Alexis sauntered to the front of the ship, pushing forward a lever amidst a myriad of controls. The world outside the ship melted into empty space, glittering by the glow of a million stars. The pricks of light smeared across the black canvas of nothingness as the vessel transcended space and time, barreling through existence towards its destination. A brilliant weave of color crossed the wormhole, reflecting dancing patterns across the surface of Aika’s wide eyes.
One by one, the stars disappeared, young suns taking their place in the sky. Time and space ran through the tunnel the ship carved into reality, converging into a single point before the craft’s forward bow. The ship slowed, the darkness of space melting into flowing green fields of saturated grass. The silver craft lowered onto the spanning empty countryside, adorned only by a single winding stone path. The landing gear settled beside a rustic roadside store with a tall figure kneeling outside the wooden building. She was punching numbers into a red vending machine, fishing into a small canvas bag for coins.
Paying no heed to the craft’s landing behind her, she pulled a large golden coin from the bag, attempting to fit it into the machine’s slot to little avail. The box was shaken down, coins hidden deep within jingling together. Winding up a kick, she slammed a black sneaker at the machine, crumpling its side instantly upon contact. Half the metal tore off the box, yet the glass around the contents remained intact.
Alexis approached beside her, sliding a Japanese yen into the damaged slot. With a low grumble it dropped down a cola. The person beside her crouched down and grabbed the can, brushing short green hair away from her face as she took a took a sip. Alexis leaned against the collapsing box, watching Aika and Shirai run over to her.
The sun’s light beat down on them as Alexis’s green haired acquaintance stood up, stretching wide in their cheap striped track suit. She outstretched a hand towards the two, shaking the empty air.
“Good morning, my name’s Izanagi. To what to I owe the pleasure?” She turned over to Alexis for explanation, sitting down right beside her.
“I haven’t seen you since that business with the sentient supernova, Alexis. Nice to meet you out here at the end of the universe.”
“The end of the universe?” Shirai leaned forward, curious. Slowly she looked behind her back at what she once thought was a sun, tracing the edge of the skyline before her eyes rose to the source of the light. The field ended cleanly as if it was simply covering the inside of a metal platform, opening out above a semicircle to reveal space beyond. Where they had thought the sun lay in the sky, instead floated a blocky mecha, light pouring from the round reactor in its chest down onto the grassy surface. The broken warrior was cracked and battered; white metal armor charred black through the abuse of battle.
“You all fail to stop it. In this timeline at least. You three struggled to the end, yet nothing really changed. The inevitable will always come to pass.” Izanagi looked on sadly into the sunset, lamenting the past which the group had yet to experience.
"Stop what? What is this place?” Aika screamed. She looked at the machine in the sky, dragged down with foreboding she hadn’t felt since the world had last fell into chaos. The machine’s helmet tugged on her mind with a sense of familiarity, clouding her thoughts in confusion.
“Well, that would be spoilers. However, for the two of you, the inability to see beyond the current time should be enough of a sign in itself. Chaining omnipresence to a point in history can only happen in times of great turmoil.” Alexis and Sakura shifted in unease at the mention of their reduced vision, unable to make full use of their abilities as gods.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“It isn’t wise to pry into the affairs of time beyond your sight, no matter what the circumstances. A lack of sight means that destiny itself is in flux. For humans, their locked sense of time frees them to carve their own destiny. For a god, it means that destiny itself is at risk of ending.” Alexis explained to Aika.
“We didn’t come to discuss this, and it would be best for us to find the truth in proper time. We came to ask about the origins of Sakura, stay focused on that task.”
“Her origins…” Izanagi looked Sakura up and down, sizing up her power and identity. “Whoever she is, she isn’t a god of this universe. She isn’t even fully a deity. The soul of a deity was crammed into the body of a mortal who shouldn’t exist. Her existence is a paradox. It denies itself endlessly.”
“Is this mortal body why I can’t recognize my own identity?”
“That’s quite doubtful. Whoever you once were Sakura, your mind was sealed long before you inhabited this vessel.”
Izanagi’s eyes narrowed as a low rumble emerged from above them. A long chrome ship, identical to Alexis’s, glided through the air towards their location. Alexis walked forward, drawing her blade’s shining hilt.
“She’s coming…” Alexis glanced behind her at her two companions, her worries steadily increasing as the ship approached.
“GO.”
With a flash of her violet eyes, the two girls were sent rocketing backwards into the grass thousands of meters away. The approaching silver spaceship’s bottom separated into an entryway, dropping a jet black mecha onto the rolling slopes of grass. The steel hull of the machine glimmered in the light, painting the sharp blocky angles of a goliath in shining white. Alexis ran forwards, a slender, silver mecha of her own forming piece by piece from thin air around her. Leaping forward, the final section of its fist clicked into place the moment it impacted the black mecha’s helmet.
Alexis’s command power pulled the legs of Aika and Sakura to their feet, forcing them to sprint away as fast as their bodies allowed. The black mecha flipped a blade the size of a bus from their arm, swinging it towards the silver machine with immense force. The arm of Alexis’s suit was cleaved straight off, crashing against the ground in an explosion of dirt. She readied her remaining wrist, blasting a wave of energy held inside into the black warrior’s chest. They stumbled backwards, holding a massive hand over a burning hole in their chest. The gap revealed a woman who looked nearly identical to Alexis, seething with anger over her damaged control console.
The black mecha’s second arm revealed another sword, leaving the open piloting chamber exposed as the machine shifted into a dual weapon combat stance. Alexis pulled a large steel rod from her back, igniting its end into a beam of rough purple plasma. Alexis’s duplicate rushed forwards, using back mounted thrusters to fly forwards, past the sound barrier. The silver mecha flipped backwards, slashing the ground it had stood moments before. The blade of light impacted the blade of metal, showering the green grass in orange sparks.
Alexis rushed her machine forwards, using the remaining arm to grab her enemy by their side. With a screech of metal against metal, she smashed the black mecha into the ground headfirst, audibly cracking the metal surface of the space station underneath the ground. The piloting seat of the duplicate was showered in dirt dislodged by the impact, coating her green coat an earthy brown.
The heavier black unit struggled to rise to its feet as Alexis kicked the side of its body. The suit rolled backwards, the weight of the tumbling machine dislodging the station’s cracked surface plates. Shards of ground fell out into the abyss of space, forcing the two fighters to focus on avoiding the collapsing land. The black mecha had time to struggle to its feet, readying both forearm mounted blades for another round of attacks. The silver unit hopped across the falling platforms, leaping at their opponent with a jet boosted kick.
The black machine curved to the side and slashed forwards, cutting off Alexis’s leg. It grabbed the slender machine’s chest, exerting explosive levels of force to smash it into the ground. The smashed earth gave way, throwing them drifting into space, accelerating further and further from sight.
Aika and Sakura watched in shock as the chunk holding the roadside store fell out of sight. The red vending machine bounced off a shard of metal, sending it rocketing away endlessly. Wordless, they looked into the emptiness below them, seeing no remaining signs of Alexis in the black.
“Well what now?”