Chapter 11: The Last Verdict and the First Chapter
The void of space has no sound, but in Kara's mind, the silence was a deafening roar. The hot, cathartic fury that had driven her, the righteous rage of a betrayed protector, had extinguished the instant she dismantled the last Outlaw ship. In its place, a cold, absolute emptiness had taken hold. Her control, barely maintained by the adrenaline of combat, didn't shatter; it solidified into something terrible and new, a calm that was far more terrifying than any scream.
She floated in the blackness, motionless for a long moment, her gaze fixed not on her prisoners, but on the distant, inert white speck of her friend on the asteroid's surface. The storm of emotions on her face had subsided, replaced by a mask of ice. Her eyes, once blue as Earth's sky, had become as dark and empty as the space surrounding her. There was no visible pain. No visible anger. There was only purpose, distilled to its purest, most lethal form.
Inside the bubble of air her breath maintained, Krem of the Yellow Hills trembled, his eyes fixed on the divine figure floating before him. The leader of the Outlaws, a warrior who had bragged of his brutality on a thousand worlds, was now a frightened child. The Kryptonian was no longer fighting. She was no longer defending herself.
Now, she was judging.
(Kara POV)
Silence.
The universe had fallen silent. The echo of plasma fire, the crunch of metal, the screams of men... it had all faded. Only the dull beat of her own heart in her ears remained, and the image seared into her retina: Comet, falling.
Krypto. Comet. Father. Mother. Argo City. Krypton.
The litany of her losses repeated in her mind like a broken mantra. Each name, a scar. Each memory, an anchor dragging her into the abyss. She had spent years running from this. Years drinking in dive bars under red suns to feel physical pain and drown the emotional. Years pretending she didn't care, that she was a cynical survivor, a goddess the universe could no longer hurt.
How stupid she had been.
The universe always found a way to hurt you. It always found what you loved most and tore it away, just to remind you that you were alone. Always alone.
She looked at the two men floating before her, their faces a mixture of terror and supplication. Them. They were the cause. The catalyst. The source of today's pain. And she had the power to end them. To end the pain. To erase the source.
Her eyes began to glow. She felt the heat building, a familiar, comforting energy. The power of a sun. The power to erase, to purify, to turn matter into nothing. It would be so easy. A single thought. A single blink. And it would be over. Justice, swift and final. Vengeance, hot and satisfying. Ruthye would understand. Her father would be avenged. And the universe would have two fewer monsters.
(Third Person)
The red glow in Kara's eyes intensified, casting an infernal light on the terrified faces of her prisoners. Krem of the Yellow Hills, seeing that light, finally broke completely. The man whose cruelty had left a trail of graves across the galaxies was now a crying child.
"Please!" he sobbed, the tears freezing instantly on his face. "I didn't! I didn't mean to! It was an accident! I'll do anything! I'll give you anything! I have money! I have secrets! Please, don't kill me!"
His pleas were pathetic, a high pitched, desperate sound in the silence of space. Kara didn't waver. The glow in her eyes grew brighter.
It was then that a voice, not Krem's, but a much smaller one, trembling but clear, sounded through the communicator still in her ear.
"Don't do it, Kara."
It was Ruthye. She had been watching everything from the damaged cockpit of her secondhand ship, a small spectator to the judgment of a god.
"Don't become him," the girl continued, her voice gaining strength. "I remember what you said. In the washroom. About your world. About not seeking revenge. You said you didn't. Don't start now."
Ruthye's words were an anchor in Kara's storm of fury. The image of the girl, so small and so fiercely clinging to the idea of justice, superimposed itself on her memories. She remembered the compassion she had shown the farmer on the slaughter planet. She remembered the feeling of using her power not to destroy, but to build, to help.
"My father wouldn't want this," Ruthye said, her voice now a whisper filled with a wisdom beyond her years. "He was a good man. He wouldn't want his sword, the justice we seek in his name, to be stained with the blood of a coward like him. He's not worth it, Kara. It's not worth becoming what you hate."
Kara closed her eyes for an instant. Ruthye's words, combined with the image of her own father sacrificing himself, not out of hatred, but out of love, were the beacon she needed in her darkness. The red glow in her eyes faded completely.
When she opened them again, the icy void was gone. In its place, there was a deep, exhausted pity. She looked at Krem, not as the monster who had taken so much from her, but as what he truly was: a small, pathetic, broken man.
She had chosen.
She had chosen justice.
…..
The decision, once made, brought with it an icy clarity. The whirlwind of fury and grief that had threatened to consume her settled, not into peace, but into a resolution as hard and sharp as the edge of a diamond. Kara Zor-El was no longer the avenging goddess or the lost girl. She was a surgeon, and the asteroid field was her operating room. The task was simple: excise the cancer without killing the patient.
With an efficiency that would have chilled Batman's blood, she went to work. She left Krem and the Outlaw leader floating in their bubble of air, temporarily forgotten, and turned to the remnants of the battle. The mercenaries she had left adrift, broken but alive, watched her approach, their faces a mixture of terror and resignation. They didn't beg. They knew it was useless.
Kara didn't say a word to them. She moved from ship to ship with methodical precision. She didn't destroy them. She did something far more meticulous, far more humiliating. She used her heat vision, not as a destructive beam, but as a microscopic scalpel, to melt the engine circuits, to weld the weapon ports shut, to turn their warships into useless metal coffins. Then, with a controlled burst of her super-breath, she pushed them all together, creating a drifting cluster of scrap. Finally, she activated the emergency beacon on one of the ships, setting the frequency so it could only be received by the nearest Green Lantern patrol. She left no message. She simply left a mess for them to clean up. Justice, she realized, was often a matter of paperwork.
With the pawns off the board, her attention returned to the two main pieces. She approached Krem and the leader, who had watched her work with growing horror.
"You," she said, her voice a cold murmur, directed at the leader. She ripped the communicator from his wrist. "You will send a message to your employers. You will tell them your contract has been terminated. Permanently. You will tell them this sector is now under my protection. And if I ever see one of yours on this side of the galaxy again, I won't be so... polite."
Then, she turned to Krem. The killer, the coward, the man who had started it all. Kara looked at him, and for an instant, the fury threatened to return. But the image of Ruthye, so small and so fiercely clinging to the idea of good, anchored her.
From a compartment on her belt, she pulled out a small projector. It was Kryptonian technology, an emergency device. She activated it. A low hum filled the silence, and a tear in reality, a window into a gray, swirling nothingness, opened in the void. The Phantom Zone.
"I promised a little girl I would bring you to justice," she told him, her voice devoid of emotion. "And justice, for someone like you, isn't a quick death. It's time. Lots and lots of time to think about what you've done."
She pushed Krem through the portal. The man's scream was cut off abruptly as the window to nothingness snapped shut with a silent click, leaving only the echo of his terror. Justice, finally, had been served.
With the villains dealt with, the adrenaline that had sustained her finally faded, and the weight of the last hour fell on her with its full force. Her body screamed in pain from her injuries, but it was a dull, distant ache compared to the sharp pang in her heart.
Comet.
She turned and flew toward the asteroid where her friend had fallen. She landed with a softness that belied the storm inside her. The star-steed lay motionless, his white coat now stained with rock dust and a sickly, greenish residue emanating from the wound in his side. The kryptonite energy still pulsed weakly, a poison not just to flesh, but to magic itself.
With a delicacy that contrasted with the brutality of the battle, Kara ran her hands over Comet's body, her fingers searching for a pulse, a heartbeat, any sign of life. She found it—a weak, erratic beat, a slow drum marking a countdown. She cradled him in her arms, his head resting in her lap, his mane of starlight now dull and lifeless.
"I'm sorry," she whispered into the void, the tears finally welling in her eyes and freezing on her face. "I'm so sorry, Comet. I shouldn't have brought you into this. I shouldn't have..."
She felt like she was in Argo City again. Helpless. Broken. Holding a dying loved one, unable to do anything but watch. But this time, there was a difference. This time, she had an anomaly. A mystery. An unanswered question in the form of a business card.
With Comet's body in her arms, she took out Urahara's strange card. She looked at it, the elegant calligraphy, the enigmatic promise. "For problems with no solution."
She focused, pouring all her desperation, all her hope, all her will into that small object. She didn't scream. Her call was a silent whisper in the back of her mind, a single, desperate word.
"Help."
The response was instantaneous, a calm, nonchalant voice that bloomed in her consciousness, as clear as if he were standing next to her.
"I was waiting for you. Come to my shop. The coordinates are being transferred to your mind."
Kara felt a torrent of incomprehensible information flood her brain. It wasn't numbers or star charts. It was concepts. Directions one navigated not with a ship, but with intent. She understood.
With Comet cradled in her arms, she rose slowly from the asteroid. She looked one last time at the battlefield, a graveyard of her own actions, and then turned, following an invisible path through the stars, a path that would lead her not to a place, but to the only person in the universe who could, perhaps, fix what had been broken.
…..
The journey was not a journey. There was no streak of light, no hum of a hyperspace engine, no sensation of speed. It was a surrender. Kara, following the torrent of conceptual information that had flooded her mind, simply closed her eyes, held on to Comet's inert body, and let herself be carried along the invisible path the shopkeeper had shown her. The cold of the void faded, replaced not by warmth, but by an absolute stillness. For an instant, she felt as if the entire universe had folded in on itself, as if the stars and galaxies had become a single point, and she, along with the girl at her side, was passing through the eye of the needle.
When she opened her eyes, the blackness of space was gone.
They were in an impossible place. An underground cavern of a size so vast it defied logic. The "ceiling," miles high, was a perfect replica of a night sky, dotted with constellations Kara didn't recognize, stars that shone with a soft, silvery light. The "ground" was an expanse of fine white sand, dotted with enormous boulders of dark rock that rose like monuments to forgotten gods. The air was warm, smelled of clean earth and the subtle fragrance of ozone after a storm. It was a training ground, a private desert hidden in the heart of nothingness.
They landed with a softness that belied the abruptness of their arrival. Ruthye, who had been clinging to Kara's cape with her eyes closed, opened them slowly, her small mouth forming an "o" of pure astonishment. She had seen wonders and horrors on her short journey, but nothing had prepared her for the serene majesty of this place.
At the foot of a long stone staircase that ascended toward a wooden trapdoor in the "sky," a man was waiting for them. He wore his usual Japanese attire and his striped bucket hat, and he gave them a kind smile that didn't seem at all surprised.
"Welcome to my humble abode, Kara-san, Ruthye-san," Urahara Kisuke said, his voice calm, an anchor of stillness in the sea of their confusion. "The tea is almost ready. I see you've had a... hectic... journey."
Kara, still holding Comet with desperate delicacy, simply nodded, too exhausted for words. Urahara led the way, climbing the stairs. As they passed through the trapdoor, they didn't emerge outside, but into a small, cluttered shop. Shelves filled with jars of brightly colored candy, strange toys, and boxes of tea lined the walls. The place smelled of sugar, old wood, and green tea. It was so... normal, that it was even more jarring than the subterranean cavern.
"This way, please," Urahara said, leading them through a beaded curtain into the back room.
The back room was not a stockroom. It was a room that defied any definition. One wall was covered in floor to ceiling shelves, filled with ancient scrolls and leather bound books. Another wall was a bank of holographic monitors displaying incomprehensible data streams. And the center of the room was an immaculate infirmary, with a futuristic looking bed and strange medical instruments that looked both organic and technological.
In a corner, in a silk lined basket, Krypto slept, surrounded by a soft, pulsating crimson glow. His breathing was deep and regular. He was in stasis, safe from the poison running through his veins.
"Place him here," Urahara said, motioning to a large examination table. With a wave of his hand, a second stasis basket, larger and lined with the same silk, materialized on it.
Kara deposited Comet with infinite care. The star steed looked even paler and more lifeless under the bright light of the infirmary. Urahara approached, his expression now devoid of all his usual levity. It was the gaze of a scientist, of a surgeon about to begin the most delicate operation of his life.
"The sample, please," he said quietly.
Kara handed him the small crystal vial containing the poison from Krem's arrow. Urahara didn't analyze it with a spectrometer. He unsheathed his cane, revealing the thin, straight blade of Benihime. With the tip of the blade, he touched the vial. He didn't break it. He "dissected" it. Kara watched, amazed, as the conceptual structure of the poison was projected in a hologram in the air: a complex, dark green molecule, surrounded by spikes of energy.
"Ah, there it is," Urahara muttered to himself. "A Kar-Telian neurotoxin base, very common among low level assassins. But it's stabilized with a binding agent from the Wild Hunt. That's... unexpected. Cruel, but ingenious. It explains why it's so resistant to conventional healing."
He left the poison and focused on his two patients. He closed his eyes for a moment, his hands hovering over Krypto and Comet.
"The dog has the poison directly in his circulatory system," he analyzed. "The steed is different. He has no blood. The kryptonite didn't poison him; it disrupted his conceptual matrix. It broke the spell that gave him his form and stability. The healing must be different for each."
He began to work. He didn't mix potions or recite spells in an ancient language. His work was an art form, a dance of science and spiritual energy. His fingers moved in the air, weaving threads of Kidō, of a bright crimson light. He created two "needles" of pure energy.
First, he approached Krypto. The Kidō needle penetrated the dog's chest gently, leaving no mark. Kara held her breath. Urahara wasn't injecting an antidote. He was creating a crimson "resonance frequency," a conceptual vibration tuned to the inverse of the poison's signature. He wasn't fighting the poison; he was giving Krypto's body the "order" to undo it, to rewrite the damage at a cellular level. A soft light enveloped the superdog, and his breathing, previously shallow, deepened.
Then, he turned to Comet. The process was different. The second energy needle didn't penetrate his body, but dissolved into a field of light that surrounded him. Urahara wasn't healing a wound; he was repairing a code. He was using his power to "remind" Comet's soul of its true form, to stabilize the magic that had been broken by the mortal science of kryptonite. The sickly green glow surrounding the steed began to recede, replaced by the soft white light of his own essence.
"They will make a full recovery," Urahara said at last, after what felt like an eternity. His face was pale from the effort. "But their souls... they need time to purge the conceptual damage. They must rest here, in my garden, where time and reality are a bit more... gentle. They will be safe."
He looked at Kara, and his kind smile returned, though tinged with weariness. "Your part of the bargain is fulfilled, Kara-san. You brought the sample. And I have fulfilled mine. Your friends will live."
…..
The silence that followed the healing was of a different nature than that of the void of space. It was a warm silence, filled with the soft hum of the infirmary's equipment and the regular pulse of the stasis baskets. It was a silence of relief, of exhaustion, the silence that comes after the storm has passed and one can finally let down one's guard.
Kara stood there for a long moment, her gaze shifting from Krypto's sleeping form to Comet's, her two anchors in the universe, finally safe. A tension she didn't know she had been holding in her shoulders for months finally released, and she felt a weariness so profound it almost made her drop to her knees.
"You've done more than enough for one day, Kara-san," Urahara said softly, his voice pulling her from her trance. He had already removed the conceptual blacksmith's apron and was back to being the calm shopkeeper. "They are safe. Now, you need to rest. And Ruthye-san needs to get home."
The mention of the girl made Kara turn. Ruthye was standing in the doorway, watching the scene with her large, serious eyes. She was no longer the desperate girl from the bar on Pyrr. The journey had hardened her, matured her. She held her father's sword, not as a weapon of vengeance, but as an inheritance, a memory.
Urahara, with the hospitality of a consummate host, led them out of the strange back room, through the candy shop, to the wooden porch that overlooked his impossible garden. The change was, once again, jarring. They left the smell of ozone and antiseptic and entered the fresh, clean air that smelled of damp earth and flowers that didn't exist anywhere else. The pocket dimension's artificial sun hung low on the cosmic horizon, casting a soft, golden light over the moss garden and carefully arranged rocks.
Urahara motioned for them to sit on the porch cushions while he went inside. He returned moments later with a tray holding a cast iron teapot and three simple ceramic cups. He poured the tea, a pale green liquid that gave off an aroma of freshly cut grass and summer rain.
"To soothe the soul," he said, handing a cup to each of them.
They sat in comfortable silence. Kara took a sip, the warmth of the tea spreading through her body, calming nerves she hadn't even known were so frayed. She looked at Ruthye. The girl held the cup in both hands, her gaze lost in the swirling nebulas that served as a sky.
"I guess... it's time for you to go home," Kara said quietly, the sentence sounding strange and a little sad to her own ears.
Ruthye turned to look at her, and in her eyes, Kara saw a gratitude so deep it left her speechless.
"My father... was a good man," the girl said, her voice a whisper. "He was a farmer. He loved the land. He believed in justice, in doing the right thing, even when no one was watching. When Krem killed him, I thought the only thing that could honor his memory was revenge. I wanted his blood. I wanted his head."
She paused, looking at the sword resting beside her. "But on this journey... watching you... I realized I was wrong. I saw you help that farmer bury his daughter. I saw you fight to protect me on that horrible green planet. And I saw you... forgive. You chose justice, not blood. My father would have been proud of that choice. Proud of you."
Tears welled in the girl's eyes, but they weren't tears of sadness. They were of understanding. "Thank you, Kara. Not for hunting Krem. Thank you for showing me how to be my father's daughter."
Kara felt a lump in her throat. She didn't know what to say. She simply reached out and squeezed Ruthye's small shoulder. In that gesture, everything that words couldn't was conveyed.
"When you're ready," Urahara said softly, breaking the moment.
Ruthye nodded. She stood and gave Kara a formal bow, a gesture of deep, ancient respect. "I'll visit you someday, when you've returned to your home. And I'll bring you the best vegetables from my farm."
"I'd like that," Kara smiled, a genuine, slightly watery smile.
Urahara stood up and, with a simple flick of his fan, opened a portal in the air of the porch. It wasn't a violent tear. It was a perfect window showing a green field under the light of two suns, with a small farmhouse in the distance. The warm air from Ruthye's home mixed with the serene air of Urahara's garden.
Ruthye gave Kara one last look, a look that said "thank you" and "goodbye." Then, with her back straight and her father's sword in hand, she crossed the threshold and disappeared. The portal closed as silently as it had opened.
And then, they were alone.
Urahara sat down again and took a sip of his tea. Kara watched the empty place where the girl had been, and an overwhelming sense of... finality, washed over her. The hunt. The mission. The revenge. The purpose that had driven her for nearly a year... was gone.
She stared out at the impossible cosmos swirling in Urahara's garden. Galaxies spun in a silent dance. Stars were born and died in the blink of an eye. It was beautiful. And it felt infinitely, terribly empty.
"So what now, Kara-san?"
Urahara's question was soft, almost casual, but it hit Kara with the force of a physical blow. It forced her to confront the abyss opening up before her, an abyss she had been ignoring, filling it with the fury of her quest.
"The vengeance is over. The dog is safe. The girl is home. Your story has concluded. What's the plan for the next chapter?"
Kara opened her mouth to answer, but no words came out. The plan? There was no plan. There never had been, beyond "find Krem." Her life had become a series of reactions: reacting to Krypton's death, reacting to her arrival on Earth, reacting to her cousin's shadow, reacting to the murder of Ruthye's father. She had never had the chance, or the courage, to chart her own course.
"I don't know," she confessed at last, and the sound of her own voice, so small and lost in the vastness of that garden, made her feel more alone than ever. "I don't... have a home to go back to. Not really. And now... I don't have a mission to guide me. The hunt... as painful as it was, it gave me a reason to get up every morning. Now that it's over, there's just... a void."
She looked at Urahara, her blue eyes pleading for an answer she knew he wouldn't give her. "What am I supposed to do now?"
…..
Urahara Kisuke heard Kara's question, "What am I supposed to do now?" and let it hang in the serene garden air. He didn't rush to answer. He let the weight of the question, the weight of a life without direction, settle between them. Kara looked at him, her blue eyes, which had witnessed the death of a world and the fury of a cosmic battle, now filled with a vulnerability so deep it was almost painful to see. She was waiting for an answer, an order, a directive. Anything to fill the terrifying silence of her future.
Finally, Urahara set his teacup down on the wooden table with a soft click. His usual enigmatic smile, the mask of the playful shopkeeper, faded, replaced by something more genuine, more vulnerable. It was an expression Kara had rarely seen, one that made her feel as if she were seeing the man behind the myth for the first time.
"A lack of a plan is not a problem, Kara-san," he said softly. "It's an opportunity. It means that, for the first time, you are truly free. Free from Krypton's expectations, free from your cousin's shadow, free from the burden of a child's revenge. The book is blank. You can write whatever you want."
He continued, his tone becoming more personal, more introspective. "I've spent two millennia observing stories. Collecting data. Analyzing the endings and beginnings of countless lives and civilizations. I thought it was enough. That curiosity was a purpose in itself. But recently... I've realized that observing is no longer sufficient. It's... lonely."
The confession was so unexpected, so disarming, that Kara was taken aback. She saw in his gray eyes an echo of her own loneliness, that of a being out of place, a ghost in a universe that was not her own.
"My work, if you can call it that, takes me to the strangest and most dangerous corners of the cosmos," he said, looking at the spinning galaxies in his artificial sky. "It's often confusing, sometimes it's terrifying, and it almost always requires an absurd amount of brute force that, frankly, I'm too lazy to apply. Diplomacy isn't my strong suit either. I tend to... irritate people."
He turned to look at her directly, and his smile returned, but this time it was different. It was an invitation.
"I could use a partner," he said, the words simple, direct. "Someone with a strong heart, an unwavering moral compass that I often lack, and a right hook that can take down a reptilian bounty hunter. Someone who understands what it's to lose a home and yet, despite everything, keeps fighting to protect those of others."
Kara stared at him, processing the offer. He wasn't asking her to be his subordinate, or his student, or his weapon. He was offering her a partnership. A position at his side.
"Travel with me for a while, Kara Zor-El," he proposed. "I'm not offering you a home, because I don't have one myself. I'm not offering you peace, because the universe rarely grants it. And I'm certainly not offering you answers. I'm offering you questions. I'm offering you the unexpected. I'm offering you... a new story. One we can write together. What do you say?"
The choice lay before her, clear as crystal. She could go back to Earth, try to fit into the life her cousin had built, be Supergirl, the hero, the symbol. Or she could take this detour. This path into the unknown, at the side of the strangest, most fascinating being she had ever met. The path that had no map.
Kara looked at the impossible cosmos swirling in his garden. She looked at the door that led to the room where her two loyal friends were healing, a testament to this man's power and compassion. She looked at the teacup she still held in her hands. For the first time in a long time, the future wasn't a terrifying void. It was an unknown adventure.
She took a sip of her tea, the taste warm and comforting. And for the first time since she had left Krypton, a small, genuine smile, devoid of sadness or irony, touched her lips.
"Alright, shopkeeper," she said, her voice a whisper filled with a new, quiet determination. "Show me what you've got."
…..
(Urahara POV)
Later that night, long after Kara had retired to rest in one of the guest rooms, Urahara Kisuke was alone in his control room. The vast underground training field was dark and silent, but the control room was a nexus of light, with dozens of holographic monitors displaying data streams, star charts, and live feeds from a thousand distant worlds.
On the main screen, he wasn't watching Kara. He was watching a live feed from the Batcave. He watched Batman, standing in front of his supercomputer, analyzing with growing frustration the strange energy readings his satellites had picked up in the sector where Kara had fought the Outlaws. The conceptual "noise" the battle had left behind was an anomaly that defied any scientific explanation known on Earth.
Urahara took a sip of his tea, a smile of pure satisfaction on his face.
'The system has stabilized,' he thought, his fingers typing a few final notes into a console. 'The primary variable (Kara) has completed her origin arc and has voluntarily accepted a new purpose. The observation phase has concluded. The participation phase... has begun.'
His gaze shifted from the Batman monitor to the basket where Krypto slept, and then to the one containing Comet. He had gained two new and fascinating subjects of study, a new and powerful ally, and a debt that he would one day collect in a very entertaining way.
'And the local administrator (Batman) is about to realize that a new, chaotic variable has formally entered his garden,' he mused, his smile widening. 'The convergence of events is accelerating. The board is set. The pieces are in motion.'
He shut down the monitors, leaving the room in near-total darkness, illuminated only by the soft crimson glow of the stasis baskets. Book One of his story had ended. And he was eager to see how the second would begin.
'This,' he thought to "himself," taking the last sip of his tea, 'is going to be very, very interesting.'
(End of Volume I)
Omake: The Silent Threshold
Darkness.
But this time, it was different. It wasn't the oppressive, lonely void from before. It was a soft darkness, like velvet, quiet and filled with an unexpected peace. The pain was gone. The cold was gone. The feeling of disintegrating, of coming undone, had been replaced by a whole and integrated calm.
My consciousness floated, no longer as a prisoner, but as a traveler who has reached the end of a long, arduous road. The memory of Yoruichi's smile was the last thing remaining, not as an image, but as a lingering warmth in the center of my being.
'So... this is it,' I thought, with an acceptance devoid of fear. 'The end of the experiment. The final result of the analysis. Silence.'
Slowly, an environment formed around me, or perhaps my perception simply attuned to it. I was standing on a beach of pale gray sand. A waveless ocean lapped at the shore without a sound, its surface a perfect mirror of a starless, white sky. It was a place of serene, final beauty.
I was not alone.
Sitting on a piece of driftwood a few feet away was a young woman. She was dressed in black, with a silver ankh that glowed softly at her neck and a swirl of makeup around one eye. She looked like a goth girl you might find in any corner of Earth, but her smile was older than time and her eyes held the kindness of a million goodbyes.
She was Death of the Endless.
"Hey," she said, her voice sounding exactly like you'd expect a friend you haven't seen in a long time to sound.
I walked over, my new, incorporeal form feeling strangely natural. I sat on the sand beside her.
"So... this is the end," I said, my own voice an echo of what it had been.
"It's the end of your story," she corrected kindly. "Not necessarily the end. Almost nobody gets the difference."
We watched the silent ocean together.
"You're a curious case, you know," she said, swinging her feet. "My brother Destiny complains that your page in his book is a mess of footnotes, cross-outs, and chapters inserted from another book entirely. It's very untidy."
"I've always been a proponent of creative editing," I replied, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I smiled without the weight of a mask.
"I've been waiting to meet you... officially," she continued. "It's not every day I get to meet someone who wasn't in the original script. It was a good run, Urahara Kisuke. Or Michael. Or whoever you were today."
"Thank you," was all I could say. A question, one that had been buried under layers of science and strategy, finally surfaced. "Did she...? In my original story... did she have a good ending?"
Death looked at me, and in her eyes, I saw an infinite compassion. "Everyone gets the time they get, Kisuke. Not a second more, not a second less. Her story was exactly what it was meant to be. And it was a good story."
I nodded, accepting the answer. It was enough.
"Well," she said, getting to her feet and dusting the sand from her pants. "I guess it's time to go. On to what's next."
She held out her hand to me.
And then, something happened. A soft light, not silver like that of the being who brought me here, but golden and warm, descended from the white sky. It wasn't an aggressive light; it was a presence, the same one I had felt in the Potter's workshop.
Death withdrew her hand and looked at the light with an expression of familiar resignation.
"Ah," she said, as if remembering a forgotten appointment. "It seems there's a complication. Sorry, it looks like your story isn't over just yet. You've got... an extension."
'An extension?' I thought, confused.
"You're a paradox," she explained, as if discussing the weather. "Your death, caused by an experiment to understand the 'Great Flaw,' has created an instability. A key variable has been removed from the board before the end of the game. And it seems the Owner of the Game doesn't approve of premature endings."
The golden light enveloped me. It didn't burn. It felt like... repair. I felt the very structure of my soul, which had disintegrated, being carefully... recompiled. The broken threads were being knotted back together. My pact, my sanctioned existence, was being reaffirmed.
"So... I'm not dead?" I asked, feeling a strange pulling sensation, as if I were being dragged backward.
"You're not allowed to be dead. Not yet," Death said with a wry smile. "It seems your job as a 'gardener' isn't finished. There's a difference, you know."
The pulling sensation grew stronger. The gray beach began to fade.
"We'll see each other again, Kisuke," she said as a farewell. "Try not to take too long next time. And try not to break the universe anymore in the process. It creates a lot of paperwork."
With one last flash of Death's smile, the golden light consumed me completely.
And then, I opened my eyes with an agonized gasp of air.
The pain was gone. I looked at my hands—they were whole. My body—intact. I stood up in the middle of the ruins of my lab. I was exhausted, my Reiatsu was near zero, but I was alive.
I stood there, in the silence of my broken dimension, contemplating the new, terrible truth. I wasn't simply an immortal being. I was a being who was not permitted to die. My freedom, my existence as the greatest of anomalies, was, in its own way, the most inescapable cage of all. My story had to continue. And for the first time, I wasn't sure if that was a gift or a sentence.
A/N
Hey! How's it going?
What did you think of the omake scene? Some of these omake scenes are more important than some entire chapters.
I actually came up with the omakes first; I wrote a lot of random scenes, and some are very important. The one from chapter 10 and this one from chapter 11 happen at the same time, one right after the other. In fact, there are some omakes I've had written for months that are really the story itself, the essence of what the story is and what Kisuke is looking for.
I wanted the first important omake scene to be with Death of the Endless. It's very poetic; Death doesn't just represent the end of life, she also represents the beginning. I wanted to give it that touch by ending Volume 1 and starting the next one.
If you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them (obviously without spoilers).
I also want to invite you to join my Patreon, where besides this story, I also upload others (mostly adaptations and translations). Soon, I'll be uploading more fanfics made and created by me, with my own ideas.
I've already written 20 chapters for several fanfics that I haven't even published anything from yet, but they are slow-paced, very very slow, so not everyone might like them.
Tell me, which of these next ideas interests you more?
Kenichi x Martial Arts Animes (like Baki, Kengan Ashura, Ikkitousen, Tenjho Tenge).
Or... Beyblade. (I know, it's weird, but recently I got ideas about those themes, aside from the fanfics I'm already writing).
Maybe next week I'll publish the first chapters of the other fanfics I'm writing.
Well, that would be all for this week, see you on Tuesday.
Oh, by the way! Would you like to get the chapters for this fanfic on Mondays and Fridays, or Tuesdays and Fridays? Let me know in the comments. I'd like to publish one chapter a day, but if I do that, I'm afraid I won't always be able to keep up, which is why I limit myself to 2, maybe 3 chapters a week.
If I see that it gets a lot of support with comments and Power Stones, I'll upload more chapters per week.
Okay, now for real, see you later!