Epilogue: Black Wins
December 24, 2009
7:06 P. M.
Pharsalus stadium, Portland, Oregon
Richard Strife was at the beginning of this season, and it’s only fitting he should be here at the end. Crouched over in the empty stadium, nothing to disturb him in a rare moment of peace, not a sound could be heard save for that which came from his Nintendo DS or the mock chains he wore from his torn up black jeans. Dressed in a panda hoodie and maintaining the image of a 15-year-old punk, before those foul gangsters took away the coolness that used to be associated with that title, Richard was truly at his happiest as his hands danced about on his touchscreen.
The best part? He was playing The World Ends with You, known in Japan as It’s a Wonderful World. I’d be making a joke about songs now if music copyrights weren’t as strict as electronic patents.
All that was temporarily disrupted, however, as a portal opened just in front of the grim reaper’s face. Pausing, the supernatural disturbance being one of the few things that could force Death to take a moment, Richard starred on as me and Flow came falling out of the temporal hole, bouncing on the metal benches with grunts of pain and shrieks. I nearly bruised myself in order to save my flower companion, holding him up above me as to avoid breaking his precious pot.
While such a sight may have disturbed most men, Richard Strife didn’t even bat an eye. Waiting only for the portal to close, the time space continuum sealing up quite nicely, Richard sighed and went back to playing his game as some pop music filled the background, all too familiar to my ears as was the voice that said
“Of course it’s you two. The man who’s trying to be death and the flower who misses his term as death… I’m going to have to put a leash on you two if you keep this up.”
Anything to keep me from hurting myself, groaning as I picked myself off the floor and set Flow down on a bench. Too out of breath, especially with what felt like a gash on my lower back, I was like a cat too busy licking its wounds to even respond to the reaper.
Flow, no worse for wear save for being a bit busy, could do that well enough for me. “If it means getting my body back, I’ll eat dog food whenever you like Elcalim. Don’t you have anything better to do, anyway?”
“What? You mean better than playing this?” Richard asked, eyes unmoving from his glowing screen. “That’s hilarious coming from the flower who wouldn’t exist if the Lord didn’t love Undertale. You whole existence depended on a video game.”
“And your whole existence depended on an anime, Richard. Guess we’re alike in that regard.”
I didn’t even want to consider how God got the idea to come up with me. Exasperated, I finally found myself settling down and adjusting to this world as I threw my hand on a railing, stretching and rolling my head about as I worked out the strains of time displacement, an experience much harder on me than on the flower, as I pulled myself forward and up the stairs, hoping to get closer to the host in order to have something that resembled a normal conversation.
Who am I kidding? There wasn’t anything normal about this.
“So… when do Seth and Molly show up?”
“What makes you say that?” Richard asked, beginning to mash the screen with his stylus.
“I’ve hung around long enough to see the patterns, Boss. There is no way Seth gets a complete ending unless it’s him forced to recognize the hell he put his sister through. You’re using her to represent you in the tournament.”
Richard didn’t even try to lie, his face plain and still just as focused as ever on dodging and drawing his pins. “Well, keep that talent of yours in check. Can’t have you spoiling how this all ends now, can we?”
“Implying you know how it ends.” Flow grumbled, scooting about his bench and trying to figure out a way to get closer. While I had nearly climbed the ten flights to get to the man, a sudden sense of guilt and pity caused me to turn around and go the other way; couldn’t leave my friend behind now, could I?
“I’m not like Henry. I can spoil myself and still enjoy the story. Henry cares more about the ending; I just want to experience the journey.
“The question is, where do you fall little flower? Will the despair of knowing what you lose keep you from trying, or will your ending be happy enough that you’ll be willing to make your struggle anyway? Pacifist or Genocide, Flow?”
“Which ever one sees me king, little Reaper.” The flower answered, my thoughts going haywire as I remembered the last time he made a comment of that caliber. Suffice to say, the fact he was still a flower should tell you how well that plan worked out.
Still, it was entertaining to keep him around regardless, even if his machinations were just as effective as most other despot rulers who tried to take over the world.
Picking him up, I was playing the delivery boy and indulging in an awkward silence, Richard actually frowning now as the flower tried to capitalize on the negativity. “Ran out of things to say, little reaper?”
“No. The two should have shown up already. Don’t tell me you morons actually managed to screw things up already.”
“Already?” I repeated. “But we haven’t done anything to-”
Seems we were just a bit impatient. Richard, gently shutting his screen down, disappeared into a cloud of black and white smoke as he materialized at the center of the stadium, standing as a sort of referee for the two people entering the stadium. At the north was our protagonist, our hero of the tale… Mr. Seth Kaiba Sears, dressed in his funeral garb for the casket he must have imagined waited for him. Black would be playing White today.
As for the South, it seems I already took away some of the surprise. Walking into the stadium with combat boots, a white snow jacket and pants that would be perfect for an infiltration mission in a snowy wasteland like Alaska, was our little pale blond angel… Molly Sears, hands hidden beneath her long coat sleeves and eyes glinting yellow from her new found vampiric powers. Strangely, though, she still didn’t possess that aggressive swagger that most mercenaries tended to carry with them; she still seemed so innocent, a part of me wondered if she had even managed to kill anyone yet.
Something to find out another day, Flow and I taking our seats inconspicuously in the bleachers as the two finally recognized each other, love and familiarity more powerful than a few hundred feet of distance that still separated them. They were truly Sears in nature; any number of things could have happened here, yet both of them simply kept on walking as if their opponent was a complete stranger, not the last and final living blood relative they had on this world.
Except for the stooge that just so happened to materialize in behind us.
“Well well. La fleur et son prophète. No wonder Sherry didn’t bother to come; her des esclaves are here to witness it for her.”
We turned around to find Pierre Belmont, already lighting up a cigarette, leaning back with arms and legs stretched out as if this entire quarter of the stadium belonged to him. Relaxed, happy as could be, it would seem like he’d been invited to the VIP section of a soccer/football game instead of a chess match.
A chess match to the death.
“You look happy for someone who’s about to watch one of their kids die. Embracing who you really are, Pip Bernadotte?”
Funny. I thought that name would be flagged in spell check.
“Oi. Mon ami, you think calling me a fake will do you good? We French do not suffer existential crise. Besides, knowing your persona makes all of your threats empty.”
The flower actually pouted at that. “Darn it. No fun being evil if no one’s scared of you anymore.”
“Pas drôle d'être bon si personne ne se soucie soit… but now is the time for silence. The show is about to begin.”
So it was, Seth and Molly now standing opposite of each other with hands resting upon their chairs. Neither of them could say, move, or even breath practically now that there was no room for doubt, no mischance or error that would save them from the awkwa
rdness that now befell them. They’re they stood, the two Sears siblings, the brunette in black and the blond in white, king and queen squared off to duel.
With neither of them knowing what to do. Good thing Richard was there; we might have been stuck there for eternity if he wasn’t.
“Well, Kaiba boy. Seems that Alucard had one last lie to pull over on you. Molly isn’t dead, or at least she was until we turned her into a vampire. Say hi, Molly… or should I say, Maria Belmont?”
“M… Maria? You… you changed your name?” Seth repeated, dazed as ever. The blond, ever smaller when in the presence of her brother, acted and spoke with the same meekness she’s always held.
“I did… it seemed appropriate. The life I was, the person I was… it seemed you were right, brother. Seems it was better for me to change after all.”
Flow and I turned to Pierre, smoke fogging up our view of the grinning man. Taking it from his mouth, blowing a ring towards the flower’s curious face, he gave a long chuckle before he explained
“Great thing about time travel. One minute away in Oregon and I can spend a day with my daughter in France. In fact, I’ve been playing the two from the start; as far as they knew, I was with them tout le mois de décembre.”
“You sneaky cheat… I love it!” Flow exclaimed, the three of us turning our attention back down to the conversation still going on below.
“-d. Please, please don’t tell me you’ve abandoned who you are for these freaks!” Seth shouted, finger pointing at Death incarnate. The goth punk could care less; him and his family have been called worse before.
What surprised us was that Molly actually disagreed with him. “…Seth. I was who I was because I couldn’t see the bigger picture. I was a slave to my sins because that’s all I could see; a sinful girl in a sinful world.
“But now, now! Now I can see everything. Vampires, mutants, monsters, mercenaries; it’s all so fantastical and wonderful. The chance to live forever, the thrill of immortality… at the expense of never giving my love to a woman again?
“I love you brother… but I know you crave power and control more than anything else. What would you give and sacrifice just to have Sylvester again? You’d swear off your company and chess in a heartbeat just to be with her again.
“That you came to die is proof of that. Besides, aren’t you happy that I’m straight?”
“Molly. You aren’t straight! Gay conversion therapy doesn’t work!”
Richard, bored now, spoke a word under his breath to cause a chair to materialize out of nothing save the dark smoke that occasional escaped his pockets. Swinging his legs onto the chess board, careful as to avoid tipping the pieces, Death went back to his game while the family drama played out, Molly ever cool as her brother continued to steam.
“I can’t choose who I’m attracted to, but I can choose who I love. Turns out, sex and love aren’t the same thing. Just took a little more thinking to figure it out.”
“But that’s not Molly! That’s… that’s…”
“That’s Maria talking. Or, would you prefer I call myself by my nickname? Mokuba?”
Well. That certainly puts a twist on the situation. I turned to my little friend, seeing his reaction was very similar to mine though he must have known so much more about these Sears than I did, and asked
“So. Mokuba’s a guy in the anime, right?”
“Anime and Manga.” Flow replied, twitching for a moment as if he was cold.
Beep.
Richard, frowning, looked around as if someone new had entered the stadium, eyes darting about even as his DS music played in the background. I myself didn’t notice this until after, stuck in conversation with Pierre.
“So why did… you know… why did he let a persona of the opposite sex live out as a Mokuba? I thought that was against policy.”
“To be honest, compagnons, I don’t think our XO knew about it.” Pierre remarked, already on his second cigarette of the night. “Nobody’s supposed to imitate the Joker or Volgin, and we have enough clowns and demons cosplaying at them. The bane of agency is that everything goes. As my people say, lorsque la merde arrive, il n'y a rien que vous pouvez faire pour l'arrêter.”
Have fun translating that one. Back to the program.
“-uba? But… but… then…”
“We’ve both been played from the start. You, me, mom and dad, Gary Gozaburo… everything was set up by Jack and his friends. I’m surprised you didn’t guess my persona before now.”
“And he’s not going to get another chance to do it either, because the time tables just got moved up.”
Hm? Me, Flow and Pierre all leaned in with intensity as Death kicked over the chess board, pieces scattered everywhere as the chair beneath him fizzled into smoke. Instead of simply dissipating as was par with FTM abilities, something else entirely unexpected happened; his hands filled with two handguns, he began to juggle them back and forth as he explained
“This isn’t quite the conclusion I was hoping for, but it seems that there’s been a disruption in the time space continuum. Someone, completely foreign to our reality, has been making some corrections and sticking his nose in business that he should have no interest in. Something fishy is going on, and I intend to find out what.”
Stopping, Richard Strife flicked the safeties off the M1911s and tossed them to the two Sears siblings, both of them catching the weapons with ease even though they chose not to point them at each other… yet.
Richard, for his part, stepped away from the sudden duel that was about to occur.
“This story had a written ending. You two have a heart to heart and reach a wonderful understanding; Molly teaches us that we are who we choose to be, not who we’re born to be. Seth would inform us that even if he was a jerk, he did it with the best intentions: he backtracked on his morals because he realized affection is more important to him than obedience. This proves once more that Molly is the genius and Seth the dumb ass of the family, but even you should have figured that out by now.
“No, we’re going to rush things now. There’s only supposed to be seven people here; me, Molly, Seth, Adam, Anthony, and Pierre.”
“Who’s the seventh?” Pierre asked, the two below just barely making out the figure of their father. Wonder if they even noticed him before now.
“The reader, of course!” Death announced, crossing himself as he did. “God doesn’t care about how history actually panned out; once the atonement went into effect, he only cares about the doctored version of events according to the way that his son Christ changed it. Personas, timelines, coincidences and the S3 program; all tools of a supreme being to etch things the way he would like them, the best case scenario in a game played with all AI players.
“Someone has to check it though. Someone has to make sure that everything went according to plan; whether it’s Jesus Christ or one of his aides, someone always reads the book of Life to verify that things are on track.
“Something is wrong though.” Death complained, eyes shifting about. “Someone else is here as well. Not Volgin, not the Devil, no being light or dark…
“It’s human but… detached. Like a soul without a body… a ghost. Who the hell…”
Richard shook his head, muttering to himself as he turned to the confused, absent minded duelists awaiting his command. Pushing his thoughts to his side, the teenager ran his hand through his hair as he stated
“Molly would have won that chess duel. Not legitimately of course; you would have lost on purpose and moved on, Seth. You would have died from WOLFDIE, and we would have walked away with a happy ending as your soul escaped to Heaven to live with Sylvester in peace forever.
“Now, that can’t happen. Someone’s screwing with the timelines, trying to disrupt our so called real ending.
“Those pistols? Found at your parent’s crime scene. They weren’t there before, but they were now; the intent was probably to make your parents death look like a double s
uicide. If that happened, neither of you would have been accepted into that Catholic orphanage due to superstition. You wouldn’t be here today if you never got adopted by Gary.
“The strange thing is, it was done so obnoxiously that I couldn’t help but discover it… which makes me wonder if it wasn’t on purpose.”
Seems even Death could be unsettled. Shaking his head once more, he leaped over the guard railing and began to make his way up the bleachers, continuing his explanation all the while
“So we’ll have a little test. This isn’t about redemption, betrayal, love or any of that nonsense; congratulations, Sears family. You just became the heart of something new. A new mystery, with our little duel being ground zeroes.
“I am the master of Death. I control statistical probability and who gets offed when the bell tolls. I dictate that Seth will die by Molly’s gun… but any number of possibilities could happen.
“Molly may pull the trigger and Seth dies.
“Molly pulls the trigger but the gun shoots backwards, killing her.
“Molly pulled the trigger and it blew up, killing us all.
“Seth pulled the trigger and it turns out to be empty. Molly shoots him dead.
“Seth pulls the trigger but the gun fires back, meaning he still dies.
“Seth may pull the trigger and actually fire a round. Molly dies.
“All possibilities, none of which would happen if my conditions are set in stone… but all it takes is one tiny shift in the timelines, one little slip up for everything to go wrong. I’d be excited if I wasn’t pist that someone thought they could screw with me.”
Standing at our side, Richard took a seat next to Pierre and gave the two below a nod. Molly, following orders, raised her gun to her eye and took aim, going for the kill shot as the chamber lined up with Seth’s scruffy, hairy and unshaven face.
The man himself didn’t move anything save his lips. “Are you kidding me? Are you telling me I have just as much chance killing myself as I do her if I fire this gun?”
“Technically, you have just as much chance blowing up the time space continuum as you do of killing Molly right now. I think there’s one bullet with toxin off of smell alone; for all I know, it’s loaded with a mass effect engine that will literally create a black hole if you fire it.
“Or it’ll just shoot a pie. If you can rewrite time, there isn’t anything you can’t do, really.” Death mused, the safety of our bleachers suddenly seeming all but useless. That he even bothered to sit next to us seemed like a guarantee that we were all going to die.
This is what bomb defusing technicians must feel like. One wrong jerk and-
“So what if we don’t shoot at all? What if we just throw away the guns and walk away?”
That idea was gibberish to everyone present in the stadium, save me. Even then, I knew why that wasn’t a suitable idea to suggest to the present company, a class and category of mercenary that forgot what the word ‘pacifism’ and ‘retreat’ meant.
“Lâche, how could you suggest something so boring?” Pierre yelled to the two below. “We so rarely get caught off guard like this. This is what we live for!”
“You won’t live for anything like this again if we all die!”
Flow, perhaps the one with the least reason to live, merely shook his head as his face changed. Darker now, teeth jutting from his mouth, it was back to his usual evil speech as he threatened
“Then you never understood why we live to begin with. We don’t live in a sane world anymore, Kaiba Boy. It’s no longer kill or be killed; we lost that the moment we thought we could justify our existence as mere happenstance.
“No, the Only Way this Ends is if one of you pulls the trigger… and you wouldn’t WANT DEAR Molly to make that choice now, WOULD YOU BROTHER?”
I almost worried Seth would be too distracted by the discovery of a talking flower to be able to process what had been said… until he put the gun to the side of his head and gulped.
Molly, as was evident by her kindly nature, immediately threw her gun away. Rushing forward, suddenly realizing the sheer bizzare insanity of it all, time seemed to slow for her as she yelled, unable to cope with this ending
“Seth! N-”
The protagonist pulled the trigger… but instead of the bullet going forward, a hole in the side of chamber opened up as the round fired outward, going straight in the direction of the approaching girl. Had time literally now slowed down at this point, she would have been dead for sure.
Instead, the stand was forced to watch with confusion as the center stage itself moved at a mere fraction of its normal speed, Molly no faster than a turtle now as the fired round moved at a snail’s pace. All eyes turned to Richard, moving back down below, for an explanation.
He was happy to give us one. “Evil has always had a flair for the dramatic. The Bible may be a bit dull in most places, but that’s because Heaven really could care less about theatricality; the only battle we like is a complete rout. No wonder all the so called entertaining stories in the Holy Book has to do with men completely lost to sin.
“I may not be perfect yet, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be played the fool. Set the stage, pick the actors, convince them they’re the main event and let the audience think that it’s nothing more than a regular play… that’s when you get away with murder. In this case, Seth’s.”
Stepping onto the field, the Grim Reaper had more than enough time to reach the slow moving bullet and save his new apostle as he continued to stride forward, unaffected by the magic he used to trap the two Sears siblings.
“If our enigma wanted to kill Seth, he wouldn’t have tampered with the timeline; like I said, Seth was doomed to die this day after losing a round of chess. Meaning, if he took the effort to change time, which is without argument the second hardest thing for a being to accomplish in all of existence, then he must have rigged the game to end with Molly’s death somehow.
“So I forced his hand and played along. I knew if Molly fired the gun, he would change time in order to make it backfire and kill her. If Seth tried to shoot himself, time would change in order to make it some stupid, specialty made firearm that fired at just the right angle to kill Molly.
“A reality shift without the temporal disruption. Never seen something quite like it.
Reaching the round, still a few dozen feet away from Molly, Richard Strife plucked it out of the air and turned it around, letting it go and resume it slows, sluggish flight. Aimed at Seth now, it seems he’d get his wish after all as Richard walked away, all things back in his control once more.
Save for a few plot holes.
“I’m confused. If this enigma can change time without anyone but you noticing, how is it he won’t change time again in order to screw with us again?”
“Because now he knows I’m watching… and thanks to what he’s done, I know for sure it’s a he.” Richard explained, stepping over the guard barrier. “If he wants to screw with time, he needs to do it when I’m distracted, when I’m thinking about things other than him. Mr. Baggins, the ring and the Eye of Sauron to make a literary reference.
“Of course, this changes everything. Plots, plans, timelines… this’ll either speed up, slow down, or maybe even stop the Instrumentality Project. Volgin is no longer our only threat.”
“Is it possible that ce diable is working with Volgin? Or maybe it is Volgin?”
Richard shook his head, close enough now for us to see just how concerned he was. It seemed as if his face had aged a decade since we we’re last so close, his eyes now a very alert and active green. Seemed he even put on a few inches, the changing man’s mood and physique as serious as could be.
“Volgin is a fool so full of himself he thinks he’s the only god he is. He would have destroyed whoever did this without a second thought; if someone is going to rule the multiverse, it’ll be him and him alone.
“Besides, Volgin has no influence here. All actions, magica
l or mundane, leave a mark only the most attuned can detect… and what I feel is completely new.
“Oh. Hold on.”
Moving his hand, the theater below resumed at normal speed as Molly found herself tripping, Seth’s head snapping back as the bullet pierced his forehead. Stumbling, his eyes went cross wide for a moment before his whole form collapsed, dead as could be as a stream of white FTM liquid dripped from his mouth and head wound, orange eyes going dark even before he hit the ground. Crawling, scampering like a bear to her brother, Molly was already in tears as if the emotional buildup of several minutes hit her at once, those among us in the crowd unsure whether the death of Seth or the side effects of tampered time caused such a strong outburst.
Richard could care less. “Well, I’ll let her grieve for a while. It’s not the fitting ending to Seth’s tale, but life’s funny like that isn’t it? Sometimes it sets up for a grand finale… and puts on a farce as if the writers had gone on strike.
“Pierre, resume your duties as normal for now. If you’re needed, you’ll be informed; otherwise, get Molly to Paz and begin her training. We’ll be in touch shortly.”
“As for us?” Flow asked, grinning. Normally irritated with the young flower, Death simply waved his hand and made a new portal as he explained
“Finish the book, and take a break. Seems the season is over; everything we’ve been setting up has just taken a whole new turn. I imagine the future you’re going back to now might even be different than the one you came from… or, for all I know right now, it’s the same as ever.
“I just have one request.”
“Which is?” I asked, picking up my flower friend.
“Figure out who the hell can mess with time!”
Times of Peace: Volume 1 of the side adventures to The Mercenary's Salvation Page 67