001st Promotion ♛ The eternal search

[promotedpawn]

[You're drowning. You must be drowning because you're surrounded by water, falling deeper into this vast sea, or are you going up? Whether you look up or down the sight is the same, darkness spreading while wrapped lovingly in the water's embrace. Is this how are you going to end? Drowning in an unknown sea, for an unknown reason? But that's

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[waterfell]

[It reminds her of the galaxy cauldron. It reminds her of the princess' dream. No sea holds any terror for her, and she finds herself looking at the lights (sailor crystals...?) as though she could identify the stars she knows among them.

They're different. She turns her head to see more of them, and again to see still more. She has a feeling of being surrounded that's worse than the possibility of drowning now that she's thought of them as senshi.

The man who speaks is the first person she's seen in this dream, and her head turns towards him sharply.]

What's going on here? [Her voice comes out demanding.]

[waterfell]

[She's doing it for herself, not for him. His reaction shouldn't bother her. Mercury closes her eyes, and focuses on her world, on the sights of the seas and the land she knows. Though she could allow the past and present to be called a different world, though she once belonged to Econtra, though she crosses worlds regularly... Primo is right. There is one world she has given herself to. She opens her eyes.

It's murky. Clouded. Where others shine brightly, this one seems dimmed. But it hasn't gone out. And- there, a glimmer of shine in the midst of the dullness. Slowly, slowly, it's coming back.

It couldn't be called beautiful, not as it is right now. And it reminds her of the times she's wondered why they call it worth preserving or keeping, this broken-down world. But even as she thinks so, she holds it carefully in her hands.]

This is the world I live in. [It's a strange feeling, being larger than the world itself for the moment, being able to hold it in her hand like this. It feels like a vague memory.]

[promotedpawn]

[Such a pitiful world as many would say. Clouded and broken, chipped more than most of the other worlds in the infinite. But Primo isn't one of those people and there's light on that world yet, a weak but determined and stubborn light that refuses to let itself die.]

Is it as you imagined it?

[waterfell]

Yes. [The honest word slips from her mouth before she thinks to stop it. Her eyes meet his again, briefly.] I already knew what I would find. I only wanted to see it for myself.

[There are other worlds here, too, dimmed by the darkness of her own, the ones she's touched and changed and tainted with her own world's poison. She doesn't look for them, but she knows they'll be there: The one where she unleashed a war in the name of stopping one. The one where a man is crippled through her attempt to spare his life. The one where another man can no longer do what he has to, because she couldn't let him go. The ones where her coldness has been not rejected, but adopted.

Mercury keeps her eyes on this single one.]

You, Primo, do you live looking at these all the time?

[promotedpawn]

I have almost forgot what's the meaning of time. I can go through hundreds of years in a single instant by observing one of those, and go back in time or jump forward as I see fit when doing so. Time no longer holds a reason to be for me.

But I can say, I don't spend an eternity here. There are other places I go to. And I'm not always just looking. At the same time I can say, I spend here long enough for humans to think that I do so "all the time", probably.

[waterfell]

[She'd meant the question more generally, but the answer suffices.]

Standing outside of these worlds, and outside of time, could be said to be similar to a god.

[promotedpawn]

Could be. And yet I'm not one, thankfully.

[Even if inside some worlds he could pass as a God, he has no desire to be one. Thankfully that will never really be a problem for him.]

[waterfell]

[She can't stop staring at it. She'd swear a thousand times that she won't let her world out of her hands and the hands of her comrades - but now that it's here, now that she is holding it, she can only think that someone like her shouldn't be.

She says nothing of this - of course not - but after a long moment more, she lets it go.]

In that case, what are you looking for here? [Or put it another way, and her smile becomes faintly mocking.] What did you lose?

[promotedpawn]

An empty world, untouched and clean. A new-born world, basically.

[That's not the only thing he's looking for and lost, but it's the biggest part of his agenda. he supposes.]

[waterfell]

[He's already refused to call himself a god, so she doubts he's looking for it to take it for himself. Then... what?

Maybe it's as a simple as looking for something fresh and pure, that still has a chance to be better than it is. She could understand that search. She stays serious.]

What do you want it for?

[promotedpawn]

Only a new-born world has all the chances for anything and everything to happen within it. Only on such a world miracles happen at every step and there's no determined fate other than life will fill it. Only an empty world has place for all the stories one can imagine and for none of them at the same time.

[He explains calmly, seriously.]

Only with a fresh and pure world I can have a chance to destroy the witches who use worlds and people as their toys.

[waterfell]

[It says something about what she's seen and experienced herself to notice she doesn't seem to find this explanation strange, and instead finds it plausible. Some people might even call that goal noble; but she doesn't bother with words like that these days.

Besides, she knows a witch who wanted the world for her toy, and used the shitennou as the same. And that witch died.

Wait. Suddenly, she's more attentive as the parallel strikes her.]

Do you mean you can destroy them completely? [Because she is so very tired of knowing Beryl is endless, that each time she sees Beryl die, another Beryl in another world will always still exist.]

[promotedpawn]

It's possible, as endless as their existence seems to be, there's a way to destroy and crush them. It's just that it's not an easy way.

[And many would say it's almost impossible, but he has the whole eternity for it. It's just a matter of time.]

[waterfell]

[She, too, has the eternity of immortality; perhaps her goal will be reachable in that time. Until then, as she's said so many times, she'll go on fighting until she can recapture that pleasure, that glee in it.]

I've ended what I need to in my own world.

It's the alternates in others that I want to also disappear.

[promotedpawn]

If what you want to destroy is inside the worlds there are only two ways for it to happen. One is find a core world from which many others are born due certain changes happening inside of it and alter it so what you want to be gone will never be there in the first place. That will cause all the other worlds to change to adapt to them being gone.

But then nothing they ever did, not even the good things, will happen or take place.

[Which... Maybe is what she wants, but it's still a large issue to consider calmly. Specially for her.]

The other way is to find out if the piece you want to destroy is actually the result of external influence. Someone who lives outside of the worlds like I do, and who guided said piece to become the way you have get to know them. Destroy that being and the piece will be left without guide or power, it will still live on inside the worlds it's in but it won't be more troublesome than a powerless kid.

[waterfell]

[A core world. The source of all the problems.

It's very tempting. She has a vision of wiping out everything that plagued her, completely. Of no more suffering under them. Of Beryl unable to break their pride, of the princess unable to keep them all under her capricious thumb.

But she's stood there, at the end of all things. She's seen the princess destroy the source of her troubles, and destroy the future in the same blow. She wavers. She asks a temporizing question.]

If I decided on finding that core world, where do I start?