Creation began on 01-25-17

Creation ended on 08-21-24

The Apparition

Malevolence into Benevolence

A/N: I had to read up on the film a few times to get the desired inspiration. To those that desire hope for the hopeless, relief to the suffering, believe in the power of one that exists to undo mistakes that were made.

As the hands pulled her into the darkness, Kelly heard a voice, the likes of which she had never heard before. It was a voice that soothed her soul…just as a hand was felt upon her left cheek that felt different from the ones that had taken hold of her.

"I'm taking you back home, Kelly," the voice, a man's voice, utters to her. "Please, open your eyes now."

She feared to do so, but she obliges the man's voice and did as he requests of her. What she saw was not what she had expected to see. Instead of a monster or some sort of ravaged ghost, in front of her was a dark-skinned man, dressed in regular clothes like any other man, with eyes that were unfathomably kind and warming.

"Who…who are you?" She asks him, her voice shaken by his presence.

"A friend and one who is family to those with souls," he answers cryptically, "and a bane to those who are soulless and cruel, like this entity."

He brought up his left hand, holding a large, glass sphere that held something that looked like a black and purple flame, forming hands, eyes and mouths every now and then.

"Is that…" She tries to ask him, but she worries if she should even try to.

"Yes," he answers her. "This is the entity that was able to escape into your world. When it was brought to my attention, that it found a way to bypass the veil between the realms of mortality and despair, I tried to keep it from slipping away from me. I failed because my focus was divided in many directions, but I refused to give up, even when each of you were defeated by its sense of attrition-based hunting."

"Attrition?"

"Yes. That's how it hunts for victims; by wearing them all down over time, eating away at their resistance, it gains strength when its potential victims feel they can't go on. But I couldn't let it get away with claiming another soul that, while giving up on escaping from it, refused to give up on the hope of there being light in the darkness. Even in the deepest depths of despair, Kelly, any creature born of darkness cannot fathom or endure the power that is hope itself. Did you or any of the others give up on there being light in the darkness this entity threatened to drag you into?"

Kelly, even when she felt like her end was near, didn't want to believe that there was only darkness and despair in her afterlife. She wanted to believe that there was light at the end of the tunnel, a doorway to Heaven instead of a long, hard road to Hell.

"I believe in slivers of hope in the depths of despair," she tells him, and he smiles.

"So long as you believe in hope, this entity can never truly take hold of you," he responds, and then tosses the container far away, watching it disappear in the darkness surrounding them. "Let's all go home."

"But one question: What is your name?"

"Brother Correction. I'm the only one with that name. There's nobody else like me. Just like there's nobody else like you, Ben, Patrick, or whoever. An eternal one of a kind."

"Brother Correction…thank you."

-x-

"Aah!" Ben gasps as he wakes up inside the Costco with Kelly, Patrick, Lydia and Brother Correction by his side. "Wha…what happened?"

"Hope came to us from within the darkness," Kelly says, pointing to Brother Correction. "He saved our lives."

Ben looks at Brother Correction and couldn't believe that this man had saved them from the entity that had been brought into their world by accident. He remembers being taken into the darkness by the entity, mangled by many hands strong enough to tear a human body into pieces, and then…only pair and despair. But moments afterward, he saw a light and a hand, unlike the ones belonging to the entity, reaching out for him to take. He reached for it, and it pulled him out of the darkness and brought him back to the light.

"Is this truly real?" He asks, just wanting someone to tell him that they were not going to suffer all over again. "Is it over? For real?"

"It's over," Brother Correction tells him as Kelly holds his left hand. "This is real. Just live. Live and embrace your lives."

"Thank you."

They step out of the Costco warehouse and see the sun rising in the distance.

"I never thought I'd feel happy to see the sun rise," went Lydia, smiling.

"No matter how great any form of darkness that has or will affect all manner of existence," Brother Correction says, "it must always yield to the purity of the light."

-x-

Setting the glass container with the entity on a stand among a long hall of similar containers that served as prisons for representations of the darkest aspects of the supernatural, Brother Correction walks down the seemingly endless hall of objects that once belonged to other worlds, other realms of existence, but were now gathered in his domain where he kept them locked away from the innocent souls of existence.

"Yo!" He hears one of the sentient objects yell at him as he walks away. "I know you can hear me! Let me out so I can rip you to pieces!"

"Brother Correction," another voice belonging to another sentient object, "I'm just a sword that compels people to murder! I'm not truly evil! Surely, you can understand that I mean well! I just act to thin the herd of humanity, that's all!"

"Let me show you your future!"

"I implore you to release me, Brother Correction!"

"I'll destroy you! You hear me?! I'll destroy you!"

Brother Correction simply ignores their whining and walks up a flight of stairs. He holds up a red and orange glass sphere and gazes into it, seeing the realm he left after saving Kelly, Ben and the rest, seeing them all move on, free from the bane of the entity that pursued them. He smiles as he sees them on a camping trip in the wilderness; anyone that believed that scientists were not adventurous were only half true on such a belief. People of science had to be capable of dabbling in recreational activities that didn't require advanced equipment or research funding to enjoy themselves from time to time.

"Scientists or any educated individual too invested in scientific discoveries tend to lose sight of what is already within their reach and delve dangerously into the beyond."

Suddenly, another glass sphere, purple and brown, appears and floats in front of Brother Correction, showing him something that requires his attention.

"You again," he sighs as he sees a young man that he has dealt with many times across the ever-shifting labyrinth of multiple existences…and one that constantly had a death wish because he wanted one thing above all else, no matter the cost that he was willing to pay to obtain it. "You never stop. You never-ending struggle to be free. Hold on. What is this here?"

He sees another young man, different from the one he loathes more than half the time, a lonely and tormented soul from a world of loneliness and misery, being sought after these strange women that looked like they were dresses as war machines from the early and mid-Twentieth Century, basically during the time of the First and Second World Wars, because they needed his help…and he would rather be anywhere else than go see his heartless father. The further he observed, he found that the two men were inhabiting the same universe, which was the result of three separate universes being smashed together when the scientists of one of the universes got careless and dabbled in forces they had no right to dabble in at all. This resulted in an instability of universal proportions and all three sides were forced to do one of two things: Adapt or be removed from the grand equation that was existence. Unfortunately, the young man he loathes most of the time misinterpreted, either because he refused to be open-minded or because he simply didn't are about proper interpretations, "adapt" for "fight" and "be removed" for "die", clearly because he was an aggressive soul doomed to suffer. However, the other soul, lonely and in need of companionship, correctly understood the objective and had to try and convince others to coexist and put an end to the unnecessary feuds that would kill them in the end, and he wanted to help him end the suffering before they went down a path they couldn't turn away from without an act of a deity to save them.

"Just my luck to help one poor soul save a new world from another poor soul that can't tell the difference between adaptation and unnecessary violence with a series of young women that deserve to be more than living weapons," Brother Correction utters as he grabs the sphere and vanishes, leaving the hall of sentient constructs to wallow in emotions they were clearly good at faking but never truly realizing, including the newest entity that fumed with rage over being caught and locked away, desiring revenge.

A revenge that would never be realized.

Darkness eventually yields to the light

A/N: I've been meaning to do an alternate ending to the film. In addition, I just wanted to add a possibility to what could happen in the future for the individual known as 54godamora suggesting Azur Lane, which I thought would be interesting once I looked at it on Wikipedia, but am not entirely interested in it. Still, just a possibility, not a reality. I hope you enjoy this.