Finale Part 1
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Finale ~ Part 1 -- One
She tapped her chin with a pencil, nervously deciding on one option over another. Agonizing over every word, every single circumstance, all down to a simple multiple-choice test. God, she hated tests. She’d been telling herself that for months now.
A gentle wind blew past her, fluffing up her fur. The breeze of a nearby lake carried the scent of petrichor and wet stone.
This was it. The final question. And that was probably the answer. Silently, she penciled in her choice, flipped the page over, and saw it was blank. She sighed.
“Finally,” she muttered. She fiddled with her claws, pensive, and then said to herself, “Then… let’s do one last review, I guess.”
And, after a few more days and a few minor corrections, she was satisfied with her answers.
“Alright. I’m done!” she called to the sky.
The rock her papers rested upon swallowed the test. She turned around to see a man wearing a tan brown suit smiling at her, offering a formal bow.
“Thank you for taking the OGC-I. Your results will be given to you in two weeks.”
“Thanks.” She shifted uncomfortably. “How’d my partner do?”
“He finished three days ago,” the man said. “Did you want him to pick you up?”
“Yeah, uh, thanks.”
Two weeks. That’s all she needed to wait. Then… maybe she could finally make a world of her own.
<><><>
The vortex of gold drained completely into the serpent atop the ruined stone spire. Left behind were dark clouds and a sunless sky. The sun didn’t matter anymore, did it? Because that serpent… it radiated more than just Shadows now. It had bits of everyone’s power. Shadows, Radiance, even divinity itself.
Owen had no idea how he was supposed to take that on. All he knew was that he was the only one who could try.
“Right.”
He tensed his wrist and flexed the fingers of his right hand. The Hand of Creation—the singular one he’d been able to grasp and keep from being stolen by the serpent in the sky—manifested fully. A javelin solidified in his palm, which he grasped as one end extended into a great, dynamic-length golden whip.
He still had the soul bullet. He saw it bobbing right near his palm. But… this, too, was not Alexander. It was something else.
Still. Just in case, he held onto it.
He dimmed his flame and beat his wings, ascending higher and higher, spiraling close to the base of the tower to avoid entering its peripherals.
Thankfully, despite its ethereal appearance, its body had some substance to it. Owen could Perceive it, even if he had no idea what those twitches or undulations could mean for its mood or intent. But at least it couldn’t hide from him or catch him off guard by leaving his view.
This was close enough. Owen brought his arm back and silently hurled the javelin side of his Hand forward. It flew silently, not even a whistle, but its golden glimmer must have caught the serpent’s attention. It ducked and rolled out of view.
Not good enough. Owen flicked his wrist, sending a wave down the javelin through the whip-end, and the javelin careened in a sharper arc into the tower. Still, it missed, striking the tower’s stone top instead.
Owen sent a pulse of energy through anyway. A flash of light ran down the Hand like an electric current. Golden energy shattered the top of the tower, its shrapnel cutting into the serpent’s body. Something bled from it and quickly closed up; when Owen flew around the tower to get a better look, he saw the last glimpses of golden motes of light returning to the serpent’s body.
“Just too slow, as always.”
Owen flinched. It could talk?
“Who are you?” Owen shouted. “You’re… you can’t be Alexander. He—”
“Shut up.”
The serpent opened its mouth. In the back of its maw, crackling black-and-white energy surged forth. Owen narrowly pulled a Protect in front of him, but the attack itself sent him flying back into Kilo Village’s ground level. Rocks and dirt covered him in a newly formed pit.
“You have lost the right to speak.” Its voice echoed even from on high. It permeated the world itself just like the song had.
Owen sensed a building that still had good enough structural integrity. He tried to search around for a Teleport, but he’d lost that essence. So much for that…
“Alexander, the ‘real’ one? Nothing but a husk at this point, but don’t worry. I’m already sending my tendrils into the Voidlands to gather him and those pathetic souls up. He is nothing…
“At this point, I am more ‘Alexander’ than he will every be!”
Owen groaned, finally climbing out of the pit, pushing heavy boulders out of the way. The blast had cut his scales. Thankfully, he healed quickly, wounds sewing themselves shut with threads of silver.
“Then, you’ve—”
“I said shut UP!”
Another blast rained down. The distance let Owen prepare, though he still flew out of the way and dodged the worst of the blast. A solid beam of black and white plasma—concentrated Chaos matter—left a fissure through the ground that Owen could not see or Perceive the bottom of. He could only see, distantly, the faint orange glow of magma at its depths. A glow that was getting brighter.
“Without me, you’ll have nobody to listen!” Owen taunted.
He had to buy time. How in the world was he supposed to tackle something like this?
And it worked. The serpent, closing its mouth, stopped the blast.
The deep, horrible grinding of stone on stone caught Owen’s attention.
“No…”
The serpent had struck Heart HQ. In that single blow, the red heart and symbol of Kilo’s accomplishments collapsed into the fissure; notebooks, depleted orbs, and unused technologies fell with its building into the planet’s molten insides.
“How easy it is to destroy so much progress,” the serpent said. “You didn’t defend it well at all. You weren’t prepared for a god. A TRUE god.”
Owen flew higher, trying to get to the same height. When he got too high, the serpent blasted just above him, forcing Owen to duck.
“You don’t deserve to stare at my level,” he stated.
Owen growled but allowed this. He tried to scan for weaknesses, but the serpent’s body was still changing. Morphing. What was he becoming?
First was the head, clad in gold crystals and two pupilless, rainbow eyes like shattered glass. The serpent had stolen Necrozma’s golden face. Trailing down from that body was some mixture of his neck and Alexander’s, splitting off into two arms that resembled a Hydreigon’s smaller heads, clad in brightened, purple Shadow essence.
In its chest was a swirl of Chaos energy enclosing a dark red core. Owen remembered this thing from his visions long ago—Diyem’s true form, the red eye in the dark void. Surrounding the cage that contained his true body was a crumbling, golden wheel—once Leph’s, now adorned by its new ruler. The serpent’s clawed feet and long tail trailed in a spiral.
Necrozma. Leph. Alexander. Diyem. A fusion of four essences…
But Owen had no Alloy to fall back on this time.
“The winner in all of this… will be Alexander. I’ll adopt that name. The old one, of course, has no use for it anymore.
“Tell me, failed Usurper. Do you think there’s any point in fighting out here?”
“You aren’t trying right now,” Owen said. “That means you don’t think it’s easy.”
The serpent snarled at that, but it was with a sick glee that flickered in his prismatic eyes. “I’m waiting to see you break,” he said. “Waiting for you to see that all you worked for was simply taken by the victor. All or nothing; all FOR nothing. What a wonderful gambit!”
He roared with laughter.
A few stars in the sky seemed abnormally bright. Brighter than usual.
“Oh, and don’t YOU think of trying anything!” he suddenly declared, pointing at the lights. “I know… what up to.”
Owen gasped. Overseers. Were they stepping in? But if that was the case…
“You think it’s a lost cause?” Owen whispered.
“You CAN’T kill me,” Alexander said, spreading his wings and arms wide. “Feel the spirits within me. Analyze their suffering. They are normal… they are just fine! I am just the new god after the old ones fell!”
He pointed at Owen.
“And this Usurper is threatening the new order!”
“What?!” Owen pointed his javelin at Alexander. “They saw everything! They aren’t going to let you be the new god, not when—”
“You don’t understand Overseers at all. But I have absorbed two of them. I know. And I know… that I am just fine.”
Owen flinched. That… didn’t make sense. The Overseers would stop Alexander if they could, right? He ran it through his mind. They saw him as a danger just as they’d seen Alexander as one because they were in danger of ruining the natural order of the world—one where Star and Barky managed it, maintained its flow of souls and suffering. Right?
But… they were both dead now.
“Turned out better than you expected, didn’t it?!” Alexander goaded. “The world under my command is fine. In the Voidlands, which the Usurper cast me into, I brought order from a world of purple ash! I built a city in a forest with no leaves! What has this Usurper done than merely climb out of his own mess?! Defy your rule to create a world of ruin that I then fixed!?”
Owen took in a shuddering breath. He didn’t dare make a move now. There was no way they would be convinced, right? He had to defend himself.
“It wasn’t just me,” Owen said. “I was speaking for all who still wanted to live! How can you fault mortals for wanting to survive?! How could I have known the extent of this darkness? Or how he”—Owen jabbed a finger in Alexander’s direction—“would have taken over that ruin? Look at his history!”
“Oh, please.” Alexander waved a wing dismissively.
“What he’s done! Who he’s killed and what he did to make that city of his!”
“You fool.” And then, suddenly, Alexander’s Chaotic body dimmed. The frazzled energy, like a raging inferno, instead settled into something closer to a gentle candle flame. His voice, while still booming, was unnervingly normal. “Subjugating dissent to maintain order is evil, sure… but it is not an Overseer matter. To them, I am maintaining order in a chaotic world. In the Voidlands, the suffering I caused… was minimal compared to the reality itself.
“And now?” Alexander spread his wings, displaying that dark core in his torso. “Now, all is well. I shall rule. And you shall fall.”
“No, that’s…” Owen’s wings drooped, only held up by his updraft. He wondered if he even deserved to be at that height. It was a flashing thought—was it Shadows, or…
“You have fought on the wrong side of history, Owen,” Alexander said. “Power means everything. And the Overseers hold the ultimate power over all worlds, but are bound by their own rules and regulations so they do not become tyrants themselves. And the rule is simple: If the souls do not suffer, if they have their freedoms in the cosmic sense, then they do not interfere.”
“But what you’re doing is wrong,” Owen said. “You—I know what you’re doing. You want all of this for control!”
“What I want doesn’t matter,” Alexander said with a chuckle. “Don’t you get it? The Overseers don’t care about good or evil, those subjective little things that nature itself has no concept of. They only regulate trapped and suffering souls. Worlds too far gone. And this, now? I saved them.
“Will you disrupt the new order, Usurper? And earn the ire of the Overseers once more?” The metal of his face distorted into a gnarled smile. “Will you try again for another thousand years of suffering? All because of you? All for your… ‘hope’ of an ideal world that will NEVER exist?!”
Alexander pointed at Owen.
“Overseers! Strike him down, and end this nightmare FOREVER!”
<><><>
Five stations—and a sixth destroyed—overlooked the ruins of Kilo. Each one held a pair of Overseers, all analyzing different things about the ruined world as they readied beams of great energy to annihilate it.
The Overseers had many methods to destroy a dying world. It was already weak and ready to collapse, so taking it out of its misery, so to speak, was a trivial matter.
Ho-Oh stood in the ruins of the sixth station. Miraidon, who had been eager to take out the world to free all the spirits within, had been retaliated against early. It was a warning from Kilo’s new god. But even that god, Ho-Oh suspected, could not stand up to five of them at once.
His wing ached. His beak was cracked. And, while he wasn’t sure, he was pretty sure he was dying from internal bleeding from divine wounds.
No matter. Death was an inconvenience to an Overseer. His time in this world wasn’t meant for much longer anyway.
More annoying was the prattling on of the other five stations that had created a group call to communicate their next plans as Kilo’s new god shouted at them.
“This guy is a total nutcase!” rumbled one of the Overseers. “He really thinks we’ll see all that, and then side with him?”
“That Charizard is the world’s last line of defense. He seems to hold just one of the divine catalysts of this world. If he loses that, it’s over.”
“Usurper against Usurper. Hmph, well, nobody wins, no matter who is the victor. Let’s destroy it before this gets worse.”
Ho-Oh couldn’t get his speakers to work. His camera was shot. The Overseers were gods of gods, but even they were subject to the limitations imposed upon them by the reality they visited. They had, with the help of this world’s Worldcore, conjured bodies and attached their celestial observatories to the outer shell of this tiny reality. But being in the world, being of material, meant the material could be destroyed.
“Hello? Can anyone hear me?” Ho-Oh called.
“This is a complete mess,” said an Overseer, once again unaware of Ho-Oh.
“Ah, this must be camera button!”
“Aaaaagh!”
“Oh, come on!”
“Put that light down!”
Ho-Oh was blinded by the sudden appearance of a new camera on the feed. Completely white. Searing.
“Aha ha! Whoops! Guess it's one of those cameras. Lemme just... this button...” It disappeared, replaced by a generic icon.
Ho-Oh, still seeing stars in his eyes, clenched his beak. Well. Time to restart things, at least. He briefly shut off his connection and tried reestablishing everything. He glanced at Kilo’s readings. The feed still showed Dark Matter, usurped by Alexander’s disembodied will, pleading for the Overseers' favor. No doubt, he was using Necrozma and Hecto's absorbed insights to make such keen arguments.
Fortunately, Overseers were equipped with common sense.
At least, Ho-Oh hoped so.
“Ah! Hello?” Ho-Oh called upon seeing the connection return.
“Who is that?”
“Wait, that’s Station One! Are you alive?!”
“Unfortunately, just me. The other two might have been absorbed or lost to space. This is… Ho-Oh, currently. Id S-JS407.”
Ho-Oh brushed a feather over a sensor. Thankfully, it still worked, and a little green icon flashed on his screen.
The Overseers grunted or hummed in agreement.
“Glad you’re safe. Hopefully, we can find the others soon.”
“I wanted to speak up about your decisions regarding Kilo,” Ho-Oh said. “I think you should hold off on taking any action.”
“Hold off?!” One of the camera feeds took center screen, showing a gruff Nidoking and a Salazzle reading a book in the background. “I’m not letting that world spread! That thing’s a monster! We should wipe it all out, harvest the souls, powerless, and sort them out! Standard procedure for a failed—”
“It is not,” Ho-Oh said calmly, “failed.”
“This looks pretty failed!” Nidoking snarled. “And I’m not about to get absorbed into some world-eating catastrophe!”
“Right now, I am the expert on this realm,” Ho-Oh said. “And I say we’re acting too quickly. To annihilate them now would be a total violation of this world’s autonomy. We should focus on containment first while they sort themselves out.”
“Containment? They damaged a station! That’s far beyond what we can contain!”
“I agree. Things are too risky. That single drake is nothing compared to that corrupted amalgamation of all souls.”
Ho-Oh winced. He was glad his camera wasn’t working.
Ho-Oh wasn’t sure how to sway all the others after witnessing their station get destroyed. It had already called for backup automatically. Of course they would assume it was time to annihilate it all.
Maybe they were right. But… surely they couldn’t strike now. They at least needed to wait for Owen to distract Alexander for that to work. Maybe, from there, they would have a better idea of the situation.
“I like Ho-Oh's thinking.”
The voice came from the formerly blinding camera feed, now just an oscillating icon when he spoke.
“He’s got a better handle on this than us. And I bet that handle includes Owen having a plan.”
A plan…
That was right. He did have a plan.
“Even this,” Ho-Oh said, “was predicted as a worst-case scenario. Owen hasn’t yet put forward that final plan. If anything, we need to wait for that to play out. Once that happens, we can make the call. Annihilate, or let them sort themselves out.”
“I still don’t like this,” Nidoking growled. Several other Overseers nodded. “They’ve already met the necessary criteria to justify an expedited annihilation. We wait for a distraction and then strike.”
“C’mon, can’t we give him a chance?” GL asked. “Pleeeease?”
“That… is that supposed to be your argument?”
“My camera’s off, but I'm doing puppy-dog eyes!”
“You can’t even—” Nidoking sighed. “Whatever. We have to wait either way.”
“The new god is waiting for an answer from us,” Ho-Oh said. “I think that’s what his speech is implying. How do we tell them… to handle it themselves?”
The Overseers hummed thoughtfully, hemming and hawing.
Ring ring ring… ring ring ring…
“What is that?” Ho-Oh murmured.
“A telephone?”
“Telephones don’t sound like that…”
“Oh wow! An old-timey rotary phone! That stuff’s older than me!”
“I… I think someone is trying to get into this call. But I’ve never heard—”
Ho-Oh’s breath hitched. The icon of the new caller…
“It’s the Top Overseer of this corner of the Overworld,” Ho-Oh said. “Oh, by all gods, what… would require them here?”
“Don’t make them wait!” Nidoking urged.
Someone quickly answered it. The icon was without a camera feed. The voice that followed was a little posh and high-pitched for Ho-Oh’s tastes, but nonetheless filled with gentle confidence.
“I heard from GL that there was a problem?”
“T-T-T-Top Overseer Xenon! Soooo good to see you.” Ho-Oh tittered. “We, ah, I’m sure you don’t remember me, we—”
“Oh, your tone is familiar! We can catch up later! This is urgent, yes?”
“Right! Right. Yes. Yes! Um. Where were we…”
“How do we tell the Usurper god and the Usurper Usurper we aren’t deciding for them?”
“Ahhh, such a classic tale.” Xenon giggled and sighed like he’d been told their new crush found them cute. “I’ve looked over the reports of this place… and I took a moment to read everything new from your stations. I’ve seen something like this play out before—isn’t that right, GL?—but not quite… like this. Oh, how interesting to see it happen… I must stay for the answer.”
“Um, Xenon, w-with all due respect,” Nidoking said, “we… need to do something, or they’ll enter a stalemate. They don’t want to make a move while we’re here, but we can’t leave them alone…”
“Ah, yes, of course. I’m so sorry. Well!” The speaker clapped. “Think of it like you’re a neighbor. You have the window lights on and you’re peeking outside. How do you tell those in the street you want to let them resolve things without you?”
A beat. Then, a Baxcalibur suddenly spoke up. “Well, one way to give the impression you don’t want anything to do with something is to, well, turn out the lights. I guess for us, that’d be… turning off the camera feeds? That should dim the stars on the realm’s shell. Then, nobody would be ‘watching’ even if, you know, we have other sensors.”
“Shutting the windows.” Ho-Oh nodded. “That works.”
“Exactly!”
Ho-Oh faced the world of Kilo with an anxious sigh.
“Well,” he said. “Good luck.”
The light went out. Xenon giggled quietly before signing off.
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Owen stood, breath held, as he awaited the worst. Alexander had put them into an impossible position. Owen knew Overseers had to maintain order. But now, Alexander was the new order. They were too late. What did that mean? Was he now the one to be stopped?
Alexander slowly turned to Owen, smirking. “Any last words?”
Owen clenched his claws around the last Hand of Creation not in Alexander’s possession. “I’ll fight them, too, if I have to,” Owen conceded. “Because this world is not yours. And the world you want to craft… has no right to exist.”
“Powerful words,” Alexander said. “Such a shame that’s the most ‘power’ you’ll have.”
But then one of the Overseers’ stars flickered out. Closed like a window at night. And then another, and another, until only the tiny stars of the false sky lit up the night.
“What?”
Gone. The Overseers were no longer watching.
“They… abandoned this world?! Are they insane?!”
But while Alexander stared at the sky in befuddlement, Owen’s chest swelled with relief and hope.
“No,” he said. “I think you forgot just what it means when Overseers stand down, ‘Alexander.’ They’re always watching once they know a place like this exists.”
Alexander’s body crackled along its entire length, literally boiling with anger.
“It means, maybe for you or me”—it was for Owen—“that the Overseers trust this world to take care of itself. So, are you ready to fight me, New God of Kilo?”
“I am more than just its god. I am ALL of it, now! I AM Kilo!”
“Sure. Alexander or Kilo, which one do you want?”
Alexander simmered again. Something shone behind him—a shooting star. Owen chose not to acknowledge it.
“Fine. You’ve made your choice.” Alexander uncurled from the top of the tower, spreading his wings wide. “I will make sure that your spirit is kept in the very darkest depths of my new world. You will never know light again.”
Owen pointed the tip of his javelin Alexander’s way. He took in a slow, steady breath. Alexander was searching for an opening. Owen gave him none, keeping the rest of his stance defensive. The whip-end of his javelin circled him in a spiraling cage. Even with just one Hand, it was enough to fend away a direct attack… if he kept his guard completely up.
But as things stood… Owen wasn’t sure how to go on the offensive.
So, instead, he broke the stare down with a small exhale. “Alexander.”
“Stalling won’t get you anywhere.”
“Look behind you.”
A wave of Chaos energy rippled from Alexander’s head, down his faux spine, and back up to his head again. “Do you think I’m stu—”
A shooting star blasted through Alexander’s head, splitting it apart into countless threads of the Hands of Creation. Owen reached toward the shooting star and caught it with his chest, clutching it with his arms and wings.
It burned and probably broke a few ribs. While he recovered and his single Hand mended the wounds, he stared in disbelief at what he couldn’t believe his Perceive to see.
Eon. He was alive.
He wanted to say so much, even as Eon smiled up at him, laughing.
“I’ll explain later,” Eon said.
And that was fine.
“What’s going on here?” Eon asked.
“That thing absorbed everyone in Kilo. I think… I think they’re in that.” He pointed at the caged, red sphere in the center of the serpent’s abdomen.
Eon glanced at the sphere, then down at the blazing ruins of Kilo Village and all its surrounding fields. Then, he locked eyes with Owen, floating further away. Something warm glowed in the tattered bag around Owen’s shoulder. Barely anything in it was useful at this point, but as he dug through it…
Alexander’s head was mending itself back together.
Owen felt the marble Xerneas had given him. The Mega Stone. Probably best not to lose that. He considered his options and the chaos of battle. Owen dropped the bag into the blaze far below.
Then, he popped the Mega Stone into his mouth, swallowing it whole.
“…Really?” Eon squinted.
“If the Overseers aren’t interfering,” Owen started, “then the spirits within Alexander aren’t suffering. Instead, they must be… no, they can’t be inert. I think they’d take issue with that, too. So they must be… living somehow, not realizing they need to fight back. They might be trapped and have no idea.”
“Do you really think a cheap shot like that,” Alexander hissed, “will stop me?”
“I have to fight him out here,” Owen said. “Eon, find somewhere safe. If he sings, it’s over. I only have this one scarf. Didn’t think Ghrelle would be the one to…”
Owen didn’t even know how he’d created the first one. It’d been out of sheer improvised will…
Eon nodded slowly, his skepticism melting into resolve. “I understand what you’re getting at.”
“Wait—you do?” Because he sure didn’t.
“It’s like how we beat Star back at the lab,” Eon said.
The Jirachi pressed his forehead against Owen’s. Alexander was nearly fully formed, though it seemed his eyes were trying to piece themselves back together as a crystal structure.
“I wish I could say so much more,” he said, “but I’m sorry for that stupid play back with the Tree.”
Owen smirked. “Wouldn’t expect anything else. And… you’re about to do it again, aren’t you?”
Eon pushed away. He and Owen shared a smile. For a fleeting moment, it was like they were two thousand years younger. So much had changed since then.
Some things didn’t.
“I’ll do my best,” they both said.
The Mega Stone inside Owen’s body shattered, unleashing a swirl of prismatic energy throughout his flesh. His flame shifted to the black-and-white spark of Chaos. More fire erupted from the sides of his mouth. His scales blackened. But then, the lighter colors of his belly gained the rainbow sheen of the Mega Stone’s life energy. He could hardly contain the power—but he’d need every bit of it to go on the offensive.
This was it.
“What are you—uff!”
Eon had Teleported directly into that cage within the serpent’s torso. There, his body instantly dissolved, but the mote of light within swirled as a single speck of light. It did not go out.
“What did he do?! What are YOU planning?!”
“A way to beat you,” Owen said. “Same way we’ve beaten all the gods! You may want to be a tyrant… but if there’s just ONE person to resist you, you’ll never have that control!”
“One, against all of me! Owen, you idiot…”
He opened his mouth. Owen’s eyes widened—he’d gotten careless and lost his defensive stance. Alexander had been waiting for this. He haphazardly tried to evade instead, spiraling his single Hand around his body.
Ten arcing beams of light fell upon Owen on all sides. Energy. Something Owen normally couldn’t Perceive. But as Owen frantically beat his wings to gain distance—a pointless effort against someone with the whole world inside him—he realized something.
I see them?
They weren’t quite solid, but they weren’t invisible to his Perceive. Divine energy? Distortions in the wind? Owen didn’t have the time to figure it out, nor did he think it was important. All that mattered was that the blasts coming his way were clear as the night sky.
He twisted his body through the air, dodging nine of the ten blasts with ease. The final one was too hard to maneuver around and he brought his single Hand forward to clash against it. The force dislocated his shoulder and sent him spiraling down tens of feet.
Deafening booms rattled Owen’s head. Ethereal metal on metal. The pointed end of his whip stabbed into his shoulder; threads of gold pulled his arm back into place and healed it.
That attack…
It was massive. Just a glancing blow that he had to deflect was enough to nearly pull off his arm. But for something with nearly every Hand, and nearly every soul—the living and beyond—he had deflected it.
Not only that, but as he reached toward it, faint traces of that power seeped into Owen. He could Mimic this. He could Usurp this. Steal bits of that power back.
And Alexander—or was it Kilo itself?—had been bargaining with the Overseers. If he’d gained true control of that much power… someone with Alexander’s will would not have stooped to bargaining.
What was going on? By all accounts, Alexander should have vaporized Owen already. He’d only stood up to him symbolically, to maybe appeal to the Overseers to assist him. But instead, they turned away.
It wasn’t abandonment…
The Charizard breathed in slowly, Chaos flames escaping with every exhale.
Leph had demonstrated the opposite… and Owen, too, knew the secret of the Hands of Creation.
They weren’t “power.” Even just a single Hand was enough, with the right skill, to access all the world’s exploits, all of its latent power, all of the “reality-grasping” the Hands could do. More Hands meant less skill was needed for its power, but a single Hand and complete knowledge was just as good.
Owen was far from a true expert. He was not a native god. He was just a Charizard. Mostly.
Yet this god, this self-proclaimed Alexander, did not simply kill Owen where he stood. Even his silly little scarf had been enough to counteract a song that destroyed the world.
Before, Owen had faced Alexander on blind hope and raw stubbornness. Now, it paid off.
There was still a way out of this.
“You were saying?” Owen challenged.
Alexander stared, befuddled for only a moment. Then, his twisted metal jaws morphed into a cackling grin. His laughter was like a roaring fire doused with ice.
“So that’s how it will be?!” Alexander declared. “Fine! FINE! I accept your challenge, you eternal thorn in my side.
“I suppose even I can acknowledge, begrudgingly, that a meal tastes better when you have to work for it.”
This was ridiculous. This wasn’t Alexander or Nevren or any other foe he’d faced. He was… all of them, and none of them. And then some. Was this everyone? Everyone’s negativity, coated in a rotten wrapper that was Alexander’s tainted will?
“Give it up, Diyem! I… I know you’re not Alexander!” Owen shouted. “I know you can come back!”
“Oh, shout all you want, fool. But I am done denying the world’s truth! I, with nearly every Hand, and all the souls of the world, am already the writer of the new world!”
“Not until you take away mine.” Owen snarled. “They’ll wake up. And you will wake up with them!”
“Oh, prattle on, prattle ON!” Alexander spiraled skyward. Owen followed him, never letting Alexander get behind his position.
“This world can still be fixed! It’s not too late! Even if we have to start from zero all over again… we’re still here!”
“And I say zero is enough!” Alexander said. “Go ahead, Owen, with your SINGLE shred of divinity. Fight the rules of the world that I now dictate! Which of us will win in this crumbling theater?
“Let’s see you beat the odds… OF ONE THOUSAND TO ONE!”
Owen vs. Kilo. Art by Chibi Pika
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Author’s Note: Special thanks to my beta readers, soliloquy, Ambyssin, and Sparkling Espeon as always, but a specific special thanks to Ambyssin for fine-tuning the dialogue of “GL” for his current and future appearances during the finale.