A long ship of glimmering chrome sailed through the starry purple sky of another world, reflecting the neon grids of light that laced the air high above its surface. A window spanning the cockpit overlooked a wondrous city below. Pale purple fog, glowing from piercing lights deep within, covered the bases of endlessly spanning skyscrapers. Ships of all sizes and qualities flew through the clear air above as a space station thousands of kilometers long docked at the end of a space elevator, dispersing a wave of fog across the city. The sounds of several billion men and machines echoed around the planet. This was Trizoun, the artificial planet built atop the surface of the brightest star in the universe. The towers and pavilions were merely a cover for the machinery that spanned underneath to depths of the shell known as a Dyson Sphere.

Alexis gazed out at the world beyond from inside the starship, her eyes weighed down with longing for something long lost. Sakura looked out through the window in amazement as Aika fell backward into a wall, clutching her mouth in horror. Sakura looked back across the large cockpit room from her position by the window, observing Aika begin to sob. Alexis simply continued to gaze out of the window, her hand stretching out to touch the glass separating her from the glowing city. Summoning her sword, Aika launched forward towards Alexis, super speed reducing her form flashing by to a mere blur. Alexis ignited her bright blade in a nanosecond, crossing their swords into a lock to block the strike.

“Why are we here?” Aika screamed as tears ran across her pale face, her sight locked onto Alexis’s eyes with ferocious emotion. “How is this place back? It’s not possible!” Her sword slammed into Alexis’s weapon of light, the blows increasing in speed each time it bounced backwards. Alexis’s eyes flashed with violet light, and Aika fell as limp as a puppet with its string cut.

Sakura rushed forward towards Alexis, but the pink haired girl held out a hand to stop her. She faced the window, and with a slow wave of her arm, the city outside began to collapse. Towers fell into the murky depths of the rising fog growing deeper and deeper in shade. The neon grids which laced far above their heads shattered and rained down upon the ruined skywalks, crumbling into sparkling particles. Large, human shaped machines rose from the dust, their weaponry and strength unable to halt the apocalypse around them. Alexis watched the destruction, her stoic eyes reflecting the light of the exploding space elevator crashing across the surface.

“3 years ago, this dimension fell. An unknowable calamity annihilated all of reality, forcing my people to split themselves across the branches of the multiverse.” Alexis maintained her empty expression as she described the end of her world and all those within it she cared for. “My soul was ripped apart as I became torn away from the dimension I governed. The last Eternal, a god who embraced technology to become omnipotent, had to watch powerlessly as their realm, even their own being, shattered.” Her eyes fell onto Aika, who struggled silently against her immobile body. “A piece of me arrived at your world, mindlessly struggling to survive until their existence ceased to exist. The entire broken universe beyond this window was deleted as if it never existed, destroying the fragment. All that remains of the third oldest realm in creation is this illusion I created to preserve a fading memory.”

Aika’s body slowly regained control, struggling to pull her upright. Sakura held out a hand to help her rise, but Aika simply stared deep into her eyes, tears running down the hero’s cheeks.

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"Shirai… She sacrificed herself to erase this ruined world and all the horrors that seeped from it. She stood before the purple rimmed sun in a starless sky, holding the Sword of Infinity’s tip above her heart, and plunged it deep within. Nobody remembered she had ever lived in the first place, nobody… besides me.”

Sakura leaned forward, gently lifting the Sword of Infinity from the ground. She lost herself into the depths of the universes held within its gems, their swirling majesty tugging at a pain in the back of her mind.

“How could this ever happen? Did the 12 Greater Deities simply ignore it? It shouldn’t be possible. This destruction, this sword, this erasure, how could they not have intervened?” Sakura spoke as she examined the gems, holding up the sword towards the window as if to overlay the stars held within onto the pitch black sky.

“The deities never had power over the lost dimension. Even if they did however, they could never stand up against what ruined this world. The only thing that could was pure deletion, even then it was likely only delayed. This is something unknowable to even the omniscient.”

Aika pulled herself from the ground, leaning onto Sakura for support as a natural instinct.

“If everything from that world was erased, how did you survive? If you managed to survive the Sword of Infinity’s deletion, could Shirai’s mind still…” She trailed off as she turned her head towards Sakura, letting go of the duplicate’s side to stand by herself.

“I survived with my own strength. Although I’m only a piece of a greater whole, I’m not mindless like the being you fought before. I could protect myself and some of the refugees I escaped with. As for Shirai however, the proof you need of her possible survival is right next to you. She may not realize it, but the girl beside you is without a doubt some form of her.”

Sakura’s eyes narrowed, placing the sword down upon a nearby console and advancing before Alexis.

“You too huh? How much must I do to convince you? I’m not some pathetic human girl who never existed, I’m a god! My name is Sakura!”

With her insult towards Shirai, Aika aggressively reached for her sword. Alexis walked between the two, annoyed at their inability to calm themselves. She reached into the pockets of her long green military overcoat, pulling out and tossing two small cans. Aika carefully caught the can, looking down at the tin cylinder suspiciously. It was ice cold, the center wrapped by a featureless purple label. She looked up it to see Aika pulling out a third can, popping it open and taking a sip.

“What? It’s just soda, what did you think it was? A bomb?” Alexis laughed at their cautious stances and crashed into a nearby piloting chair. “There’s too much I don’t like about this. To many unknowns. I don’t know the answer behind Sakura’s existence any more than the two of you do, so what we need to do is go ask someone who might know a little bit more than us. I also know exactly who to talk to.”

“And who would that be?” Aika asked tentatively.

“The father of this dimension’s gods, Izanagi. If you have a question about how Sakura was created, who better to ask? She owes me a favor anyways.” Alexis chuckled and leaned back into her chair, her back facing the window as the illusion's destruction reversed into its old, lively appearance.