Darkness was finally full. Although how long that would last was anyone’s guess. After finally consuming enough universes--and then planets once his stomach started getting close to full--to satisfy his appetite, he could finally move on to what he had been trying to do for a couple million years now: find Lord Flare and get his revenge on him. After that, he would find the Book of Doomsdark and the Trimonds and carry out his master plan. As his five-foot tall, pitch-black body was soaring across Universe-57390, his yellow eyes glowed as his two upright pointy ears sensed the presence of a ship...a familiar ship… Darkness suddenly stopped in his place. He could not see the ship, but he sensed it, all right. A ship traveling through time and space, in such a way that it could not be detected by anything traveling through spacetime normally. But Darkness didn’t have to care for such rules. He has been alive so long, he knew all the tips and tricks about using his Hole Piece...including that of detecting such ships. Darkness concentrated hard, trying to determine the nature of this ship… Suddenly, he remembered, and shivered at the thought of it. It was Wizel’s ship. He remembered how, early in his life, after he accidentally helped destroy his home Universe, he had been fighting with Lightness over the fate of many other Universes. He wanted to eat them, Lightness wanted to protect them. At one point, he blasted a very weak Lightness into some planet that looked like a human face--and then the torture happened. Wizel’s ship had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and Wizel’s daughter, Gyges, had come out of the ship and beat him to a pulp. It was the first time anyone had ever beaten him to such an extreme degree--he had thought himself invincible, a being with such extraordinary power. He found himself inside an enormous ship with constantly shifting insides, stripped of his Hole Piece and trapped in some sort of icy room for nearly a decade before getting freed by a then-young Flareo. He managed to get his Hole Piece back, but shuddered at the thought of something like that happening again...although it did happen again. When Lord Flare did pretty much the exact same thing, keeping Darkness out of commission for the entirety of the Lord’s reign. For some reason, Lord Flare had given Darkness back his Hole Piece after his empire crumbled and let him go, and Darkness had been trying to find Lord Flare to get his revenge ever since. His ears did not detect Wizel in her ship--to his infinite relief--although they did detect a different Hole--albeit one significantly weaker, probably because it had recently recondensed. Darkness grinned. He detected no one of even a minor threat in this ship. He could finally have his revenge on Wizel by tearing her spaceship apart from the inside. But there was another in the ship as well. One who he could not sense, due to that being possessing a hundred years of training in using his Hole. So Darkness arrogantly didn’t even consider the disembodied sneeze he heard. Darkness entered the current of spacetime closest to the ship and whisked himself onboard. … Dr. Athena was sitting on a couch, eating potato chips and reading “The Mez” while Aerstron was attempting to boil a glass of water by tapping into the energy stored in his Hole piece. Despite all of the training he had done with it, it was still difficult for him to consciously manipulate the energy within. It had been about three days since they had found each other at Hilbert’s Infinitely Grand Hotel, and they had each discussed what each of them had done and discovered since Weirdo Drinc Universe. Aerstron told Dr. Athena about galaxies made of solid diamond, multiverses where atoms were large enough you could hold them in your hand, and about running into future versions of her frequently. Sometimes she had just seen a future version of him just minutes ago, other times they had not seen each other for years. It had become a sort of game between the two of them to trace their timelines, and mark where the other was at. Dr. Athena, in turn, told Aerstron everything she had discovered about Lord Flare, the Infins, Sponsored Beings, and Holes in her time at Flare Castle and HIGH. She showed him “The Mez,” although she quickly discovered that Aerstron could only see blank pages due to Lord Flare’s highly specific insistence on getting a copy that only Dr. Athena could read, to ensure the wrong people would never be able to use it. She was still able to tell him about every concept in the book she encountered. The book worked in strange ways, however--one could never simply read it in the normal way, as every time one flipped to the same page, one would end up on a completely different topic. Apparently, to compress billions of pages worth of information into just around a thousand, these pages would change content at random points of time. It was much easier to read the book using the voice-search option, although that could only get her to portions based on her own initial queries. Suddenly, the two heard a large crash and alarms began ringing off throughout the ship. Aerstron’s neural sync with the ships computer told him exactly what was going on. Darkness was crashing around the ship, slaughtering thousands, trying to interfere with the ship’s structural stability. Aerstron quickly commanded the ship to begin building a cocoon of dense material around him, but he was not sure if that could hold him. He put his hand on his burner and stood up. “What is happening?” Dr. Athena asked with a concerned look on her face. “Darkness is in the ship.” Dr. Athena stood up, absolutely horrified. “The monster that ate my home planet, the horrific Sponsored Being who can consume universes, is IN THE SHIP?” “Yes, it certainly looks like it.” Dr. Athena quickly asked her book, “How do I use my Hole powers to obliterate a Hole Piece?” “The Mez” simply turned to page 493, which read, “Hole Pieces cannot be obliterated, only torn apart or stolen. Sponsored Beings with Hole Pieces cannot be torn apart unless their Infins want them to. Beings with Hole Pieces can be weakened, depending on how much mastery they have over their Hole Pieces. It’s really difficult to steal Hole Pieces, unless you’ve mastered particular techniques and have sufficiently weakened the being with the Hole Piece.” “Alright, fine! Then how can I use my Hole Powers to kick Darkness off the ship?” Turning to page 243, the book simply read, “Who is Darkness?” “Uggh!!! Not now! Stop giving me such a hard time and TELL ME HOW TO BEAT UP A REALLY POWERFUL SPONSORED BEING!!!!” The Mez turned to page 1, which read, “Rudeness is bad for your health. I recommend anger management medicine, two doses a day, seven days a week.” Dr. Athena just opened her mouth wide, in complete disbelief at how much of an intentional pain in the neck this book was being at such a vital time. Then the door burst inward and shot across the room, missing Dr. Athena by an inch as it smashed through the furniture and into the nearby wall. Standing where the door once was was a creature unlike anything Dr. Athena had ever seen before. It looked like an arm that had come out of the ground, except its two long, straight pointy ears made it look like two fingers coming out of the arm. It had no feet, instead seeming like a black shadow sticking up from the floor. It had two short, three fingered hands sticking out from its body. Its two golden eyes glowed while its mouth held the place of a permanent sneer. It had blue and purple flames coming out of its body, although these flames disappeared shortly after it broke through the door, as if these flames only appeared while it was attacking something. The pitch-black shadow smiled and remarked, “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Acel? What brings you here, on Wizel’s ship? I thought you hated her guts? Speaking of which, I have not seen a single person who works for Wizel on this ship at all since I got here, just some utterly pathetic humanoids. Whatever. It’s nice, ruining her ship for her anyway.” The pitch-black shadow soared right up in front of a shocked Dr. Athena and whispered, “Remember I, Darkness? No? Of course not. It seems you have recondensed. A bummer. If you had years of training on you, you could have easily kicked me out with a snap of a finger. Too bad. Now it’s my turn to--” Aerstron’s vision went red. He could feel the energy--and insanity--building up in the back of his mind. He had encountered Darkness before, albeit an older version than this one. And it wasn’t a pleasant encounter. And now he was here? Threatening his friend? Aerstron let the rage break loose. He exploded into flame, and smashed a right hook into the sneer he wore on his face. Darkness looked surprised. It had been a long time since someone with a Hole had managed to sneak up on him. His flames flared up, and he smiled. It had also been a long time since he had been in a fair fight. Darkness screeched so loudly that it temporarily deafened the ears of both Dr. Athena and Aerstron Mill. After this, he spit out a black sphere of energy at a distracted Mill, which… stopped in place, thanks to Dr. Athena, who finally figured out how to stop spheres of energy in their place with her Hole. The black shadow just sneered and soared over to Mill, grew the height of the room, and opened his mouth wide to swallow him up. Objects from the room started flying into Darkness’s mouth, including the black sphere, tables, and potato chips. Mill saw what Dr. Athena was doing. He concentrated on having the ship turn energy into more potato chips. A whole lot more potato chips. The ship would materialize them in mid-air, and as soon as they were formed, Dr. Athena guided them straight into Darkness’s mouth. Darkness was getting agitated. He couldn’t get to Mill, for storms of chips and other objects were getting thrown into his mouth, forcing him to swallow these all up. He was already full on the stomach to begin with, and soon had no room for anything, due to a universe’s worth of potato chips being crammed into his mouth. His eyes grew wide, and he realized what was about to happen. He shut his mouth and put his arms onto it, leaving a barrage of chips to slam into him...only to get absorbed by his skin, which also consumed objects through its dark membrane. But his immensely large stomach in the Warp Pocket within him was lurching, and the food kept coming for him. Suddenly, he could not hold it in any longer. Darkness threw up. An entire mesh of dirt, chips, tables, dead organisms, and all sorts of other undigested waste blasted all across the room, first shooting straight at Aerstron and Dr. Athena, slamming them into the wall, and then finally flooding the room. But for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and with Darkness, there was no exception. Darkness was sent flying back from the immense force of his vomit beam to such an extent that he was blasted straight through the room’s exterior and into rooms beyond. Dr. Athena and Aerstron got to the surface of the vomitus, seeing immense holes in every room beyond, caused by the impact of Darkness getting thrown back, until they saw the empty space of the Universe. Darkness had been thrown back all the way out of the ship into the Universe beyond so hard that he had created a huge hole in the side of the ship, and in every wall on his way there. If it were not for the fact that the ship was technically outside of spacetime at the moment, things would have been flying out into the vacuum. Aerstron quickly commanded the computer to absorb all of the vomitus and use it to repair the holes in the ship. Darkness had been weakened enough such that he would not pose a threat to anyone for some time. But Aerstron wasn’t content to just allow him to go and gorge on thousands of universes full of innocent people, to come back and threaten Dr. Athena again. He had the ship follow Darkness’s trail. When they had caught up with him, it was a simple matter for Aerstron to capture him in a room on the ship. Darkness was afraid. He knew where this was going, and he did not like it one bit. Aerstron was slowly approaching him from the other side of a large room, with Dr. Athena trailing behind him, looking concerned. Aerstron’s hands were glowing with tremendous orange light, and his eyes were emitting scalding blue energy. When he had gotten close to Darkness, he reached straight into him. He pulled out his Warp Pocket stomach, and… something else. It was a small dark orb which seemed to take up the whole room. Aerstron brought it to his chest and it disappeared. Dr. Athena could swear that some of the flames surrounding him took on a purple tint, but only for a fleeting second. He then grabbed Darkness by the end of his body, where his feet should have been, and shoved it into Darkness’s open mouth. Darkness let out a muffled scream. And then he was gone. Dr. Athena covered her mouth. She could not believe what she was seeing. As horrifyingly evil Darkness was, seeing Aerstron pull objects out of the menace and make him eat his own self was utterly grotesque, perhaps even sinister. She could only murmur, “Wha--how--but--that’s just--wow…” Without warning, a searing loud noise went off in Dr. Athena’s head. She covered her ears and asked, “Ow! What’s that noise? Is that normal? What is--” Dr. Athena suddenly fell forward and became unconscious. … She saw herself in the blank emptiness of her mind, face-to-face with Lord Flare. And Lord Flare did not look too happy. “What--where am I? What just happened? What--” “Dr. Athena,” Lord Flare replied, his arms crossed. He was frowning, as if he were upset about something. “I am speaking to you through your mind via the Universal Translator Chip on your forehead. Remember when I told you that it also doubles as a surveillance device? Well, it can also make you turn unconscious so that I can communicate with you in your mind.” “But...wait, why would you--” “Listen to me. Infinidark is PISSED OFF. A sore loser, too. Zhe is tired of zher Sponsored Being constantly getting trapped, destroyed, and rendered useless so many times. First it was Wizel, then it was me, and now it’s a Hole Piece of Krinfiel. I certainly commend your friend for stopping Darkness--but of course, Infinidark will ensure that probability is twisted to zher way to bring Darkness back--albeit that process could take millions of years. And Infinidark is impatient. Really impatient. Especially after me. Remember how I told you that I was trying to get the Infins to pay attention to the Posi Universe? Well, this just made that effort fail miserably, as far as Infinidark is concerned. Zhe is now forced to manipulate zher Hole Piece of Lectrue from within your friend, until zhe can successfully bring back Darkness and somehow manage to put it back into him. I am warning you; your friend is going to be fighting an immense internal battle now; Infinidark’s manipulation of the Hole Piece he just absorbed will make your friend begin to have desires to accomplish whatever goals Infinidark has in this game. Dark, dark goals…” “Wait--that black orb he absorbed was a Hole Piece?” Lord Flare sighed. “Yes, Dr. Athena, it was a Hole Piece. I’m impressed by him, though--I had to invent entirely new technology in order to extract Darkness’s Hole Piece when I did it. Nonetheless, be forewarned. The last person to steal Darkness’s Hole Piece became just as pure evil as Darkness was, and when I took it it began to do the same to me, until I created a way to store it--although I have high hopes for your friend here, seeing as he already had a Hole Piece to begin with.” Dr. Athena gasped. Aerstron may begin becoming…as evil as Darkness? Lord Flare saw the concern on her face and added, “Remember, Infinidark does not have direct control over that Hole Piece. Zhe only has the ability to manipulate how it’s used, how the being who’s using it acts. By the way, as far as Game Resets go… the Infins have to unanimously agree to cause one in order for it to happen, but with only Infinidark at a disadvantage--okay, maybe Infiniyes and Infinilight are also in low points right now, too--the other Infins will take this as a tactical advantage and refuse to reset it. But please… do be careful around Sponsored Beings… we cannot risk having all of them in tight spots, just as I had done during my reign.” Dr. Athena suddenly realized something, and the thought of it quickly made her extremely suspicious. “Hold on--aren’t you a Sponsored Being? Wouldn’t that make YOU susceptible to the influence of your Infin?” Lord Flare grimaced. “Well, yes…” “Then how do I know I can trust a single word you say? Your Infin could have desired for you to turn against all the Infins on purpose, just so that you could--” “--undermine them all once I become--or would have become--an Infin, after which Infinimind, who as my Infin knows my weaknesses, would consume me, yes, I have thought of that.” A drip of red sweat dropped down from Lord Flare’s head, as if he were approaching an uncomfortable subject. “Look--if I tell you how I managed to significantly reduce how much my Infin influences me right now, my entire plan would risk failure, because the word could spread, and the Infins would realize how I’m doing it--” “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU WON’T TELL ME HOW TO REDUCE AN INFIN’S INFLUENCE!!!? AERSTRON MILL HAS ONE OF THEIR HOLE PIECES NOW!!! I NEED YOU TO TELL ME SO THAT HE DOESN’T TURN EVIL LIKE YOU SAID--” “Listen. I cannot… alright, fine! Look, I know someone who can tell you safely such that no one else would find out, but I cannot tell you the nature of this person without risking my Infin finding out. The Hole Infinitel, however, very much can. If you really want to know, go to her. Your book can tell you where to find her. I will speak to you later--” Dr. Athena woke up, finding herself laying flat inside what looked like a medical pod. The glass covering on top opened up and she got up, walked out, and found herself face to face with an extremely concerned Aerstron Mill. “You are awake! That circuit on your forehead knocked you out for a while. I imagine Lucas has been talking to you through it. And he will have caught you up on the battle going on inside me right now. Now listen to me very, very carefully. I am going to transfer the ship to you, I know you will give it back to me when I either have this Hole out of me or have won the battle. Also, you must get us to Weirdo Drinc. It doesn’t matter when, you just need to get us to a version of him. And then you have to take us all to coordinates a6086-i9234-10:168:87 in the Posi universe. Just think them and the computer will take you there. You have to trust me. But don’t trust anything I say after this. Not a thing.” Just after Mill managed to blurt out all of this, he said, “Computer, transfer command to Dr. Athena. Retain no authority for Aerstron Mill,” and fell to the floor. … Words could not describe how utterly shocked Dr. Athena was, but she had to act quickly. If Mill was going to be a danger, she needed to keep him someplace where he could not harm anyone. She commanded the ship to transport Mill to a room with constant supplies of food, drink, and entertainment that he could not leave unless she commanded for the room’s door to open. Suddenly, an escort robot appeared out of nowhere, picked up a collapsed Mill, and flew him over to the room she asked for him to be sent to. Dr. Athena’s thoughts were racing. She just remembered that this ship once belonged to Wizel...meaning Weirdo Drinc, before giving it to Mill, could have gotten it from her… or stolen it... she did not know, but she knew she was going to ask this Infinitel about this when she found her. Dr. Athena grabbed “The Mez” and asked, “Where can I find Infinitel?” The book flipped to a random page and displayed a page that read, “Any Universal Entropy Reader will do.” “What do you mean, ‘Any Universal Entropy Reader will do?’ You’re not even explaining--” The book instantly closed and two eyes and a mouth popped on its cover, surprising Dr. Athena to such an extent that she dropped it. “Look, stop asking me so many questions! Seriously, discover this stuff for yourself, will you? I’m a guidebook, not a ‘I’ll answer every question you have about the Multiverse’ book, sheesh!” Then the book rolled its eyes and muttered, “A Universal Entropy Reader is a gigantic tree wrapped around a small asteroid with tons of plant life on it. There is one of these in every Universe, made to track how much longer until Heat Death occurs in that Universe. There’s tons of other asteroids flying around this asteroid, each one fitted with a device that makes anything it detects instantly transport to the far end of that Universe. It’s meant to make it extremely difficult for anyone to get to the tree, so that way no one can damage its ability to record Universal entropy. Inside each tree is a wormhole that leads to some tower that Infinitel lives in. So there.” Then the book shut its eyes and went to began to snore. Dr. Athena was starting to get really annoyed by this book. She wished Lord Flare had spent an extra hour ensuring that his specific details would exclude “excessively annoying and hard to work with” from the book description. Speaking of Lord Flare… “Mez!” she cried, “How do I prevent an Infin from manipulating a Hole Piece?” The book opened its eyes and hollered, “How am I supposed to know? No one’s done it before. Except for Lord Flare. And he’s not talking.” “Ugh, fine. Then what are the coordinates for the Universal Entropy Reader in this Universe--” “Let me spell it out for you: A-S-K Y-O-U-R S-H-I-P N-O-T M-E. There, see? Done.” The book fell asleep again, prompting Dr. Athena to pick it up and whack it into a wall. It didn’t seem to notice. She just sighed and asked the ship to go to the Universal Entropy Reader in whatever Universe they were in right now, and it suddenly swooped over through time and space...and swooped over through time and space...and swooped over through time and space… Drat, she thought. Apparently, every single time the ship instantaneously got to the Universal Entropy Reader, it would suddenly get whisked away someplace else due to the asteroids circling it detecting it. Dr. Athena got into a chair and closed her eyes to think. To think of a way to get to the Reader, to think about all of the events of the past few hours, to think about what was going to happen to Aerstron… yeah, she could really use a thinking break right now...and then she suddenly jumped up from her couch, yelling, “Eureka!” and ran off to the other side of the ship, excited at how she was going to solve this issue. ... Inside Mill’s head, there was a tremendous battle going on. Infinitel would appear and tell him he needed to come to zher. He would lash out, yelling “I will not listen to any Infins!”, and would run away in his dream world. He had sent himself into a dream state so he would have more control over himself during the fight. A dark being would show up occasionally and would say, “LET ME SPONSOR YOU!!! I CAN GIVE YOU MORE POWER THAN YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE!!! I COULD EVEN BRING YOUR FAMILY BACK FROM THE INFINITELY GRAND HOTEL!!!” For a moment the thought of seeing his family again was so tremendously appealing that he wanted to accept zher offer. But then he would snap back to reality, and would lash out at the being. Communication through a Hole Piece was a two way street. Aerstron was able to send such tremendous bursts of random data through the link that it would decapacitate whatever Infin was connected for some time. He waited for a while, and after he was sure he had won the first fight, he woke himself up. He looked around. He was in a medium sized room. He found a cool storage unit full of food that would never empty, a sink, dishes, and a large, blank computer screen. “Clever Athena,” Mill thought. He quickly began to scribble equations across the screen, trying to figure out a way to isolate the new Hole he had absorbed. TO BE CONTINUED… ~Lord Fell-caller ~Pentachorus
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 07:24:36 +0000
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