Gundam MS: Episode 12

Relena’s Story

“Why the hell is that girl still sitting like that? It’s been half an hour already!” said Vegetta angrily.

Relena sat cross-legged, stock-still, eyes unfocused, staring at something beyond normal sight. Death’s scythe was resting on her lap, while the blade emitted ghostly wisps of black fire, barely able to be seen. Keyonne, Ayeka, Heero, and Vegetta sat around her, while Ryo Ohki floated above her shoulder, eyes closed, seemingly asleep.

Ryo Ohki opened her eyes and turned towards Vegetta. “I already told you. She’s in shock from acquiring Death’s power. She should snap out of it in a an minute now.”

“So she’s strong. In my world, I can destroy galaxies! How hard can this be for her?”

“She’s not just in shock because of the power,” Ryo Ohki said hesitantly. “I don’t know how to explain this easily. Death has… senses… far beyond anything mortals dream of. He can sense all things in this Universe at once, down to the grass itself. He can, well, it’s not descriptive enough, but he can envision the entire Universe stretching out in all directions. Relena has a tiny fraction of his power, but a large fraction of his mental abilities. The human mind wasn’t meant to understand things the way she understands them now. It’s really pretty complicated.”

Ayeka was looking at her scanner, which she had been running over Relena. “Um, Ryo Ohki, how much is ‘a tiny fraction?’”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because my scanner is going off the charts.”

“Well, you know that Death is virtually omnipotent.”

“Uh huh,” replied Ayeka slowly, suspecting already where this was going.

“Well, take one trillionth of infinity. What do you get?” Everyone stared dumbfounded, even Vegetta.

“Infinity…” whispered Ayeka dumbfounded.

“Well, technically yes,” replied Ryo Ohki. “However, like I said, Death is virtually omnipotent, so it’s not quite that high. But it’s still very, very large.”

“I can see them,” whispered Relena.

Everyone started, and several of them jumped to their feet. They leaned closer to her, trying to better hear what she was saying. Her eyes were still unfocused.

“All those people… all those beings… all across the Universe,” she continued slowly and haltingly. “I can sense all of them…”

“So, how does it feel to be a god?” asked Ayeka.

“Not just a god,” replied Relena, smiling. “A god of gods.”

The words seemed to come with a stronger emphasis. It wasn’t an emotion; it was something much more powerful. It was something eternal.

“Ryo Ohki, Vegetta, come. We have work to do.”

“Oh no,” moaned the little Angel. “This is going to turn out badly, isn’t it?”

And all three were gone.

***********

The problem with describing Death is that English isn’t really constructed for it. First of all, he’s not really a he (just like Misato isn’t really a she). All Deaths identify with their forms, but they’re not the same thing. Second, he’s not really Death.

It’s already been mentioned that Deaths don’t really think of themselves in that way. It is true that ushering souls into the next world is a big part of their job, but it’s only one part. They’re the great regulators of the Multiverse, sort of like really, really high-class engineers. They make sure that their little gear in the grand machine is well greased. All the rules of existence are kept running, and everything works like it’s supposed to. Death (the killing kind, not the being), admittedly, is a pretty big part of that. Without a Death, a Universe will slowly wither away. No one will die, no matter how injured (which, of course, leads to problems), and the Universe will slowly decay. In as little as a week, a Universe could fade away completely.

This can cause very serious problems. For one thing, Universes are two-way roads. They exist because of people’s belief in them, and people’s belief in a Universe exists because the Universe makes it so. In fact, people don’t even have to really believe in a Universe for it to exist. Written words and pictures can create existence without belief.

So what happens if the focus of this belief, or maybe semi-belief, is removed? The belief is removed too. People can lose their minds if something like that happens.

Especially if they happen to be the original creator of that world.

So, what does that have to do with this?

Almost nothing.

But keep it in mind. You may need to know it one day. Just be careful of dreams, OK? After all, every one creates it’s own little world.

***********

It would have surprised Relena to know that she doesn’t really have a physical body anymore. Her body has been completely transformed into energy. Some of you might remember a little thing that goes something like E=mc². For your benefit, yes, that is an awful lot of energy. She can control it now, thanks mostly to unconscious knowledge given to her by Death.

Of course, that might not surprise her after all. Who knows how deep that knowledge goes?

Some scientists have theorized about dark matter, which is, in hideously butchered summary (think Fox here), a whole lot of mass that should exist, but doesn’t seem to. That mass exists as Death’s form, and has been converted to energy. Well, sort of, anyway. It’s slightly more complicated than that, and involves all sorts of nifty 5D physics to make sure that the mass stays here when Death leaves, and acts as mass even though it’s energy (again, sort of), and other stuff like that.

If you know a physicist, don’t tell him this. It’ll just make him angry, or maybe laugh, depending. Besides, even if he believes you, it won’t do him any good. A lot of Deaths don’t like people to figure these things out. Takes away the mystery, you know? Magic is no good if you know the secret.

Anyway, Relena’s now-energized form appeared again, along with her two comrades, after ducking into the fifth dimension. Imagine… Oh, forget it. Just pretend she teleported. The real explanation won’t do you any good, and is a whole lot more complicated.

The three of them floated above a battlefield, where two armies of somewhat green aliens fought, using (basically) the equivalent of medieval weaponry. Atop two very distant hills on opposite sides stood groups of tents, surrounded by a good-sized bustle of work. Several figures on each hill were using fairly crude spyglasses to watch the battle, and would occasionally give orders to some of their aids to relay to the troops. In short, it was a nice little war, in approved fantasy style.

Alright, a very bloody little war.

The real Death divides himself into a trillion little parts, each equally conscious. He is everywhere he needs to be.

Relena, as his substitute, is also divided up into a trillion little parts, but only one of those parts is really conscious in-and-of itself. Otherwise, this same scene would be playing itself out in slightly altered format all over the Universe. It is very good for narration that this doesn’t happen.

“What… is this?” asked Relena hesitantly, as if she wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to say.

“What do you mean, ‘what is this?’” responded Vegetta contemptuously. “It’s a battle. Even I can figure that out. See, over on that hill is one general, and over there is the other.”

“No, I mean, why is this happening?”

“Why do any wars happen?” asked Ryo Ohki, rather rhetorically. “One side wants to take over the other side. These two have been at it for over a hundred years, on and off. This particular battle was caused-”

“-was caused when a high ranking official fell off his horse inside the borders of the other country on a peace mission. They claimed it was an assassination attempt and declared war. I know all about it.”

“These people made that kind of mistake?” asked Vegetta incredulously. “What kind of idiots are they?”

“They didn’t make a mistake,” replied Ryo Ohki. “They deliberately misinterpreted the facts in order to go to war.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” interjected Relena before Vegetta could say anything. “Why does this happen?”

Ryo Ohki, thought for a second, and then began to speak, very slowly. “I don’t understand-”

“Yes you do,” responded Relena with that strange emphasis. “But I shall state it again anyway. Why is this ALLOWED to happen?”

“There’s no other way,” responded Ryo Ohki. “Out of this war will arise a nation strong enough to conquer all the other little states in this region. A series of bloody battles will occur, but afterwards, they’ll be united. The result will be a strong country that will lead its world into great scientific discoveries.”

“A war is not necessary for this to happen.”

“You’re wrong!” exclaimed Vegetta. “Sometimes, a war is exactly what a place needs. Wars bring with them the realization that, no matter how horrible battles are, sometimes there are things worth fighting and dying for! No world can grasp that fact without fighting.”

“I will not allow this to happen. I AM DEATH, AND TO THIS,” Relena paused, and raised her scythe into the sky. Black fire burned along the edge, precisely controlled.

I SAY NO!

Dark energy radiated out from the scythe blade, not in rays, but in a perfect sphere, with a rush of wind more powerful than a hurricane. All across the world, people lay down whatever weapons they had. Within hours, blacksmiths were busy turning them into all manner of peaceful implements (yes, plowshares included). All was done because of one belief:

There is nothing worth killing for.

Ripples of cause and effect hurtled down the timeline. The changes passed unnoticed by everyone.

Well, almost everyone.

Relena watched what she had done unfold in front of her eyes in four dimensions (the fourth being time, of course).

She watched. And she swore.

***********

In the original timeline, the planet became a great super-power. It eventually had a large star-spanning empire, which it administered under the ideals of the country that had been birthed back in that war Relena had watched over. It was the perfect ideal; strong, but fair.

Not anymore.

Shortly after they had achieved space flight (almost a hundred years after they would have originally), they had been singled out by planet raiders and attacked. Unwilling to fight back, the new raiders made this world their home, brutally oppressing the natives. Only bloodshed was the result.

***********

“Raiders my ass,” mumbled Relena under her breath.

“Nothing good will come of messing around with time like this,” said Ryo Ohki. “The real Death would have been able to. You don’t understand what you’re doing! You’ll just make things worse.”

“We’ll see about that. Come. We have a duty to fulfill.”

“Yeah, but so far, we’re doing the exact opposite.”

And they were gone.

***********

The raiders came from a planet that had been struck by an asteroid many millions of years ago. However, their planet had been unable to heal itself, and living conditions were bad. Shortly after they achieved space flight, they chose to leave their dying planet and seek a home elsewhere. When they could not find an unoccupied colony, they took a planet over.

“Stupid meteor,” said Relena, and she reached a hand back in time and destroyed it. “No more raiders,” she said happily.

“Yeah, no more raiders alright,” responded Ryo Ohki scathingly. “Or any other sentient life forms in this sector.”

“Huh?” said Relena, seeing that Ryo Ohki was right. “But how? What happened?”

“That meteor might have damaged their planet, but it also provided the seeds for the birth of their species! It did the same on five other planets it passed close to. You just wiped out trillions of life forms.”

“Nice going, Miss Wizard,” said Vegetta. “Maybe you should try making things better next time, not worse.”

Relena was desperate. She could do something, change things, fix things-

Only she couldn’t.

She didn’t know how.

She wouldn’t be able to do things right; she couldn’t see far enough ahead or behind to know what the consequences of her actions would be.

So, in resignation, she changed things back.

“It’s not easy, is it?” she asked.

“No,” replied Ryo Ohki. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. That is from your planet, right?”

“Yeah, some gang flick I think. Never saw it myself. Does he ever help things out?”

“All the time. Mostly in small ways. There are too many tragedies, too much death, for him to help them all. And sometimes a few deaths now will prevent hundreds later on. He does what he can, but sometimes he has to just let things go. It’s not really the greatest job in the world.”

“Can’t he make a world where everyone is happy? Where everything turns out good in real life, and no one has to die?”

“Would you really want to live in that kind of world?”

Relena thought about it. “No,” she finally said. “But I think it’s time to get back.”

“Damn straight,” said Vegetta.

***********

“So, what are we supposed to do, anyway?” asked Keyonne.

“Die!” suggested Escaflowne. “Dilandou, attack them!”

“I should have known better than to say something like that,” mumbled Keyonne. Dilandou rushed her and planted a weak punch on her chest.

“Command achieved,” he said.

“Oh, forget him!” yelled Epyon. “I’ll take these guys out!”

“Not while I’m around!” said Heero. TALGEESE POWER ACTIVATE!

As strange as it may be, Heero was surrounded in a set of armor painted with a tuxedo. Taking the shoulder-mounted cannon in his hands, he pointed straight at Epyon, readying his only ranged attack. PANSY ROSE CANNON!

A bright red rose smacked Epyon directly between the eyes, dealing no damage but annoying her greatly. “I’m gonna make this hurt,” she said as she took out her beam sword.

Heero stared at his “cannon.” Then he stared at Epyon’s sword. Then he swore.

“Screw this! I’m gonna gut you from head to toe! PANSY DUAL SWORDS! Two bright pink swords shot out of his hands, and with only a momentary glance of distaste at the color, Heero leaped at Epyon in a rage. They quickly flew out of site as they dueled.

“Anyway,” said Escaflowne, “Dilandou, stab them!”

Dilandou tapped Keyonne with the point of his sword.

“Kill them!” yelled Escaflowne.

“How?” asked Dilandou.

“Hit them with your sword!” screamed an increasingly distraught Escaflowne.

Dilandou tapped Keyonne with the flat of his sword. “It didn’t work,” he said.

You can’t disobey a slave circlet. But, if you’re strong enough, then you can cheat it.

Into this chaos, Relena appeared. “Hey!” she yelled, “Who wants to get trashed first?”

“You can’t interfere directly!” yelled Ryo Ohki.

“And besides,” said Duo as he floated into existence, “I’m going to be your opponent.”

Relena disappeared, and took up Duo’s challenge. They fought in a battle that had no rules; being of pure energy and having the ability to manipulate all of reality, the two battled across all five dimensions. There were no rules, other than one:

Kill your enemy.

A small digression should happen here to explain about dimensions. It’s going to have to happen sometime, and this is as good as any.

Now, for most normal Universes (and “normal” is being used very loosely), there are four regular dimensions and one more-or-less unknown dimension. The four normal ones are the three spatial dimensions (length, width, and height) and the one temporal one, time. Of course, this isn’t true in all Universes. There are plenty without all three spatial, or with extra ones inserted in for narrative convenience. But mostly, this rule holds true.

The fifth dimension is one that is almost never known, simply because virtually no one ever changes their location in it. It is immeasurable, and usually thought to be a constant. It always is, within a Universe.

It is reality.

It is alterable only by Death himself, although he can give that power to others in his Universe.

Why this Death has given it to the Demons is a mystery to everyone but the demons, the angels, and Death himself.

But back to the fight.

Have you ever seen a Jackie Chan film? If so, you’ve probably seen a scene where he will try to protect something, while all around him people are trying to break it. That’s a lot how this was.

Duo blasted power everywhere, sometimes damaging by missing Relena, sometimes by purposeful aim. Relena, meanwhile, tried to keep the Universe from going down the drain while not dying in the process. Her efforts were not helped by the fact that she wasn’t very good with her newfound powers. It wasn’t that she was slower; the way they were fighting, power equals speed, and she was much more powerful. But she was… clumsy. Uncoordinated. Duo had eons to hone his powers to perfection; Relena had hours. The limited knowledge given by Death helped a lot, but it wasn’t enough to counter Duo’s experience. The fight might have taken minutes or days; the way they fought, time was fluid. One minute they were in the distant past, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, then they were further back, when the earth wasn’t even formed, then they were in the far future, when the Sun had long since gone nova, then they were back to the seconds just after the beginning of everything, then they were near a battle between Epyon and Heero, with Oreades, Escaflowne, and the others standing over on the other side-

Wait.

Duo looked around. Figuratively, since he still didn’t have a body. They were back when they started. But his opponent had vanished. He was a little worried; he had just been working up to the climax of the battle, and this was an unexpected place for her to flee.

Then he spotted it. And smiled.

He formed his body with blinding speed (for the look of things), and cradled a blinding black ball of dark energy in between his hands. Above him, Relena flew in for he kill shot, scythe glowing even blacker than his ball. Faster than light she moved, flying at him from across the Universe where she had hid, hoping to catch him not looking. But in the milliseconds he had, he was ready.

“POWER THAT CAN SMASH PLANETS INTO DUST, BLOW OUT STARS LIKE CANDLES, BLAST APART BLACK HOLES WITH EASE, AND CUT EVEN REALITY ISTELF INTO SHREADS!” Duo screamed the words of the spell faster than light, power streaming away in a moment that transcended time.

“I CALL UPON THIS GREATEST OF FORBIDEN LORES TO HELP ME IN MY TIME OF NEED! POWER BEYOND POWERS, STRIKE WITH ME!” Duo gathered his energy for the final touch, to say the name of this spell. Power like this couldn’t be rushed, be he would have just enough time.

One way or another, he had won.

OMEGA CRASH!

He had cut it close. Relena was already in the atmosphere when the column of anti-light flew at her. What happened next was fast, even by the standards of Death himself. It will be slowed down for your benefit.

As the beam hit her, Relena seemed to come apart. The hole in her back opened up, wider and wider, while holes seemed to appear all over her. Tiny, microscopic holes, but they were there, making her look like a piece of cheesecloth. As the hole in her back got wider, her skin began to stretch and flatten out. Her colors began to flow together, mixing and changing, until they were all the same light tan color. Her skin began to come taunt into a single, almost perfectly circular, plane, centered around Duo’s beam. She no longer looked the least like a body.

She looked like a net.

The Relena-net blasted down Duo’s beam, and when it hit Duo, it began to transform in the opposite way, except this time, it stopped in a perfect sphere. Duo’s power winked out like a lamp, and he floated up above for all to see.

Relena stepped out from the atom she was hiding in, and smirked at her handiwork.

“Now now,” she said, “Don’t you think an Omega Crash is a little overkill? Look what it did to reality.” Indeed, where the beam had passed, a faint afterimage could be seen, as though space itself had been thinned. “You know, that beam blew apart the core of a galaxy, and that’s the least of it. It would take me days to fix all the damage if I wasn’t just going to let the real Death deal with it when he gets back.”

“I underestimated you,” Duo reluctantly admitted. “I suppose you’re going to kill me now.”

“Yep,” said Relena, and raised her scythe to deliver the killer blow.

The normal Relena would have. But, just in time, Death-given observations and senses started to kick in and ring warning-lights in her brain. She hesitated for a second, which was exactly what was needed.

“NO!” yelled out Ryo Ohki. “Don’t kill him!”

“Why not?” asked Relena. “Why should I spare his life? Why would it be a bad thing? But most importantly… why did I hear suppressed tones of victory in his voice?”

Duo groaned. He was certain he had hid it better than that. So he had lost after all…

“Duo is a being of pure energy,” explained Ryo Ohki quickly, trying to get it all out before Relena changed her mind. “For beings of matter, simply blasting them apart will kill them safely. But for a being of energy, the same thing isn’t true. If you break their matrix, their consciousness, their energy will no longer be contained, and will, basically, explode. The size of the blast depends on the power of the demon.”

“So how big would Duo’s explosion be?” asked Relena. “Enough to take out this city? This planet?”

“Most of this galaxy,” replied Ryo Ohki.

“Ouch,” said Relena. “Well, nice try there, buddy. See ya ‘round!” With a wave, Relena sent Duo off into the middle of a sun in the middle of a galaxy far, far away. By the time he broke out of his cage, the real Death would be back in charge.

Relena turned her gaze to those that remained. “Now, as for you guys…” As she trailed off, she raised her scythe and smiled.

“Wait!” yelled Ryo Ohki. “You can’t interfere directly, remember?” Relena sighed, and the bad guys turned back to their job of beating up the good guys.

Relena snapped her fingers, and split into two. “But I can interfere indirectly!” the two chorused, and both of them disappeared.

Heero’s battle raged on, twin swords against sword, shield, and whip. Despite having no real weapons training, Heero was a natural swordsman, and more importantly, he learned fast. Epyon wasn’t a natural, but she had basic training. She knew she wasn’t very skilled, but she had so far relied on the fact that her opponents were less skilled. Now, however, she was faced with an opponent who wasn’t a complete pushover, and she wasn’t having a very good time of it. She had been winning in the beginning, but Heero was getting better exponentially, and now the tide of battle had turned.

At least, it had until Relena glomped onto Heero’s shoulder, completely catching his sword arms.

“Hey, Heero!” she yelled cutely.

Never one to waste a Death-given opportunity, Epyon brought both her weapons around to strike into the now-defenseless Heero, giving him the deathblow he so richly deserved-

And had both her weapons blocked. At the same time. By the same end of Relena’s scythe.

Both Eypon and Heero’s eyes watered at this physical impossibility which won’t be explained because there’s been too much explanation already, so make up something that will satisfy you.

Epyon drew back and struck as fast as she could with both weapons, even using her feet sometimes, but every strike was somehow blocked by Relena, even though she didn’t seem to be paying attention (she wasn’t really; suffice it to say that at the moment she had a lot of extra attention to go around). Of course, Heero was encased in a glomp, so he wasn’t exactly doing any attacking either.

“Do you mind?” he said rather acidly. “I’m trying to kill someone here.”

“You’re not supposed to kill anyone!” admonished Relena. “We fight for love and justice and peace and… and… what was the fourth one again?”

“Dreams!” yelled Ryo Ohki from across the battlefield.

“I can’t believe I’m seeing this,” muttered Vegetta. He promptly continued his almost aggressive sulking, although it probably wouldn’t be a very good idea to call it that in his hearing (he called it meditating, or thinking, depending; very few people were fooled).

“Right, love and justice and peace and dreams,” finished Relena.

“Well, you might fight for love and peace and dreams and…” Heero paused, went over the list in his head, and finally gave up. “And whatever, but I fight for not getting my throat cut.”

“And a very pretty throat it is, too,” flirted Relena (no matter how much power she got, some things would never change). “But you still can’t kill anyone. Especially her. We’ll probably end up converting her back to the cause of good before this is over.”

“Well, if I can’t kill her, how should we get rid of her?”

“Oh, she’ll run once she sees her foot soldiers get beaten.”

Heero looked over his shoulder to see an identical Relena standing with the others.

A short time ago…

Relena appeared next to Ayeka and began to talk to her.

“Hey, you see that circlet on Dilandou’s head? That’s controlling him. Hack into it and you’ll allow him to openly fight Escaflowne and the others.”

“Whu… Huh… Duh…” replied an Ayeka dumbstruck that Relena said something that was fairly intelligent. Then she regained herself and started pounding at her all-purpose portable computer. Being smart, she was good with computers, which meant she could hack anything. Whether or not this made any sense is open to debate, but not here.

Meanwhile, Escaflowne continued blithely in his fairly insane ordering of Dilandou, trying to find some orders that his unwilling slave wouldn’t be able to mistake. “Alright, then will you-”

“This is taking too long,” said Relena, and…

A fifteen minute hacking job was done in seconds.

“I think I’d rather kill you,” said a very pissed off Dilandou.

Escaflowne teleported away as only those deathly afraid can manage.

“Now, Ayeka, if you would be so kind-” began Relena.

“I’m not an idiot like you,” sniffed Ayeka, and punched a button on her computer.

Dillandou’s armor folding into itself and disappeared, and Dillandou himself collapsed. By the time he hit the ground, he was a she.

“As long as Celena keeps the circlet on, Dillandou will be contained within it.”

Epyon looked on in horror as her plans collapsed around her. Then she did the prudent thing and ran away with her tail between her legs.

“Hey, come back!” yelled Ryo Ohki. “You didn’t even make any speeches!”

It was at this point that things became really stupid.

For your protection, that part has been cut out.

So, um, wow! Stuff sure happened right here. You sure waited a while! And was it worth it? No! But it’s sort of neat anyway, right? Right? Oh, well, anyway, tune in next time for adventures in DBZ and/or Evangelion, depending on how much I can fit it! God, did I do that right? I am SO out of practice. Um, I’m not still on, am I? Shi-