[Episode 25005] [Episode 25005]Setsuna's eyes blurred as she shot past images of the ancient kingdom, and those images began changing. It looked like a chaotic pantheon of the past, visions of great wars and fallen empires flitting by in a swirl of color and motion, blurring together in a phantasmic amalgamation the burned the eyes and blinded the senses.
Images from the past, images from the future, all met and parted as the timestreams merged, their tenuous cords breaking and fraying at the edges. Temporal backwash flowed over the embracing couple, wave after wave of infernal feedback that heralded pain and promised death. In an agonizing flash, the Gates of Time exploded, their ten-thousand-year-old framework being submerged into the flow of the erupting timestream.
Setsuna screamed, shaking in the arms of her unconscious companion as every life, every moment, every event in time encompassed her. This was wrong. Wrong beyond the scope of the paradox, wrong beyond the destruction of the Time Key Staff. This was wrong beyond everything. The accelerated passage of the timestream playing out around her should have produced a cacaphony of sound sufficient to break her body and shatter her mind. It would have been the flawless immutable beat of time, the sound of creation, the sum of all existence blended into one fatal ideal note.
But it was silent.
Absolutely silent.
And that was why Setsuna screamed.
Silence meant only one thing...the coming of the absolute Order, the breaking of Creation, the advent of the Silence itself. Ever-patient, ever-powerful, the Silence watched and waited for the end, the terminus of all reality.
The Fall of Time.
If this truly was the sound of Silence, then the timestream as she knew it was dead. The sound of creation had been snuffed out by the damper of the Silence, the all-encompassing black hole lying at the end of the timestream, overwhelming all with its presence.
And as the timestream writhed and buckled around her, Setsuna knew she had failed.
Failed beyond all measure.
Crystal Tokyo, Nega Tokyo, even simple existence were now denied. All that ever had been, all that ever would be, all that ever could be, was being methodically snuffed out. Yes, she had known that the cost of the paradox would be high...but...this surpassed all imagination.
She had to stop this.
Straining with all her might, Setsuna reached out to the chaos around her, grasping, groping, desperately searching for anything that might bring about resolution. Her screams intensified as the essence of the chaos backsurged through her link to the timestream, the pain dampened only by the encroaching presence of the Silence. The sheer force of the tumultous flow was overwhelming, its comprehension impossible. This was not looking good.
But wait...what was that...? There!
Setsuna rejoiced as she spotted the little motes of light cavorting around the timestream. Pillars. Sublime souls. Beings whose very existance brought chaos to order and order to chaos. Even now, in the midst of annihilation, their mere potential for being was keeping them afloat on the raging sea. They flirted with time, dancing willfully around its enraged form, little pinpricks which snagged and pulled at the timestream, folding it about themselves.
Yes. They would work. Their presence alone would not be sufficient to overcome the Silence, or even rebuild the timestream, but that did not mean that they were completely useless. A fallen phoenix would rise from its ashes, after all, reborn into a new form with its original potential. The timestream was not so very different.
It would work. It had to work.
Her strength failing, Setsuna reached out one last time, capturing the Pillars and binding them together, linking her fading lifeforce with Ranma's own, embracing the power which flowed through her and sending herself spinning down the stream of time, hurtling ever closer to where the Silence lay.
Ever closer.
Ever closer.
There.
**************************************************
Ryouga Hibiki groaned as he staggered up the grassy knoll, both hands clutched tightly to his head. He had been trying to follow that weird glow on the horizon when the visions had started. Images assailed him; recollections of his past, premonitions of his future, lost memories of lives he had never lived.
He remembered killing Ranma. He remembered Ranma killing him. He remembered his brief life as a girl, bound into femininity by a carelessly phrased wish. In one blinding moment of clarity, he saw all that he was, all that he ever could be, layed out before him. He had seen himself raw, exposed, and naked to the world.
Overwhelmed by the assault, Ryoga fell raggedly to his knees, wearily raising his head to stare off into the horizon...and froze at what he saw.
There, filling the horizon, was a wall of...white.
Energy. A cold sheer emotionless wall of ivory, towering above the landscape and glowing with a cold fragile inner light, immutable and unstoppable. Monsterous in its immensity, it seemed to have no end, its bounds reaching from the base of the ground off into the outer reaches of infinity, scorching the earth and splitting the sky.
And it was growing closer.
**************************************************
His impassive eyes bored ruthlessly into the viewing screen in front of him, their cold frozen depths displaying an absolute dominance over all they surveyed. Below him, various officers and personnel scrambled to address the matter at hand, barked orders and shouted commands ringing out like rifle fire. Overwhelming them all was a low whining drone, the agonized cry of a machine screaming out in fear.
He would not show fear. No, he would not. For he was Gendo Ikari. And Gendo Ikari did not show fear.
He had seen the future. Seen the end of the world. Seen the folly of his own machinations played out before him. Seen it with the same composed and barren eyes that he now used to gaze upon the new problem in front of him.
The problem that had claimed the life of the latest Angel. The problem that had claimed the lives of his Children. The problem that had claimed his wife, his hopes, and inevitably, his dream.
No, Gendo Ikari would not run. Not this time. Not ever.
Settling back into his chair, Gendo Ikari stared defiantly at the encroaching wall of energy, and waited for his end.
**************************************************
Belldandy stood perched on the temple steps, looking out at the horizon with sorrowful eyes. Her long hair stood unbound, flittering fitfully in the gentle breeze. The wind was the exact same as it had been on that day, so many years ago, when Ragnarok had first come to pass...
"So, this is it then?" Urd queried, coming up to stand next to her sister. At the moment, the elder Norn looked far from her usual vivacious self, her hair frazzled and her eyes sunken and weary.
Belldandy nodded, her face steeped in sadness, "Yes, it's beyond even Father's control now."
Urd grimaced, but didn't respond, instead dropping back to deal with more important matters. Had Belldandy been looking behind her, she would have seen the unusual sight of her older sister moving inside to comfort a weeping trembling Skuld. In the end, it had indeed taken the end of the world for those two to get along.
Shifting listlessly, Belldandy sank to her knees, shivering slightly in the suddenly chill wind. It wasn't much later before Keiichi came out and wrapped his arms around her. Kissing her gently on the neck, he drew his mouth close to her ear and whispered the only thing Belldandy had ever wanted from him...
"I love you..."
It was the last thing Belldandy heard before she was consumed.
**************************************************
Elsewhere, all across the universe, other entities were making their farewells. Other times, other places, other lives; young and old, good and evil, all bore witness to the judgement of fate. Every single one of them knew their impending doom and they embraced it as well as they could, facing it with as much honor and dignity as they could muster.
Young men stood vigilant, their wives and lovers by their sides, swearing their unerring fealty to those they held dear.
Young women gazed out with unwavering determination, their helds held high and their bearing proud, refusing to walk silently into their deaths.
The elderly ceased their machinations, and the babes their crying, all to bear witness to the absolute end of the world.
And trapped within the swirling vortex of the timestream, Setsuna prayed. Prayed for guidance and success, prayed for the lives of the souls that would be forfeited, prayed for the life of the boy contained within her arms. Prayed for another chance.
Reaching out gently, she embraced the very face of annihilation.
...
And the world was engulfed in white.
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(Posted Sat, 08 Feb 2003 09:24)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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