The Crossing of the Paths
Second Edition
By MMM/AJ
Part I: Desert Wind
A/N: Well ladies and gents, here it is! This is the ending of the Desert Wind Arc! Everything truly comes to a head here! I've done my absolute best to tie up every last possible plot thread, at least minus the ones that lead to the next big arc.
There's an uncountable ocean of blood, sweat, and tears that went into this finale. The rough draft was hella fun to write but when I first wrote it I accidentally introduced literally dozens of plot holes into the story as I went. I had to spend months finding them all, figuring out how to patch them, and actually implementing all those fixes. As far as I can tell, it's fully polished up and plot hole free, or at least as close to plot hole free as my smooth hooman brain can get it. As a reminder, I wanted to say again that I do welcome constructive critiques on this work, but I will not accept anyone trying to use concrit as a sneaky vessel to slide in insults and abuse. Please be cordial and kind if you choose to critique me here at the end. And of course, even tiny short comments or just emojis are welcome! I value all comments as long as they're not insulting!
That being said, there's still more content here that I feel the need to add a Content Warning for! It's not as intense as the really dark stuff in the last chunk, but it's enough that I feel it still necessitates a CW. As always, the CW is in the ending Author's Notes at the bottom, please scroll down to check it if you're sensitive to violent content!
Remember too, THIS IS THE END OF WEEKLY UPDATES! We've caught up to where I'm still working on the story now, so it will be going back to taking 5-8 months per chunk for me to finish. And hey, here's a seriously BIG thank you to everyone who has stuck with me and read everything so far! It's been a crazy 4 years of work since I started this rewrite in 2019. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it!
Interlude 4
Indiru knew they had finally arrived at their destination when she heard soft gasps of shock and dread echo through the Helmasaur from the pilot's seat. The voices that came over the radio were hushed and filled with a subdued fear.
"By the Goddesses!"
It had only been minutes since they left the ancient woods that had protected the sacred meadow where the blessed sword had been hidden. The speed of their Helmasaurs and the assistance of the Deku Tree had carried them through the final stretch toward the capital at impressive speed. Now the treeline had parted and revealed the full panorama to the entire caravan, causing them all to come to a halt and take in the scene. Indiru had only seen a vague outline of the capital during her vision of the path that she'd conjured for Mewtwo and Kalana but she remembered it being dark and ominous. She didn't exactly feel eager to see the real thing in full detail now, but a sort of terrified curiosity drove her to stand up from her seat and peer through the cabin at the driver's screen.
The red doomsday orb above the tower was the worst part. Indiru's visions had already warned her repeatedly about an imminent apocalypse threatening to swallow the entire world, but seeing that miniature blood red sun hovering above the top of the tower was a far more stark, direct warning than vague visions and gut feelings. It was like staring directly into the face of death itself while knowing that it could break free at any moment and come for you. The fact that the city around the tower was lying in ruins already and emitting hundreds of smaller plumes of smoke only added to the sense of desolation and looming doom even further. Everyone was rendered speechless for several long, creeping moments as their minds all struggled to process what they were seeing. Hadara was the first one to eventually break the silence.
"So Mewtwo really was right..."
Indiru slowly climbed up to stand between Hadara and Madiri's seats so she could speak with them.
"We should hurry. I don't know how long we have, but my vision warned me that Mewtwo and Kalana would be in danger not long after entering the doors of that tower. We need to get there before they get inside."
Hadara nodded and then grabbed the radio to make an announcement. "Alright everyone, it's time. All warriors need to start gearing up immediately. I want every single suit of Iron Knuckle armor donned and every weapon readied and checked. We don't know what's waiting for us in there but we need to act as though it's a whole army standing between us and Mewtwo."
"My Chief, I think I see a clear path to the base of the tower to the south. It looks like some sort of paved plaza that extends through the ruins into the dead meadows south of the city outskirts. It's only a short diversion and it should be much safer than trying to cross the smouldering ruins directly." Nereti called out through the comms.
"Good. Take the lead and show us the path." Hadara replied, then revved the engine and took off following Nereti.
Ruru came up alongside Indiru at this point to watch as they veered South and found the plaza. The rest of the Gerudos in the passenger cabin began to noisily gear up, filling the air with clanking sounds of armor plating and weapons knocking together. Ignoring this, she knitted her brow and reached down to take Indiru's hand for comfort.
"I guess you're not going to let Indiru and I come with you when you march inside huh?" She asked.
"Absolutely not. I don't think you need me to explain my reasoning to you either do I?" Hadara replied.
Ruru shook her head quietly. "What if Indiru has another vision during the battle and it could save a bunch of people?"
Hadara pondered this quietly for a few seconds while she focused on driving. The base of the tower zoomed up toward them rapidly and she failed to conjure any meaningful reply. The atmosphere took an immediate downturn however when they got close enough to see that the doors were standing open and there was no sign of Mewtwo and Kalana anywhere in sight. Indiru's stomach dropped as she recognized that doorway. It looked almost certain that they were too late. Indiru couldn't bring herself to mention it though, she knew that Hadara was already aware of the implication and didn't need it repeated. She scowled deeply as the caravan pulled to a stop, then turned to look back at them as they parked. When she spoke next it was a quiet whisper, as though she didn't want to be overheard by anyone in the passenger cabin behind them. Her eyes fixated on Indiru and there was actual fear in her gaze.
"I don't see them anywhere. What do you think we should do now?"
Indiru furrowed her brow and pondered the situation. She knew the last thing Hadara wanted to do was act like Kamilia and use Indiru as a tool, which was probably one reason she looked hesitant to ask her for advice. Indiru didn't mind here though, she understood they were only here at the tower because of her guidance, and she was the only one who could keep guiding them now. She looked up at the screen and sighed; they couldn't see the top of the tower from here due to the limitations on the field of view of the Helmasaur's external cameras, but Indiru already had a gut feeling. She didn't think she needed to conjure up any visions to know where they had been taken.
"Go up." Indiru replied, pointing to the top of the screen. "I have a strong feeling they've been taken to the top of the tower somewhere. If the Sulaaq are as grandiose and pompous as their architecture implies then their leadership must be up near the top. Foes as important as Mewtwo and Kalana would almost certainly be held and interrogated by the leadership up there."
Hadara nodded in understanding and finally unbuckled herself. "Thank you. I should go now and help lead everyone. You two stay here. Don't leave this Helmasaur for anything."
Kurala's voice came over the comms loudly at this point, interrupting Hadara briefly. "Alright everyone, form up in front of the doors behind me! Spears and swords in front, bows and guns in the back!"
Hadara winced slightly, perhaps irritated by the younger Arbiter's eagerness to exert authority and look brave. She gave Indiru and Ruru a resigned, sad look before resuming. "We can't spare any warriors to stay back here with you, so I know you probably will refuse to listen to me and will sneak in after us no matter what I say. If you do, stay far back and avoid the areas where we're fighting. Don't risk yourselves for nothing, ok?"
Indiru felt a strange mixture of emotions come over her in response to those words. It was almost like Hadara was starting to trust them as adults by acknowledging their agency like this, but it wasn't nearly as validating and affirming as she'd expected. It was an acceptance forced upon her by the nature of their circumstances; Hadara wouldn't have acted this way if she'd had any other choice. It also felt like a loss of their innocence in some way. Hadara couldn't control or protect them from themselves anymore and that was terrifying to a part of Indiru in a deep, disconcerting way. The looming threat of a violent demise meant they no longer could be children anymore and the thought made Indiru's stomach sink. Even Ruru seemed sobered by the change in the way her mother treated them. The sound of the Helmasaur's rear door opening interrupted their moment and Hadara sighed and stood up from her seat.
"Time to go." She said, then gestured to the two of them to make way.
Indiru and Ruru watched quietly as they parted and let Hadara and Madiri step past. The young duo stood silent as everyone grabbed their weapons and climbed out together, leaving them alone in the cabin. Hadara had conspicuously left the Helmasaur's screen on so they could sit and watch, but Ruru didn't seem contented with it. Instead she quietly cranked open the top hatch on the Helmasaur and climbed out to sit on top of the hull and watch. Indiru followed her and sat down next to her immediately after. The open air here was disturbingly much warmer than it had been in the forest thanks to the huge amounts of radiant heat being put out by the tower's weapon and the whipping winds that carried the heat around and spread it so effectively. The whole area was bathed in blood red light and the air smelled strongly of smoke, burning plastic, and metal. The Gerudo throng was gathering only a few dozen feet from the open tower doors and they were lining up in neatly regimented rows with the Arbiters and the Chiefs at the head. The two members of Sumati's music troupe who had come along stood on either end of the lines with bows strapped to their backs and drums held at the ready. Again it was Kurala who spoke up first, but this time it wasn't some eager yell about preparing for battle. She turned to face the tower and raised her scimitar before releasing a traditional melodic war chant in Gerudo that was filled with defiant strength.
"Goddess Nariva, guide our spears and arrows!" She yelled.
To accentuate those words, everyone wielding a spear slammed the bottom ends on the pavement simultaneously while the drummers played a single, thunderous staccato beat. The din all this created echoed across the empty plaza, making the single beat sound like a rolling thunderous chord.
"Goddess Nariva, lead us through the night!" Nereti chimed in, matching Kurala's tone and cadence.
Another rolling series of slamming spears and drums pierced the air, reaffirming the strength of the conviction behind those words. Indiru and Ruru watched and listened in rapt fascination now, feeling the weight of the emotion behind those words.
"Nabooru's fury is with us!" Hadara called next.
The elder chief's tone was especially soulful and potent. Undoubtedly she had joined in the traditional battle chant at this point specifically because of the fact that Nabooru's bloodline still flowed through her veins. The rumbling chord of drums and spears grew even louder here, as Nabooru's fame was universally remembered by all three tribes. From there, both Arbiters and all three chiefs continued the chant together as one.
"Though we die without fear, willingly
Let our souls return home from this storm
To our sisters, and daughters, and mothers, and ancestral motherland!"
Each line was given the same thunderous wave of drums and spear slams. Once the final syllable of the chant finished echoing across the ruins, the two Arbiters and the three chiefs raised their weapons to point upward to the top of the tower. They unleashed a wordless battle cry together as one and began to make their charge toward the tower doors. Instantly the entire crowd joined that cry, and even though there was an infectious energy that Indiru could feel as the sound crashed over her, she wasn't ensnared by it. Ruru was of course, she raised her fist and yelled along with similar gusto, but Indiru couldn't help but focus on the fact that it was her mother up there at the head of that group, sprinting headlong into almost-certain death.
"To the top!" Hadara yelled at the top of her lungs as she led the charge.
The entire crowd followed them close behind with their own weapons raised and in mere moments they were pouring through the tower's doorway and vanishing into the interior. Indiru could do nothing but watch as her people ran headlong into the jaws of oblivion. Guilt churned in her gut and she sat there quietly until the last one had gone. The ensuing silence seemed to break the spell that the battle chant had cast over Ruru and she turned smilingly to Indiru to speak.
"Indiru wasn't that amazing?! I love-" Ruru paused as she saw the guilt-ridden expression on her friend's face and her exuberant smile faded to worry. "Hey, is everything ok Indiru?"
Indiru shook her head. "I'm starting to think maybe my mom had a point. Maybe I shouldn't have led everyone out here like this. A lot of people are about to die because of me."
"Hey, don't think about it like that. That's the same sadness that was bothering Mewtwo all the time. You're not responsible for the terrible things the Sulaaq do. You told the people about a danger and they willingly volunteered to face it head on. Sure they might not have come out here to fight if you hadn't told them about what you'd foreseen, but what if you didn't tell them? Would we all be better off then if Mewtwo and Kalana failed, and that big red star destroyed the world?" Ruru replied.
Indiru sighed and furrowed her brow. "I guess not."
"See? And besides, you more than anyone else are qualified to help stop more deaths! You could call on your power again with that circlet and try to figure out how to help them in the battle." Ruru suggested.
Indiru's stomach churned with dread at the prospect. She shook her head vehemently. "The last time I used my power to intervene that directly it got my sister caught by the Sulaaq, remember?"
"Well then why not focus on changing something outside of the battle? Maybe there's a switch we could hit to disable a trap? Or maybe we could find and free some prisoners in there? You won't know unless you try it!"
Indiru pondered Ruru's words quietly and realized she was right. She would feel better if she was at least doing something to help. Sitting there helplessly waiting was only going to make her miserable. So she adjusted her sitting position to something more comfortable and closed her eyes.
"Just keep an eye out for any Sulaaq while I focus on this. Remember it makes me lose track of reality for awhile."
Ruru grinned and then brandished a Sulaaq pistol she'd secretly pilfered from the storage lockers in their Helmasaur. "They won't put a finger on you!"
Indiru gawked at the gun for a moment and then laughed. "If your mom saw you holding that-"
"Heh I know! You wouldn't tattle on me would you?"
"Nope!" Indiru said with a smile, then took a deep breath and began to focus.
This time there was almost no delay as the vision came to her. Barely a few seconds passed after she closed her eyes before she saw a dimly lit hallway come fuzzily into her mind's eye. Even though she'd never been inside this particular Sulaaq tower she had an innate sense that she was now seeing its interior. It had the same dull blood red lighting as all the others, but here the walls were decorated with numerous engravings and the occasional embedded skull. There wasn't enough detail in the vision for her to make out what the engravings actually depicted, but she could at least tell they were there and quite complex. She saw the hall opening up to a large circular open chamber with two stairwells and recognized it as the same place she'd seen Mewtwo and Kalana being captured in her previous vision. This time it was empty though, and the vision moved away from it on its own, moving down the hallway and taking a left turn. Just around the corner, a door to a small storage closet opened up and inside was the sleeping form of Ciela! She was out cold but otherwise looked uninjured, and seemed to be slumped against the shelf lining the back wall.
"Ciela!" Indiru gasped out loud, snapping out of the vision with surprise.
"You saw her?" Ruru asked.
"Yes! She's stuck in there and needs our help! Do you have a potion we can give her?!"
"No, but there might be one in the storage lockers beneath the seats we could take."
"Right, let's hurry!"
The duo climbed back inside the Helmasaur and began to fling the locker doors open and dig around inside. Unfortunately the warriors had taken almost everything with them when they piled out, but Ruru eventually struck paydirt. She produced a much smaller vial of Red Potion from the last locker on the left side of the row.
"Bingo! It's only a small dose though, do you think it'll be enough?"
"Ciela didn't look hurt, just knocked out, so it should be. Come on, let's not waste any more time!" Indiru replied.
"Right, but you should take one of these too, just in case." Ruru said, grabbing a spare Gerudo dagger out of the locker and offering it to her.
Indiru hesitated for a moment, feeling worried she might hurt herself with the weapon even though it was still in its sheath. She had always considered herself a pacifist and hated the idea of ever hurting another living thing, but she couldn't deny that if anyone deserved to be harmed it was the Sulaaq.
"Don't worry, we probably won't even need to use these. I just wanna be ready for the unexpected. If you have to use it then I'll eat my own shoes." Ruru replied.
Indiru smirked a little at the mental image of Ruru sitting down at a dinner table and using a fork and knife to cut up and eat a steaming roasted shoe. She then took a breath, grabbed the dagger, and strapped it to her hip.
"Alright, let's go."
They slipped out of the back of the Helmasaur and darted across the plaza toward the tower doors together. Indiru briefly marveled at how smooth the stone was here as they ran, there wasn't even a single seam in the weird black pavement. She nearly hesitated as they approached the doors, but the thought of saving her sister gave her the courage to push on through. She noticed how Ruru didn't even seem to hesitate at all too; that girl seemed totally fearless. Once they entered the big chamber with the two stairwells though, Ruru came to a stop and looked to Indiru for guidance.
"Where to next?"
"This way!" Indiru replied, hanging a left and running down the hallway she'd seen.
She followed the path the vision took along the hallway and through another left, then stopped at the door. She looked up at it and then realized she had no idea how to open it.
"Uh... uh oh. Ruru do you know how to open these?"
"Kalana always told me you gotta hit the green glowy button on that ethereal screen off to the side. It's right there, but I don't think I can reach it!" Ruru replied, stretching her arm up toward the holoscreen. Her hand was just an inch short.
"Hold on, I'll boost you up." Indiru replied, then knelt down and began to lift Ruru up off her feet.
Ruru wobbled a bit at first though. She gasped and grabbed at the wall while calling out. "Woah, hey be careful!"
"Sorry!"
Indiru angled Ruru toward the wall rather than away from it and this allowed them to brace against it and avoid toppling over. Ruru only needed an inch anyway, so it didn't take long before she was able to hit the button and cause the door to swish open. They were fortunate that this was just an inconsequential storage closet for cleaning supplies; there was no reason to lock and encrypt the door. Indiru rapidly set her friend back down and rushed inside to find Ciela exactly where she'd seen her.
Emotion flooded through Indiru as she came face to face with her estranged sister for the first time in over a year. She couldn't help the tears that gathered in her eyes now as a number of different feelings flooded her gut, including a righteous anger at the Sulaaq who had driven her to go on this strange quest. Perhaps there was some part of her now that would abandon her pacifism if she ever had the chance to get revenge on the ones who'd done this to her. She shook it off though and called out to Ruru.
"Ruru, uncork the potion now, quick!"
"Got it!"
Ruru produced the small glass vial and uncorked it with a quick pop, then handed it to Indiru. Indiru then gently pulled her sister's mouth open and tilted the potion inside, hoping she wouldn't choke on it. It took several seconds for anything to happen, but then Ciela's eyes slowly flitted open. She looked dazed and disconnected from reality, which sent waves of fear through Indiru. She tossed the empty bottle aside carelessly and grabbed Ciela's left shoulder with both hands.
"Ciela? Sis? Can you hear me?" She asked, her voice cracking from suppressed fear.
"Hhhuhhhwha? I'ru?" Ciela mumbled, using her sister's nickname.
"Ciela, please wake up and be ok!" Indiru said, then broke down and hugged her tightly.
That embrace seemed to be what finally snapped Ciela out of her groggy state. She recognized her sister's embrace and sat up to return the hug with one arm. Her other hand rubbed the sleep out of her eyes before going down to complete the hug.
"I'ru what's going on? What are you doing here? Where am I?"
"I don't even know, but I'm so glad you're alright!" Indiru replied, starting to softly cry again.
Ciela held her tightly and rocked for several seconds, holding back her own tears. She realized how much she'd missed her sister during that year away and how much of a mistake she'd made by not going back to Ven'vha after escaping this place the first time.
"It's ok I'ru, I'm fine. It takes more than a little bit of pain to break this old soul." She said softly.
"Why didn't you come back to us?" Indiru asked between her muffled sobs.
"I... I thought I... I don't know what I thought. My mind has been addled, I've made a lot of mistakes. I'm sorry."
Indiru cried in her sister's arms like that for a short while longer, feeling relieved to get all those emotions out in the arms of one of the few people she trusted with them. Ruru stood back and watched with a respectful silence, knowing this was a moment just for the two of them. Unfortunately Indiru felt a flicker of another vision trying to come through at this point, and thanks to her circlet she couldn't block it out. It felt like a warning reminder that they were operating on limited time. She briefly saw the mental image of another room flash into and out of her mind too quickly to make out any details. This gave her the strength to stanch her tears and gather her composure; she gently tugged her way out of the hug.
"Ciela, we don't have much time. What's the last thing you remember?"
"I remember... I had just helped Mewtwo. He was trying to form a spiritual bond with one of the ancient elemental medallions and had somehow succeeded, but then I blacked out. Next thing I know you're waking me up with a potion down here."
"So he's alive then!" Indiru said, perking up as she felt her hopes restored. Maybe they weren't too late after all!
"Yeah, but one of the Sulaaq leaders was about to show up and I don't know what happened. He could be in danger right now!" Ciela said, then urgently lifted Indiru up off of her entirely and began to scrabble around the floor as if looking for something. "Have either of you two seen the Golden Bow?!" She asked.
Both Ruru and Indiru shook their heads quietly. Ciela realized the bow wasn't in the room with them and then climbed to her feet.
"I need to go find the bow and rejoin the battle to help him. But first I'm getting the two of you out of here. Come with me."
Ciela reached down to take their hands but Indiru pulled her hand away.
"No, we're coming with you Ciela! We may not mean to get into any fights, but I want to use my powers to help!"
"Yeah, that's right!" Ruru added.
Ciela heaved a frustrated sigh. She didn't go for the low blow by blaming Indiru for her previous capture, but she did look genuinely worried and irritated.
"I'ru, you know I can't protect you both if we get ambushed!"
"Then let us help you find the bow before you go to battle at least! I'll call up a vision of it!"
Ciela hesitated for a moment, then sighed and nodded. "Alright, fine. But hurry, we don't know how much time we have left!"
Indiru nodded and sat down on the floor again. She now felt immensely grateful for the Circlet, its power was making this process so much easier and faster. She took a few breaths, closed her eyes again and focused. Just like before it only took a few seconds before her work paid off. She saw the same room as the one that had come through in the earlier flicker, but this time much clearer and longer. It was a personal bedroom of some sort, filled with metallic, gothic furniture and decorations that were made to look sinister and demonic. Shelves with weapons and other unspeakable devices lined the walls, and there were what appeared to be heads of various alien people mounted to placards on the wall like trophies. The golden bow was laying on the floor in this room. Indiru also instantly recognized Mewtwo's Gerudo spear in that room, it was mounted to the wall on a shelf next to a bunch of other looted weapons. She tried to focus more on zooming out so she could see where this room was, but even as it did she couldn't really place anything else. The twisting corridors she saw were all alien and foreign to her, and the vision ended before it could reach any landmarks she could recognize.
"Damnit..." Indiru mumbled.
"What happened? Did your powers refuse to work this time?" Ruru asked.
"No, I saw the bow, I just don't know where it is." Indiru replied.
"I know this tower practically inside out. Can you describe the room to me?" Ciela asked.
"Yes. It looked like a private bedroom. It's a one room chamber, has black carpeting, a black bed, and lots of black and red Sulaaq decoration. There's tons of weapons mounted to racks on the walls, as well as weird alien heads in taxidermy. It looked like it was one floor below a prison of some sort.
"That's Flametongue's quarters! I know exactly where that is! Come on, let's go!"
Ciela turned and led them out of the closet, down the hall, and into a stairwell. They ran up the steps as fast as they could, but the amount of time it took was disheartening. After several agonizing minutes of stair climbing Indiru began to feel her sides and lungs ache, while her mind painted anxious pictures of them arriving too late and seeing Mewtwo and Kalana already dead. Thankfully they didn't run into any corpses along the way though, there didn't seem to be any signs of battle despite how many Gerudos had poured through the place ahead of them. Indiru was forced to slow down in order to catch her breath a few times, and by the time they reached the proper floor her whole body was aching. Even Ruru looked a bit winded.
It was only a brief walk through one more hallway before they finally reached their destination. The door was shut and locked though, but Ciela didn't seem worried.
"Stand back, I'm going to use magic to cut this open." She said, and Indiru and Ruru nodded and did as instructed.
Ciela chanted a brief incantation in Gerudo and pointed her hand toward the door with all five fingers extended and held out vertically. A bright orange beam of magical light formed from her fingertips, taking the shape of a three foot long blade of heat and flame. She then slowly pushed that blade into the door, cutting through the metal gradually and sending beads and rivulets of glowing molten metal to the floor.
"I used this spell to escape the Rakeshan Arbiter's Grounds once." Ciela boasted with a slight smile.
It took just a few moments for her to carve right through the locking mechanisms. Gouts of smoke and flame shot out of the hole she was carving, and once she finished she drew an unfamiliar sword and shoved it into the crack of the door and pry it open. Inside was the exact room Indiru had seen down to a T, and inside was the spear and the bow exactly where the vision had shown her. Ciela rushed in and scooped them up, strapping them to her back with haste.
"Thank the Goddesses. Indiru your visions have become incredibly accurate!" Ciela marveled as she worked.
"Nariva's blessings have helped a lot. But what are we going to do now?"
"I'm going back up to the command chamber to rejoin the battle. You know I can't let you come with me for this one too."
Indiru nodded her head and sighed. "I could try to summon a vision of the fight, but usually that doesn't work."
"You've done enough. Listen, Flametongue is dead and the rest of the Sulaaq should be too distracted by the battle to come in here and check, so stay here for now ok?"
Indiru wanted to argue but she knew her sister well enough to know it would be useless. Ciela was always stubborn and headstrong; when she got an idea in her head only the Goddesses themselves could change it. Ruru opened her mouth to argue but Indiru reached out to gently put one finger over it.
"We'll wait for you. Just... be careful ok? I don't want to lose you again." Indiru said.
Ciela leaned down and hugged Indiru briefly. "They won't take me again. I promise."
Indiru savored the hug for as long as she could, then let go and watched her sister make for the door. "Goddesses be with you, sis." she said before Ciela could slip away.
Then the two youths were alone again in the creepily decorated room. Ruru whined softly and turned to frown at Indiru.
"I know you said you didn't want to get into a fight, but do you really want to just sit here and do nothing now?!"
Indiru nodded grimly. "I'm not going to risk getting in the way again. Not after what happened last time. Mom is at least right about that."
Ruru pouted stubbornly. "Can't you just... try calling up a vision of what might happen if we followed her up there at a distance?"
Indiru hesitated. "I've tried to foresee battle outcomes before but like I said to Ciela it doesn't ever work!"
"Then don't focus on the battle, just focus on us if we snuck up to watch it!"
Indiru hesitated again. She was starting to feel like even Ruru was using her like a tool now. She also knew Ruru was as stubborn as Ciela and would most likely keep pushing on this regardless of however many logical arguments she could make. And besides, this room full of weapons and severed heads was creepy and Indiru didn't exactly want to stay any longer either.
"You know what? Let's just go and watch. Vision or no vision. You're not gonna let go of this and I'm not going to convince you, so let's at least get close enough to observe. But no intervening!"
Ruru gawked in surprise. "Wait, what? Really?"
"Yeah. If I'm going to get over what happened to Ciela last time I need to face my fear and be brave. Besides, there's bound to be a lot of Gerudos still up there and we can blend in with them or get help from them if we need to."
Ruru's shock melted into a big grin that was filled with pride. "I knew you could face it. You really are braver than you give yourself credit for Indiru. You make a great Heroine."
Indiru smiled a little bit too. "Thank you. Come on, let's get moving."
Chapter 32 - In the Lap of the Goddesses Pt. 2
An amusing yet dark thought crossed Mewtwo's mind as he ran toward the Central Tower's command chamber; If Hadara had him banished for failing to save Kalana then maybe at least Kamilia might give him a place to stay in Ven'vha for saving Ciela. He gave a cynical little chuckle as he ran, shaking his head. The distance he had to cover was mercifully short and he was trying to save his psychic reserves by not teleporting. He'd spent a lot of energy to take down Flametongue and Shadetalon and the hardest fight of all was still yet to come.
It made sense that the command chamber that he arrived in would look vastly different from all the others he'd seen in the other towers; this was their planetary capital after all. The huge energy conversion machine for the drain system was still there and it looked the same as all the others that he'd seen, but that was where the similarities ended. Gone was the glass floor and moody red lighting; the floor here was solidly opaque and there was ample clear white lighting. The outer walls were covered in hundreds more holographic screens from floor to ceiling and there were several tables scattered around in front of the screens with random items like plates, mugs, and unfamiliar digital devices resting atop them. Most of the screens showed text, but some had video feeds from the tower's interior. Some even had feeds from other towers. A large black leather wheeled office chair was sitting empty by the largest of the screens. Mewtwo could see it was designed to fit a member of his species with total comfort, it even had a hole for a tail to fit through. Mewtwo realized that there was undoubtedly a treasure trove of information here that could probably answer all of his lingering questions about the Sulaaq, but he didn't have time to go digging through it. He had to broadcast that stand-down code immediately and get ready for the fight. He made a beeline for the biggest console screen and saw some text on the readout that immediately confirmed one of his fears.
"Tower grid charging sequence 100% complete. Awaiting Fire Command."
There was a square beneath the text with a palm-shaped image on it, indicating it required a palmprint scan to access. Mewtwo immediately placed his right palm on it and was instantly greeted with a shrill alarm screech and a flashing red lockout screen.
"TOTAL COMMAND LOCKOUT ENGAGED! Enter secondary back-up authorization code: _"
A sinking feeling filled Mewtwo's stomach. He didn't know if the codes he had would work and he suspected his luck was about to run out. He had to try though. He chewed on his tongue anxiously and typed in "Sarne Burns"
SCREEEEEEEECH!
"INCORRECT CODE! Two attempts remaining before automatic security engagement! Enter secondary back-up authorization code: _"
The blank field blinked insistently this time when it appeared again. Fear churned in Mewtwo's gut as he pondered that prompt. If he was genetically identical to Darkest then there was at least a good chance that the security system might not automatically attack him, especially since Darkest wouldn't want to risk killing his past self. But if Darkest was as horribly spiteful as Mewtwo suspected then there was a good chance that the tower was designed so that the superweapon went off if he ran out of password attempts. There was only one other code he knew: the tower weapon stand-down code. He held his breath as he punched it in as cautiously as he could.
SCREEEEEEEECH!
"Goddesses damnit!" Mewtwo yelled in terrified frustration.
Now only one attempt was left and he didn't have any other codes left to try. He turned and tried to access several of the other consoles covering the walls but they all prompted him for the same code and only offered one attempt. Panic began to rattle through Mewtwo's mind and he shakily gripped the handle of Azria as he tried to come up with an idea. He could try conjuring up a psychic vision for the password like Indiru had done before, but he discarded that idea due to the risk of an inaccurate vision giving him the wrong code. Best not to roll the dice like that when the fate of the entire planet could be on the line. Then an actually feasible idea struck him.
He could still remember the schematics of the tower that he'd read when he and Kalana went on that information gathering mission during their stay in Ven'vha. He recalled from those diagrams that each of the energy projector spires in every tower had maintenance access panels on their bases within easy reach. Inside these panels was a hard-wired emergency disengagement system designed to cut off the energy projectors from the rest of the tower's power grid in the event that the computer control system failed and the weapon needed to be shut down manually. The disengagement system was isolated from the tower's main computer system entirely; it required purely manual input from someone up there on the roof. This was a mixed blessing and a curse though. It meant that Mewtwo could prevent the weapon from firing without needing the missing code, but he could still only do this to the one tower he was at. All the others were still primed to fire and Mewtwo had no way to force them to stand down. It'd have to do for now; he trusted the Vha'an people to keep their own local tower offline. With both that one and this one offline it would at least mean all the Gerudos would survive if the network did fire.
There was just one other massive problem with this plan. The schematics had come with great big bold red warnings that the roof would be extremely dangerous to stand on while the doomsday orb was ready to fire. High winds would be present, along with high temperatures, gamma radiation, and an extremely high risk that the ionic disturbances in the atmosphere could cause those bolts of red lightning to strike him. The real cherry on top was the fact that any and all psychic energy discharges that close to the orb's containment field could compromise its integrity, leading to the whole thing coming free and firing itself then and there. If he did this it'd have to be without using any of his powers. Just one forgetful slip-up could be all it took to reduce him and any nearby Gerudos to a cloud of superheated vapor. It was the very definition of a high risk, high reward gamble. Not like he really had a choice though. He ran over to the center of the room and began to awkwardly climb up on top of the energy converter device and then push his way through the hole in the roof above it. He could feel a tingling, static-like charge prickling over his skin and fur as he passed through that circular hole, as well as a slight measure of ethereal physical resistance. It was almost like shoving his finger through a weak telekinetic barrier of some kind. He figured it was a protective energy shield of some sort, probably used to prevent the wind, heat, and radiation put off by the orb from blasting into the room. It was easy for him to push himself through it though since it was clearly not designed to exert enough physical force to block entry. The instant he was through his senses were assaulted by the raging howl of wind.
The roof was absolutely bathed in bright red glow from the orb just a few dozen feet or so above him. This close it was so bright that he couldn't bear to look directly up at it. Its heat was uncomfortably strong, making Mewtwo's skin heat up under direct exposure. He could taste a faint, strange metallic taste in his mouth. The wind was strong enough that he was forced to lean forward into it in order to avoid being blown off the roof entirely. Thankfully the steel floor had small, smooth studs that his feet could grip onto fairly well, giving him much better traction in order to keep on his feet. He was grateful that he hadn't come up here with his cloak on, that deafening gale would have immediately caught it and turned it into a noose around his neck. He slowly put one foot forward and strained his way across the roof toward the first spire he randomly picked, gritting his teeth and squinting his eyes shut as he went. He had to sheathe Azria once he arrived at the base of the spire so he could use one hand to grab ahold of it and keep himself steady under the wind while he opened the panel.
The inside of the access panel had a number of small wires and conduits lining the sides of it, and in the center was a massive stainless steel cylinder with a thick horizontal handle attached to the top. A huge black and yellow striped warning label was plastered all over the underside of the panel, and thankfully Mewtwo's body hunched over it shielded it from the blinding red light from the orb above so he could read it easily.
"WARNING: In order to avoid catastrophic failure due to uneven containment field shutdown, Projector Spire disengagement requires all seven spire interlocks to engage before proceeding. Unlock and prime all seven ejector cylinders first before triggering disengagement procedure! Failure to follow this procedure can lead to asymmetrical orb containment failure causing the release of energy downward at the tower rather than upward into space!"
Sweat poured down Mewtwo's body as he squinted to read the text, running his finger along each line. His heart pounded in his chest and he chewed his lower lip. He muttered curses under his breath as he reached down and grabbed the handle on the steel ejector cylinder and began to turn it counter clockwise to unlock it. The handle was extremely stiff, causing him to strain and growl as he forced it all the way around with a painful series of loud metallic clicks. Once it had completed a full rotation it made a loud CLUNK and a pneumatic hiss as the whole thing began to slide upward. Mewtwo knew from the schematics he'd read that this cylinder had been built over a section of superconductor conduit that carried the energy up from the tower into the projector. The conduit had a junction here composed of a loose segment that was still sitting in contact with both sides, and there was a tiny explosive charge beneath that segment that was designed to instantaneously shoot it up into the cylinder above when set off. This would cut the connection in a fraction of a second and break the circuit without damaging the rest of the conduit, and a new segment could be easily slid in and replaced. The timing of all seven cylinders firing had to be exact so that the containment field came down symmetrically in order to release the orb's energy straight up into space. Once the cylinder finished rising up to its full height of twelve inches it exposed a glowing red priming switch, which Mewtwo immediately flipped. A small, old fashioned LED display then activated above the cylinder, showing 01/07 to indicate his progress at priming the system.
Immediately a loud series of klaxon alarms began going off all over the tower, both interior and exterior. It was so loud Mewtwo could hear it over the roaring of the wind around him. A bright yellow rotary alarm light came on over the cylinder too, letting him know in no uncertain terms that the mechanism was now primed and ready to trigger. Shaking with adrenaline and terror, Mewtwo turned and made a beeline to the next closest spire to his right, pushing through the wind with as much speed as he could safely conjure without losing traction and being blown off the roof. He unconsciously clenched his teeth as he struggled over the roof toward the spire. The klaxon wasn't helping his nerves, and the heat given off by the orb above him was making him sweat even more as his body overheated. He felt like his heart was going to give out as he bent over the next spire's panel and wrenched it open.
The cylinder inside was even more difficult to turn than the previous one. His shaking, sweaty hand nearly slipped off the handle a few times as he struggled to twist it through a rough portion that caught and resisted the motion. Once he had turned it all the way around he panted and ground his teeth as the pneumatic mechanism sloooooooowly pushed the cylinder up.
"Come on, goddesses damnit!" He yelled at the top of his lungs.
A few seconds later and the second switch was revealed. He slammed it and the screen above it flicked on, reading 02/07. With no delay he turned again to head to the next, but now he was heading into the wind at a different angle and it was trying to blow him sideways. Keeping his grip was far more difficult at this angle, especially since he was now following the edge of the tower and had very little margin of error before falling off. There were no railings around the edge so all it'd take would be one tiny slip or totter to cause him to plunge over the side. He knew he could catch himself with telekinesis if he fell away from the containment field's danger zone, but getting back up would waste valuable time he didn't have. He almost wished he had some sort of timer or countdown blaring at him until the tower fired or Darkest arrived, the lack of knowing how much time he really had was driving him mad. He stumbled his way over to the third spire, now panting loudly, and yanked violently at the panel. His skin was burning now from the heat and light cast by the orb and his eyes were blurry.
The third cylinder was easier than the second thankfully, but it took just as long for the pneumatics to raise it as the other two. He gasped in breaths of air as he waited for it to finish, then flipped the switch. He noticed that this one's switch didn't light up properly, which sent a bolt of fear through his belly as he thought it meant the primer hadn't worked properly, but then the rotary light and the screen came on above it with 03/07 and he released a breath of relief. These mechanisms were painfully old and the light in the switch had probably just burned out.
Mewtwo turned and made his way to the fourth and was more than halfway there when his legs nearly gave out on him from the exertion of resisting the wind. Cramps jolted through the muscles and he gave a wordless yell as he leaned and nearly toppled over the edge. It was a miracle that he caught himself and managed to make it to the next spire at all. He struggled to get the panel free too, as the hinge had rusted severely and nearly totally locked up. He released more desperate curses as he forced it open with a shriek of grinding, stressed metal. He had to kneel to let his legs rest as he reached down to grab the handle on the cylinder. This time though, when the cylinder caught and got stuck in place, no amount of physical force could budge it. He strained and groaned and swore as the sweat coursed down his body, but nothing budged it.
"DAMN YOU!" He screamed, venting all his desperation and terror in one loud burst.
With nothing else left to try, he drew Azria and wedged the tip of the blade underneath the handle to try and pry it loose like a crowbar. The metal of the blade strained under the force he exerted and the cylinder began to slooooooooooooowly grind around thanks to the leverage it was granting. He was halfway there when his psychic senses picked up a brief flicker of energy nearby. It distracted him just enough to cause his hands to slip off the blade. He nearly faceplanted into the console as his misplaced leverage threw off his balance. Fear was surging up in his belly as he realized that the flicker he'd sensed felt exactly like a teleport. He was out of time. He snarled wordlessly and again grabbed the handle of Azria and shoved with every last ounce of strength his body could conjure. The tip of the blade began to bend and give, but the force was finally enough to dislodge the cylinder from the groove it had caught on and it rotated the rest of the way around and began to rise. Mewtwo had to pry loose the sword as the mechanism rose up, since the blade had bit deeply into the side of the handle due to the force he'd exerted. He got it free just as it finished rising, and he reached down to flick the switch. 04/07.
Mewtwo wasn't sure he had the time or the strength to make it to the fifth spire now, his body was undoubtedly suffering from heat stroke at this point and his stomach was churning and twisting with nausea. He pushed his way to his feet and began to hobble his way over and the wind again nearly toppled him, but he forced himself to keep going anyway. Three times he nearly lost his balance due to the wind, but caught himself before tumbling over the edge. He was shaking and panting when he got to the fifth spire, and his arms seized with cramps as he grabbed the edges of the access panel. He struggled and struggled, only to be interrupted by the deafeningly loud CRACK of a firing laser weapon. Pure burning agony scorched through his right hand as a red beam an inch in diameter pierced directly through his palm and blew open the edge of the panel where he'd been gripping. He recoiled his hand away with a wordless bellow, then spun around to look toward the source of the attack.
When Mewtwo saw the figure of his attacker he completely forgot everything else in the world around him. The blaring klaxons, the howling wind, the scorching heat, it all fell away. There was another member of his species also like Shadetalon, standing in the center of the roof just beside the hole that led down into the command chamber. He too was wearing a full body suit that concealed his identity, but Mewtwo instinctually knew that this was Darkest himself. His suit was far more heavily armored than the one Shadetalon had worn, resembling a bulky set of power armor that a futuristic space marine might have worn. It was all the same jet black with red glowing highlights, but it had been built to at least partially mimic the shape of the suppression armor that Giovanni had first made for Mewtwo to wear during his brief stint working for Team Rocket. Darkest had one arm raised toward him and Mewtwo could see the barrel of a large laser cannon that had been built into the top of the armor on his wrist. The armor was glowing with a sort of blacklight-esque radiance that resembled the energy put off by the Shadow Medallion. Most menacing of all though was the pair of webbed, bat-like demon wings folded behind Darkest's back, giving him the appearance of some sort of hellish lord of the underworld decked out with advanced technology.
"Step away from the panel." Darkest ordered in a lethal, low tone of voice. Mewtwo's blood ran cold, the voice was exactly the same as his own.
Darkest kept his weapon aimed squarely at Mewtwo as he stood there staring at him through his visor. Mewtwo seemed to be locked in a no-win situation now, he couldn't use his powers without setting off the tower's weapon and killing everyone, and Darkest's armor and weapons were too powerful to possibly overcome. But Mewtwo knew the truth now thanks to Shadetalon; he knew Darkest couldn't kill him without killing himself. Exhausted and ready to pass out from the heat and the pain, Mewtwo still couldn't help but smirk.
"Or what, you'll kill me!?" He shouted back defiantly.
Darkest didn't reply at all. He didn't even move, save for adjusting the aim of his arm slightly before firing again.
CRACK!
The beam lanced through Mewtwo's other hand, burning a hole through the same exact spot. He fell to his knees again and yelled out from the pain; now both his hands were limp and useless. He couldn't open the panel now even if he tried. He briefly considered lashing out at Darkest with his psionics one final time in order to bring the orb crashing down on them both, it would be suicide but it'd take Darkest down with him. But he discarded that plan when he remembered the fact that there could be Gerudos nearby that would be killed too.
"I will not repeat myself again. Step. Away." Darkest ordered, his voice completely calm yet brimming with contempt.
Barely able to conjure up the energy to stand, Mewtwo slowly pushed his way to his feet and wobbled in the wind. He took a step away from the spire as instructed, but he stepped to the side rather than toward the winged menace before him.
Darkest began to wordlessly walk toward him now, weapon still raised. His wings, while still folded, were fluttering in place from the force of the wind. The weight of his armor was anchoring him perfectly, so the wind didn't even cause him to lean or wobble. He approached slowly at first but began to pick up speed as he homed in on his exhausted target. Mewtwo couldn't see his face through the visor but he could sense the raw malice hidden beneath. Even though Darkest couldn't kill him, he still could easily use that armor's strength to capture him. Mewtwo knew the moment one of those armored hands wrapped around his second neck it would be all over. Cornered and out of options, he had only one avenue of escape remaining. He closed his eyes, stood to his full height, and stepped backward. With a quick, simple hop he plummeted over the tower's edge and into the open air.
This wasn't a suicidal leap though, Mewtwo was just falling long enough to escape the danger zone around the orb's containment field. As he began to fall he closed his eyes and used his Recover ability, healing the holes in his hands and the burns all over his body. His vitality rushed back to him again, removing the aching cramps from his muscles and easing the blur out of his vision. He fell for several seconds, savoring the cold rush of the wind over his body as he plummeted. In a way it was almost similar to the cold relief of the waters in the spring at Purity Lake back when his old human friend Ash had tossed him in to heal him. He smiled a little at the memory. That had been all he had needed then to return to the fight and defeat Giovanni. The repeating patterns of history amused him as the Earth zoomed rapidly up to meet him. He caught himself before he could smash against the pavement though; his telekinesis halted him gently and pulled him to a stop just in time. Then he teleported directly back to the Command Chamber of the tower, knowing full well Darkest would follow. In the chamber the klaxon alarms were even louder thanks to the lack of roaring wind to muffle the sound, and dozens of those rotary alarm lights were flashing all over the walls. All of the screens in the room were now glaring bright red alarms about the Spire Disengagement System being partially primed. Every screen was showing the same 04/07 status.
Mewtwo raised his telekinetic barrier as soon as he arrived and almost immediately he was glad he did. Darkest jumped down through the hole in the ceiling and landed on top of the energy converter machine a moment later, opening fire without hesitation. The beam crashed against Mewtwo's shield and nearly tore through in one shot. It was even more powerful than the handheld rifles that the Sulaaq had been using before and Mewtwo winced as he held it back. It probably would have penetrated on the first shot if the Medallions weren't helping to boost Mewtwo's energy reserves. Darkest kept firing though, so Mewtwo was forced to use telekinesis to propel himself sideways through the air and dodge all his subsequent shots. The beams lanced through the air with all the instantaneous speed that a laser should have, but Darkest hadn't expected Mewtwo to dodge so quickly and hadn't led his shots, so the beams fell short and blasted smouldering holes through the walls of the tower around them.
Then it all got worse. One of Darkest's missed shots clipped the edge of a thick humming energy conduit connecting the energy converter machine to one of the seven spires. An intense white arc flash filled the room, blinding both combatants and forcing Mewtwo to halt himself so he wouldn't collide with something while blind. An ear piercing BANG filled the chamber and Mewtwo flinched and shut his eyes, fully expecting the whole system to instantly detonate, killing them both. Fortunately that didn't happen, but when the light cleared they both could see that the conduit had half its mass vaporized and electrical arcs were dancing out of the crater in it. Suddenly even more klaxon alarms began to blare on top of the others, overlaying them to intensify the nightmarish din. The screens all changed to a new warning, and an automated male computer voice came over the speakers in the room, delivering a stark warning.
"Danger! Insufficient power to weapon containment fields! Containment failure will occur in T-minus five minutes! All personnel must evacuate immediately!"
Mewtwo's head spun around to look at the screens and he saw they all now were displaying the huge bold numbers of a countdown sequence. Fresh new horror surged through his system as he realized just how deeply in trouble he was in now.
Darkest wasn't perturbed by any of this though, nor did he pause to look like Mewtwo had done. He took the pause as an opportunity to fire again, holding down the trigger this time to pump shot after shot into Mewtwo's barrier while he was distracted. It only took two to burst through and collapse it, and the third struck Mewtwo in his tail and made him yell raggedly in pain. His throat was raw now from all the yelling. He used another burst of telekinetic force to propel himself forward and avoid any further shots, buying himself time to bring his barrier back up and start healing himself again.
Darkest wasn't going to make the same mistake twice though, instead he raised his other hand and conjured up a wall of transparent red telekinetic force directly in front of Mewtwo. It appeared too quickly for Mewtwo to react to and he slammed into it head-on. His shield absorbed most of the impact and prevented serious injury, but he still collided with it with enough force to bruise his snout and break his concentration. This bought Darkest enough time to open fire again, piercing the new barrier a second time and scorching a hole through Mewtwo's left shoulder.
"GAAAH!" Mewtwo bellowed wordlessly.
Feeling increasingly desperate and trapped again, Mewtwo resorted to attacking instead of continuing to evade. Fearing Darkest had the same elemental typing as Shadetalon he resorted to yet another attack type choice that he hoped would at least bypass his foe's resistances. He staggered back and raised his good arm to fire off a bright yellow Thunderbolt attack from his palm. The bolt instantaneously struck Darkest's armor and scorched a pit into the surface, but he didn't seem to even be perturbed. Instead the armored menace kicked off the ground and telekinetically zoomed toward him! Mewtwo's eyes widened in horror and he tried to re-raise his shield again, hoping to block the attack.
Mewtwo had been cutting it awfully close. The barrier flickered to life at the last possible millisecond and Darkest landed feetfirst on it. The impact still propelled Mewtwo and his bubble backward to slam against the wall. The barrier absorbed both impacts and held, but now Mewtwo was pinned. Mere feet away from the partially severed energy conduit, he was a prime target for one of those electrical arcs now. One flashed out to connect with his barrier with a loud BANG, causing it to overload due to the sheer volume of the energy released. The barrier shattered again, causing Darkest to come crashing down feetfirst onto his stomach. Darkest used Shadow Claw to wreathe the gauntlets of his armor with ghostly purple energy and buried them in Mewtwo's stomach. Either he didn't care about the existential risk to his own survival that such actions represented or he knew he could just heal him with Heal Pulse after knocking him out.
Darkest didn't hold back like Shadetalon had done either, he put his full psychic force into the blow as his claws sank all the way in and pushed through Mewtwo's back. Mewtwo gasped and choked as he felt his organs shift and puncture from the force of the blow, and before he could even pull up the energy to shove Darkest back or heal himself, blackness began to swallow him up. It was as he had feared, they really did have the power to finish him off with one strike if they used their type advantages against him properly. That strike would have been the end of him then, but something happened that he didn't expect. As his mind spiraled into unconsciousness, the energies of the two Medallions still bonded to his soul surged forward in response to the ebbing of his life force. Green and golden power welled up inside him, bringing him back from the brink and waking him up again. His eyes flashed open and he found himself being dragged across the floor by his tail toward the main console. The deep wound in his gut was gone, as he suspected Darkest had healed it in order to avoid killing him outright.
Mewtwo didn't know how long he had been out but he figured it had been several seconds at least due to the fact that Darkest wasn't paying attention to him anymore. He turned his head up to look and saw Darkest walk up to the main console and type in his secondary backup code. He decided to play dead and watch now, hoping that Darkest would actually shut down the weapon in an act of pure self-preservation. The countdown to containment failure was still going, and the computer voice spoke up again.
"Danger! You now have T-minus four minutes to reach minimum safe distance!"
Darkest typed furiously on the console and it screeched loudly. Text flashed on the screen in large enough letters that Mewtwo could still read them from down there on the floor.
"Unable to comply! Weapon control systems compromised!"
"FUCK!" Darkest snarled, figuring his errant shots had severed enough conduits to cause this.
Another warning popped up on the screen here at this point too.
"Warning! Proximity alert! Hostile forces detected on ground-based approach vector!"
On the left side of the screen, a video feed popped up showing a horde of Gerudos charging up toward the double doors at the base of the tower. They wore the colors of all three tribes and carried spears, scimitars, bows, and stolen Sulaaq guns. They were sprinting inside shouting fierce battle cries, weapons raised.
"Damnit, did that moron even have any thralls left to defend this place with?" Darkest mumbled, tapping on the main screen.
Then another alert sounded. "Incoming hail! Audio only!" flashed on the screen. Darkest tapped it to accept the transmission.
"What is it?!"
"Sir, this is Captain Onyx of the Scarlett Dread! We've managed to break away from the main engagement zone to answer your call but we're being pursued! The enemy seems to be ... some kind of jamming ... cannot teleport! Telepathic ... interruptions! Please advise! Should we continue on course or stop ... engage?!"
Static distortions peppered the transmission, periodically cutting through the captain's words. Something seemed to be causing significant interference.
"I don't care what it takes, get down here as fast as possible! I need backup!" Darkest replied.
He then slammed the button to end the call and turned to tap on a few others. On the right side of the screen, a tactical overlay showing a zoomed out view of the planet appeared. On this view the tower was just a tiny speck down on the surface, and the space above the planet showed thousands upon thousands of tiny green and red pinpoints. One green pinpoint was starting to break away from the main cluster and move downward through the atmosphere. Mewtwo realized then that each mote must have represented a starship. There must have been a colossal amount of them up in orbit duking it out then, judging by the sheer number of them he saw on that screen! That must have been the source of the interference! Four red ones were pulling away too to pursue the green one, a fact which made Darkest growl angrily to himself while tapping his chin.
Mewtwo sprung into action at this point; he grabbed Scimitar Azria from where it had been dropped on the floor and stabbed it forward at Darkest with the intent to skewer him right through the gut. This time the armor Darkest was wearing was too strong to penetrate though, causing the blade to deflect off sideways and slide off. This stuff must have been much tougher than Shadetalon's Spec Ops suit. The attack wasn't wasted though; a searing burst of Nariva's holy energy came surging up through the blade as it made physical contact with the armor and sent crackling arcs of divine fury all through the suit just like it had done to Shadetalon. Darkest jerked rigid as the holy light made his muscles tense and spasm, and huge showers of electrical sparks and smoke shot out of the seams of the suit as the Goddess's power fried its inner systems too. The eerie blacklight glow around the armor vanished and Mewtwo realized that it had been some form of force field barrier. Nariva's power had allowed the blade to at least pierce that force field to touch the armor, and now her power had fried the barrier's systems and paralyzed Darkest long enough for Mewtwo to act. He called up an immense amount of telekinetic force and tore the armor into pieces, hurling it scattered all over the floor. Piece by piece he ripped and shredded the suit, exposing the jet black fur and skin underneath. Once he'd pulled off enough to expose Darkest's necks, he raised Azria for the kill.
Darkest recovered just enough control over his body to act before the finishing blow could land though. He whipped his hand up and used telekinesis to catch Mewtwo's blade as it swung down, causing it to freeze mid-swing. He then jerked his hand to the side and pulled the blade away to the left before letting it go, causing Mewtwo's swing to completely miss. But Mewtwo had momentum now and he could feel the Medallions surging with power inside him, helping replenish his dwindling psychic reserves even more. He channeled some of the Forest Medallion's magic into an Energy Ball made of glowing green power and brought it down on Darkest's back with blinding speed, searing a scorched crater into his exposed flesh. Darkest snarled wordlessly in pain and used telekinesis to shove Mewtwo back several feet, and for a brief moment the combatants paused and stared each other down. Mewtwo got a full look at his foe now without any armor in the way and saw he was almost identical to Shadetalon, minus all the scars. But he'd only seen Shadetalon's face, and now Darkest's full body was exposed. Every part of him was that same jet black save for his tail, which was a brilliant crimson red. His wings flared open wide now, stretching to an impressive six foot span. He had jagged yellow claws on his fingers and toes, and the exact same slitted red demonic eyes. Unlike Shadetalon though, he had absolutely no visible scars and his head was adorned with a pair of polished black pointed horns like a demon's. But despite Darkest's similarity to Shadetalon, there was something altogether far worse about him. The sheer presence and menace that the Lord of the Sulaaq exuded was stomach turning and he seemed to be wreathed in a very small, subtle aura of eldritch blackness that seemed to twist and writhe wherever Mewtwo wasn't looking directly at. Then, as they continued to size each other up, Darkest gave Mewtwo a horrifying, unnerving toothy grin.
"Danger! You now have T-minus three minutes to reach minimum safe distance!" The computer blared, interrupting their standoff.
Then Darkest did something that Mewtwo didn't expect. Instead of launching into another vicious attack he began to speak to Mewtwo via telepathy.
"Having fun yet?"
Mewtwo didn't deign to reply. Instead he used the time to finish healing all the lingering wounds Darkest had given him before. Darkest almost didn't seem to care, in fact he continued to taunt Mewtwo with telepathy while healing himself too. But rather than talking casually, he actually began to softly sing. He slowly circled Mewtwo like a hungry predator while giving his own twisted, corrupted rendition of the Gerudo song "The Goddess's Pledge" with a sadistic tone.
"You are me and I am you
I'll always be with you"
Mewtwo felt his stomach turn as the implications of the twisted song sank in. Darkest was still giving him time though, so once he finished healing his wounds he called up the power of the Forest Medallion again and began to charge a Solar Beam attack. Darkest was still unfazed, he continued circling Mewtwo and singing his twisted song.
"I am the eyes that watch you in your dreams
I am the ichor that oozes in your seams"
Fortunately the Medallion's power sped the charging sequence for the Solar Beam even more than before and it was ready to fire before Darkest could start the next stanza. Mewtwo let loose the golden-green column of blinding light with terrifying speed, aiming directly at Darkest's chest. Darkest had been on guard and expecting the attack though; he used some telekinesis to propel himself directly upward and jumped seven feet into the air with supernatural speed. In his place he conjured a giant ethereal red wedge made of raw telekinetic force, which the beam struck head on instead. The wedge divided the beam into two halves that were deflected away at clean right angles, blowing holes through the walls of the tower in predictable spots that Darkest had chosen, avoiding hitting any more vital conduits. The room shook and the klaxons continued blaring, but Darkest nimbly landed on his feet and dismissed his telekinetic tool with a cool, collected grin. It was then that Mewtwo felt a horrible realization hit him. Darkest was toying with him.
"I am the gloom that renders your eyes blind
I am the hunger that lurks deep in your mind."
Darkest's mind games were working far better than Mewtwo wanted to admit. The disgusting mockery of Gerudo beliefs, compounded with the nightmarish implications of the words, were enough to drive him over the edge into trying a desperation tactic.
"Just shut up already!"
Mewtwo raised both hands and called up as much power from the Medallions as he could and tried to fire off as many different elemental attacks at once as he could handle, hoping at least one of them would stick. Ice Beam, Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, Shadow Ball, Aura sphere, he tossed them all out with a much lower power level in order to get them firing rapidly purely in the hopes of testing Darkest's resistances. Darkest reflected them all, at least until Shadow Ball, which suddenly punched through the barrier and struck Darkest in the hip and caused him to stagger and gasp! Mewtwo's eyes widened with shock when he saw it, that shouldn't have worked as well as it did! If Darkest had been Psychic/Dark type as he thought, then he should have easily resisted the Ghost type energy even better than the others. He couldn't believe it, was Darkest... not a Dark type? The almighty Lord of the Sulaaq, who had been taunting and toying with him, reeled backward and abruptly halted his singing to heal himself, and Mewtwo grinned.
"You call yourself Darkest but you aren't even a Dark type yourself? And yet Shadetalon was? Why is that? Didn't want to genetically alter yourself?"
Finally losing his patience, Darkest snarled back an especially venomous reply. "I don't answer to anyone, especially not YOU!"
It was at this point that Darkest began to take the fight more seriously again. He resorted to using one of Shadetalon's tactics next, teleporting around the room erratically in an attempt to be unpredictable and impossible to track. Just like before, the Spirit Medallion aided Mewtwo's senses and helped him keep track. Darkest teleported a total of seven times before appearing behind Mewtwo's back and lunging with a Shadow Claw attack at the ready. Mewtwo dipped down under the blow just in time, allowing the lunge to begin passing over him. He then pushed himself upward again midway through that lunge, planting his shoulder into Darkest's chest as he slammed up into him. If Mewtwo had just tried to shield that attack he knew the Shadow Claw would have carved right through it again, so a quick martial maneuver like this was the correct choice by far. Darkest was taken entirely off guard, having expected a purely psychic-based counter attack. He had the wind knocked out of him and flopped onto Mewtwo with his entire body weight.
Using the leverage he now had, Mewtwo grabbed onto Darkest with his bare hands and turned to the side, slamming him down onto the floor on his back with a brutal thud. Darkest winced but raised a telekinetic barrier regardless and began to push Mewtwo away. Knowing Darkest wouldn't be able to resist it now, he used his own Shadow Claw attack to slash a hole directly through that barrier with zero effort. With a second strike he then carved a searing gash into Darkest's left arm.
"Danger! You now have T-minus two minutes to reach minimum safe distance!" The computer chided insistently.
Darkest realized the terrible position he was in and conjured up a massive wave of telekinetic force to slam Mewtwo backward and give him some space. Mewtwo was bruised and battered but managed to keep his footing as the attack send him skidding ten feet across the room. He scrabbled to a halt and then propelled himself right back at Darkest while Darkest was still getting to his feet and healing his wounds. Feeling much more confident now that he knew Darkest had a weakness he could exploit, he used the exact same tactic as before and wreathed his hands with another Shadow Claw attack.
This was too predictable though, as Darkest now borrowed Mewtwo's earlier technique and dipped to the side to dodge it. He brought one elbow down to smash into his back mid-lunge, causing him to collapse to the ground in a heap. Mewtwo groaned in agony and spun around as quickly as he could to desperately keep his second neck out of reach. His whole body was searing in pain from the beatings he'd been taking and he was starting to feel tapped out again, but he needed to keep pushing. He fired off a Shadow Ball attack to force Darkest to dodge out of the way and put some distance between them, then grabbed Azria and swung it wide to the right in an attempt to catch him in the side with another tactic switch-up. Darkest again caught the blade with telekinesis just like before, but this time deflecting it wouldn't be so easy. Mewtwo's arms alone didn't have enough strength to fight this, so he added telekinetic force to the blade in an attempt to break through. They both grunted with raw effort as they struggled against each other for control the blade, and again they seemed equally matched. Then Darkest gave him an ugly sneer.
"You really don't know the first thing about true psychic warfare, do you?" He asked, his voice far too calm and uncaring for the desperate situation they were both in. "You really do treat this whole situation as just another Pokemon battle. You think you just need to use the right neat little discrete moves and that will be enough to win. I will show you what true psychic warfare is."
Suddenly Mewtwo sensed an upwelling of sinister psychic energy coming off of Darkest. An aura of pure, vision-blotting blackness seemed to swallow him, obscuring him from Mewtwo's sight, and that blackness seemed to writhe and undulate with countless tendrils of squirming malevolence. Mewtwo couldn't let go of the blade to respond, he was already expending all of his concentration to maintain the telekinetic duel he was fighting to control Azria. Darkest had been fighting in psychic wars for so long however that he had the skill to subdivide his concentration between multiple attacks. This attack was like nothing Mewtwo had ever seen before in any of his past battles either. As the blackness swelled and expanded off of Darkest's body, it sent a feeling of raw, uncontrollable fear through the fabric of Mewtwo's being. This wasn't an attack meant to do direct damage, it was an attack on his mind. Reality was warping and filling with nightmarish visions of nameless monsters and sending his mind into a spiral of panic that he couldn't control. He released a scream of raw fear and faltered backward, and in that moment his grip on Azria failed.
There was a great and deafening explosion of light above them as Darkest's telekinetic strength gained control over the sword and snapped it cleanly in two. All of the power of Nariva's blessing was forcefully released at once in a gigantic burst of white light, slamming both Mewtwo and Darkest backward against the walls of the chamber. Mewtwo at least cushioned himself with telekinesis so the impact didn't knock him out cold, and Darkest managed to do the same, but the holy radiance seared burns all over Darkest's body. Most of his front half was cooked to a crisp, but it still hadn't been enough to kill or disable him. The blast hadn't been directed at him, but blown out indiscriminately, so he clung to his consciousness and began to heal himself again anyway.
At the very least, the explosion of Nariva's fury had completely dissipated Darkest's fear-based psychic attack. It took a moment for them both to regain their senses after the blast, and in the aftermath they were once again back at a standoff. As they eyed each other, the two halves of the now lifeless blade sparked and sputtered on the floor. Mewtwo could only spare a brief glance down to sadly look at the ruined weapon. This was the final insult he could stomach now. The sword that Nabooru had once wielded was gone, and with it the legacy of the Rakeshan tribe and its ancestors. Mewtwo turned his gaze back up to Darkest and locked eyes with him for a few tense seconds. The creeping darkness now wasn't even enough to intimidate him, he was ready to do whatever it took to put an end to the monster in front of him. As if sensing this, Darkest grinned maliciously, showing his wicked curved yellow fangs.
"Good." He said simply.
"Danger! You now have T-minus one minute to reach minimum safe distance!" The computer said urgently
Darkest flicked his wrist downward and clenched a fist, then a glowing red blade of ethereal psychic energy burst forth into existence above his hand, as though he was gripping a blade of pure psychic power without actually touching it. Another energy conduit on the other side of the room spontaneously exploded as the tower's systems began to fail. They were now seriously struggling to maintain the containment field around the orb above them. Sparks showered through the room and smoke billowed out across the ceiling above them. Darkest launched himself forward at Mewtwo with another burst of telekinetic speed and the aura of creeping blackness expanded forward again.
Mewtwo had no more weapons left and his psychic energy reserves were becoming dangerously low again after all this exertion. But he still felt no more fear as the manifestation of his own evil barreled down on him. Remembering what Darkest had said about his flawed views about psychic warfare though, Mewtwo decided it was time to stop playing fair. He let Darkest close the gap dangerously close, then teleported out of the way at the last second. He knew that if Darkest wasn't part Dark type then he wouldn't be able to see through tricks like Shadetalon could, so now was the time for him to give such techniques a try himself. He vanished and let Darkest swing and miss, then reappeared behind him and called up a huge surge of power to blast him in the back with raw telekinetic force. As if sensing a unique opportunity themselves, the Medallions sent a surging wave of their own power up through him even without being called on, and a multicolored wave of blue, green, and gold erupted from Mewtwo's hand and crashed through the aura of blackness protecting Darkest's back. The force of the blow smashed into his body and carved a massive vertical gash along his back and tail, just barely missing his second neck and cauterizing the wound immediately. Darkest was taken totally by surprise and screamed in agony. He hadn't anticipated the sheer power of the Medallions aiding Mewtwo's attacks and it caused him to fall forward and land face-first on the floor.
Mewtwo pushed his advantage and kept going, diving down on top of Darkest's back and reaching for his second neck. With Darkest's barrier shattered, that particular little Achilles heel was now exposed and vulnerable. If he got a hold of it then their battle would be over. Darkest was still too combat hardened to be stunned for long though; he raised a fresh barrier and blocked Mewtwo's grasp at the last millisecond. Fueled by surging bloodlust, Mewtwo called up another wave of raw telekinetic force, and for the second time the Medallions aided him and expanded his attack significantly. Darkest put every single ounce of his psychic might into the barrier now, expecting the attack to be more forceful this time, but even that wasn't quite enough. The Medallions were giving Mewtwo such an incredible boost that the blow was once again able to smash the barrier to pieces. Most of the attack was spent in this collision, but some still was able to blow through, albeit at a deflected angle. It veered away from the second neck and struck Darkest's back just at the base of his left wing. Even with most of its energy spent the blow was still enough to completely sever his wing with a scorching, visceral ripping sound. He screamed in primal agony and terror, then made a desperate telepathic call to his officers on the ship descending toward them.
"GET DOWN HERE ALREADY YOU IDIOTS!"
Darkest must have been too desperate to care about keeping the message private, as it blasted universally outward to all minds in range. Mewtwo winced, the sheer strength of the signal made his mind ring. Then he heard another broadly broadcasted telepathic reply, this time coming from above them.
"We're almost in range sir!"
Immediately Mewtwo knew his time was about to run out again, but he couldn't help but smirk. It was too late for them to help. The second shattering of that barrier had finally given him enough time to grab Darkest's second neck. He curled his fingers around it and squeezed as hard as he could.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" Darkest screamed as an unfathomable pain ripped up and down his spine.
The nerves in there were already more sensitive than any other part of their species' anatomy, but Mewtwo had grabbed it and disrupted the nerves just as Darkest was trying to shout back at them again. Even just a gentle physical squeeze was enough to completely block the flow of psychic energy from reaching his brain. Now it had nowhere to go, so it bounced uncontrolled around inside Darkest's body, setting his nerves alight with so much agony that it nearly blacked him out. A twisted, vengeful quality crept over Mewtwo's smile as he watched his foe suffer. Then he used telekinesis to grab the handle of Azria and bring it over. Even though it was snapped in half it still had a sharp edge to it that could do its job. He raised it over his head again and relished the moment as he prepared to make the finishing blow.
"Danger! You now have T-minus thirty seconds to reach minimum-" The computer said, but then was cut off.
Suddenly a column of blindingly intense red light poured down through the hole in the roof, coupled with a deafening roar of a gigantic explosion. The floor of the room shook and heaved violently and both Mewtwo and Darkest cried out in shock, each thinking that the containment field around the orb had finally failed and their death was pouring down out of the sky to meet them. Though the roar and shaking and blinding light continued for a few more seconds, death didn't come. Mewtwo lost his grip on both Darkest and the broken sword as he was thrown to the side by the force of the quake, and his head struck the wall violently and made him nearly pass out.
Again the power of the Medallions surged up to save Mewtwo from unconsciousness. He just barely managed to grip onto his mind long enough to survive whatever was happening and use Recover on himself one more time. When his vision returned he saw nothing in the room but black smoke and dancing sparks shooting out from multiple locations around him. He turned to look for Darkest but the monster was gone, undoubtedly vanished via teleport. All the light from the screens was gone. The klaxon alarms had all stopped. No more rumbling could be heard. All he could hear was the lonely, mournful blowing of the wind and the crackling of the sparks. The smoke began to thin out fairly quickly, as there were now multiple holes blown through the walls that it could escape through. Mewtwo climbed to his feet and raised a protective barrier around himself as he continued to heal himself. He couldn't sense the presence of anyone in the room with him, so he walked over to glance up through the original hole in the ceiling.
To his amazement the doomsday orb was gone. He saw a great circular hole in the storm above them that opened up to starry night sky, and the red lightning that had been flashing all around the orb was starting to slow down. The clouds were no longer churning in a circular vortex either, but drifting outward and away from that hole in the center. A moment of profound stillness was washing over the scene now as Mewtwo gazed up at the stars above. As the low moan of the wind sang its mournful song, he watched tiny flashes of light appear and disappear among the heavens miles above him. He saw red flashes and blue flashes, and many of those stars seemed to be slowly creeping through the sky above. He realized that this was the battle he'd seen on the strategic display before and for a moment he held his breath. How many lives were being given up there so many miles above this world? How many resources? All because of him. He stood there silently, almost forgetting the looming threat of Darkest, until something caught his attention. Five of those moving stars were getting brighter and brighter. They were moving faster and faster too, growing larger over time.
Wanting to get a closer look, Mewtwo used his telekinesis to float up out of the smoke-choked command chamber and land on the roof. He saw that four of the tower's seven spires had been sheared off by the force of whatever had happened to the doomsday orb, and the other three were so severely damaged as to be practically held up by threads. The lights all over the tower were completely dark, so he guessed that the explosion of the orb must have fried the tower's systems or triggered some sort of failsafe shutdown. There was no sign of Darkest anywhere, nor were there any of his minions, so Mewtwo allowed himself the time to stare up at the approaching lights.
It became obvious fairly quickly that those falling stars were in fact starships descending from the battle in orbit. One was much fainter than the others and colored bloody crimson, and it seemed a lot larger too. It was at the front of the group and seemed to be descending down toward the tower directly. The four pursuers were a bright blue and significantly smaller, and were hot on the red one's tail. It didn't take long before they got close enough for Mewtwo's eyes to truly make out their shapes. The lead ship was another of Darkest's vessels not unlike the one he'd seen departing the city earlier. It was easily 1.5 times the size of the previous one though and was bristling with weaponry. It was roughly the same shape too, complete with the massive cannon barrel and forward-facing spikes on the nose. Mewtwo could also make out small hangar doorways on its sides, undoubtedly used for launching strike craft of some sort. Mewtwo guessed that it was a type of battlecruiser or even a light carrier, but he didn't know enough about military classifications to do more than just make assumptions.
The four pursuing ships were beautiful, angelic-styled starships of roughly frigate size, each one at least 250 meters long and decked out with clusters of weaponry of their own. They had swept, sleek, curved hull profiles and silvery metallic plating that had gold trim. Their flanks had what appeared to be wing-like sails that were most likely used as solar panels or solar sails. Darkest's battlecruiser easily had them beat in both bulk and armament, but they were lighter and faster and were spreading out behind it as they closed in. The sinister battlecruiser was beginning to slow down as it approached the tower, allowing the four frigates to close to engagement distance and open fire. Blinding flashes of light blue light appeared as they lashed out with multiple laser batteries. The beams lanced out to strike at Darkest's ship, though a previously invisible energy shield of some sort flared to life in ethereal neon red and blocked them. The beams slashed across the surface of the shields for multiple seconds, raking over it vertically and creating gigantic plumes of plasma and fire that bloomed into the sky above it. There was a brief delay as the pressure waves from the sound traveled down, and then Mewtwo heard colossal crashing BOOMs that made his ears ring.
Mewtwo was enthralled by the sight of this battle beginning to play out in front of him. He watched intently as Darkest's ship launched a salvo of glowing red projectiles that he assumed were some sort of torpedo or missile. They streaked out of the launch bays on the sides of the ship and struck the flanking angelic ships in kind, but they had shields of their own that blocked the attacks too. The five ships continued to exchange fire back and forth like this for awhile, putting on a dazzling light show without actually causing much damage to each other. Mewtwo had made a grievous error by allowing himself to become so thoroughly distracted by the battle though. He didn't even notice it when Darkest teleported back onto the roof behind him. He certainly did notice it however when Darkest slashed right through his barrier with another Shadow Claw and wrapped his fingers around Mewtwo's second neck!
Mewtwo collapsed to his knees with a bellowing cry of pain as Darkest gave him a very large dose of the medicine he'd been dishing out just before. He felt comparable agony to a human man who'd taken a vicious blow to the groin, but all that pain was focused on his central nervous system right around his second neck and brain.
"Pitiful. All it took for me to get the drop on you was a pretty little light show in the sky above." Darkest growled.
Unable to use any psychic attacks with that hand on his second neck, Mewtwo winced and turned to look back at his foe. Darkest had healed all his wounds and regenerated his severed wing during the brief time he'd been gone and looked totally refreshed. He had also now donned a pair of black steel collars around his necks that were dotted with glowing red rubies. He was sneering venomously at Mewtwo and ignoring the battle playing out above them. He eased the pressure of the squeezing enough to allow Mewtwo's pain to ebb, but he didn't stop entirely. He needed to use his grip to keep Mewtwo's psychic powers crippled, and that was still painful enough to make him stammer and groan. Trying to think of anything to delay the inevitable, Mewtwo slurred out some taunting words in hopes of distracting Darkest long enough for the owners of those angelic ships to come to his aid.
"I know what you are Darkest. I know you're my future self. I know enough to never allow myself to become you! You're too late to salvage your plan!"
Darkest didn't even respond. He turned his head to look up at his ship and then there was a flash of red psychic light. Mewtwo recognized this energy, it was an attempt to teleport them. But something happened that interrupted the teleport and they remained standing there on the roof of the ruined tower.
"What? I just teleported down here a few seconds ago! Fucking... " Darkest growled, then caught himself and stopped speaking.
Mewtwo smirked. "What's wrong? Had your escape attempt blocked? I think I remember your man Onyx mentioning some sort of jamming field or device. Maybe they can turn it on and off at will?"
"Shut up!" Darkest snarled, then gave Mewtwo's second neck another brutally hard squeeze.
He yelled out in pain again and writhed for several moments until Darkest let up, but then laughed.
"You're cornered aren't you? You've been cut off. That ship is your only way off this planet and now you can't reach it. It's Lightest's doing isn't it? I almost forgot she was coming. I heard you mention her when I spied on your communications with Shadetalon!"
A mixture of shock and rage played out on Darkest's face in response to Mewtwo's words. He was so taken off guard he didn't even know what to say, so Mewtwo kept verbally pushing him.
"I know you want to take me back to Sarne too. I know everything. You're fucked, Darkest. Even if your clones destroy those four ships above us right now, the fleets in orbit up there won't let you get off this planet with me in captivity. There's no escape."
Darkest reeled for just a bit more before a look of resigned realization came over his face.
"You know what, you might be right about most of that. I have no truly guaranteed safe courses of action left to take. But you know yourself well enough to know that I, by extension, would never just give up without trying something. We always go for that last, desperate Hail Mary play in the end, even if it's destined to fail. Better to die trying than give up all agency. So let's go for broke shall we? If a paradox erases us, at least I take all of the rest of them down with us!"
Darkest then placed his hand on the top of Mewtwo's head and began to pour glowing red psychic power into his brain. He followed the same exact procedure that Shadetalon had done before, producing the same results. An overpowering sense of rage and fury began to seethe through Mewtwo's mind and his vision began to turn red. The distorted sense of double vision returned with a vengeance, but this time Mewtwo knew all too well what was happening. Darkest was trying to shatter his mind and cause him to be consumed by his own inner evil. He was trying to create himself!
Mewtwo struggled with everything he had left, but the grip of Darkest's hand on his second neck made it futile. He had no psychic power as long as Darkest held him there and he couldn't intentionally call on the Medallions either. The pain of being held there made his body too sluggish and uncoordinated to lash out with his limbs with any effectiveness or speed. Making a Hail Mary play of his own, he tried to whip his tail around to strike at Darkest, aiming for his second neck. But the blow was stopped less than an inch short as the collars on Darkest's necks hummed to life. Now it was apparent what those collars were. They weren't psychic restraints or amplifiers, they were projecting tiny little protective force fields around Darkest's necks! Darkest's grin widened further at that point, and then his used telekinesis to grab Mewtwo's tail and yank it away.
More and more Mewtwo's mind lost its coherence as it began to fragment and break in half, and he wordlessly yelled and snarled as he fought it to the last. Panic curled through him as he realized he was out of options now, there was nothing left he could do. Lightest still wasn't here to save him and his mind was about to break. He didn't think he could stall for time any longer, so he searched through his memories for any possible ideas. He found nothing, but his desperation at least led him back to one specific vital memory that could help him stave off mental collapse. Just like before when he was on the verge of giving into his hate, he remembered Amber's words.
"Remember to try to be the person you always wanted yourself to be."
In his mind Mewtwo could still see Amber's face. Despite the rage and evil clawing for control over his thoughts he pictured her smile perfectly. She always saw the best in him, even now after all his failures. For a moment, her smile held the gnawing teeth and fangs of his inner malice at bay, and through the partially shattered lenses of his senses he could barely make out Darkest grunting in confused frustration.
"Why... is this... taking... so long?!"
Then Darkest got a reply that he wasn't expecting, and it wasn't from Mewtwo. A blink of bright sky-blue light flashed behind him, and a feminine voice chimed in. "Pitiful."
Mewtwo couldn't really see it due to the distorted twisting of his eyesight caused by Darkest's mental attacks, but a glowing white figure had teleported in behind Darkest and landed an attack directly on his back. The shield collar on his second neck stopped it from decapitating him on the spot, but it had deflected the strike downward to sink into his shoulders. Mewtwo did hear him release another primal yell of agony though, and immediately the flow of energy that had been trying to shatter his mind was cut off. His hand came off of Mewtwo's second neck and Mewtwo fell to the floor while a few deafening explosions sounded behind him. He struggled to hold onto his identity a bit longer and lost track of time, but then a cool, soothing blue energy began to wash over him. The fury finally started to fade out of his mind and the red eased away, and his broken consciousness mended itself back together. After a few seconds his eyesight returned to normal and he looked up to see a beautiful angelic figure kneeling next to him with one hand on his head. She was another of his species, but her body fur was a pure, pale snowy white and her tail was sky blue. She had a feminine body shape and a beautiful pair of feathery white angel wings on her back. She also was wearing a pair of protective shield collars around her necks, but these were made of gold and studded with gently glowing blue sapphires. Mewtwo looked into her eyes and saw they were the deepest azure blue he'd ever seen, and they were brimming with worry and compassion. Her body glowed with a golden, holy aura and she wore simple white satin robes rather than any sort of armor or weapons.
"Take a few deep breaths Mewtwo. Can you hear me?" She asked in a calm, soothing tone.
"Are you... Lightest?" Mewtwo asked, slowly sitting up.
"Yes. I'm surprised you know me. Are you alright?" She asked, letting go of his head now.
"Fine. But... almost tapped out. I've been fighting that monster for what feels like hours. I don't know how many more times the Medallions can refresh me. Where is Darkest?"
"He retreated back to his ship. I stabbed him directly through his spine while he was distracted with you, but his officers broke the teleport jammer with a collective psychic attack and then teleported him to safety before I could finish him. They're undoubtedly healing him now." She replied, standing back up and raising a telekinetic barrier around herself.
"You should have followed him and..." He trailed off as his mind interrupted itself. "But you probably needed to save me first before I could shatter entirely. I guess this split his minions have always mentioned created not just him, but you too?" He asked.
Lightest nodded solemnly. "Correct. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. I've known he has been messing with a spacetime anomaly related to an interruption in our timeline for awhile now but I didn't know it was you. You shouldn't be here. What happened?"
"It'd take too long to explain with words. Can I tell you through telepathy?"
Lightest frowned indecisively but nodded. "Yes, but be quick, he could be back at any time."
Mewtwo gave her a look of understanding and reached out to share the relevant memories with her via telepathy. Once the link formed he noticed that her mental presence was profoundly soothing and benevolent. It was the polar opposite of how he had felt when he linked minds with Shadetalon before. Her mind was a bastion of positive energy that helped wash away his anger, fear, and uncertainty. Even without her intentionally trying to heal him with her actions, the touch of her mental presence against his was a panacea that renewed his resolve and sharpened his mind just in the brief seconds it took to transmit the information to her. She returned the favor by showing him how she and her own forces had come to his rescue. She too cloned herself to create officers and soldiers like Darkest did, and they had been fighting an endless, escalating war against Darkest for centuries in an attempt to protect the universe from his campaign of slaughter. It was her forces that had kept all of his ships and soldiers locked in an eternal deadlock for the entire time he had been stranded on Hypalia, explaining why Darkest had never been truly able to spare anything to help Shadetalon capture and break him. For most of the time she hadn't known Mewtwo was there or where he was, but since she and Darkest were technically two halves of one being, it meant their minds shared an unbreakable telepathic link that always cross-contaminated their minds with random portions of each other's thoughts.
Mewtwo felt even more pieces of the puzzle coming into place now as he accepted all this information from Lightest's mind. That link was the Destiny Bond that Shadetalon had mentioned in his last communique with Darkest! Darkest was always intentionally trying to avoid knowledge of all the tactical maneuvers his officers were making so the bond wouldn't leak information to Lightest. Oftentimes he even had his Chosen erase part of his memories to try to ensure Lightest never got access to them. But as soon as they had captured one of Darkest's Generals who knew more about it, she had brought every single ship in her armada here to Hypalia in order to force Darkest's hand and end their war once and for all. Darkest had no choice but to follow them and engage, but during the fight he'd slipped away alone to come and attempt to subdue and split Mewtwo. Luckily he'd underestimated him and ended up giving away this play when he called for backup. When that battlecruiser answered the call, Lightest and four of her ships managed to break through Darkest's fleet in orbit and follow it. Once they were through most of the atmosphere they pretended to engage the battlecruiser only to turn and open fire on the doomsday orb above the tower. They struck it directly on the top, breaking open the containment field and allowing it to explode safely upward into space, saving them all. Mewtwo couldn't help but gasp as he digested all this information. Feeling the need to be quick, he kept the telepathic link to Lightest going so he could speak to her quickly.
"Quickly, call all your clone troopers down here! Flood the tower with them before Darkest comes back!"
"I don't need my Guardian forces to be down here in person, both Darkest and I can call upon their psychic energy reserves remotely. Each of us can pool the powers of all of our combined troops into our minds to fight, so they can stay back out of the way."
"Your brains can handle containing and directing that much raw power!? Even just taking on one other Mewtwo's worth of psychic might in addition to your own would be overwhelming! How does it avoid frying your brains?" Mewtwo asked in an awed tone.
"Long story short, a lot of genetic modification, implants, and centuries of constant training. We actually both avoid having our clone soldiers exposed out in open battle because we understand the fact that their combat experience pales compared to ours. When they are pooling power to send to us, it also requires immense concentration that leaves them vulnerable to attack. Their very role as psychic force multipliers makes them huge targets in battle too, so it's safer to keep them tucked away aboard starships where they can be protected by the shield envelopes. Brace yourself though, I get the feeling that Darkest is-"
Lightest was interrupted by a bright flash above them and they both broke their telepathic link and turned their heads and looked up. While they had been speaking Lightest's four frigates had continued to fight with Darkest's Battlecruiser, and now one of the four had finally taken too much damage and given up the ghost. A miniature sun blinked into existence for a brief moment as the ship's fusion reactor detonated, and Mewtwo clasped his hands over his ears right before the deafening shockwave from the explosion washed over them. The blast nearly knocked them both off of the tower, but since the doomsday orb was gone they could just brace themselves with their telekinesis. Still, the loss of that ship was a clear reminder that their situation was still grim. It put them properly on guard, and Lightest flicked her wrist and formed a blade of pure psychic force just like Darkest had done. This one was a bright sky blue like her tail and much more clean and smooth though. This time nobody was caught by surprise when Darkest returned. He reappeared behind Lightest via teleport but she sensed him and spun around lightning fast and raised her blade, catching the red one that Darkest had swung down toward her. The collision between the two blades of raw psychic force created a fountain of blinding sparks and crackling bolts of energy along with a loud electrical crashing sound that made Mewtwo stumble back and cover his ears.
Mewtwo knew in the back of his mind that he should have jumped in to join the battle at this point. He was watching Darkest and Lightest stare each other down while their blades locked and he couldn't bring himself to move. The aura radiating off of the two combatants was overwhelming his psychic senses due to the sheer power they were channeling against each other. Each of them was drawing in the pooled collective psychic energy of all their cloned minions on their respective ships, creating an aura so immense it was blinding and painful to his third eye. He felt insignificant before the raw psychic strength put on display, especially now that his own reserves were so low. Thus Mewtwo stood there paralyzed with indecision and consumed with guilt over it as he watched the clash continue.
"You made a grievous mistake by coming down here with so little support, Lightest. Without that fancy fleet of yours to back you up it'll be nice and easy to capture you and finally put an end to this war of ours once and for all. All I have to do is call down reinforcements from my blockade in orbit to overwhelm your power pool and it's all over!" Darkest sneered. He seemed perfectly capable of hurling telepathic taunts while channeling his psychic power without losing his concentration at all.
"I could say the exact same thing about you! Seems like we both want the same thing and it all comes down to whose ships arrive first! Too bad for you that I have more crew on my three combined ships here and now than you have on your one! So I'll make this quick while I still have that advantage!" Lightest replied.
With that Lightest took a deep breath and drew in a massive upwelling of psychic might from the crew of her three frigates and lashed out at Darkest with an explosive burst of pure telekinetic force. His psychic blade was shattered but he managed to raise a barrier in time to absorb the majority of the blow before it could hit his body. Rather than trying to push back against the force too, he used the barrier to merely take the initial brunt of the impact so he could then let it propel him up away from the tower through the air, riding it like a wave so he wouldn't have to fight the rest. Lightest quickly kicked off the roof of the tower and telekinetically flew after him to keep pressing the attack.
What unfolded next was a titanic battle between two psychic superpowers that Mewtwo could barely keep track of. Darkest and Lightest darted through the air at blinding speeds and repeatedly traded attacks both in melee and at range. They zoomed through the air like fighter jets, leaving glowing contrails of psychic energy behind them that faded out rapidly. Their movements followed unpredictable paths that almost seemed to be random and nonsensical. One moment they closed the distance and clashed blades of telekinetic force against each other with explosive results, the next they backed away and fired destructive beams of raw psychic power in huge barrages that lit up the night sky and sent thunderous booms through the air. So wild and chaotic was the battle that Mewtwo almost wondered if this was each of them attempting to avoid the other sensing their opponent's plans using the psychic destiny bond between them. Now he truly felt outclassed and knew there would be little he could do in the face of such obscene power. If he could barely even follow their movements with his own eyes then what hope did he have of fighting on their level?
While all this was happening, the battle between the ships above them was still going strong too. Darkest's ship had by now taken a bit of a beating; its shields had been pierced a few times and there were smouldering holes in its hull. Two of the three surviving angelic frigates had been hammered as well, with one disengaging slightly to give its shields a chance to recharge. Instead it turned its weapons on Darkest himself now, firing four thick beams of blinding blue laser light directly at him as he fought with Lightest. The beams crashed against his shield and sent him careening violently through the air, blowing off one of his wings and sending him out of control. Lightest followed up and pressed the attack, but the energy he was being sent by his soldiers allowed him to recover immediately and fend her off.
"RAISE THE SIEGE DOME!" Darkest bellowed, his voice echoing through the minds of everyone present.
Suddenly Mewtwo heard a deep thrumming and saw the lights coming back on in the tower beneath him. The systems seemed to be rebooting or some sort of backup power source was coming online. There was a loud clunk and a thick electrical buzz, and then a flat dome-shaped force field barrier began to flicker to life above the tower. It imposed itself directly between the two warring combatants and the ships higher up, then seemed to rise up and clash with the barriers surrounding those ships, pushing them further up into the sky. The recovering angelic frigate again attempted to open fire, but this huge shield dome deflected the beams effortlessly. But the dome wasn't providing full coverage like a bubble, it only covered the top half of the tower, so the energy pooled by the crews of the ships was still able to go around its edges to reach Darkest and Lightest.
Then something struck Mewtwo as he watched. After Darkest had been knocked back by those beam strikes he was and floating in front of the lingering remnants of the storm, surrounded in a blinding red spherical psychic barrier. Crackling red bolts of psychic power flashed all around him. It was naggingly familiar and it took a moment for Mewtwo to realize that this brief moment was the final vision he'd seen when he'd picked up the Spirit Medallion for the first time. His train of thought was interrupted however when he heard the telepathic voices of both combatants ringing through his mind. Darkest had resumed verbally taunting Lightest during their battle in an attempt to break her combat concentration. He apparently was broadcasting his telepathy on a wide scale again just like before.
"Is that all you have? You've sneezed on me harder than that before! Come on, your power pool outsizes mine by like 15% right now!" Darkest taunted as he took a piercing lance of white psychic light right through the gut.
Lightest seemed intelligent enough to understand it was all a ploy to distract her so her reply was perfectly calm and collected. "I know you can't kill me though. You know what our Destiny Bond will do to you if you do. You can only attempt to capture me, that means you have to hold back, even while already at a disadvantage. I however am not subject to these same limitations. I'm not afraid to die, but you are."
They exchanged another barrage of shimmering beams of energy as they spoke, and Lightest's defenses held while Darkest again failed to protect himself. He psychically regenerated every wound just as fast as he took it, but Mewtwo was starting to realize that even the small difference in their power pools was enough to put Darkest in serious danger. Perhaps he was trying to use his taunts to hide his desperation.
"My ships are already on the way though. I can hold out more than long enough to make it until then. The question is, why can't you seem to land a killing blow on me now despite how eager you are to tell me you're ready to die with me?"
Darkest then opened up on her with a cluster of small, fast-moving shadow ball attacks that zipped through the air in wild, obtuse arcs and tore through her barrier with ease. They impacted her body and created fist-sized burned pits in her flesh, making her wince in agony. She regenerated just as fast as he did, but that blow seemed to have taken her by surprise.
"Where are you getting this extra energy from?!" She yelled insistently.
Darkest slowed to a stop and then raised one hand into the air. In a flash of purple light he teleported a small item into his hand. Lightest didn't recognize it but Mewtwo's blood immediately went cold in his veins. It was the Shadow Medallion!
"I found a little trinket here on this world that has proved to be slightly more useful than expected. Let me show you what it can do!"
Darkest then channeled the Medallion's power into a series of brutal Dark type attacks that completely ignored Lightest's defenses and sent her careening through the air with crippling injuries. Orbs and beams of fluorescent blackness and purple carved holes and craters into her flesh so rapidly that she could barely handle even regenerating herself and was forced to rely solely on dodging them rather than blocking. This made their fight even more difficult to follow, but Mewtwo did his best. He was now even more hesitant to try joining the fight, that Medallion would let Darkest rip him to pieces if he got into the line of fire. The thought was terrifying, though he didn't have time to linger on it for long. He was interrupted by the sound of a new voice calling his name behind him.
"Mewtwo!"
Mewtwo spun around and saw a large group of Gerudos had begun climbing up through the hole in the tower's roof and were now spreading out. All at once he recognized multiple familiar faces; here was Hadara, Kamilia, Lamira, Nereti, Kurala, and even Ciela! On one hand he was immensely relieved to finally see their faces again and was honored they would come to his aid despite the risk, but on the other he was instantly filled with dread as he realized that Darkest could notice their presence and do any number of horrible things to them. Hadara was running up to meet him already but he didn't want to waste any time, so he sprinted over toward her to close the gap even faster.
"Hadara, you shouldn't be here! It's too dangerous! Darkest could turn around and-"
Mewtwo's words were interrupted by a deafening BOOOOM as Lightest and Darkest both fired beams at each other that struck dead on, exploding with such force that the shockwave rattled the guts of everyone present. The Gerudos winced and even tottered a little but they weren't deterred. Many pointed up and called out in shock as they watched the battle, but more continued climbing up onto the roof with them.
"We all knew the risk when we chose to come here Mewtwo!" Hadara said, looking totally undeterred.
"We're tired of standing idly by while our people are enslaved and tormented!" Kamilia added, coming to stand alongside her.
"And I know just what we need to do to stop him." Ciela said, then reached back and produced a weapon that she held out to him.
Mewtwo's eyes lit up with renewed hope when he saw the Vatorsa Spear in her hands. Another thunderous explosion filled the sky as he reached out for it but he didn't flinch. The moment his fingers wrapped around it he felt the warm tingle of Nariva's magic under his fingertips again and knew what he needed to do.
"I've been fighting hard for a long time now and I'm not sure I have the reserves left to fight much longer. I'll need an opening. What's your plan?" He asked Ciela.
Ciela smiled and then produced her golden bow too, nocking an arrow which immediately began to glow with faint holy light. "We'll get you your distraction. Wait for an opening and strike the moment you see it."
Ciela then turned to the chiefs and gave them a nod. The three of them had now gathered and they turned to shout out orders to the huge assembly of Gerudo soldiers, who had by now finished climbing onto the roof and lining up. "Rifles, take aim!"
At least fifty of the gathered Gerudo soldiers in the group were carrying stolen Sulaaq pistols or rifles and they immediately raised them and pointed them up at the sky to try to track Darkest's wildly fluctuating position in the sky above them. This proved difficult though, he was still flying as quickly and unpredictably as ever.
"Hold!" Hadara shouted.
The crowd was still now, those without guns merely waited and watched while the gunners kept their weapons trained on the enemy as best they could. They had to periodically squint their eyes shut from bright flashes of light caused by the beams and explosions the two combatants were casting at each other, but they didn't falter. Mewtwo gripped the spear tightly as he controlled the anxiety bubbling underneath his resolve. They needed Darkest to stop moving so the Gerudos could hit him with accuracy and he didn't know how to force it to happen. He wasn't strong enough to do it with his powers and he knew Darkest was too intelligent to be fooled by a simple ruse. Then he remembered that this whole conflict was driven by simple self-preservation and an idea struck him. He shifted to holding the spear one-handed and then teleported Hadara's dagger into his free hand from where he'd dropped it earlier. He raised the dagger to his own neck and lightly nicked the skin just enough to cause himself to bleed without cutting anything vital. Lamira noticed this and gasped.
"Mewtwo what are you doing?!" She shouted.
"Getting his attention." He replied quietly, then looked up and projected his telepathic voice toward Darkest. "Darkest, it's over! I won't let you continue existing, even if it means I have to die too!"
Darkest froze in place and turned to look down at him. Seeing what appeared to be Mewtwo slashing his own throat, a panicked desperation came over Darkest and he made a beeline directly down toward the tower at maximum speed, hoping to stop Mewtwo from killing himself and taking him with him.
That was all the Gerudos needed. The enemy was now on an easily predictable path at a constant speed. Hadara raised her hand and shouted "FIRE!"
Fifty glowing red lances of laser light flashed through the air simultaneously in a deafening snapping salvo. Ciela joined them with her glowing golden arrows, but her shots couldn't cross that distance effectively and fell off. The lasers had no such limitations though, and the accuracy of the Gerudo warriors was so dead-on that only a handful of the beams missed their target. The rest struck all over Darkest's psychic barrier with overwhelming force, lighting it up with an explosion of red that pushed so hard that he was forcefully halted in place. His desperation to save himself by stopping Mewtwo's suicide had blinded him with tunnel vision and he hadn't expected the force of so many of his own most advanced weapons to be turned on him simultaneously. All the energy he was pulling from the Shadow Medallion had been aimed at Lightest rather than focused into his barrier, and the speed of that barrage didn't give him time to shift it around. He might have been able to hold off against it if he had bothered to pay attention to the Gerudos and seen it coming, but now his defenses failed and his shield made an explosive report like a bomb going off when it shattered. Most of the beams were spent in the process of overcoming that shield, but five made it through and carved scorching holes through Darkest's body, landing two in his gut, two in his tail, and one through his left shoulder. He gasped in wordless, choking shock as he felt stabbing agony rip through his body, eyes widening in maddened confusion. Mewtwo launched himself up from the tower at this point with the spear in one hand and Hadara's dagger in the other, but Darkest didn't stay stunned long enough for him to close the gap. He re-raised his barrier and began to regenerate himself with shocking speed. The power being broadcast from that battlecruiser was so substantial and Darkest had been through far too much war to give in so easily.
"Keep firing!" Ciela yelled, continuing to shoot despite none of her own arrows making it far enough to reach.
Darkest was too high up still for the arrows to reach but the blistering barrage of lasers was more than capable of hitting him. Darkest was again struck by dozens of beams from the crowd, but this time he knew it was coming and leveraged every single ounce of energy he could get from his power pool. He was also now channeling the Shadow Medallion's power defensively; its purplish colored aura flared around him and buttressed his defenses, allowing him to keep holding out despite the sheer force of all that laser fire coming in. It took significant force and concentration to hold back that much raw power though, so Darkest didn't notice it as both Mewtwo and Lightest closed the gap on him and got into melee range. Lightest's glowing blue psychic blade smashed against the back of his barrier and shoved it downward several feet into the oncoming laser barrage, but the Shadow Medallion again seemed to bless him with enough raw strength to resist. Rather than continuing to just float there and take it this time though, he teleported out of the way of the beams in a flash of darkness, escaping the barrage unharmed. Mewtwo could easily track where Darkest had teleported with the aid of the Spirit Medallion, but the Gerudos lacked this ability and were forced to stop firing to search for their target.
"He's over there!" Mewtwo shouted, pointing toward their hidden foe.
Darkest had reappeared inside the slowly retreating bank of dark clouds about a hundred feet up. This hid him from the Gerudos quite effectively, even as Lightest streaked up toward him to re-engage. Even with Mewtwo's words and gesture, the warriors below were too blinded by the clouds and hesitated to fire. Then Mewtwo sensed a brief, strange blip of something teleporting nearby. He could sense that Darkest was still up there though, the teleport hadn't been used to escape. What had he just done? He turned back toward the tower to look and his eyes fell upon the altogether too familiar form of Valisse Lasheera climbing up out of the hole in the roof. Her eyes were still that same brainwashed milky white and she was once again clutching the dark metallic shape of the Shadow Medallion. That was what the teleport was for. Just like before he had no time to react before she opened her mouth and yelled a command so loud it echoed through the sky all around them.
"ALL BUT DARKEST MUST HALT!"
All at once every single living being in the area froze in place. It was as if Valisse had flicked a simple switch which rendered them all paralyzed. She kept going too, pre-emptively cutting off any psionics.
"ALL BUT DARKEST MUST CAST NO SPELLS!"
Sheer panic rushed through Mewtwo as Valisse's words cut off his powers completely and he began to drop out of the sky like a stone. He was directly above the tower so at least he wouldn't die instantly from the fall, but he was still about to suffer an impact similar to the one he endured when he fell to Hypalia's surface. He tumbled end over end, rigid like a plank thanks to Valisse's paralysis, but then something caught him. Darkest, who still was intent on keeping him alive for self-preservation purposes, had re-emerged from the clouds and used telekinesis to grab him out of the air. He caught and carried both Mewtwo and Lightest up to hold face to face with a smug, gloating grin.
"You know I was almost worried for a moment. You two and your friends really did a number on me a couple of times there. It might have been legitimately over for me if I hadn't been keeping a few aces up my sleeve. Those ships of yours have been a thorn in my side, but I think by now my boys have done some real damage." He laughed, looking up at the slow battle still taking place above them.
Mewtwo couldn't even move his neck to see it due to Valisse's magic holding him in place though. He felt like a complete idiot, he should have made time to go find and free Valisse before this could happen!
"There goes one of them." Darkest chuckled as another bright flash erupted above them.
He paused his gloating just long enough to let the thunderous explosion of a supercritical fusion engine pass without interrupting him. Now there were only two frigates left. Thankfully the siege shield dome over the tower deflected the blast wave and wind though, otherwise the paralyzed Gerudos would have been easily blown off to their deaths.
"It'll only be a few more minutes before I finally get some reinforcements down here too. I gotta admit, your Guardians have done a damn good job keeping all my assets tied up in that fight up there, but I can already feel a carrier breaking through the formations and making headway. Once that gets here, it's all over for all of you!"
Darkest was so confident in Valisse's gift that he turned his back on the tower in order to face Lightest directly and taunt her. He, like the rest of the Gerudos, wasn't aware of the presence of two smaller bystanders who had snuck along in the shadow of the larger group. These bystanders were two young Gerudo princesses, who had waited until the whole group of warriors had finished climbing up onto the roof before peering up over the edge of the hole in the center of that roof to watch. They had been standing there hidden at the edge and watching the entire time. Mewtwo couldn't see it either, but Ruru Quindalo was now realizing that she was the only one left out of the entire crowd whose body was still working. The red jewelled circlet on her head had protected her from Valisse's magic. It only took her looking over to see her friend Indiru paralyzed to realize what was going on. Valisse wasn't standing too far away, and since Darkest wasn't looking, Ruru climbed up onto the roof and ran as quickly as she could toward her. She used one hand to pull the circlet off of her head, knowing full well how dangerous this was, and jumped up to make a desperate reach toward Valisse's head.
"Goddesses please let this work!" She whispered to herself as she made that leap.
Ruru did come up a little bit short, but she grabbed onto Valisse's shoulder and pulled herself up the rest of the way. She just barely managed to slide the enchanted circlet onto Valisse's head. Valisse's whole body seemed to jolt as if every muscle had briefly spasmed for a fraction of a second, then her eyes flashed with a blink of golden light before her pupils returned. Darkest's psychic hold on her had shattered. He was partially through a sentence of smug gloating at Lightest when he sensed his mind control linkage being forcefully broken, causing him to instantly go silent and spin around to lock eyes with Valisse. In that brief moment when their gazes met, everyone there could see true fear in the eyes of their tormentor. Darkest tried to pour more psychic energy into retaking control of Valisse's mind, but the circlet held it back and gave her all the time she needed.
"DARKEST MUST HALT!"
Even with all the power of hundreds of Chosen and Immortals flooding through his veins, Darkest couldn't resist. His body locked up instantly and the only thing he could do was impotently twitch.
"ALL OTHERS ARE RELEASED!" Valisse yelled again, and every other person in the area came to life.
People all around who had been held in place stumbled, some gasping in air after barely managing to breathe while their adrenaline-fueled bodies craved far more oxygen than their slowed lungs could draw. Mewtwo and Lightest shook out of their frozen states and looked down at Valisse and Ruru in amazement.
"ALL OTHERS MAY NOW USE SPELLS!" She yelled as the group of Gerudos began to regain their focus and raise their weapons.
Ciela again drew her bow and started to fire off glowing arrows, though still she was too far to reach. Mewtwo and Lightest's glowing psychic auras flared to life and they turned back toward Darkest to renew their attacks again, but Valisse was eager to add one final stroke to her revenge.
"DARKEST MUST CAST NO SPELLS!"
That was all it took to render the once fearsome galactic tyrant into a helpless doll. He began to tumble out of the sky just like Mewtwo had done earlier, and with a golden opportunity in front of him, Mewtwo caught him with telekinesis and held him up so he could now exact his own revenge. With a look of seething contempt and fury in his eyes, he raised the Vatorsa spear as high as he could and brought it down on Darkest with one smooth, fluid motion. With no psychic barrier to hold it back, the weapon plunged through Darkest's belly with so much force that the bladed tip erupted out of Darkest's back with a fountain of dark, ichor-like blood. The power of Nariva's fury surged up the length of the spear and enshrouded Darkest's body in a crackling storm of golden holy bolts. Still locked in paralysis, Darkest could hardly even show a sign of the agony he was now in. The breath rushed from his mouth and nose and his eyes went wide, but not even his vocal chords could function thanks to Valisse's grip over him. Even if he hadn't been caught by her paralysis, Nariva's purifying bolts would have still rendered him helpless and writhing in the grip of Mewtwo's telekinesis.
"That's for W'diri!" Mewtwo shouted, remembering clearly the name of the Vatorsa sister he'd promised Q'diri he'd avenge.
Even as the holy energy of Nariva began to taper off and her smiting power was spent, Darkest still couldn't move. It was at this point that the crew aboard his battlecruiser seemed to realize their master was in trouble. They attempted to transmit a surge of healing energy to Darkest remotely from the ship, but the sizzling flesh around the spear couldn't heal while the weapon was still buried inside. It could only keep his vitals stable so he at least wouldn't die from the wound. Mewtwo, now filled with righteous anger and a desire for more revenge, remembered the death of his friend Ruisa and chose to extend Darkest's agony even more. He could have ended it all then and there with a swift decapitating strike to both of Darkest's necks, but his bloodthirst made him overconfident and he forgot Nariva's guidance as he went for more vengeance. Still holding the spear with his hand, he leaned down and bit Darkest's shoulder with all the bite force his jaws could conjure. Symbolic of the jaws of the molduga that had devoured Ruisa, he applied all the bite force his jaw muscles could muster. His short feline teeth sank into the flesh and the pain caused Darkest to partially break through the paralysis, tossing his head back to bellow in agony. Then, using the leverage he had against Darkest's body, Mewtwo yanked his head backward and tore a chunk of Darkest's flesh free with his teeth, ripping muscle and sinew with a gout of blood. The Gerudos below were too afraid to accidentally hit Mewtwo with their lasers, so they held their fire and merely watched in horrified awe. Mewtwo spat the chunk of his foe's shoulder out and angrily called out again.
"That's for Ruisa!"
Again the power flowing in from the enemy crew started to regenerate this new wound, and this time it actually seemed to work better since there wasn't anything physically holding the bite wound open. Darkest was still mostly paralyzed but he continued to yell out in pain, unable to form words, as if trying to call his soldiers for more help. Then Mewtwo saw Lightest snapping out of the shocked stare she had been locked in and moving in close to help. She called upon the crews aboard her own ships and raised her arms as she got into range. Rather than attacking though, she created a glowing blue spherical telekinetic barrier around them in an attempt to block out the power from Darkest's crew. This barrier immediately flared brightly as they pushed against her and it didn't look like it would hold for long. But Mewtwo didn't need long. He had one more score left to settle. He let go of the Vatorsa spear entirely and wrapped both hands around the handle of Hadara's dagger, then blindly swung it down to plunge directly into Darkest's chest!
"And that's for Kalana!"
The blade sank all the way in to the hilt and just barely missed Darkest's windpipe. Mewtwo left both of his weapons embedded in his foe's body and raised one hand to form a psychic blade that he could use for a finishing blow. He had wasted too much time on this bloody display of vengeance though, the Chosen had enacted the rest of their plan to save their master. Suddenly the siege shield dome around the tower shut down, opening them up for the battlecruiser above to intervene. It swooped down quickly and opened up with a massive salvo of red laser beams. Lightest's telekinetic barrier held off all of them thanks to the power pool of her Guardians, but it was completely spent in the process. She cried out in pain as her barrier buckled and shattered, and then three of the smaller point defense laser cannons on the underbelly of the ship opened fire with bright flashes of red light. One beam pierced through Mewtwo's raised right arm, causing his forming psychic blade to vanish and a scream of shocked pain to erupt from his mouth. The next beam struck Lightest across her left wing and tail, blowing off her wing entirely and causing it to come fluttering down through the air as she reeled backward with a terrible sobbing cry. The third was aimed straight down at Valisse; it penetrated her skull and traveled down through her body, burning a lethal tunnel all the way through her longwise and striking her dead instantly where she stood. The edge of the beam clipped the Shadow Medallion lightly and sent it streaking through the air away from the tower as her lifeless form collapsed into a smouldering heap. Before anyone could react and try to catch it, the Medallion had vanished into the night.
Mewtwo knew immediately the magnitude of the mistake he'd made. The blinding pain in his arm was almost as bad as the mournful wailing of Kamilia, who had to witness her estranged aunt being hollowed out by a laser right before her eyes. All at once Valisse's magic was nullified and Darkest was freed, and the first thing he did was grab the spear and yank it out of his stomach before then turning and hurling it at Lightest. He used a surge of telekinetic force to accelerate it to brutal speed. Lightest was already reeling from the laser fire that had just severed the wing from her body so she didn't see the golden spear rocketing through the air in time to fully avoid it. She tried to turn herself sideways to avoid it impaling her chest, and instead it tore through her other wing, severing it entirely too and leaving her wingless. She managed to catch the spear with telekinesis before it could be lost to the abyss beyond, but her body was spiraling downward toward the tower as she struggled to regenerate all the terrible injuries she had just suffered. Then Darkest reached up to pull Hadara's dagger from his chest and spin around to hurl it toward Mewtwo too.
Mewtwo at least managed to catch the dagger with his own telekinesis at this point so he avoided enduring the same painful fate as Lightest. He started to work on healing his arm, but he fully expected the ship above them to open fire a second time so he made a snap decision not to return the attack. Instead he turned his focus toward creating a large telekinetic barrier above them all, placing it between the ship and the rest of the Gerudos. He wasn't going to allow those monsters to take any more lives. Darkest, having a choice between his targets now, turned and chased Lightest toward the tower, judging her to be the greater threat. He could come back to that fool Mewtwo when he was done capturing her. Once again he called up all the power he could muster from every single Immortal and Chosen on his ship and he raised both hands to create a bright glowing red blade of psychic power that he planned to bring down on Lightest's belly.
The Gerudos below were no longer worried about accidentally hitting Mewtwo though, and with what little ammo they had left they opened fire and pelted him with beams. He deflected them again but they pushed him back with enough force to halt his advance on Lightest midair just like before. By now several of them had fired enough times that their ammunition was running out though, so the salvo was noticeably smaller than it had been before. Darkest immediately could tell the difference and pushed his luck, now able to hold it back without fear since his crew's power pool was more than enough to resist it all. But he'd made one fatal tactical flaw in this move: he'd flown down much lower to the tower than before in order to chase Lightest and now he was within range of Ciela's bow.
Ciela realized this and immediately reached back for another arrow. Her heart stopped for a brief moment as her hand groped around, finding nothing but emptiness. This was finally her moment and she'd fired all her arrows recklessly while her nemesis was out of reach! She swore under her breath and scrambled a bit more, until suddenly the quiver on her back finally activated the enchantment it'd received back in the Spirit Temple. A flash of golden light poured out of the empty quiver and shot up into the air above her in a brief but beautiful column. When it faded, another arrow with a solid gold shaft and a razor sharp silver head had appeared inside. Knowing that Nariva was with her, Ciela grabbed that arrow, nocked it on her bow, and opened fire.
Just like Flametongue before him, Darkest was doomed the moment that arrow left the bow. The laser fire came to a halt as the entire crowd of Gerudos lowered their weapons and watched the golden arrow sail up through the air, almost as if in slow motion. It burst Darkest's barrier like an overinflated balloon and embedded itself into his side all the way up to the fletching. The burst of holy power that erupted from the shaft of the arrow flared out across his body with all the same fury as every other smiting strike he had endured, but since he was already so close to the tower this time he didn't have the time to shake it off as he fell. He lost control over his powers and fell the rest of the distance with a strained yell, then slammed into the steel roof with a sickening thump. He had spun around and landed on his back, trying to use his last remaining wing to absorb some of the impact, and the result crushed it into gory tangles of shattered bone shards and torn flesh. The Gerudos had parted to make way as soon as they saw him coming toward the tower, so thankfully he didn't crush anyone with his landing, but his blood did spray out and spatter over the bodies of those standing closest.
It was a good thing that Mewtwo had imposed himself between that battlecruiser and the rest of the Gerudos. Darkest's soldiers made one last ditch effort to save him at this point by opening fire with a whole salvo of lasers from the small turrets on the ship's belly. Mewtwo did his best to call on the power of the Medallions one more time and they answered with great warm upwellings of gold and green magical power that flowed up and empowered the barrier even further. This at least prevented the beams from shattering it outright, but it was clear that it wouldn't last long. The Medallions had infinite energy but not infinite bandwidth, and those arm-thick red lasers were even more powerful than the rifles that had proven so deadly before. The withering barrage was prevented from striking the Gerudos but the barrier quickly began to bend and buckle. Thankfully Lightest acted quickly and rushed up alongside him to share the energy from her power pool, buttressing the defense and helping it to hold. Together they just barely managed to hold on, keeping the innocent people below them safe. Then Mewtwo saw one of Lightest's last surviving frigates bearing down on that battlecruiser on a collision course! It was already heavily damaged; its hull was covered in flaming craters from weapon strikes and most of its turrets had been scoured off. Mewtwo realized it must have been making one last ditch suicidal ramming strike to pull the battlecruiser out of play and give them an opportunity to kill Darkest. The battlecruiser's red energy shield flared to life as the scorched nose of the frigate plummeted down into it, but it was only designed to hold back weapons fire, not thousands of tons of mass soaring at a significant speed. The shields buckled like tissue paper and the hull of the frigate crashed into it with a thunderous BOOM, causing the larger ship to shudder and careen downward and sideways away from the tower. Its engines flared up to maximum power to try to compensate for the massive force propelling it through the air, but to no avail. Then Mewtwo heard a feminine telepathic voice calling out to them all loudly.
"We'll handle them, this is your chance! Go! Strike him down!"
Mewtwo looked over at Lightest and she nodded and smiled, then handed him back the Vatorsa spear. He nodded back to her and then let go of the barrier he had been using to hold back the hostile ship's fire. He turned to propel himself down through the air at the fastest speed he could conjure. Lightest followed him close behind, once again forming a large sword blade from telekinesis as she prepared to strike. With their weapons pointed right down at their helpless foe, Mewtwo and Lightest looked like two glowing blue lances of divine retribution soaring down from the heavens. Darkest was only just starting to recover from the nerve-roasting agony of the holy arrow's strike when the duo arrived. Mewtwo impaled Darkest directly through the pelvis with the Vatorsa spear a second time, but this time with so much force behind the strike that the tip of the spear partially embedded itself into the metal floor beneath him. Lightest landed next to him, plunging her psychic blade into Darkest's chest with a similar floor-penetrating impact. She drew it back and then used it to sever the shield collars around Darkest's necks, causing their protective barriers to fizzle out. Then, with that vital weak point now exposed, she planted her foot on his second neck, ensuring that this time there was no way out for him via his powers. With his ship still struggling to stay in the air, his soldiers had lost their focus and were too busy desperately struggling to save themselves to send him any more energy. Then, realizing her moment had finally come, Ciela dropped her bow and rushed forward, drawing the weapon she'd been keeping hidden in reserve ever since she found it deep in the lost woods. An elegant, silvery longsword slid out of an unassuming sheath hidden under her cloak. It had a beautiful blue handle and its crossguard was shaped like a pair of open wings facing down toward the blade. A soft white light glowed along the edges of the blade as Ciela brought it down on his stomach and pierced him directly between the spots where Lightest and Mewtwo had struck. Darkest's eyes bulged out of his skull as he felt the holy power of all three weapons surging through his body, scouring his nervous system and cooking his flesh alive. Mewtwo couldn't help but smile, there was a beautiful sort of symmetry in how they had all come together to finally finish off this monster once and for all.
For several moments the crackling holy light flashed all over Darkest, slowly reducing his body to a charred husk. But even as the life faded from Darkest's body one last time, he couldn't help but sputter out one final wet, choked laugh. "I may die... and you may destroy everything that I've built... but you will never undo what I've done. I'll... always... be... with... you..."
Ciela scowled with disgust and pulled the Master Sword up out of his torso to raise it over her head. "Just shut up and die already." She growled, then brought the blade down on his necks and severed them both with one final, clean stroke.
There was a brief moment of uncertain, yet relieved silence as everyone on the tower realized what had just happened. It was finally over. Ciela let go of the Master Sword and stood up shakily, staring down at the culmination of all her struggles. A thudding boom shook the tower as one of the struggling ships crashed into the Earth nearby, but nobody seemed to really notice or care. The silence was only broken when Lightest suddenly winced and drew in a soft, gasping breath. Her psychic blade flickered and vanished and she lost her balance and stumbled down onto her knees. Mewtwo snapped out of his trance-like fascination and then turned to kneel down next to her and use Heal Pulse on her.
"Lightest, are you ok?! Did you take an injury I missed?"
She grimaced and frowned, clutching her chest as though her innards were burning with pain. But she still managed to struggle through it and turned up to look at him and give him a weak smile.
"It's alright Mewtwo. I knew this was coming, it's inevitable." She replied cryptically. Her sad expression implied she was already at peace with what was happening, but didn't know how to tell him without hurting him.
"What's happening? What's coming?!" Mewtwo asked, feeling suddenly terrified by that look. He didn't want to lose anyone else.
"Do you remember earlier in my battle with Darkest when I told him I was ready to die?" She asked.
"I thought you meant you were willing to resort to kamikaze attacks if that was what it took to kill him!"
The Gerudos around them began to move in closer, some examining Darkest's body while others struggled to listen in on the conversation. Lightest winced and her breaths started to become ragged, and no matter how much energy Mewtwo poured into her with his Heal Pulse technique, her life force seemed to continue draining out of her. She smiled sadly and shook her head.
"No. I don't have much time so I can't explain it in detail, but... Darkest and I, we have always been two halves of the same person. The two halves of you. We're not our own unique souls, but shattered souls split in half. What happens to one of us happens to the other. And now that he's dead..."
She trailed off again, her breathing becoming more and more forced. She knew they were smart enough to connect the dots of what she'd said and come to the right conclusion. Mewtwo felt like he'd been punched in the gut though, it was like fate had one final insult saved to use against him once he'd finally won his victory. Desperation and bitter anger flared up in his mind at the injustice of it all. No matter how hard he tried, no matter if he won or lost, he was helpless to stop the people he cared about from dying. He put everything he had left into that Heal Pulse now, using one hand to grip her shoulder.
"It's not fair!" He shouted. "You fought so hard to stop him! I fought so hard! We all did! You shouldn't have to die for this!"
Lightest smiled and nodded. She slowly leaned back to sit down on the roof and took a long, shuddering breath. "I've been fighting for a long, long time Mewtwo. Eight hundred years of nothing but war. I'm tired, Mewtwo. I'm so tired..."
She trailed off again and slowly closed her eyes. She began to fall backward but Mewtwo scrambled up to catch her and hold her in his arms, not caring about the paradox risk anymore that came with touching his future self. Desperation filled him and he turned to the Gerudos and shouted out.
"Does anyone have a Red Potion left?! Is Fara here?! Someone help her!"
Lightest sighed again and shook her head. "Just let me go, Mewtwo. They can't do any more than you. This will be mercy for me. All I've ever known is fighting, I'm not sure there's anything else left of me. But my Guardians aren't bound to me or Darkest, they will live on and make sure everything else will be alright."
"But you can do more than just fighting now! Now that he's gone you can do anything you want! Art, music, exploration, you just..." Mewtwo said, losing his focus as his voice broke from the sadness. He had only known Lightest for less than an hour and yet he couldn't bear to see her go.
She smiled a little bit again and took one more deep sigh. "Just... do it for me. Your future is your own now. You can live for me."
Then she went silent and didn't breathe again. Mewtwo poured more and more Heal Pulse energy into her, now drawing on the energy of the Medallions he possessed since his psychic reserves were finally tapped. Nothing could bring her back though, it was as if her soul had peacefully slipped away. He knew it wasn't his fault and he understood why, but he couldn't help but feel as though he had failed again. He leaned down to clutch his arms tightly around her and buried his face into her shoulder and cried.
Ciela, who had been standing by his side uncertain what to say, placed her hand comfortingly on his shoulder. Then Hadara lowered her weapon and quietly walked up to join her, placing her hand on his other shoulder. Nereti, Lamira, Kamilia, and the others wordlessly joined too, and any others after that who wanted to join merely gathered around as close as they could, unable to reach. Only the sound of the mournful blowing wind could be heard, until Hadara softly began to hum the Song of the Valley to honor Lightest's passing. Before long the rest of the crowd began to quietly join. Mewtwo could hear them and a part of him was grateful for them, though he couldn't bring himself to do anything other than cry for awhile longer. It wasn't until his psychic senses picked up something strange that he finally had to pull himself together and let go.
An upwelling of lingering psychic energy was flowing through Lightest's lifeless body. At first Mewtwo thought she was somehow still alive, but then the energy moved with lightning speed. It focused at her forehead and began to pour out into the air in a column of bright sky blue light, almost like a firework going off. The Gerudos winced and stepped back, as the intensity of that light and heat was unpleasant. It only lasted a few seconds though, and when it was done Mewtwo looked back down and saw a beautiful sky blue gemstone of some sort had formed, embedded in her forehead. She was still dead though, and now there were burn marks around where the gem had formed.
Mewtwo was completely baffled by this. He almost reached down to touch the gemstone, but then he remembered what it was attached to and recoiled away. He was consumed with speculation as to what had just happened, at least until he sensed something else far darker going on nearby.
The battle was over and Darkest was dead, but something was deeply, deeply wrong. It wasn't related to the danger of timestream corrections either. Mewtwo's senses were detecting a growing wave of psychic emanations nearby. It was a massive upwelling of emotions coming from hundreds of minds, and these weren't happy and cheerful emotions either. This was bloodlust, greed, and rage. It had sprung up extremely suddenly and it was so overpowering that it was already drowning out his sense of grief. He couldn't help but chuckle bitterly as he forced back his confusion and grief to face it. He'd shoved back his sadness for Kalana already and once again he had to shove this sadness back too. The universe seemed to still have more in store for him so he dutifully choked back his feelings in the face of impending doom just like a good Gerudo would. He gently set Lightest's body down and shakily rose to his feet. Hadara, still looking confused by the gem on Lightest's head, turned and shot him an uncertain look.
"What even happened? Why is there a jewel there?" She asked.
"I don't know, but it's not the jewel that I'm worried about. Do you feel that?"
"Feel what?"
Mewtwo wiped his eyes and turned to look toward the source of that intensifying emotional maelstrom. He couldn't see through the crowd of Gerudos that had surrounded him, but he could at least make out a plume of black smoke rising up above them. He raised one hand and pointed toward it, hoping people would get the picture and move.
"Over there."
The crowd indeed parted, though looks of confusion and concern crossed many of their faces. Many more turned to look too. Mewtwo walked past them over to the edge of the tower and looked down, and all at once he realized exactly why he was feeling so much dread. The frigate that had smashed into Darkest's Battlecruiser had come loose during their fall and plunged into the ground before dragging it all the way, and somehow the Battlecruiser had pulled out of its dive and stabilized itself. He tried to probe deeper with his psychic senses and what he found was absolute carnage. Yelling, screaming, snarling, ripping, tearing. He received brief telepathic flashes of images in his mind, depicting dark hallways draped in gore and blood. Chosen and Immortals were turning on each other and ripping each other to shreds in an orgy of violence.
"What the fuck?!" Mewtwo gasped, reeling backward in horror.
"What is it?" Nereti asked, walking alongside him and staring down at the ship too.
Mewtwo couldn't find words to describe what he'd seen. He wasn't upset that those monsters were targeting each other but he was deeply afraid of what they might do when the survivors were done. He struggled to articulate it for a few moments, then a massive explosion rocked the back end of the ship as several of the fighting Immortals unleashed a colossal psychic wave throughout the engine room. The ship began to drop out of the sky, though the hover drives on the bottom struggled to fight gravity a bit longer. Another explosion cracked open the ship's port side like a bursting tin can, causing it to list sideways toward the tower as it fell. Adrenaline suddenly rushed through Mewtwo as he realized it was now on a collision course with the base of the tower and he turned to give a warning shout to the Gerudos while he still had a chance.
"Everybody hold on!"
Thankfully the ship slammed into the ground right next to the tower's foundation rather than striking it directly, so they weren't immediately hurled off to their deaths as a group. It did slide forward several dozen feet and collide with the tower's base after the impact, but it shed a majority of its momentum in the process of scouring out a gigantic trench in the ground. The tower shook ominously from the shock waves put off by the initial impact, and once the nose of the ship crunched its way into the base they felt the structure start to tilt under their feet.
"Sa'sheer! We're not going to have time to climb down all those stairs before it gives way!" Hadara gasped.
Mewtwo knew what he had to do and he had to do it fast. His psychic reserves were gone now though so he'd need to try calling on the Medallions to do it, but he'd been increasingly successful with each time he used them so he felt confident he could do it. He turned to Hadara and gave her a deadly serious look.
"Make sure nobody panics and get them clear of the tower, I'm teleporting everyone down to the ground."
"Ok, got it! Hurry!" She replied.
Mewtwo then closed his eyes and did his best to focus despite the shaking and slow leaning of the floor beneath them. He heard the Gerudos beginning to shout fearfully as they realized the danger they were in. The sound was highly distracting since he cared so deeply for them and dreaded losing anyone else after everything he'd been through. All the fighting, all the deaths, all the emotional trauma, it had frayed his nerves down to raw nubs and he was losing his ability to concentrate properly. The Medallions did respond in kind, but what really helped was the sudden wave of psychic energy that he felt transmitted to him from above. He knitted his brow in confusion and glanced upward for the source, then spotted the last of the four surviving angelic frigates and knew they were helping him.
"Thank you." He whispered up to them with his telepathy.
He then turned and channeled their power into a series of teleports that evacuated the Gerudos down one by one to the surface, making sure he picked the side that the tower was leaning away from. He was still too unfocused from the stress to handle taking them all at once, but he did at least manage to quickly move up to taking groups of two or three. A series of bright blue blinking flashes filled the air as he sent them to safety, but he started to feel the floor shaking and shifting even faster. He was almost finished when he heard the groaning and shrieking of tearing metal. He spun to his left and just barely saw one of the bent, partially destroyed spires give way and collapse due to the tilting of the tower throwing it off balance. It toppled over onto Ciela, striking her head and knocking her out cold. She fell to the floor limply and began to slide across it gradually, threatening to slip off the roof entirely.
Mewtwo was forced to act quickly. He didn't know how severe her head injury was and he didn't have enough time to heal it. She and the sword were too far away from each other to both grab simultaneously and he couldn't concentrate on more than two or three things at once. He teleported over to Ciela to save as much time as he could and knelt down to use Heal Pulse on her, hoping at least a partial application would stabilize her. While he did, the Master Sword began to skid and then bounce across the floor toward the hole in the center of the roof. There were still other Gerudos left on the roof too, some of which were beginning to stumble and lose their footing as the incline increased. He made a snap judgment to split his focus on the healing and teleporting the people first. The sword would be a shame to lose, but it wasn't worth sacrificing lives.
Fortunately, Mewtwo's work went quickly. He managed to heal Ciela at a rapid pace while sending everyone else back. Once everyone else was safe he then used telekinesis to grab the Vatorsa Spear and wrench it out of the floor where it was still pinned to Darkest's corpse. He made sure to grab Hadara's dagger too. But when he tried to grab the Master Sword, his telekinesis slid right off of it as though he was trying to grab something covered in slippery oil. He tried again and just managed to make it float an inch up into the air before it slid out of his grip and clanged onto the roof again.
Time was almost up so he instead turned his attention away from the blade and teleported Lightest's body so they could give her a proper, respectful burial. He decided to leave Darkest's body behind though so it would be crushed in the collapsing ruins of his own creation. He wasted no more time in teleporting Ciela now regardless of the fact that she still hadn't woke up, then tried one last time to pick up her blade. It was no use, it even seemed to repel his attempt to lock a teleport onto it when he tried that too. It slipped through the hole in the roof and fell into the command chamber with a loud clang. The floor was starting to fall beneath him so he was forced to teleport himself to safety now, leaving the body of Darkest alone with the legendary weapon that had finally slain him.
A few hundred feet away, Mewtwo reappeared standing next to the group of Gerudos in the large open plaza in the heart of the ruins of Darkest's city. It was the safest place they could have landed since all the wreckage that Shadetalon had created in the process of razing the city was full of smouldering hot embers and razor sharp twisted metal. They all looked up and watched in silence as the tower tilted further and further away from them before finally giving up the ghost and plummeting to the Earth in a spectacular fashion. Flashes of red light erupted in waves from the tower as it collapsed, marking the detonations of rows upon rows of capacitors that had still been storing tremendous amounts of energy for the tower's weapon. The bursts hurled shards of steel support beams and flooring dozens of feet in multiple directions, but the crowd was far enough away to safely avoid all of it. When the final tip of the sinister structure vanished into the dust, Mewtwo took a deep breath and gave himself a moment to take in the finality of it and feel some measure of closure. The clouds that had been filling the sky continued to clear, spreading the gap wider and giving them a clearer and larger view of the starscape above. The battle in orbit was starting to take a turn now, as the infighting among Darkest's forces caused more and more ships to explode or fall prey to the coordinated attacks of the Guardian ships. Dozens of tiny falling stars danced across the heavens above them, each one a ship plummeting to its death in the upper atmosphere with a bright orange fireball. Mewtwo had lost so much, but this was ultimately what he'd been fighting for. Standing among the crowd of Gerudo people he saved, he used a simple telekinetic barrier to deflect the dust cloud that came billowing up after the tower's collapse. The Gerudos winced a little bit at first, expecting shrapnel to come shooting through the cloud, but the barrier held. Mewtwo then craned his head up and looked at the silvery frigate floating above their heads. Remembering what Lightest had said about her forces protecting them, he closed his eyes and made a simple telepathic call.
"Hello up there. If any of you are still listening, we need to talk."
Epilogue - Promises
Mewtwo wished he felt better about returning home to Ven'rakesh. The familiar sandstone walls were comforting in their own way, but nothing could make the circumstances of their return any less unpleasant. He and the rest of the three assembled tribes of Gerudos had been offered a ride by Lightest's Guardians aboard one of their starships after the battle had ended, and the ride had taken mere hours instead of the days it normally would have needed. The Rakeshan Honored Guard understandably needed some talking down after seeing a silvery starship landing just outside the walls of the village, but Hadara's words were thankfully eloquent and firm enough to prevent a panic. Now everyone was gathering in and around the village square for a ceremony that Mewtwo had been deeply dreading ever since the battle had ended. Gerudos wearing the colors of all three assembled tribes were packed around the edges of the square and were lining the roofs of all the buildings to watch. A quiet and somber atmosphere filled the place and nobody in the crowd said a word. They all knew what was coming next and they were just as unhappy about it as Mewtwo.
The crowd standing on the Eastern side of the square parted and a small procession consisting of Nereti, Kurala, and Q'diri emerged. The three Arbiters were carrying a stone funerary platform on wooden handles and had stoic expressions on their faces. Following behind them were Hadara, Ruru, Kamilia, Indiru, Ciela, and a member of Lightest's cloned Guardian forces named High Admiral Zuriel. Atop the platform were three symbolic items they had chosen to bury during the ceremony. Since Kalana's body had been burned in the fires of battle, they had chosen to bury the two shattered halves of Scimitar Azria in its stead. Next to it was a symbolic item chosen to represent Lightest, since she had requested to be buried on the capital planet of her empire. The Gerudos had insisted on honoring her sacrifice here anyway, so they had chosen to bring a single charred fragment of the silvery hull of the ship that had crashed into Darkest's battlecruiser during the fight. Finally, the third item was a brand new set of Vha'an tribal clothing to represent Valisse Lasheera, who was going to be buried at Ven'vha later on but the other Gerudos still wanted to honor here alongside Kalana and Lightest.
The procession carried these items all the way to the fountain and stopped to set the platform down, and then High Admiral Zuriel used some of her telekinesis to start pulling up the stones from the floor in the fountain's empty pool. Mewtwo noticed that despite the fact that Zuriel had been created as a clone from Lightest's DNA and looked mostly similar to her, she still had several unique identifying features to set her apart, including black stripe markings on her face underneath her eyes, dark grey eyes, and a lack of wings. Her psychic aura still glowed with a soft teal color as she exposed the bare rock underneath the fountain. It was a nice distraction for Mewtwo to focus on for a little while in order to escape the reality of what he was experiencing, but then Sumati emerged from the crowd to approach the mourners. She began to sing the Song of the Valley and it was a cold, sobering wake up call that brought Mewtwo back to the stark sadness of the funeral.
Of course Mewtwo had been offered a spot in the procession before it started, but he had turned it down. Not out of any sort of disrespect for Kalana or the rest of her family, but because he didn't think he could handle being there in front of everyone when the pain really began to sink in. Even now he didn't want to show his own weakness in front of the Gerudos despite knowing they would never judge him for it. He was standing at the back of the crowd on the Northeast corner of the square, huddled between a few Vha'an Gerudos who he didn't personally know. Here he could easily hide it as he began to weep for his late friend. As Sumati's beautiful voice rose up through the square and carried through the air, Mewtwo fought back his sorrow in order to at least keep himself quiet. He allowed himself to shed all the tears his eyes could give, but he bit his tongue to stifle the sobs in order to avoid drawing attention. He felt some measure of relief over the fact that he wasn't trapped in a limbo of silence and unable to cry to express his grief like the time after Ruisa's death, but ultimately this was little comfort in the end. Expressing the grief wasn't an escape from it; it continued to stab sharply at his heart no matter how many tears he shed. This was a wound that couldn't be magically healed by a single dose of catharsis, it would be bleeding and scabbing over slowly for a long time.
The crowd let Sumati sing the entire song by herself, and though Mewtwo couldn't see it due to the tears clouding his vision, Q'diri stepped forward and began to place the three symbolic items into the hole under the fountain while she sang. She was the only one out of the entire group who was stoic enough to perform the task without any tears, as everyone else had already began to break. Hadara was struggling to keep it together for Ruru's sake, while Ruru had buried her face in her arm to cry. Indiru and Kamilia were at least faring a little better since they had never had a chance to know Valisse in their lifetimes, but their empathy drove them to feel a share of the agony that Hadara and Ruru were now suffering. Indiru quietly stepped over to take Ruru's free hand and squeeze it firmly in the hope it might help at least a little. Kamilia noticed this, then decided to reach out and place a hand on Hadara's shoulder. Hadara closed her eyes in response and took a deep breath, then reached one hand up to place on Kamilia's hand to show acceptance of the gesture. She used her free hand to wipe away the tears running down her wrinkled face and nodded briefly to Kamilia to show her gratitude. She sensed this was the final ending to her feud with the Vha'an Chief, but she wished it too could have come under better circumstances.
Once Q'diri finished placing items in the hole beneath the fountain, Zuriel began to use her telekinesis to replace the stones atop them in order to return the fountain to its previous state. Sumati finished her song right as the stones settled into place. After the song ended, Q'diri stepped back and spoke the rites.
"We, the Granddaughters of Din, commit the souls of our sisters back to the embracing arms of the Goddesses, and the soul of the heroic outsider to whatever deity watches over her people. May they, Nariva, and the Three Divine Mothers give them peace everlasting."
As one final gesture to pay respects and mark the ending of the ceremony, Sumati stepped forward to place her hand on the base of the statue in the fountain that her mothers had carved. She whispered a brief arcane chant to herself and her hand glowed with a soft blue aura of magic that seemed to radiate up through the statue and travel to the jug that the stone Gerudo was carrying. Crystal-clear water began to spill out of the jug and pour down into the empty pool with a soft splattering sound. Sumati had to stand there and continue focusing in order to keep conjuring more water like that, and even she began to feel a few tears rolling down her cheeks as she worked. Nobody had used magic to fill the fountain like this since her mothers had died. She had taught herself the spell they had used to do it when they filled the fountain, but she could never bring herself to do it until now since she knew it would bring back too many painful memories of her own. But now it felt like the right time had finally arrived, now that she could share a portion of her own grief with that of her Chief. She didn't care that the water was soaking through her shoes as she stood in the fountain and filled it. She stayed there and kept conjuring for several long, quiet moments while everyone else watched, and didn't stop until the water had risen to her calves and filled the entire pool to the brim.
Normally the ceremony would have been over at this point, but the gravity of recent events and the nature of the losses warranted something more. Hadara was struggling far too much to contain her grief, so Arbiter Q'diri chose to speak a tribute to the dead. She wasn't exactly a picture of stoicism either since she'd considered Kalana a friend, but she was still at least able to maintain her composure and speak clearly without her voice breaking.
"It may be Gerudo tradition to be brief and stoic while paying respects to the honored dead, but today we have lost more than just one of our sisters. The loss of Kalana Quindalo will be felt sharply by every single member of the Rakeshan tribe. Her selfless and brave nature touched far more souls than many of us ever will. She set a high bar for all of us to follow by always being the first to step up and do the right thing regardless of the dangers involved. Not many among us have the courage to defy the Chief's orders and venture out into the deep desert for nothing other than the desire to selflessly help another, especially not twice. Although she was often a thorn in my side during day to day operations in keeping the guard in line, and she loved to recklessly rush into battle against hopeless odds, I always admired the strength of the flame that burned in her heart. Most of us do a fine job of upholding our oaths of kinship with each other during our day to day lives, but Kalana took to it with a sincere zeal that was rarely ever matched. She was one of the best of us, and without her here by our sides, even this great future of freedom her sacrifice helped buy will feel emptier."
Those words were like a torture device made of beautifully hand crafted and polished silver. They were artful and expressive, but just drove the pain in Mewtwo's heart even deeper. He could no longer keep silent; the sobs were pushing out freely now. Q'diri paused for a brief moment to gather her thoughts, and her eyes wandered across the crowd. There wasn't a single dry eye to be seen, but the weeping of Mewtwo and Hadara was among the loudest. She took a deep breath and resumed.
"But Kalana's selflessness would not abide me only speaking about her. She would have wanted me to speak of everyone who died. In total, fifteen brave warriors were lost battling the Sulaaq in the fight up through the tower; their losses shall be felt just as keenly as hers. We have gathered to honor all of them equally; it is because of their sacrifice and bravery that we still stand here alive today. If they had not fought as valiantly and ferociously as they had, the rest of us wouldn't have managed to summit that tower and intervene to stop the Sulaaq. I ask that you each hold their names in your heart with the same reverence as Kalana's."
Q'diri then bowed her head to the crowd and stepped aside. Next, Chief Kamilia stepped up to say a few words. She coughed briefly and looked almost nervous, as though she was concerned she wouldn't be able to follow up very well on a speech like Q'diri's.
"Truth be told, I never had a chance to meet my aunt Valisse. She was lost to us long before I was even born. I made peace with her absence when I was a youth and I never expected anything more to come of it. But the revelation of her centuries of imprisonment and torment at the hands of the Sulaaq has brought back some of that old pain, and also forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth. For most of my life I've exalted my family and ancestors to near-deific levels of strength and perfection, and this is not a healthy way to honor those you love. It is not dishonorable to recognize that we are all flawed mortals who make bad decisions and act poorly from time to time, including our loved ones. Valisse was neither perfect nor was she a villain, I've learned it from the true accounts of her actions leading up to and during the battle last night. She risked all our lives with her selfish pursuit of revenge, but she saved all of our lives by using her voice to help defeat the dark one. I can still honor and love her as family while acknowledging both of these sides of her. I will have my time of mourning her again, as will the rest of my family, but I also wish to say one more thing. I have been a selfish fool in my reckless and destructive pursuit of hiding the flaws of my bloodline. To all those who I have acted callously with, I offer my sincerest apologies. All I ask of you now is that you join me now in remembering Valisse as she really was; an imperfect and often selfish, but still heroic woman who played her part in helping us to bring an end to the age of enslavement we've all been suffering under."
Kamilia then bowed and stepped aside to allow one more speaker to come forward. This time it was High Admiral Zuriel, who seemed the most stoic and collected of anyone at the ceremony. She was wearing a simple white robe that clung loosely to her frame, and bore a single pin on it over her chest that bore the crest of Lightest's Guardians. The crest was a silhouette of Lightest's head framed by stylized wings and a golden halo. She lowered her head respectfully and allowed for a moment of silence before speaking.
"I've known Lightest for my entire life. She was there when I stepped out of the growth tank, greeting me with a warm smile filled with pride. She gave me the same kindness and autonomy as she gave all the other Guardians she created. I was told I didn't have to fight in her war if I didn't want to, even though I knew it was what she had created me for. She gave me the choice to contribute in nonviolent tasks like construction or food production, and even let me choose to leave entirely and pursue my own life elsewhere in the galaxy if I desired it. I even saw some of my peers take her up on that choice, and she never once begrudged them for it. She didn't want to come even close to being like Darkest, who put control bolts into the skulls of his clones and intentionally reduced their mental capacity until they became mindless slavering beasts. I always respected her for giving us that choice, and it was a desire to live up to the example she set that drove me to become who I am today. I've done a lot of difficult things and seen horrors too terrible to describe in my time fighting for her, and perhaps there are scars inside me now that may never heal, but I don't regret it for a second. The things we did together saved so many people and made a difference in so many lives..."
Zuriel suddenly trailed off as her facade of strength began to crack. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before resuming.
"Lightest was up front and honest with me from the very beginning about what would happen if we ever did achieve victory, so I knew this was coming. It doesn't make going through it any easier, but I still don't have any regrets. I want to thank you all for being there with her during her final moments and giving her peace at the end. There's still so much work left for me to do now, I have to go and hunt down all the surviving clones leftover from the ruins of Darkest's Dominion and they are spread over thousands of worlds across multiple realms. Even if most of them slaughter each other now thanks to the power vacuum in the ranks above them, even 1% of them surviving will be enough to endanger countless billions of additional innocent lives. But I can at least do something for you before I leave. It's something Lightest herself would have done if she'd been here on this world sooner. I want to offer you all the supplies you will ever need to build a new civilization on this world, including food, hydroponics technology, prefabricated structures, medicines, and all the infrastructure needed to maintain it all. My Guardians will be able to use telekinesis to build it all extremely rapidly, and our ships can gather every single survivor together in this new home settlement in a matter of days. I want to ensure none of you ever has to suffer or die from a want of supplies ever again."
The crowd was shocked by the suddenness and generosity of Zuriel's offer, and for a brief moment every single person in attendance was speechless. It was Chief Lamira who managed to speak up first, since she alone was the only chief who hadn't lost anyone during the battle.
"My Lady, are you certain? That is an immense gift, we would have absolutely no way to repay such generosity."
"I wouldn't want any repayment even if you could. I do this for you because it's what Lightest would have done. She wouldn't allow me to do any less if she was still with us. If I'm to ever stand a chance of filling her shoes as the new head of the Guardians, I have to do at least this much. You will need to choose where this new home is located; I can't build towns for all four tribes separately since my time is short so you will have to all come together. But I can suggest you choose someplace close to the forest west of the former Dominion capital ruins. Ideally I would love to terraform your planet back into a verdant, green garden world, but such an endeavor would take far more time and resources than I can afford with all the tasks ahead of me. But, if you will at least accept my help now in building you a new home, I will promise to you to return to the planet Hypalia and terraform it into a paradise after the remnants of Darkest's Dominion have been exterminated. Even if it takes decades to hunt them all down, I will return and remake your world into the paradise it once was."
Even Hadara managed to push aside her grief and regain some semblance of composure in the face of such an offer. "I think I can safely speak for all my people when I say that we would be eternally grateful for such generosity. Without the towers of the Sulaaq producing food and water for us to steal we would be facing a collective death by starvation in our near future without such help. We will need to briefly speak as a unified group in order to decide where to place this new settlement. I just have one small request of you. If we do leave our old homes in the desert behind, can you at least help us wall them off so the Lizalfos don't raze them all to the ground? One day we may wish to return to our birthplaces once the world is richer and greener and it would be a tragedy to come back to nothing but ruins."
Zuriel smiled and nodded. "I think I can do that."
Even though the Gaze of the Sulaaq dreams had ended along with the Sulaaq empire, Mewtwo still seemed to struggle to sleep at night. He had managed to finally adjust himself to a diurnal sleep schedule but he still found himself waking up earlier in the morning than anyone else. He climbed out of bed and got himself a glass of water, then slowly pondered his small but luxurious little home. Zuriel's people had done amazing work; they had produced a small one-room abode with every single modern amenity that human homes back on Earth usually featured. He had a cozy bed that exactly fit the size of his body, running electricity and switch controlled lights, indoor plumbing with clean water, a refrigerator stocked with food, cooking appliances that included an electric stove and microwave, central heating and air conditioning, plenty of storage shelves filled with literature, and even some hologram screens for entertainment devices like video games. A lot of the tech behind it was even more advanced than anything the humans back home had managed to achieve. All this had been provided for him and all of the Gerudos over the span of a single week, and yet it all still felt a little hollow to Mewtwo without Kalana there to share it with him.
He sluggishly prepared and ate a quick breakfast of multigrain cereal and fruit juice before summarily opening the door of his little home and stepping out into the open air. It was still so early out that the sun hadn't yet managed to peer over the horizon and the sky was mostly dark. He shut the door and paused a moment to take in his surroundings at a leisurely pace. His home had been built on the Western edge of the new united Gerudo city of Ven'rakúl, which had been founded on the border between the Lost Woods and the glassy ruins of Old Hyrule. Several hundred small prefabricated homes similar to his own had been built in a neat orderly grid along the edge of the forest, as well as dozens of structures meant for industry and infrastructural purposes. The city wasn't quite finished but Zuriel's people were expected to arrive soon that morning to finish the final touches of telekinetic construction work. Only a few skeletal frames were standing among the clusters of sleek white and silver futuristic buildings, most of which were single-story and roughly hexagonal or dome shaped. Smooth cobblestone streets had been placed between the buildings rather than pavement at the request of the Gerudos, who wanted at least a few touches of familiarity among the architecture that they found so alien. Only a scant few of them were awake this early; Mewtwo could see the night guards still patrolling the streets in and around the city, carrying silvery laser weapons that the Guardians had given them.
Taking a deep breath, Mewtwo used telekinesis to float up over the tops of the buildings. He headed toward the Northern edge of the city, where a four story power plant had been erected just shy of the city limits. It was the tallest building in all of Ven'rakúl, so his feline instincts immediately gravitated toward using it as his perch to sit atop and observe their surroundings. From there he could gaze off into the distance in all directions. To the West, the barren black glassy flats of Old Hyrule stretched out for hundreds of lifeless, empty miles. To the East, the massive trees of the Lost Woods acted as a green wall that mostly blocked his gaze, though he could see down between the trunks for a decent distance because of how far apart those huge old trees were spaced. To the North and South, green grassy borderlands between these two regions reached out to their respective horizons. Zuriel's guardians had been teaching the Gerudos how to remove the glass and toxins from the soil with their new machinery, so there were already areas along these borderlands where the blackened crust had been scraped off, revealing old brown soil underneath. The hope was that greenery from the woods would steadily spread out into and grow on the soil they had freed from this entombment, but it would be a slow and grinding process. As Mewtwo stared out at all this, his mind drifted back to Kalana again. He sadly pondered how proud she would have been to see all this. She was always a dyed-in-the-wool Rakeshan woman, but she also was wise enough to recognize the value in Gerudo unity and would have gladly accepted the unification of the three surviving tribes into the new Rakúlan tribe. She would have embraced the new ways and new technology of this place gladly and gratefully. He wished he could have seen her smiling and laughing at all the strange things these machines could do. He longed to try to explain to her how electricity worked. He bitterly imagined how much joy he could have had showing her how to cook new foods on a stove. Every one of these thoughts was like a sharp, throbbing ache in his mind. They lingered and poisoned his mood for the next few hours as he sat there and watched the sunrise.
Before Mewtwo knew it the light of morning had flooded the sky and lit up Ven'rakúl completely. The changing of the guard went smoothly as he watched, and soon the Gerudo people were slowly filtering out of their homes and going about their day to day duties. New market stalls began to open up in the square at the center of the city and workers began to head to their tasks. They still wore their old tribal colors despite being integrated into one unified tribe now, mostly as a way to pay homage to their past tribal identities. A lot still had their same old scars too, despite Zuriel offering them psychic healing that could have removed scarring. Mewtwo respected their desire to embrace the past in these symbolic ways while still moving ahead into the future, so he had advocated for these choices even when Zuriel's people seemed genuinely confused by them. Soon his nose caught a whiff of the scent of cooking meats from the food stands in the square and he realized just how long he'd been sitting there lost in thought. He stood up and brushed himself off in preparation to go find something to do, only to be distracted by the sharp glint of sunlight reflecting off a silvery hull in the sky to the West. He craned his neck up and spotted one of Zuriel's Guardian ships descending from the Western skies above them. There they were, right on time for their scheduled arrival to finish this morning's work. He took off from the roof of the power plant and floated down to the landing pad on the Southern side of town to meet them.
The three Chiefs were already there waiting for the ship to arrive when Mewtwo landed. Hadara had by now managed to regain her usual composure despite the overpowering strength of her grief, so she gave Mewtwo a cordial nod and greeting as he landed next to her.
"Good morning Mewtwo. I hope you slept well last night, today is going to be an eventful day."
"I slept... as well as I ever have." Mewtwo admitted quietly. "Why, what's on the docket this time?"
"Zuriel is bringing the collected survivors of the Ravéan tribe to us today. She managed to use her ships to gather every last freed thrall from all the intact towers and has been giving them medical treatment up until now. According to her messages, the vast majority of the survivors want to join our Rakúlan tribe, so she's bringing them here now." Hadara replied.
"Any word on whether they found Chief Nephra Akila among the survivors?" Kamilia asked as the ship came down for its final approach.
Hadara shook her head grimly. "Not a trace. I fear the Sulaaq probably killed her during the raid on Ven'ravé. You know she was a ferocious soul, there's no way she would have gone peacefully even if the Incantation was on the air during the attack."
Kamilia and Lamira both nodded quietly in agreement and then the four of them craned their heads up to watch the small cargo ship extending its landing gear and inching down to a gentle landing on the paved pad. There was a soft thud as it came to rest, and before long the ramp clicked open and touched down too. Several of Zuriel's Guardians emerged, most carrying construction gear and supplies with telekinesis. They greeted Mewtwo and the chiefs with friendly smiles before taking off and heading for their allocated construction zones. Then Zuriel herself appeared coming down the ramp followed by a procession of almost 150 Gerudos wearing yellow Ravéan garb. Once they had exited the ship and approached the three chiefs, the crowd of Ravéans bowed deeply.
"Honored Chiefs, I am Arbiter Serisa Komesi of Ven'avé. I am deeply grateful to you and your people for taking us in and giving us homes in your new tribe."
"It's the least we can do. Most of the credit belongs to Lady Zuriel here, since it's her technology and resources that even made it possible. She is the one who built the homes that we are granting to your people, so as far as I'm concerned you should be thanking her." Kamilia replied.
Serisa nodded and said "Believe me when I say I have been thanking her effusively for the last few days. But I must ask, which of you should we refer to as the official Rakúlan Chief?"
"All three of us, actually. We have decided to share the power and responsibilities of the title evenly between us, voting together on all major decisions. Once your people have had some time to settle into Ven'rakúl and have properly mourned for your lost Chief and tribeswomen, we will ask you to appoint your own co-Chief from the Ravéan people to join us on our Council of Chiefs so there is equal and fair representation for all of you." Hadara replied.
Serisa bowed deeply again as emotions overwhelmed her. "That is... you are wise and generous beyond words, My Chiefs. Goddesses Bless you."
"Come, let me show you and your people to the homes that are waiting for them." Lamira said, gesturing to the Ravéans to follow her. She led them off the landing pads and into the Rakúlan streets, leaving Zuriel alone with Hadara, Kamilia and Mewtwo.
Zuriel smiled softly and approached them to speak. "It took some doing, but those are the last survivors. We had to spare quite a few ships to gather them all in time to prevent starvation, as they were scattered around dozens of towers across hundreds of miles. We checked the ruins of the capital tower one last time for any survivors in the rubble but sadly there were none. The atmosphere of that place still feels dark and terrible even after the Dominion's fall, I would recommend avoiding it. Who knows what sort of lingering pollutants may have been dumped on that land."
"We didn't exactly have such a plan, but thank you for your wise counsel regardless. How much longer do you think your people will need to finish their work?" Hadara asked.
"The construction should be fully complete by the end of the day. Maybe earlier if what Commander Cadriel has told me is correct. Seems like the workers are really enjoying their time here, your people have made them feel welcomed and comfortable without putting them on untouchable pedestals of perfection."
Hadara chuckled a little bit as she replied. "You will find us Gerudos do have our own ways of practicing hero worship, but unquestioning reverence is not one of them. Except maybe for Kamilia here." Hadara said with a sardonic little smile.
Kamilia grumbled and waved one hand dismissively, but didn't bother to try to argue this time. Feeling satisfied with her little barb, Hadara resumed speaking. "Even a Chief isn't immune to being called out for acting foolish, as my Arbiter will demonstrate. Still, I and the others are immensely grateful for your help."
"Of course. It's as I said before, this is what Lightest would have wanted. And speaking of her wishes, I have one more piece of assistance for you. Four of my own people have volunteered to stay behind on Hypalia after we leave for the final time tonight. They wish to act as educators for you and the rest of the Gerudo people. If you would have them, they will teach everyone here remedial science lessons so your people can learn all the principles behind our technology and how it works in the hope of advancing your own understanding of the world. We want to make sure you can maintain and even build more of it in our absence."
"We would be honored to host them! I can't see any downsides to it. It's not like we would struggle to feed them thanks to the food stores and farming machines you've already given us!" Kamilia said.
"I figured you would say that." Zuriel said with a smile. She then turned to Mewtwo and spoke to him next. "Mewtwo, while my people get to work, would you mind speaking to me in private for a bit?"
Feeling curious about what she could need such privacy for, Mewtwo nodded in assent. "Of course."
"Thank you. If you will excuse me for a bit Chiefs, I will be down to the village with the new professors shortly once I've finished addressing some business." Zuriel said, then gestured to Mewtwo to follow her inside the ship.
Mewtwo followed her up the ramp and down a short hall, and she led him to a small private meeting room where she offered him a seat and then sat down across from him. She looked slightly anxious as she began to speak, which sent a brief surge of concern through Mewtwo.
"Mewtwo, I want to ask you something and I need you to think about it long and hard before you reply to me. I'm prefacing it very carefully since it's an important and difficult choice and I know you're going to instinctually want to say no immediately."
"What sort of choice?" Mewtwo asked nervously.
"I want you to consider coming with me when my ships depart Hypalia one final time tonight." Zuriel replied.
Zuriel was right of course, his immediate desire to refuse was nearly automatic. He sputtered a little and scowled deeply. "What? Why on Earth would I do that? Don't you realize how much I care for these people?!"
"Why? Because of the inherent temporal problems we're still seeing going on here. Mewtwo, have you stopped to think about just how strange it is that we haven't seen a temporal correction now that you know to avoid allowing yourself to split into Darkest and Lightest?" Zuriel asked frankly.
That gave Mewtwo immediate pause. His mood came crashing down as he realized just how much of a point she had here. He couldn't come up with any words to rebut her so she continued speaking.
"There's two potential answers to what's going on here. The first is that you might not actually be the same original Mewtwo that endured the split. Our Mewtwo might have been from a different universe entirely, and Darkest and his crew mixed you up with ours. This is more than a little far-fetched, but it would explain everything without any danger. The scarier and more likely explanation is that there's still a potential danger that something could happen to you in your future that shatters your mind severely enough to cause you to split anyway, regardless of your intentions. If I were to just leave you here on Hypalia without any protection then any number of potential horrible things could happen to you in our absence that could cause the split. For example, one of Darkest's surviving commanders could evade my forces and come back to Hypalia while we're gone in order to force the split upon you, and then the new Darkest and Lightest could jump back through time to the points where they should have started and everything continues on as destined. This would at least prevent causality from collapsing, but I don't need to tell you that I would rather Darkest never have existed in the first place even if it meant my Guardians and I were gone with him."
"I... I understand." Mewtwo replied, still unable to make a decision just yet. An awkward, painful silence passed between them then, until Zuriel continued.
"Mewtwo, listen. I understand how much you love these people. You bonded with them just as strongly as you would have bonded with the Sarienne if things had gone on the way they normally would have. But you have to understand what's at stake here. I can't force you to come along with us, that would be antithetical to Lightest's laws for respecting the agency of all sapient beings. But I want you to think long and hard about whether your friendships here are worth sacrificing the potential to save the billions upon billions of innocent people that Darkest and his Dominion have killed." Zuriel said in a heavy, serious tone.
"Can't you just leave some of your soldiers behind here on Hypalia with us to keep watch for these potential dangers?" Mewtwo retorted, anger rising in his voice. He was growing highly resentful of her for putting that much responsibility on his shoulders.
"I could, but it'd come with a very serious and deadly caveat. If such Guardians found themselves too overwhelmed by an attacking force, or in circumstances that they can't stop from causing the split, I'd need to order them to kill you to prevent it. Are you certain you can bear the risk of that?" Zuriel asked.
"Admiral, I've willingly walked into certain death here on Hypalia so many times now that I've lost count of them all. I do not fear the reaper in the slightest and I would welcome whatever quick end they would give me if we were trapped in such a situation. I'd rather accept such a fate than leave behind all the people that I've sacrificed so much for." Mewtwo replied without hesitation.
Zuriel sighed and shook her head. "Alright, very well. I will place a navigational and communications beacon satellite above the planet in orbit and assign a detachment of four Guardians here with you so that there is always at least two awake on shift just in case. That way they can send word to the rest of us if an emergency arises and try to fight off any enemies until we arrive."
"Thank you Admiral. I know this is a risky decision, but it means a lot to me." Mewtwo replied.
"It's what Lightest would have wanted me to do."
Mewtwo smiled softly as he recalled the kindness he'd seen from her during the brief time he'd known her. Then he remembered the strange event that had taken place with the gem in her forehead after death and decided to ask Zuriel about it while he still had the chance.
"Admiral, before you leave, I want to ask you a question. Right after Lightest died, something odd happened to her body. A sudden and incredibly powerful upwelling of energy seemed to spontaneously shoot out of her forehead a few moments after her passing, and when it was gone a large blue gemstone had appeared embedded her her skin. What exactly happened there?"
"Ah, I figured you might ask about that. You see, when a member of our species dies under the correct circumstances, all the remaining unused psychic power stored in their body's nervous system is suddenly released. It follows the path of least resistance after this release, which just happens to be up the spinal cord, through the brain, and out through the psychic third eye. In the process of this venting, a significant portion of it crystallizes, forming what we call a Mindgem."
"Hmmmm. The name almost seems to imply that a portion of the deceased's consciousness might still linger on in the crystal, is that correct?"
"In a way. It doesn't preserve the consciousness itself, but a freeze frame of the subject's personality and a varying percentage of their thoughts and memories. These are permanently embedded in the microscopic structure of the crystalline lattice, almost like a form of psychic data storage. It's no more alive or aware than a hard drive, but it carries enough vital data about the subject that it's massively useful for many purposes, including preserving records of their lives and memorializing them." Zuriel explained.
"I see... but why didn't one appear when Shadetalon or Darkest died?"
"That goes back to what I said about specific circumstances. There's a lot of factors that can prevent one from forming. For example, if the subject has spent 75% or more of their psychic reserves then there simply won't be enough to form the crystal. Or, if their body is destroyed or damaged severely enough to prevent the energy from passing through the central nervous system, such as in decapitations."
"Ah, I see. If I may ask, what happened to Lightest's Mindgem? It was still with her when you came to retrieve her after the battle."
"It was respectfully removed from her remains and taken back to our capital planet, Ralos. We have a very specific set of directives we follow when one of our people passes. Since all Guardians are clones and have no kin to pass the gems on to, we default to giving the gems of the deceased to the closest friends or confidantes they had during their lives. Or, if direct permission for it was given ahead of time, the gems are taken to the Great Memorial Hall on Ralos where they are put on display. Some are also used as the foundational basis to create new Artificial Intelligences as well. AIs serve many different custodial roles among the Guardians, from shipboard operational directors to research assistants. When we create such AIs, the mindgem provides enough data on the deceased's personality and memories to make a very accurate simulacra, though not every memory is preserved. Lady Lightest has already given permission pre-emptively for this to be done with her gem, so her new AI self will undoubtedly become one of our most important cultural figures and custodians in the future."
Mewtwo felt conflicted about this as he quietly pondered Zuriel's reply. He knew some people might consider such a repurposing of a dead person's likeness to be an exploitative desecration, but given the fact that it seemed to be a purely opt-in scenario, and that it allowed the passed to keep doing good even after the end, he couldn't help but admire it. It felt like the exact sort of thing someone as selfless as Lightest would want. He smiled a little as he spoke next.
"In a way, it's like you never truly lose those who you care about this way." He said.
"Indeed." Zuriel replied, smiling a little. But her smile was pained and bittersweet.
"You don't seem so happy about it though, is something wrong?"
"Not with that no. It's just that... In a way I envy you, Mewtwo. Your unwillingness to give up on the Gerudo people is proof of just how strong of a bond of friendship you've built with them. I've lived a long time and done so much in service of Lightest's ideals, but I've never had the chance to form such a bond with anyone. When your every waking moment is spent coordinating battles and the vital logistics that go with them, and you know countless innocent lives will be lost if you ever dare stop to take a rest, it means your social life is just one of the many things you leave behind on the pile of things you've sacrificed. Most of us in the Guardians have made such sacrifices, and even though we do our best to give each other the kindness and support we've lacked, Darkest never once gave us the time to truly relax and be ourselves."
Mewtwo suddenly understood the sadness Zuriel was expressing and wished he could do something to help her. He reached out to place his right hand atop hers in the hope of imparting at least some minor scrap of solace.
"I'm sorry, Zuriel. For what it's worth, I know you've made an immense difference in the lives of a truly tremendous amount of people. If the generosity you've shown to other worlds is comparable to what you've shown here on Hypalia, then you and your people will be remembered as heroes by billions. And hey, Darkest is gone now. His Dominion's remnants are finite, and if your people still have access to that anti-aging medication, then that means you will live to see the light at the end of this tunnel. You did promise you'd come back to Hypalia after the last of the Chosen and Immortals are destroyed, why not come back for more than just the terraforming work? I can speak from personal experience that Gerudo hospitality is legendary once you finally manage to earn their trust. I had to work hard for what felt like years to earn that trust, but I think your generosity here has already done more than enough for that." Mewtwo said, smiling slightly as he finished.
Zuriel couldn't help but smile a little too. "You know, I may just take you up on that offer, thank you. Chief Hadara did already share some Hypalian Hydromelon with me after all, and there's no way I'm gonna miss another chance to eat that."
Mewtwo was getting tired of goodbyes now. He hadn't known Zuriel for very long, but somehow watching her ship take off and depart Hypalia for the last time was putting a fresh new ache into his heart. He stood among a huge crowd of Gerudos who had gathered to watch their saviors depart for the heavens as the sun crept down toward the horizon at the end of the day. A somber atmosphere hung over the crowd as the reality of the departure sank in now. Sure, they still had four Guardian soldiers there to keep watch on Mewtwo and four of their best teachers, but having an entire armada of ships watching over their planet for a brief time had given them all the strongest sense of safety and protection that they'd ever felt in their entire lives. Now their fates truly seemed to be back in their own hands again, and that was sobering even to the Chiefs. They stood in reverent silence and watched as the silvery ship receded slowly into the orange sunset skies above them and nobody moved an inch until finally it was completely gone.
Once it was gone, stragglers slowly lowered their heads and began to disperse, coming in twos and threes at first. Then the main body of the crowd finally seemed to realize the moment had passed and they all began to quietly speak among themselves as they spread out and left. Mewtwo didn't move though, he watched the empty sky where Zuriel's ship had departed. His imagination was drifting back to the dark nighttime sky filled with the slowly descending lights of falling starships that he'd seen the night Darkest was defeated. He was lost in thought, wondering just how many of Lightest's Guardians had died in these skies above them and how many dark, quiet wrecks now orbited unseen up there still. Any ships that had avoided orbital decay so far but had lost their crews could be up there for many years still before finally drifting down into the atmosphere. They would be like cold, silent crypts and mausoleums among the stars above them, carrying their solemn cargoes for however long their orbits could last before gravity eventually reclaimed them.
Mewtwo was so lost in thought that he didn't notice a familiar pair of Gerudos walking toward him as the last few members of the crowd left. He was jolted back to Earth when he felt a hand come down firmly on his shoulder. He spun around and stammered a little when he saw the faces of Madiri and Q'diri beside him.
"Hey Alafir. You still with us down here?" Madiri asked, giving him a tentative, yet playful smile.
"Oh, Madiri, Arbiter, yes I'm fine. What is it?" He asked, struggling to regain his composure. He hadn't exactly expected Madiri of all people to be the one to come up and talk to him now.
Madiri briefly looked guilty and conflicted for a moment, and Q'diri gently nudged her in the side with an elbow. That seemed to jar her out of that uncertain state and she found the words she'd been looking for.
"So, hey um, I wanted to apologize to you for the way I treated you before. Q'diri sorta slapped some sense into me once we got back to Ven'rakesh and I saw she was still alive. She made me realize it wasn't fair for me to blame you for the position you were forced into back in Ven'ravé. You were doing what you thought was right to save the most people." Madiri said, bowing her head penitently.
Mewtwo was taken utterly by surprise by this, but not in a bad way. All the sadness that had been gathering in his heart in the wake of Zuriel's departure was banished for now and he felt a sudden surge of warmth welling up in his chest. He tried to conjure up words to reply to Madiri, but Q'diri interjected before he could.
"And?" Q'diri said firmly to her sister.
"And... I should have had more faith in my sister's strength as a warrior too. Even if the Sulaaq had sent an army of thralls after her, she would have fought them off just fine." Madiri added.
Q'diri smirked a little bit as she listened to her younger sister say this. Mewtwo couldn't help but do the same. He opened his mouth to say something, but again Madiri was quicker.
"I'm sorry for all that, and I'm sorry I didn't apologize sooner. As soon as news spread that you and Kalana had stolen a Helmasaur and set off into the East to try to save us all, I knew just how badly I had messed up. I didn't know if I would ever get a chance to apologize to you again if you died during that mission and it was my fault for being a stubborn, prideful Kritech. Can you forgive me?"
Mewtwo's smile shifted from the amused smirk it had been before to a genuinely warm, forgiving one. He reached out to hug her firmly and pulled out his old standby. "Madiri, you know what I'm going to say. There's nothing to forgive."
Madiri almost choked up for a moment there and Mewtwo could hear it. She put her arms around him and returned the embrace tightly, and then Q'diri stepped forward to join the hug. The three of them held it together for several warm seconds before they naturally let it go, and Mewtwo saw Madiri try to stealthily wipe some tears out of her eyes without him noticing.
"And what else did you have to say to him, sister?" Q'diri prompted her gently.
Madiri nodded and said "Mewtwo, to show our gratitude for everything you've done for my sister and I, we want to offer you full formal combat training with the spear, starting whenever you'd feel ready. Both of us would be working together to help you with it, though admittedly Q'diri here is a better fighter than I am."
"Don't sell yourself short Madiri, I've seen you do some really gnarly things to the Lizalfos with your own spear before." Q'diri said with a grin.
Mewtwo chuckled and nodded enthusiastically. "I would be honored to accept your training. You may need some patience though, as I've never once done serious physical combat with my arms before now and I have little to no upper body strength. But... at least I do have one bit of combat experience now, I did fulfil my promise to you Q'diri. I plunged your sister's spear through the body of Darkest himself."
Q'diri beamed with pride in response to this. "Nariva be praised! I knew you had it in you! I'm not so certain now that you even need my training then! Thank you for avenging our sister."
The both of them then bowed to Mewtwo together, their heads dipping as low as their waists. Mewtwo felt immensely happy and honored by this, but also more than a little awkward. He chimed in quickly now, eager to point out that the credit wasn't his alone.
"You should thank Ciela, Ruru, and Indiru too. If it weren't for the parts they played in that battle I never would have pulled it off. In fact, thank everyone who showed up to that battle, their laser fire helped bring Darkest down too. I wasn't even close to being alone in what I did, we all played our parts."
"True, and I'll thank myself too since I was in that crowd firing away too." Madiri joked with a grin.
Q'diri laughed and patted her sister firmly on the shoulder. "Should we give you another title like Molduga Slayer then too?"
"I wouldn't refuse it!" Madiri replied, still grinning.
Mewtwo almost pulled the two of them into another hug again, as the warmth of the familial joking filled his heart to the brim. Instead, he reached back to gently unstrap the Vatorsa spear and hold it in both hands.
"You two feel ready to give me a lesson tonight? It might be getting a bit late but to be truthful I could use the company to distract me."
"Well normally I'd say it's unwise to perform combat training in the dark due to the risk of injury. But since Lady Zuriel gave us these fancy lightning-powered flameless street lamps, I guess there's no excuse for us to refuse you." Q'diri replied.
"Alright! Come on, there's a clearing for drills on the Eastern side of the city where we can go to start!" Madiri said enthusiastically.
The two of them led Mewtwo through the sunset-drenched streets and they spent several hours together performing training exercises on the smooth paved training yard. Mewtwo forgot his sorrows entirely as the burning pain of exertion and the playful banter of the Vatorsa sisters occupied his mind instead. The sun set completely while they worked and the three of them only finally realized it was time to stop once exhaustion had become too much for Mewtwo to handle. Panting and drenched in sweat, he agreed to quit for the night once he could no longer lift the spear sufficiently for performing any maneuvers, and they agreed to meet again a little bit earlier in the day tomorrow for more training. Mewtwo sat down to rest on the pavement for a little while longer while Madiri and Q'diri patted him on the back and then departed for their homes to get some rest.
Mewtwo was again alone then as the city of Ven'rakúl as its people settled into bed for the night. He knew he should get up and go home to sleep as well, but he was so sore from his training that he didn't want to try to climb to his feet at least until he'd had a few more minutes to recover. He knew he could just use his psychic healing abilities to skip ahead, or even levitate and fly home without irritating his legs, but something was oddly peaceful about the atmosphere in that empty training ground at night. The city was still brightly lit thanks to the street lights and Mewtwo could still see the nighttime guards patrolling around in the periphery of his vision, but the atmosphere of quiet solace was undeniably attractive. He didn't even feel the urge to find the highest point to perch on now, he just wanted to take in the nighttime ambience and let his mind relax.
The solace wasn't to last though. Just like before Mewtwo was shaken back to reality by the feeling of a hand on his shoulder. He nearly jumped from the surprise of it, and when he turned around he saw it was Indiru this time who had come to speak to him.
"Ah, Indiru! You nearly made me jump out of my skin. What is it?"
"I'm sorry Mewtwo, I didn't mean any harm. Do you mind if we had a few moments to talk again?"
Mewtwo relaxed again and nodded to her. "I don't see why not. You must be very skilled at sneaking away from your mother at this point huh?"
"I have practice." She replied with a soft smile, then started to walk toward the woods at the edge of the training grounds.
Mewtwo reluctantly got up to follow her, disregarding the aches in his legs. He didn't question where she was taking him, instead figuring it was probably something she wanted privacy to talk about. They didn't stop until they were standing together in the shadows behind an especially tall tree in the beginnings of the forest.
"Mewtwo... I'm worried. Have you noticed the change in Ruru ever since the night of the battle?"
All the warmth Mewtwo had been soaking in during his training exercise with the Vatorsa sisters rapidly ebbed away in the face of this dire topic. His face faded to a sorrowful frown as he nodded briefly to her.
"She hasn't been the same since she lost her sister." He replied.
"Neither have you." Indiru pointed out.
Mewtwo felt as though the young seer had unintentionally stabbed him in the gut with her words. He was left speechless for a moment as his mind floundered for something to say. Indiru cast her eyes down at the ground then as though she felt remorseful for what she'd said.
"I'm... sorry. I know you're struggling to cope with the grief in your own way, but I don't know who else to turn to. I know Chief Hadara is trying to do her best for Ruru too, but I can't stand idly by after seeing the pain she's enduring. The light has gone out of Ruru's eyes, Mewtwo. I can see it in everything she does now. There's no more of that passion in her, even when she's doing her daily combat training. She loves to fight Mewtwo, you know that. If she can't find any more joy in that, then how deep must the damage run in her soul?"
Again and again those words stabbed at Mewtwo's heart. He knew everything Indiru was saying was true, but he didn't know what he could do to help. "Indiru, I know you're right but I'm not a therapist. I'm still struggling to even cope with Kalana's loss myself. It gnaws at my spirit during every quiet moment I have alone. I want to help Ruru but I don't know how."
"Neither do I, and the worst part is that I've already tried to ask Nariva for a vision of how to fix it and I've gotten nothing." Indiru whispered, hanging her head shamefully. "It's enraging, Mewtwo. I hate it. My gift was all too happy to bombard me with visions and warnings for years and years up until now, but now when I want to use it for something other than staving off disasters it just goes silent. Not even the circlet helps."
Mewtwo was again at a loss for words. He didn't have the foggiest idea of what to do to help either of them. He joined her in gazing morosely at the ground for several moments, until Indiru piped up with her own idea.
"Mewtwo, do you remember when my mother asked you to use your own powers to try to conjure a vision of the fate of my sister?"
"Yes, I remember it clear as day. Do you want me to try to use my own Future Sight power to search for a way to help Ruru?" He asked.
Indiru nodded wordlessly, the look of guilt on her face intensifying. Mewtwo realized how hard this must have been for her to ask. After being used by her mother and so many others like a tool so callously for the last few years, she must have been hating herself for turning around and asking the same from him. He reached one hand out to take hers and nodded.
"I'll do it, not just for her but for you too. I told you once before that the world expects you to carry an unfair share of the burdens of life, and even with Darkest gone you've still been trying to keep carrying it. Just put it down and let me carry it for awhile, there's no shame in that. You're not burdening me if I'm volunteering to take on that burden."
Indiru's eyes began to tear up and she nodded quietly again before leaning in to hug him tightly. He returned her embrace for several long, comforting seconds before gently letting go and moving her aside.
"I'm going to try it now, so just stand clear and don't interrupt unless a monster comes out of the forest, ok?"
"Ok." Indiru replied softly.
They both sat down on the soft loamy Earth and Mewtwo closed his eyes and began to focus while she kept watch. He took several long, deep breaths and conjured up his powers, feeling grateful that he'd never again have to worry about the Sulaaq drain devices interfering. Yet even though he felt Future Sight functioning properly and responding to his call, he got absolutely nothing out of it. No visions, no sounds, not even a vague gut feeling. He kept focusing and tried to use more psychic power, but still nothing came of it. Minutes passed in grinding, frustrating silence and his powers still gave him nothing. He desperately didn't want to admit that this could be a fruitless endeavor though, so he kept going at least until he felt like Indiru might put two and two together and figure out the fact that he'd failed. He sighed and slowly opened his eyes, trying to come up with a comforting fib he could tell to Indiru before she spoke.
"Did you see anything?"
"Yes, but it was something very personal that might violate Ruru's privacy if I told you about it. But I think I can use it to help her, it'll just take some time. Think you can trust me and leave it in my hands without worrying about it yourself?" He replied.
Indiru furrowed her brow slightly. "I can try. I'll still worry about her though, she is my friend after all. But I trust you to do your best to help her. I'll still keep trying to be the best friend for her that I can too, it's the least I can do after she did so much to help me."
"That's all anyone can ask of you Indiru. Now why don't you head off to bed before your mom wakes up and realizes you're gone, ok?" Mewtwo asked, standing up and patting her on the head.
"Ok. Thank you again Mewtwo. For everything. Even if the visions never confirmed it, I knew in my heart that you really were the Traveler."
Mewtwo felt an initial desire to cringe back away in response to being called that, but he hid it well for Indiru's sake. He led her back to Ven'rakúl and saw her off to her home, then slowly began to make his way back to his own house for the night. As he walked he couldn't help but slowly slide into self reflection again. Why did he still feel wrong about being called the Traveler? It had always rankled him ever since he'd first heard it, but not just because of the uncertainty of the prophecy's unfinished ending that implied he might betray the Gerudo. He chewed it over as he opened the door and stepped inside, heading to the sink to get some water. He splashed a little bit over his face and savored the cold sensation of it matting his fur. That was a feeling he hadn't experienced since he sat in the spring cavern during the Taji Alirha trip. It was soothing in a way that only a slice of fresh Hydromelon could match. He lifted his face up from the sink and looked at his reflection in the mirror above it. In his eyes he could see a lingering sadness that betrayed the grief he was still holding in his chest for Kalana. It seemed so obvious now, everyone else in the village must have been able to see it despite the facade of strength he'd been trying to put up to hide it.
Then something clicked in Mewtwo's mind and he realized why the title of Traveler had never sat well with him. When he looked into the mirror at himself he didn't see an avenging hero who could swoop in and save the Gerudos from the evils of the world. He didn't even see someone who looked worthy of their friendship. He saw a sad, lonely old soul with far too much blood on his hands to ever be called something like a hero. He'd been carrying Gary's blood on his hands since before he arrived and even now, after having slain the very embodiment of his own inner darkness and bringing a new age of prosperity to the people he'd call friends, he still couldn't bring himself to accept that title. A hero could have saved Ruisa. A hero could have saved Valisse. A hero certainly could have saved Kalana. A hero wouldn't have X+78 souls' worth of blood on his hands. No, it was X+80 now, he had to add Kalana and Valisse to that count. He hadn't singlehandedly brought down Darkest either, he would have absolutely failed without the help of Ciela and the others. Even if the Prophecy of the Traveler had been written about their battle against Darkest, he knew that the true credit belonged to all of them. He stared into his bleary, sorrowful eyes in the mirror for a few moments longer and for a brief moment wondered if he had made the right choice when he refused to leave Hypalia with Zuriel.
But then a soft, cold draft of air wafted through the room around him, curling around his cloak and making it rustle. He felt a presence nearby once more, tickling the back of his mind in a familiar way. He turned around and scanned the dark room of his little home and saw nobody there with him. The presence wasn't dark or terrifying though, and while he tried to scan the room for the source of the breeze his eyes caught sight of something moving in the corner of his peripheral vision. He used telekinesis now to switch on the electric lighting for the room and winced a little as it partially blinded him. He then walked over to the source of movement that his eyes had seen before. It was on the steel nightside stand sitting adjacent to his bed. There, atop the flat surface and next to his alarm clock, was Kalana's old Amulet of Speechcraft. His eyes widened a little as he realized that it wasn't in the last place he'd put it; he'd been storing it in a cabinet of keepsakes on the other side of the room. There was no way it could have moved across the room on its own, unless...
"Kalana..." Mewtwo whispered, then looked around the room one more time.
He was still alone, or at least that was how it seemed. He still felt that presence somewhere nearby, but now he realized why it was there and what the amulet's movement meant. His hands gently shook as he reached down to pick up the amulet and raise it up to examine again. The cracks were all still there and the stone was still as cloudy as it had always been, but the metal felt ice cold against his fingers. Only a spirit's touch could drain heat out of an object like that. She was with him. He closed his eyes and clutched the amulet tightly against his chest as tears began to roll down his cheeks again.
"Thank you Kalana. I... I miss you, but I promise I'll keep going. I'll do my best for Ruru, no matter how hard it gets."
THE END
To Be Continued in Book 2: Darkness & Light
A/N: CONTENT WARNING: This chunk contains more character deaths, very graphic depictions of blood and violence, detailed depictions of grief, and emotional trauma! Reader discretion is advised!
Well everyone, there it is! Desert Wind is finally over! Four years of work off and on and almost 350,000 words later. It's been quite a journey. Those who read the original first edition will know that this isn't the ending of Crossing of the Paths, a whole new arc will be coming next. In fact, I'd say we're only about halfway done with Crossing of the Paths as a whole.
Kinda crazy how fucking huge this thing ballooned isn't it? In the original version of COTP, Desert Wind was only like 50K words and the second arc was like 60K, for a total of 110K or so. Here, just Desert Wind alone is almost 3.5x larger than the whole original story with both arcs. Even crazier, the next arc in this second edition will probably be EVEN BIGGER than Desert Wind! I expect to actually pass 400K, with a good chance it might even approach 500K. Can you imagine? All of the new COTP could be like 9x longer than the original!
And again, I have to provide credit citations to the musical group Shpongle, as I once again used some of their Lyrics in the part of "The Goddess's Pledge" again during this chunk. Just like the last time, I took some lines from their song "I Am You" and then also wrote some of my own lines for when Darkest was trying to intimidate Mewtwo by singing. Big props to Shpongle, their work has been an inspiration for my writing.
So I've been working on Chunk 1 for the next Arc ever since I finished this chunk in December, and it's nearly done now as of this chunk going up in May. There's a few more scenes left to add, but it's very close. I MIGHT just be able to get it finished up by next weekend and do one more weekly update, but no promises. This new edition was only so good because I took my bloody time to really make it the best I could. And once again, thank you so much for coming with me on this journey! Even if you've just lurked and never reviewed or faved, I appreciate all of you for reading! See you in the second arc!
