I'm really not happy with this chapter, since it's once of those “just-get-on-with-it!” Types that you quite simply have to get through before you get onto the good stuff. It also isn’t as well planned out as I’d like it to be. However, concrit is still appreciated.“It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing.” – Terry Pratchett

Thirteen: Of Truths and Fictions.

The Nexxus Core.

Deep within the centre of the one-time almost-world, the Cyber Stalker watched the Sixth Dimension collapse.

It was easy now, to slip between the two worlds. Not that there was much of the Sixth Dimension left to enter. Not in a material sense. The energy was a different matter. As the world liquidized, crystallised, scattered, and broke into its component coding, Kilobyte saw it for what it truly was: Nothing more than series of programmed binary, messages, ciphers, and electronic signals. Pure elements which, somehow, combined to give the world its substance and power.

One of the few creations of humanity which could be considered truly remarkable... and it had been an accident.

And now the Sixth Dimension was dying in a whirlwind of yellow and bursting light. If “dying” was an apt descriptor for something which had never been entirely alive. It hardly mattered. The coding would remain, and he was beyond those codes now. Perhaps he had been since the beginning. He was in control of all substances, and could remake it all at his will. The Master Programmer’s computer had told him everything he needed to know, and it had been such a simple matter, Kilobyte thought, to dispose of that pathetic mortal’s body and then to dispose of his computer passwords.

And then he had found himself here, at the core of the world. He watched the centre, absorbing data with his tendrils and analysing. The longer he stayed within the eye of the storm, the greater his knowledge and power would become. What was happening to the game didn’t matter to him, so long as he believed he could control it.

‘It’s an irony, isn’t it, Ace?’ he found himself saying with quiet humour. ‘This was, after all, your game, and your world. The humans created it around you, and now it closes in upon you... Strange.’ He stepped forwards, towards the edge of the world where light blue earth faded away into a yellow chasm. ‘There will be none alive here remaining after I take your place as the centre of this world, and remake the vortexx in my own image. How does it feel, to be a god about to destroy one’s existence?’

There was no answer; but he hadn’t expected one. Kilobyte smiled. It was odd how this facsimile of a body so well mimicked the one he had in the real world. Yet the differences were fairly obvious if you looked for them. Perhaps he was even more insubstantial in this world than the other... characters of his ilk. He was designed to exist primarily in the real world. He had no place within the game. Not that it truly mattered. There was no more game – there was only Kilobyte and his prisoners, and the core of the world which would soon be utterly under his control.

Kilobyte walked within the core of the Vortex, looked up at its glowing centre, and smiled.

No... Insubstantial is wrong... I am nothing but pure substance. I was created to gain power, and power I shall have. I think, therefore I am.

Congratulations, Master Programmer. You have been granted your Wish...

The Disintegrating Wasteland.

The winds died as suddenly as they had started, dropping them unceremoniously on top of Random (who had been the only thing keeping any of them on the platform the whole time), and then the beast arrived.

Something reached out of the clouds that followed the wind, tearing deep gauges into the ground as something huge and inhuman dragged itself out of the yellowness–Most of itself, anyway; it’s body was ripped and torn as it dragged itself upright, bones disintegrating in a way that probably should’ve smelt as bad as it looked. But there was no smell at all. A tiny part of Chuck’s brain (The part that was still functioning on a cognitive, non-adrenaline based level) told him that this was because the game was breaking down so rapidly, and that minor factors such as scents would be the first things to go. So even though the monster was disintegrating and dragging itself out of liquid-yellow-nothingness; rotting as a human corpse would; they couldn’t smell it at all.

He should probably have been grateful for that.

Funny what you notice when you’re staring death in the face. And the next thing he knew Lady Illusion was ‘porting directly in front of them and yelling at them to move out of the way. At which point chuck’s thoughts became a lot more coherent and sensible, and along the lines of “do as she freakin’ says, dude, focus!”

Feet which couldn’t decide which creature they came from, teeth which changed from mouth to mouth on its six heads – from sharp carnivore to confused omnivore. And a body covered with a million sharp, golden eyes glistening between its metal feathers, grinding up the earth.

Concluding that he had been very, very right when he said that Evangelion had nothing on this place, Chuck did the only thing any sensible person could do in this kind of situation. He screamed.

Lady Illusion clamped a hand over his mouth as she dragged him away from a spot which, seconds later, was peppered by a spray of metal feathers. Spurts of yellow broke between the creature’s claws where it had cracked the stone of the island through. It stood like a tower, and shuddered like a falling forest. It was like everything that had gone wrong with this world had come together at once.

It climbed upwards on its spider-ish legs (ten of them, though two had half disintegrated into yellow gloop) and snatched at the air with teeth larger than outstretched hands. Teeth which grabbed hold of Random’s claw and shoved him backwards so far that he almost toppled into the nothingness.

Mark must’ve gotten about four shots off with the wrist cannon before the creature knocked him off his feet – not that it mattered. Mark wasn’t a good aim, and even if he had been, each blast he fired reflected off of the creatures silvery scale-feathers and ricocheted around the platform. One of them caught Random on the claw, and Mark had no time to shout an apology before the ground splintered again and threatened to throw him upwards.

That was when they discovered that what the creature lacked in smell it made up for in the screech of its voice –like a thousand human beings in serious pain. It sent chills down your spine. Chuck actually saw Mark doubling up in pain – and it must’ve been an instinctive reaction because he doubled up as , hitting the ground harder than he’d ever seen anyone do in the movies. Nearby Lady Illusion was morphing and twisting in the air, switching from one form to another as quickly as she could, in a desperate bid to find something that could fend off the monster’s attacks, or maybe just to confuse it for long enough that she could come up with something more productive. Her attacks were no use whatsoever. A Harpix’s sting, a Canary’s shock waves, a viper’s venom, a Buzzbeast’s bite, and her own crystalline based explosives –everything she threw simply echoed back off the creature’s skin.

‘Aw, man, what the hell is that thing?! Is it a Harpix? I-I think I see Harpix in there!’

‘Harpix?!’ Mark coughed, still shaking off the shockwaves of a blast to the stomach. ‘When did you ever see a HARPIX that size, Chuck?!’

‘Uh... I dunno, maybe when I was using the Mimi-Me-Ace Cheat Code, but I think that was just relative sizing!’

‘The wha... Oh never mind, just move!’ Mark was dragging Chuck backwards towards the only piece of scenery that looked as if it could provide any shelter. Lady Illusion followed. Random didn’t.

‘It’s simple, in fact,’ Lady Illusion said (and Chuck had no freaking clue how she was able to sound so composed while shielding her face from falling debris). ‘This creature is a combination of whatever others remain in this world. A merging of forms broken apart and put back together with... other parts, other beings. A mutation.’

‘ A-are you sure?’ Chuck gulped. ‘Cause I’m seeing... bits out there that I don’t think I ever saw in the game, dude!’

‘Quite sure. Part of it used to be one of my servants,’ Lady Illusion scowled, and Chuck didn’t dare ask if she was joking (surely not). ‘It’s pulled itself together out of sheer desperation to live. And it’s starving.’

Not for the first time, Chuck wished he had something to shoot. Not that he could’ve done any damage, but it was the principle of the thing... ‘Uh, Yeah, I think our mission would be kinda interrupted by becoming that thing’s breakfast, guys!’

A second shockwave from the creature’s scream sent a number of sharp, stony towers nearby crumpling into the nothingness, dust fragments glancing off their heads and stinging their eyes. Chuck tried not to look at Random on the other side of the wall, slicing madly at the air hoping to drive the creature backwards –like pitting a human being against a ten tonne truck, Chuck thought.

‘I don’t think it wants us for our flesh,’ Lady Illusion said. ‘It wants us for our energy, just like everything in this world right now. A dead body gives out no energy at all.’

‘So... so not only does it have six heads, eight legs, and knives for feathers, it’s also gonna go vampire on us the second it gets a hold of us?’ Mark gulped. ‘Just bloody brilliant.’

The Haunted House.

The fact remained: he would have let the wretched mortals go.

Not that they would have believed this. And not that they would have responded any differently if they had. In fact, Lord Fear is surprised that he had not anticipated the boy’s plan. Mark would never have left without Lady Illusion. Lord Fear would not have allowed her to leave the Haunted House alive, no matter what Sparx’s whim. The amulet had not even theoretically been a part of the deal. Sparx’s absence had not been a part of the deal...

Clearly, somebody had been teaching the brats how to cheat.

Well.

Lord Fear knew all there was to know about cheating. Perhaps he might yet cheat his way out of destruction.

‘So, Lord Fear... How is your dominion?’

The voice does not disturb him, even coming out of the darkness of an otherwise empty chamber. There were those who might have been deluded into thinking otherwise, but he had no fear of the Cyber Stalker; he never had. Nor was he particularly surprised at Kilobyte’s unexpected arrival. He had been bound to come skulking out of the Datastream sooner or later. Lord Fear looked around to see the origins of the voice, but there was no one to be seen.

‘Oooh heck,’ Staffhead murmured. Lord Fear shushed him with a finger to his lips.

‘I admit, it is somewhat smaller than I had hoped.’ Somewhat smaller, indeed. There remained the Haunted House, and around it, a scattering of what might have almost passed for gardens.

‘And it’s falling apart, as well,’ Kilobyte sneered. ‘Much like its creator. How does it feel, Lord Fear? To be the despot of a broken world?’

Lord Fear remained still for one long moment, and as he listened, the sensation of tearing began somewhere deep down where a human gut would have been. The sensation was tied into his nerves, and he felt the structure of the shield weakening and slipping through his grasp. It would not hold for much longer, and there are no minions left to drain. No power for the shield to digest. Had the virus stayed...

...Well. He would have been useful.

‘The foolish ramblings of a so-called Overlord. But you know nothing of control. Perhaps you did once, but the female has driven it away. She sucked the tyrant out of you, even as you drained the fire from her being. Do not bother to deny it. I watched it happen.’

Lord Fear ‘Indeed?’ ‘And how, pray tell, do you know these things?’

‘Because of the Nexxus.’ Kilobyte spoke with the voice of a being who knew all the answers to questions which had never been asked. There was a kind of... serenity in his tone. Fear wondered how he had never noticed such a thing.

Had it even been there before? ‘I know everything there is to know, Lord Fear. And there is little left worth knowing. I see everything that Ace Lightning sees. He watched his sidekick suffer and change, his lover driven mad, his brat of a mortal eaten from the inside out, his very world reduced to nothing more than a thin back story and plastic casing. And he sees nothing more than the pain and the fear. The knowledge of this will destroy him. He acts...’ Kilobyte laughed. ‘...Out of love for them, without knowing that they are here and that his actions will destroy them all. and then he shall die, as any mortal would.’ He paused, as if weighing Fears opinion to this statement. ‘It’s ironic, isn’t it?’

It took Lord Fear several moments to work out what Kilobyte meant. ‘Then the boy was right. Ace Lightning...’

‘Is here.’

‘Ah. Well, well then. So. The cyber stalker seeks help from the Master of this house.’ Staffhead grunted, in mock bravado. ‘The cyber stalker cannot fight his own battles, even when Ace Lightnin’ himself is doing all the hard work for him.’

A snort of diversion. ‘At what point did you mistake my... consideration, for acceptance, insect? I have no need for your powers, Fear. Not any longer. Noentheless. here are things that must be arranged...’

‘What are you talking about?’ Fear snapped irritably. He grew tired of these games, tired of Kilobyte and his petty frustrations tired of the whole damned game...

‘Wery well. The battle should end as it began, should it not? I give you your comrades, Lord Fear. Do with them as you will.’

And then the air around him warped, dragged out to the corners of the room, walls thickening momentarily and then letting go again, as a portal opened and closes, and deposited The Dirty Rat precisely where Lord Fear was standing, and Pigface on the nearby organ.

Neither of them came out the better for this sudden arrival. Nonetheless, Lord Fear supposed he’d have little use for it anymore.

The Disintegrating Wasteland.

Sparx felt the battle before she reached it. Maybe it was something to do with all the power surges around her, but the shockwaves of pure, concentrated weirdness echoed out across the sixth dimension and told her exactly where to go.

It figured. If you ever wanted to find a party that had Random Virus in it, all you had to do was follow the trail of destruction.

It was hard going fast without the Flash, and with the ground constantly shifting and melting underneath your feet. Like running on lava, and knowing not to stop for too long or else you’d be trapped there and burn to death. Sparx had never flown without the Flash, and her body was built for short, quick distances, not treks to forever. Something else that she could curse the game for.

It took five minutes before she saw Chuck. And Mark. And beyond that Lady Illusion, balls of energy crystallising in her palm. And Random looking like he was fighting thin air, but really it was just that his opponent had more legs than was fair, and could move faster than anything... And then there was the thing... easily ten times huger than any of them...

Sparx cursed under her breath and picked up her pace.

The Haunted House.

‘So yeah uh... hey boss, can I ask a question? Why ain’t we dead?’

This was not as stupid a question as it might have sounded.

Dirty Rat had his uses to Lord Fear. He had had to; otherwise there would have been no way that Fear would have tolerated his presence for so long. One of these uses was a purely rodentian awareness for all things wrong with the world. His ability to smell danger, as easily as one could smell the stench of Pigface on a particularly warm afternoon. ‘Dark! Dark! Pigface can’t see!’

...That stench was not something Lord Fear had missed.

‘Aw pull yerself outta there, piggy, can’t ya tell we’ve been abducted here? Seriously, boss, why the heck is we still here? One minute we was in the human world, all quiet like and the next...’

Lord Fear sighed impatiently. ‘Funnily enough, Rodent, you are alive because I don’t feel like killing you. And from the looks of it neither did Kilobyte. (He wanted them to die together, right here and now, in the place they had once called their dominion, and which was now nothing more than an empty shell, worthless and unknown.) ‘It would seem a pointless exercise; destroying you would exert as much energy as I would be able to obtain from you afterwards. There would be no point, given the fate we all face anyhow.’

The Haunted House was trembling.

‘Uh yeah... an’ what fate is that exactly?’

‘What fate do you think it is, idiot? What do you suppose is going on beyond these walls?’

‘Anvil hears...nothing,’ Anvil muttered. The creature wore a grim and anxious expression. ‘Outside of the world. Is all... empty.’

There were advantages to having a brain so simple that you were basically on par with crustaceans. It meant that you were better aware of the tide. ‘Quite right, my minion. The dimension is falling apart. Kilobyte has left us here to die.’

There was a moment while the minions analysed this fact. Meanwhile, there was a shrieking, bellowing laugh from overhead, accompanied by the sound of thudding. Googler was approaching, smashing into every wall as he went, no doubt doing even more damage to the Haunted House’s already highly fragile structure. There came the sound of a shrieking zombie somewhere on the other side of the walls, as the shape of Anvil lumbered into the doorway, splintering the frame as he entered, looking around in awed confusion, and muttering to himself. ‘Anvil... Anvil home now?’

‘Indeed, my small brained minion.’ Lord Fear said, dryly. ‘If one could ascribe it such a name. Shame, then, that this world is eating itself apart from the inside.’

‘What about Sparxy? She ain’t around, is she?’Dirty Rat grimanced.

‘She left.’

‘Oh... oh... riiiight. Yeah, well we kinda figured... I mean, don’t take it too hard ya know, boss? I mean there’s plenty more fish on the sea... grains o’ sand on the Cliffbeaches an’ so on an so forth...’

‘Dirty Rat.’

‘Yeah, boss?’

‘Do shut up.’

Over the last couple of years, Mark Hollander had learned a thing or two about courage.

He still sucked at actually being brave, but when it came to real pain and real fear... well, he’d stopped complaining about the unfairness of it all and just got on with it, he supposed. And when you’ve been terrified for a very, very long time, it becomes comfortable; like an old pair of jeans you don’t want to throw out even though they’re falling apart, because it’s taken you this long to work your way into them. Fear became familiar. Anxiety became common place. You found that the fear was just so normal that you could just accept it, and concentrate on other things happening around you, like girlfriends, homework, and your best friend’s obsession with computer game stores.

Of course, this did mean that you tended to zone out a little bit now and then, but Mark figured this was a price worth paying for even an imitation of normalcy.

This was probably why he wasn’t panicking right now. Probably.

‘Pipsqueak is learning.’

‘Be quiet,’ Mark muttered.

The ground shook.

Mark glimpsed at Lady Illusion, clutching the rock in her fist, face twisted into an ugly grimace. ‘R-Random’s okay out there, right?’

‘How should I know? Damn it,’ she hissed. ‘Nothing I can do affects this creature, I’ve tried every morph I know.’

Mark nodded uneasily. The creature (whatever it was) was made up of about a dozen beings that had resistance to a dozen different power types. Whatever you threw at it, it already had a resistance. The only reason Random was holding his own was because he was focussing on purely physical attacks – none of which would do enough damage to get rid of it.

‘Fear fear fear fear fear!’

Mark swallowed. ‘...Think we could run for it?’

‘Run where?’ Chuck yelped.

‘Maybe... maybe back to the Haunted House!’ It was a stupid plan, and he knew it, but when you’re this desperate you mind throws out crazy ideas and hopes you’ll give them some credit.

‘That’s crazy, we’d never make it,’ Lady Illusion snapped. You could still see it in the distance, but Mark knew this was an illusion. Perspective was all warped in here. The haunted house was far, far behind them. Farther than they could possibly run.

When he looked again, he saw that the creature was digging, tearing furiously at the ground with its limbs, pushing aside the dirt in a furious panic. Like something gone mad. ‘The hell is it doing?’

‘I-I dunno, I think it’s lost it. It’s ripping the ground up underneath us.’ Chuck swallowed. He had his laptop open but the information on the screen was a garbled mess of uselessness. ‘It’ll die the second it even touches that... that gloop all over the place.’

‘Which is little comfort given that it’ll drag us down with it!’ Lady Illusion snapped. ‘How do we stop it?’

‘No idea, man, the only thing that could take on that guy would be a... a power neutralising weapon, like a sword of Jacob, or something.’ Chuck glimpsed at Lady Illusion, frustratedly. ‘I told you we should’ve brought Sparx.’

‘And I told you that she wouldn’t come.’ Lady Illusion winced,

And then the last wall protecting them from the onslaught collapsed, dragged down into the sinking nothing below them, and Lady Illusion had to grab Chuck’s collar to keep him from being dragged down with it. Mark felt the nothing burning at his fingertips as he tore them away...

And looked up.

The monster had an awful lot of teeth from this angle. And its jaws were falling downwards, wide enough to swallow Anvil whole. There was panic, welling up like it hadn’t done in years, the voice inside of his nightmare was crying out in fear and rage...

And then there was the Sword of Jacob, driving through the creature’s head and through its top jaw, creating a bizarre parody of an extra tooth. Its screaming made the world shudder, but it didn’t fall. It jerked, and shook, and for a moment, Mark caught a glimpse of Sparx’s form, being shaken violently from one side to the other before she, the sword of Jacob, and a good portion of the monsters head flew upwards and slammed into the ground nearby.

Chuck scrambled to his feet. ‘Sparx, no way!’

Lady Illusion’s face curled into what was almost, but not quite, a smirk. ‘I stand corrected.’

‘So uh... we’re gonna die, right?’

It was a simple question with a complicated answer. Lord Fear remained unsure as to whether their kind deserved the terms “life and death”. ‘You might, perhaps, Rat. I however, am already dead.’

‘Yeah but I m mean... not really dead, dead, ya know Like... forever. The way that humans do.’

‘Humans... stop,’ Pigface said, slowly, chewing on a piece of the doorframe Anvil had shattered in his entrance. ‘They stop for good. Little lightning knight say that once.’

Pigface shrugged. ‘Little puny knight could lie to Pigface. Pig face not have time to kill him and find out.’

Anvil seemed to consider this thought for several long moments. ‘Lightning Knights not liars,’ he said, eventually.

‘I mean I figured... Lightning Knights, or some long, long trip to White Hot Oblivion, maybe... or heck, even that kid getting off one lucky shot with that cannon... a well placed memory spike. Anything. But not... not nothin’. Ain’t no point in it all if it all ends up with nothin’.’ Dirty Rat looked up, and for the first time ever, Lord Fear saw something in the creature’s eyes which had nothing whatsoever to do with copious planning and sly deviation. ‘We ain’t just gonna sit here though, right, boss? I mean, if Lightnin’s out there we got’s to go battle the guy. All for one and one for all, like?’

Pigface snorted with laughter. ‘Ratty has been listening to puny mortal’s puny stories. Ratty believes in all for one and one for all.’

‘Hey! Clarice an’ Bob know stuff about the world that they just don’t teach ya on the shopping channel, Piggy.’ Dirty Rat snapped. ‘Ain’t I right boss? We can still win this thing, right?’

‘...Perhaps so, minion.’

A lie.

Honestly, the Rat should probably have known better. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he smelt the danger far more strongly than Lord Fear has presumed, because the Rat appeared to sniff the air for one long moment, as if weighing the value in two, equally bad choices: rebellion

‘Oh. Is that a voice of loyalty I hear?’ Staffhead sneered disbelievingly. ‘From none other than Dirty Rat himself?’

‘Meh. I was much of a rebel anyway.

‘Anvil will fight.’ The lumbering rhino shrugged, standing upright and staggering forwards. ‘Anvil will fight, and Anvil will win.’

Of course, Lord Fear thought, dryly. It was all that he had ever known. The fact that there was nothing in particular for him to aim at meant nothing. And perhaps it meant nothing to Googler neither, who suddenly was crawling out of the corner.

‘Jokes that kill, tricks that torture, Googler and crew have plenty to go around,’ the clown chuckled. And the puppets were strangely silent, unmoving as they considered facts that were probably beyond their master’s brain. ‘and no White Hot Oblivion now, mateys! Nothing can’t be worse than that! Nothing can’t! Googler will go bye bye forever before he goes into Oblivion again!’

...There were downsides to having an army with barely enough brain cells amongst them to boil water.

Or perhaps, this was not so much a downside at all. The world around them shuddered and spattered. The sound of Googler’s laughter echoed over and over.

Still, it was a tempting thought. To go out there now... to see Ace Lightning twisted into the nothingness... to see him torn to shreds by the emotions, the so called “gift”, that his one-time treacherous Lady had given him. It was a shame that he would miss it. however, if his minions could serve a purpose that had been incapable of in reality. A form as large as Anvil’s broken down into energy would provide several minutes of further protection at least...

Lord Fear took one long pause while imagining these figures, to look down at his damaged leg.

...And noticed the scuff marks of Sparx’s boots upon the chamber floor.

‘It’s got to be me and you. No one else.’

In the grander scheme of things, both good and evil were rather irrelevant.

There was the program. And then there were choices.

He saw no need for anything else.

Lord Fear let go of Staffhead, and allowed the creature to leave his grasp. ‘Come, my loyal staff. Let us descend to the battle outside. We shall open what remains of the shield, and we shall see what it is that Lightning has to offer.’

‘Uh... is that wise, M’lord? I mean, is it really wise?’

The corridor around them was barely whole now. Fragments of the nothingness were seeping in, like glazed honey dissolving everything it touched. As if the world was made of nothing more than paper.

Decades ago, before the last war, before the war before the last war, and before the game had come into being, there was a man.

This man stood in Lord Fear’s memory as clear and bold as if it had been planted there. Which Lord Fear supposed it had. It was a man with high cheekbones and an ugly sneer, and a grip as tight as iron. It was a nameless being who had once controlled entire legions, and attacked the Lightning Knights on their own turf.

There had been a girl. Small, slight, with pale green skin and a face more curious than afraid, as she was pushed forwards by an eager father and made to take her future master’s hand.

There had been battle, and a tower burning with the most potent types of magical energy that had ever existed. There had been a young and eager Lightning Knight, with far more power than sense, who had attacked, mixing magic with technology in a potently destructive blend. That nameless man had vanished into the blossoming light and magical destruction that Ace Lightning created.

And Lord Fear had walked out of it

This was a tale which he had never shared. Not with Sparx. Not with his loyal staff. Not with the wretched fools who stood beside him now under some thin assumption of loyalty, because there was nothing else for them to do and nowhere else to turn. They stood for a fiction. For a lie, steeped in adventurous cliché and artificial symbolism. They were fictions in his conscious mind, created to justify his means and ends.

But Sparx was not.

Still. To sit in silence and wait for Lightning to destroy them here, ih the remnants of that fictional world? No. Lord Fear would not stand for this. Failure was preferable. Failure the very moment they stepped outside of that shield and entered into the world as it was falling apart.

‘No, Staffhead.’ He said, continued to hobble down the corridor with his staff alongside him, slithering to keep up. ‘I don’t believe it’s wise at all.’

Lord Fear walked into his destruction as easily as he had walked out of it.