[Episode 1880] [Episode 1880]Ranma and Kasumi fled as the Knights opened the Gate.
A tide of pure probability washed into the area surrounding the Gate, leeching away the surrounding reality and turning it white. Pristine. Pure. Clean. Sterile.
Without anything to distinguish it from nearby Realities, this timeline would merge with those others and cease to be. This was the goal of the Continuaa Knights - to eliminate all altiverses, leaving only mainlines. Those too would eventually fall, until there was one. The True Continuaa. That this ultimately couldn't work and involved the destruction of billions of timelines and a death toll too high for human comprehension was besides the point.
It was a religious war, it didn't have to make sense.
Slowly at first, the tide began speeding up as the Gate itself was consumed. Ranma and Kasumi stood atop a hill and watched as the landscape of Nerima including the fires leached of color, then sagged and melted, finally becoming featureless white like a blank page.
Ranma was almost literally beside himself. How did you fight something like this? All his life he'd been prepared to fight martial arts battles where nobody was ever really hurt and the stakes had never been high. This? This was destruction beyond anything he'd ever seen.
Kasumi's eyes were blurred with tears but that way at least she stopped seeing everything she'd known cease to be.
"Ranchan!" "Airen!" "Ranma?"
A small group of Nerimites, including Cologne and Shampoo, made their way to the top of the hill. It was the highest point around and the terrible whiteness was lapping at the bottom of it already. Soon they'd have to climb telephone poles.
Ranma crossed that plan off as he saw telephone poles collapse into the nothingness as the stuff washed against their bases.
Tatewaki Kuno stood proudly, bokken at the ready. "Saotome. Keep my sister safe. I go to vanquish this foe."
"Are you nuts?!" Ranma considered who he was talking to and admitted that was a poor question. "What do you think you're going to do?"
"If I must perish, it shall be as a samurai. I shall not give up the battle until breath has left my body!" Kuno ran forward, bokken proudly held high as he charged the whiteness as if it were an enemy. When he struck it was with all the power he could muster. The whiteness flowed up his bokken. He sagged and melted and became one with the whiteness.
Kodachi screamed until Cologne hit a pressure point and she slumped to the ground.
"I don't suppose you've got any Chinese Amazon tricks that'll work here?" Ranma asked Cologne hopefully.
"If I had the Nanban Mirror, maybe," said Cologne. "Unfortunately that does not appear likely to resurface."
The sound of chains clanking drew everyone's attention.
"If you want to live, go through the loop in the chain," suggested some gaijin. "i can't aid you any more than this."
"Who?" Cologne blinked owlishly but as there was certain death in all directions but one - she was inclined to go through the loop herself with all due speed.
"Someone who opposes the Continuaa Knights," the figure gestured to where his manriki gusari had stretched out to a loop the size of a bank door. In that loop was a shimmering field like a soap bubble stretched tight. "Through there is another universe, what you make of it is your own problem or paradise. i'm just trying to save a few where i can."
Not everyone was inclined to trust the figure, much less abandon their own universe on a moment's notice. After it was apparent that everyone who would escape had, the chain was retracted and the Knight Of Duty himself escaped.
The remainder watched as the tide of whiteness splashed up and swept over them, dissolving their essences and existences from the multiverse. Except that of course by that point they weren't capable of noticing.
The whiteness spread out, dissolving the planet to the core and then spreading out further through the system - gaining greater and greater speed as it did until the entire solar system was engulfed.
And then, because it was exactly like so many other universes, that timeline merged with those universes and was no more.
Meanwhile, Ranma & Co (leaving exact number/identities open for other authors), found themselves in:
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(Posted Thu, 21 Nov 2002 11:21)
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