LEXX

With Stan and Kai falling helplessly towards Water, Xev is struggling for control of the Moth. Regaining it's balance, the Moth is urged towards Water as Xev tries desperately to find the guys. Stan and Kai brace for impact and hit the water at full pelt. Kai sinks immediately, the light from the sun fading quickly as he descends deeper and deeper under the surface. Stan, shocked and shaken, surfaces a few seconds after impact gasping for breath and treading water. He calls for Kai, amazed that he's still alive, but Kai is nowhere to be seen.

Xev skims the water in the Moth searching in the vain hope that the guys will turn up. But water is a vast, featureless planet comprising a vast featureless ocean. There are not even any cities in this area where Xev could get help so she just continues searching. At one point the dog-paddling Stan sees the Moth in the distance. But it's too far away and Xev doesn't see Stan waving.

After hours of fruitless searching, Xev has to head back to the Lexx. An angry 790 demands to know where his beloved Kai is, but the sad Xev can only shrug that she doesn't know. Maybe she's sad at losing her two best friends. Or maybe she's sad that she'll have to spend the rest of her life alone now. But more likely she's sad that she'll have to spend the future with an arrogant, paranoid, insulting and gender-confused robot head.

Xev takes a stand on the stand and asks Lexx why he ate the balloons.
"I was very hungry" replies the oh-so-intellectual Lexx.
Perhaps now he's eaten, Lexx can fly now, she suggests. Lexx says he can, but not very far. Oh well, it's a start I suppose.

And back on the planet Kai's hookrug get-up is getting him down, deeper into the heart of the ocean. Stan is struggling to stay afloat. He's been paddling for hours and there's still no sign of rescue, nor even anywhere to swim to. Poor Stan is so tired...so, so tired...

Stan falls unconscious and his head dips below the surface. And he's not able to lift it up again.

Stanley H Tweedle, Captain of the Lexx, starts to drown.

The next day Xev is out at dawn trying to locate the guys. 790 whitters about Kai not floating etc. etc. but Xev will not be put off. The moth skims the water once more, looking for any sign of life.

Stan, soaked and spluttering, is surprised to find himself washed up on a beach. A beach? On Water? Anyway...who should be there but our favourite supervillain, Prince!
"Hello Stanley" greets the little devil with a big smile.
Stan is slightly surprised and asks where they are. Prince is delighted to tell him that they are between Fire and Water.
"How is that possible?" asks Stan
"You made it possible. We are between Fire and Water, but we are not ON either of them. Oh look, here you come."
Uho. As Stan looks down the beach to where Prince is indicating, we finally work out what he's on about. Down the beach strides Stanley. No, another Stanley. This one is dressed identically to our own Stanley, except the boiler suit is entirely white. Something tells me that this does not bode well for Stan.

Stan is finally rescued by Xev. But it's a little too late. She fishes his limp body out of the ocean where it's been floating all night. Stan is dead, and Xev can barely lug his body aboard the Moth, but she manages to retrieve his earthly (or waterly) remains and heads back to the Lexx.

Kai is still meanwhile heading for the ocean floor. Of course that's presuming that this ocean has a floor. Perhaps the whole planet is just water and he's about to float right through to the other side? These and other musings were probably going through Kai's head to fill the boring hours spent sinking with nothing to look at, until below him a faint glow appears. As he nears it, the light grows brighter. Hmmm. Curiouser and curiouser...

Back on the Lexx, Xev desperately tries to shock Stan back to life with the protein regenerator. Something tells me that he's kinda past resuscitation by now, but she has to have a good try anyway. 790 merely burbles about the fact that she should be off looking for Kai...

...who is still busy sinking, but now the light is surrounding him. It's full of people. Specterly glowing people, I grant you, but people still. They are souls in limbo, waiting to be reincarnated as happy spirits on Water. Perhaps Heaven has one of those ticketing systems you get in the supermarket at the deli counter. Or perhaps not. Either way, the glowing souls seem happy enough floating gradually upwards in the hopes of a new life on Water.

"Tell me Stanley" asks Prince, back on the beach, "Would you rather be on Fire or Water?".
Stan considers this for less than a nanosecond and rather obviously replies "On Water, of course". Then he continues, "Not that I'd ever have to make that choice..."
(Lines like these are just made to be contradicted, aren't they?)
"Oh don't worry, you won't." Prince agrees. "He will."
The other Stanley, all dressed in white, has reached them and looks at Stan impassively. As all souls are in every major theology all down through time, the good Captain is about to be judged. If Stan is found to have been a good person in life, he will spend eternity on Water, playing volleyball and having all the sex he can eat. If however he's found to have been a naughty boy, he'll be sentenced to Fire to spend the rest of this cycle of time peddling a bellows in Prince's city. You may think that Prince isn't exactly the most trustworthy of chaps to decide your fate, and you'd be right. The only person who really knows Stan, is Stan. The doppelganger all in white will decide Stan's eternal home. It's up to Stan to convince him that it should be on Water.

Prince begins the trial.
"Tell me about yourself."
"What, everything?" asks Stan, nervously Prince nods and Stan starts making his case. "I've always done what was necessary day to day..." he begins. Oh dear Stan, I think you could be in trouble here.

Xev is still trying to resusscitate Stan's earthly remains in the cryochamber. She has repaired all the damage but Stan remains dead. She can't seem to get her head around the fact that once you're dead, you're dead. She refuses to give up, however, and decides instead to freeze his body in the hopes that Kai will be able to revive him. If, of course, she ever finds Kai.

Kai, meanwhile, is still sinking...

Stanley is meanwhile digging himself a huge hole in the metaphorical sand of the Beach. Prince is very interested to hear all about Stan's life and all the things he's done. Stan is not however making a good case for himself and Prince lets no misdemeanour go un-noticed.
"You were willing to abandon your best friend for a bottle of soda water?" He says in response to one of Stan's childhood stories
"Does that mean I have to go to Fire?" a panicking Stanley asks doppelganger.
"No." replies Doppelganger Stan. But Stan thinks he knows what's coming next.
"This is going to be about the 94 Reform Planets, isn't it?"
"No."
"You did not destroy those planets." Prince points out to a slightly relieved Stan. Which would have been great if Doppelganger Stan hadn't then pointed out
"But if you had have died rather than give up the amino acid codes, you wouldn't be here right now, you'd already be on the Planet Water."

So it seems that Stan is a borderline case and has to argue for his eternal soul. To help Stan remember all those little moments that have slowly tarnished his soul like so much tartar on his teeth, Prince shows him a translucent film show of the points in Stan's life that he'd rather forget. The show runs like a condemning pantomime above their heads. Stan offers Zev to the security guards during their escape from the Cluster way back when. It's not looking good...

Xev has a new plan to find Kai. 790 guides the moth to the exact spot that Kai splashed down and Xev throws a weighted rope over the side, hoping to reach the assassin who she thinks is stranded on the sea floor. The rope however is nowhere near long enough. After all, Kai has been sinking for almost two days by this point and still hasn't reached the bottom. Xev however, doesn't give up hope.

"What about all of the good things I've done?" Stanley complains, unhappy at being branded a bad person. "Can you make them appear too?"
"You can. If you can think of any." Prince smiles.

The screen responds to Stan's thoughts and shows him and Zev distracting His Shadow by stamping on the Divine Predecessors while Kai tried to destroy Him. One heroic moment in the last few years fails to impress the big man though, who brings out a lot more evidence of his very own.

Stan 'volunteers' Fifi out of the balloon when they're sinking over the desert on Fire (in "Gondola"); Stan shows no desire to help the prisoners they found on a crashed transport, only to get his end away (in "791"); and finally Stan's willingness to destroy the entire Water planet in return for May's life.

Stan is indignant. "But I didn't destroy Water!" Prince points out that Stan wanted to destroy Water, it was just that Xev stopped him. Therefore the intent was there, ipso facto Stan is a bad man.

Unfortunately Stan, like myself, is one of those people who will flap open mouthed at the time and it'll only be in the car on the way home that he'll go "Ha! What I should have said...". Stan is at a loss for words. Poor Stan. It's not as if he's never been a good person! He went to rescue Zev and Kai in Supernova, despite the fact that his hand had been cut off; he refused to blow up Kai's pod when ordered to in Luvliner, even though he had a gun to his head at the time; he protected Xev when Kai when insane in Wake the Dead; he decided to fight Mantrid in Brigadoom...Stan has been a very good person. Unfortunately he neglects to mention any of these heroic moments and the judgement is passed.

Doppelganger Stan stands in judgement as his uniform turns from pure white to jet black. Stan is heading for Fire.

Prince melts away with a cheery goodbye "I will see you soon Stanley Tweedle!"
But before Stan can even become terrified, he himself is transported to the core of fire where he becomes a disembodied soul floating just like the ones Kai saw in the ocean of Water.

And speaking of Kai, his journey through the souls has been very long and yet he still sinks. As he looks around him however, he catches sight of a familiar face. It seems he was a good person after all, when he was alive, for floating in amongst all the other souls is Kai's own soul. Of course his soul won't remember who he was when finally reincarnated on Water, but at least it'll have a good eternity. Kai looks down towards the intense light below him and as he nears it, he disintegrates.

And wakes up on a bed in Gametown. Looking slightly confused by the whole experience, he gets up and walks over to the window where he sees the moth scouring the ocean. He whistles loudly and an overjoyed Xev comes scooting over to collect him.