DB Multiverse

The sacrifice

It had been several minutes since the headquarters of the Tsufuls had not received signals anymore. They understood that Frosty had attacked their ships and since then they remained in the fog of war.

It made them more and more worried.

— How can we re-establish contact?

— We can't! What do you think? All means of communication are destroyed, there’s not even background sizzling!

— We don’t have other means?

— Like what? They’re so far we don’t even see them through telescopes!

— Isn’t there a rebel telepath? A… a rebel with… a headset?

— They’re fighting. They have more pressing issues than send an info bulletin.

— But… we… Director?

Tchiin hadn’t participated in the heated exchange. She raised her head.

— We’re not helping at anything anyway. Watching or not, it won’t change their chances either way. We need to trust in Hanasia.

Frosty still gave no signs of existence.

Hanasia wasn’t feeling good. She hadn’t planned on running out of air. She was already quite tired, and the change in surrounding conditions had already modified her behavior. Given the urgency, her body had naturally reduced her rage to concentrate on survival.

Fortunately, even in the vacuum of space, a super saiyan could hold a little while. But the Demon could hold an eternity.

She had to find him.

Hanasia.

A voice inside her head! And pictures as well. It reminded her when Bourgo had shown her the way to the bomb. It was the same thing. It was the same person, as a matter of fact.

She glanced at the ground and saw the body of the Namekian between clods of overturned earth. Several… important pieces were missing though.

The image she saw was the entry of a corridor that led to the field. She followed.

Was the green warrior dead and talking to her as a ghost? Maybe he had said something to the Demon along the lines of: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”?? Or maybe he just wasn’t dead.

The pictures changed as she advanced.

Even with the rarefied air, Hanasia’s movements created some sound and wind. Frosty heard her coming. How did she know where he was? He had remained in trance, lying on the bed of the infirmary, regaining his strength. When he had injected the medicine, it had disturbed him a little, but it was ever so short! One needed impeccable perceptions to have localized him at that moment…

Slowly, he raised himself. She was gaining on him fast. He put his back against the wall, just next to the door. She’d enter, he’d attack her by surprise.

Hanasia was rushing through the last straight line.

— Uh, why?

Hearing her question, Frosty moved away from the way quickly, and threw a large energy attack through the door. The corridor exploded. It barely burnt the hairs of Hanasia, however, the hull of the ship was torn apart.

— I’m not just going to listen blindly!

The demon didn’t need to leave the infirmary that was now missing a wall and floor. He descended among the debris into another corridor and disappeared. Hanasia followed.

— Hmpf, ok fine.

Frosty continued to evade, all the while asking himself questions. Why was she speaking to herself? He decided to listen on all possible frequencies.

Bourgo understood it was hopeless. He changed his plans.

— Say what? No, I’m not abandoning now!

— No! I don’t want him on my planet!

He showed her the image of a precise location, that she instantly recognized.

— Ah… Well… Ok… then.

She turned around and followed another corridor along the path the Namekian indicated.

Frosty had taken the telepathic earphone. The Namekian, of course! And so… they wanted to flee now? No, no, no…

It was his turn to pursue Hanasia.

After a while, he saw her at the end of a long straight corridor. He launched a new energy attack. Several rooms were destroyed, and once more, they were both amidst debris and the emptiness of space. Frosty didn’t know where they placed the scaphanders. But he just had to destroy any place where Hanasia lingered. She’d never have a refill of oxygen. He saw she was already weakening. She threw herself into a piece of ship as instructed by her telepath. He followed suit.

Hanasia was starting to have her vision haze. She didn’t know at all where she was going.

The Demon was getting closer. She ducked to the right. This time, her trust was literally blind.

She followed the instructions and destroyed the door instead of opening it. She entered a large room, with tables, chairs, all of them floating. On the side, counter with food, properly ordered and empty.

She exited the room by the aforementioned door as Frosty entered as well. It was a large automated door, but its system - which was obviously turned off - wouldn’t be fast enough to give her enough room. Just as for the door at the entrance, it didn’t matter much.

In this new room there were large shelves, of which its contents were floating about in all three dimensions in the room. Kitchen tools, canned goods, boxes of all sorts, and also food that didn’t need to be kept either fresh or warm.

She tried not to react too much. She recognized the piece of wall from the vision Bourgo had given her when they were first heading to the space arena.

The wall of the right was composed of partitions that could be removed with clearly visible joints. The blocks could be easily removed, opening on a closed space, used for stocking, for example, the rations meant for the return trip. And there, they had stocked a very explosive treat… A machine of death of three by three by three cubic metres, capable of destroying a planet

She ran to the partition, acting like she didn’t care about it, and in that short instant, her left arm mechanically extended to a shelf to grab what looked like a sausage. Her instincts still worked. Exhausted, but not enough to not bite into the extraterrestrial meat, she continued.

She hadn’t swallowed her first mouthful when Frosty entered the room. She turned. She stopped advancing. She looked at him, somewhat desperately. An anger, a hope? He didn’t understand her gaze.

He immediately stopped his flight. Something was off. Why had she abandoned her escape now?

Bourgo said nothing, but he was enraged. She was going to screw everything up.

Everything wasn’t too bad, actually. Frosty didn’t think of a trap. He just found it odd, and allowed himself an instant to see how she’d react to his appearance.

Her reaction was to swallow.

— It’s disgusting. She said accusingly to Frosty.

He didn’t comment on the presence of plastic surrounding the food that no civilized being would have forgotten to remove before eating.

— Are you done running? He said while pointing two fingers at her.

She understood he was going to fire without approaching her, and that all was lost.

— No! She screamed. I’m not done! So go to that corridor there, and we’ll go again!

Frosty opened his eyes wide. She was losing it!

Anyways, she knew she had lost, and was losing her mind. It was over. He fired.

The power of the keen attack, although instant, pierced the clavicle of Hanasia who had barely had time to move a little to evade. She was dragged backwards and bounced off the wall as she screamed. Panicking, she grabbed onto the railing so that her body wouldn’t turn in any direction, so she could see Frosty. She didn’t dare put her hand on her wound, where literally a piece of her body was missing. She was going to fall unconscious any second now…

— It’s… pff! Arg… You call that an attack, really? Urk… Don’t make me laugh, I didn’t feel a thing!

She had used what little energy she had left. Her hand was starting to unclench.

She couldn’t see Frosty anymore, because her head, whose direction she no longer chose, was showing her the ceiling. A view that was getting darker and darker. The edges first.

But she knew he was coming.

Frosty, seeing she couldn’t do anything, approached without worry, to finish her off properly.

If he was coming directly to her, that meant along the wall.

He was going to pass in front of it, Hanasia thought as she could only vaguely guess where he was.

It was obvious, he was going to brush against the partition.

Why would he take a detour?

Was he going to take a detour? In Hanasia’s head, everything was spinning, paranoia flaring, the possibilities multiplying. If parallel universes existed, there’d be some where he went left, one where he stopped, one where…

Click.

The space arena, Hanasia, Frosty, Bourgo, the bodies of both armies, the debris of the allied vessels, everything vanished.

Everything had merged with a precipitation of several tons of anti-matter. There weren’t any atoms left.

There was just energy, a tiny big bang that diffused light, heat, and radiation of all kinds in every direction.

On the planet Plant, a second sun appeared in the sky for several seconds. On a large portion of the hemisphere facing the phenomena, it was daytime and barely noticeable. Along the edges, at twilight, thinking beings reacted. On one continent, the reaction looked like this:

— Huh? What’s that li… It’s still the day? I thought that… Hey, Hatonek, did ya see? Ah, it’s over. Crazy! Did ya see it too, or am I crazy?

On another, more like this:

— What the…? What’s that li… It was night just now! Say, Erika, did you see? Oh, it stopped. That’s amazing! Did you see it like me, or am I the victim of a hallucination?

Light is the easiest thing to perceive. But invisible destructive rays accompanied the visible spectrum. On the Tsuful continent, the cities were enveloped in domes and nothing dangerous passed through. On the rest of the planet, animals that weren’t in the oceans or beneath the surface suffered a light radioactive trauma on their skin. The incidences of cancer increased by 9.87% during the next thirty years.

Chiin-Lee looked with empty eyes at the screen where the space radar indicated the factions present in the battle space. It didn’t indicate anything.

Nothing at all.

Hanasia was dead.

Their world was saved.

And Hanasia was dead.

It hadn’t taken long to replace the immense giant throne of Blizzard that had in any case been destroyed to replace it with a small dock in which fitted the floating seat of Snower.

Without manifesting the slightest fear despite being in a room where many powerful warriors were until recently foes, the Frost Demon had reduced his form to return to his “third reduction form”, this fragile appearance that was even smaller than his original form, that left him at a hundredth of his power, but that also allowed him better control of his body.

The little lizard, now new emperor of the universe, lorded in the center of his father’s palace.

But there were also some changes. Around the throne, he had installed, quite closely, many screens and communication stations. The more strategist ones had understood that Snower was going to micromanage, where Blizzard would only overview.

He was talking directly to a representative of a far-away planet. Without intermediaries.

— Greetings.

— Lord Snower, we are grateful for having granted the independence of our planet. But your soldiers are refusing us access to the katchin mines.

— Why would you want access to the mines? They’re not yours.

— They’re on our planet. They belong to us.

— Not at all. Your planet sold those mines to my company more than ten years ago. If you want them, you’ll need to come up with a price. Those are the interspatial laws. You have the government you want. But if this government tries to steal a private enterprise, then we’ll protect it.

— It’s your government that sold it to your company at the time!

— And? That’s the past. You have the wheel now, do as you please. Within the law. Good day.

Snower cut off the communication before the myriad of insults of the disappointed new leader could come through. He opened a new line.

— Greetings.

— Lord Snower, we thank you for having granted our planet our independence. But it seems that our influx of nitrogen has been cut off…?

— Of course. The empire used to import it for free. But you’re independent now.

— It’s just that… we can’t survive without the constant import of nitrogen into the atmosphere…

— That’s terrible. Maybe you’d like to buy some?

— What?! We don’t have the means!

— You can always re-integrate the empire as a federated territory if you want. Or take a loan.

— This is a scam! You’ve rendered us dependent on money and nitrogen, we’re only independent in name!

— You have the government of your choosing. What you’ll do is your own choice. I’ll let you get in contact with our sales team. Or our consulate. Good day.

He pressed a red button that flickered impatiently. On this screen, one could see written “extremely urgent”. He had made it wait for over half an hour.

— Greetings.

— Lorg Snower, finally! It's an emergency!

— Hello, President Donel Manalsen. Glag to see you out of prison and in your rightful place.

— Uh… said the other, perturbed and who remembered he was talking to a terrible Demon whom one of his brothers had thrown in a cell for twenty seven years. Well… We’re under attack by an army of space pirates!

— That’s unacceptable. I promised peace and justice throughout the universe. I’ll immediately send an important support unit.

— Thank you, Lord. I didn’t hope it’d be this eas…

— You are of course aware of the related cost?

— ...? As in?

— Well, a battle and the displacement, it’s all quite expensive. To give priority to the victims, our army will start by pounding the aggressors and will sell them as slaves - once judged in an orderly fashion - as per interspatial law. But if that isn’t enough to cover the costs, it’s up to you to sport the difference.

— But we will need to rebuild! They’ve already destroyed five major cities!

— We can handle that as well. Our construction companies adapt to local preferences and environments. We even have reductions for post-war reconstruction. Once more, our priority are the victims.

— It… it’ll cost how much all that?

— Hard to tell for now. I only remind that if you were a federated territory, all this would of course have been free. Our armies are en route. I hope you’ll be able to hold before their arrival in two weeks.

— Two... w...

— Good luck, good day.

He hopped onto the next conversation.

— Greetings.

— Lord Snower, we are grateful to you for having allowed the independence of our planet.

— My pleasure, how’s everything going?

— Pretty well, thanks. We’ve killed every family of your empire that still lived here. I hope you don’t mind.

— They should have left quicker.

— We’ve finally massacred the entire Zaöne community up to its last member. It’s been so long that we couldn’t stand them, those ones, with their weird skin and yellow hats.

— You take your own decisions.

— Well, we established martial law, obligatory religion, birthing classes, and the power only for those of noble descent - males, naturally.

— I’m glad you’ve been able to return to your little traditions.

— You mean like before you came and enslaved us.

— That was the old empire. Us, we’ll leave you in peace.

— Yeah, I know you! You’ve tricked other planets with their dependencies! But us, we’ve got natural resources and no need of you!

— I’m glad to hear that. By the way, I’ve heard there’s an increase of space pirates. Stay safe.

— Wait, wh-?

— Good day.

The transition period was going to be long and complicated.

Snower took care of numerous other calls, when a messenger arrived with a bang.

— Lord Snower! It’s confirmed, the space arena has been entirely destroyed! There’s no survivors! Lord Frosty is dead! And, uh, I hadn’t yet signed my allegiance, but it was a simple mishap, it’s done now!

Only the two most perceiving members of the room noticed the real relief in Snower’s breathing.

— We’ll give him a ceremony with the highest honors. The heroes of the old empire remain heroes.

— And what do we do with planet Plant?

— What do we do with planet Plant? Well nothing dear boy, nothing at all! We’ll send them our congratulations, flowers, and a pact of nonaggression. Both ways, as a matter of fact.

This was the start to several hundreds of years of peace. In the empire, and on the planet Plant, between two species that everything opposed.

In the land of the dead, Hanasia had the shape of a little cloud.

She was annoying her neighbors with her questions, starting with: why should she follow the line? And what if she didn’t want to follow it? Who was Enma?