"It is a place that dwells in the memory of those who still dream of
its ancient glory. A world revered for its beauty, mystery and danger,
on a planet of endless adventure. Such a land is known as El-Hazard.
If your spirit has wings to travel, even across the breath of a
thousand million nights, imagination will guide the way and the gates
of El-Hazard will always be open to you."
- El-Hazard OAV #1, Pub. 1995. [Dub Version]
-*-
PROLOGUE: Fallen From Grace
-*-
"We have control now," Jinnai yelled out to Makoto, Nanami and
Fujisawa-sensei as they all stood on the Eye Of God. He was flanked by
legions of Bugrom, all keeping a close eye on the three earthling
Alliance members.
Jinnai continued, "Isn't it ironic that in the end, only we would
remain? I mean, two wars and two years later after we arrived, only
the off-worlders would remain. Well, and my loyal Bugrom." The
legions of troops gave a quick grunt of approval.
"You're crazy, Jinnai," Makoto yelled for the last time. He had said
it more times than he couldn't remember and each time it did little to
help the situation they were in.
Nanami rolled her eyes at the comment and faced her brother. "Look at
what you've done, Katsuhiko! Destroyed an entire planet for what? To
rule a dying world? To get petty vengeance over something that started
two years ago in another dimension? There's nothing left to rule!!"
She started to cry as painful memories of the last year came flooding
back to her. The destruction of Floristica and everyone in it,
Shayla-Shayla and Queen Diva's battle from which neither returned from,
Fujisawa-sensei weeping over the body of his would be lover. It seemed
so pointless after the fact.
"There still are other worlds to conquer," Jinnai said, totally
oblivious to Makoto and Nanami's cries. "Now that I control the Eye Of
God, I'll simply send myself, and my troops, to another world, and
conquer that." He chuckled demonically. "Who knows, maybe I'll find a
copy of myself in another world."
Makoto hung his head and a few tears fell from his cheeks. Nanami
looked over to him and tried to console him, wrapping her arms around
him and holding him close like a scared child. Fujisawa-sensei looked
at his two former students and grit his teeth. He turned to face
Jinnai, during which flashes of memory appeared in his mind. Faces he
once knew, and loved. People long since dead in this bitter and
endless war taken to an extreme that even Diva tried to prevent.
"No, Jinnai," he said like thunder. Jinnai looked at the teacher with
bordom across his face then gave him one of his satanic smiles. "This
world is over, but I shall not let you bring your plague of terror to
others."
Jinnai casually took a few steps back and was quickly surrounded by
the Bugrom legions. "If it takes my life," Fujisawa-sensei continued.
"I'll stop you. In the name of the beautiful priestess Miz, my former
wife, you will proceed no further." He rose his fists and took a deep
breath before lunging into the fray of bugrom, waving his fists
frantically, hoping to clear the forces enough to get a clean shot at
Jinnai.
It was no more than a few seconds later, that they Bugrom were tossing
the teacher's lifeless body over the side of the Eye. He had not gone
down without taking at least a dozen troops as well, but it was a
futile effort, and Jinnai knew it.
"Well, off to conquer other worlds," he said cheerily, clearly showing
the blackness that now cluttered his soul. "Have fun you two, and do
try to get away from the Eye. I wouldn't want you burnt to a crisp
prematurely." Jumping into one of the ventilation shafts, he laughed
again, the sound fading as he fell deeper and deeper into the core.
When Nanami looked up again, she found that her and Makoto were alone
on the Eye and that all the Bugrom forces had gone into the Eye for
safety. Scared for what would come next, she shook Makoto's shoulders
in an attempt to wake him from whatever trance he was in. When he
sleepily moved his head to look at her she sighed and began yelling at
him.
"We have to get out of here or we'll die on this stupid thing," she
said immediately. "Jinnai is going to activate the Eye of God, we have
to get down," she repeated when he didn't respond. Still watery in her
eyes, she admitted, "Makoto, it may very well be too late for us, but
he'll do the same thing to countless other worlds. Maybe he'll even
get back home and do this to our friends, our families..." she
struggled for something familiar. "To Ifurita!" she blurted in a
moment of clarity.
Makoto looked up at her suddenly and blinked away the sleepiness.
"Of... of course," he stuttered. "You're right, we have to do
something to stop him."
"Right," Nanami affirmed. "Now, we just need a way down an�"
"We can't wait," he said, standing. "He can't be allowed to leave
El-Hazard." He paused for several seconds, as if contemplating some
universal idea. "You have to get down, but I have to stay and try to
stop this thing. Hope still lies if you can find someone else on this
planet that is still alive. Somewhere Jinnai forgot to destroy."
"What about you?" Nanami asked nervously.
"I'm going to try to sync with the Eye and... destroy it."
"Destroy it!?" Nanami yelled back.
"Go, NOW!" Makoto yelled as he felt the Eye of God starting to power
up. "Find a piece of rope or something and slide down like the first
time. Just go!
Nanami hesitated for a second and Makoto had to forcibly shove her
away to make her go. After continuing to plead with her, he managed to
make her leave. When he was sure she was gone, he bent down to the
surface of the Eye and placed his hands upon it. Concentrating, felt
inside of the Eye, searching for something, anything to stop what
Jinnai was doing.
Controlling the Eye from the surface was hard enough, but competing
with Jinnai made the task even more difficult. In the end, the Eye
simply rejected both as unsuitable and began the self-destruct
procedure Makoto had tried to activate himself. While the eye was
going through the final stages of the destruction, he fell on his back
exhausted and looked up at the gathering black clouds.
In his mind, endless nights were replaying themselves as vivid and
pure as they had been when he first experienced them. He finally
settled on the memory of Ifurita, the weapon he had promised he'd find
again someday, a promise he would never be able to uphold.
He only wished he had another chance, some way to turn back the clock
and put things right. That way he could prevent Jinnai from putting
his plan into effect, and keep Floristica and the priestesses alive.
He was still hoping for some salvation when the Eye completed its
procedure and exploded in a supernova that quickly consumed all the
fuel and oxygen in the area expanding around the globe before the
entire planet was encompassed. A split second later, it was over. The
once great land of El-Hazard was now just a drifting asteroid field.
But in the darkness, a thought remained.
Was this the way it was all supposed to end?
-*-
The panoramic view from the center of time in the natural world was
impressive. He wouldn't deny that. But after over sixty years of
intermittent visits, it was starting to get old, not to mention every
time he arrived here it was almost certain that he was about to get a
new assignment. Assignments meant being isolated from the timestream.
Assignments meant more time away from his wife.
"The strands of time weave together to form a complex web of
interlocking events, each key in keeping the design intact. On
occasion, one event will misalign with the rest, throwing discord into
the web and risk�"
"And risking the unraveling of the whole. Blah blah blah."
Pluto looked down upon the clean shaven man before him plainly. He
stood equal to her height with short brown hair that fell just above
his dark brown eyes in small clumps. Tugging at the edge of his
loosely knit sweater, covering a white shirt and black tie, he raised
his arms and shrugged.
"I've heard it before, Pluto," said Adam. "You need to be more
creative." He stuck his hands into his pocket and slightly swayed back
and forth. "Is there a reason you've called me to this god forsaken
place again? Washuu is probably waiting for me."
Pluto said, "Your time is done here. Your work with the Planetary
Defense Force has assured that the human race will be able to return to
Earth and the surrounding planets in the distant future. Also, Washuu
now has a renewed respect for those around her and will be vital to the
Jurai Empire in years to come."
Adam's throat went dry and he found it hard to speak. "You mean that
this has all just been another assignment?" Adam pulled his hands out
of his pockets and ran them through his hair. "My time with the Senshi
and the Organization? My life with Washuu, my..." he swallowed. "My
love with Washuu?"
Pluto tilted her head. "Of course."
Adam's head spun and he had to forcibly push away thoughts that he had
been manipulated to love Washuu. I really love her, his mind said to
himself. No amount of manipulation could make me feel like I do about
her.
Pluto turned away from him and waved her staff in a circle, creating
an oval shaped portal. Looking into the portal, she began to read off
information. "There is a problem in Midkemia with the Tsurani and
the�"
"Forget it," Adam interrupted. "I'm not doing it. I'm going back to
my wife and going to lead a normal life."
Pluto got a look upon her face that seldom had gotten to see, shock.
"You must." As if to accentuate what she mean she waved her staff and
a large diagram appeared, showing a section of the diverging
timestreams. It looked like a piece of broccoli, starting from one
large stem, then splitting off in two, then those parts would split.
Some of the strands would suddenly end while others would exploded from
one to millions. Raising her staff, a thin red line appeared over one
of the strands, highlighting where Midkemia was.
Pluto said, "The fate of countless depend upon it." She slightly
nudged the strand with the tip of her staff and the broccoli changed
drastically before a couple strands intersected and the entire diagram
exploded into nothingness.
Adam rolled his eyes and swallowed. "It's not like I don't understand
what you're trying to do. I just want to know why it must be *me*, why
you can't send someone else... like Richard or someone."
"You are my messenger, Richard is my disciple."
Disciple? He thought. I'll have to look into this later. "Choose
someone else, I don't want to do it anymore," he said.
"You swore to be my messenger until the end." Pluto moved forward to
look eye to eye with him. "Your fate is infinitely connected to my
own. You cannot leave."
"What am I? Your prisoner?!" Adam yelled at the unmoving woman before
him. "Do I have endure this torture for eternity? Caring for an
instant then leaving to pursue other things? Don't think I'm ignorant
to the fact that I'm nearly eighty years old and I look no older than
thirty."
"You are removed from the timestream, you can appear to be any age,"
Pluto quickly supplied.
Adam grit his teeth. "Don't you understand? Can you have any idea
what I'm talking about? I will not leave my wife. I will not do your
work anymore! LEAVE ME ALONE!" He panted slightly as he gathered his
breath for Pluto's rebuttal.
Before he managed to breath out his second breath, Pluto pointed her
staff at him and closed her eyes. "Fine."
The light the sparking energy that flowed through her staff was the
last thing that he saw before a rush of nausea hit him and he fell to
the ground in a wave of dizziness.
-*-
Was this the way it was all supposed to end?
The thought rang though Pluto's with a vengeance like no other. She
quickly grabbed her staff and waved it around to determine the origin.
Deep within the strands of time she spotted the origin of the powerful
thought. The devastated planet would never reform to a life bearing
habitat again. Those that dwelled there would be forgotten and their
knowledge and culture would go unspread.
Checking her diagram of the timestreams she noticed no long term ill
side effects to the destruction of the planet. But the thought
retained a bit of mystery in Pluto's mind. It wasn't like the final
thoughts of most planets, thoughts of anger, of a fallen lover, of a
continuing trek to worlds beyond. The final thought for this planet
was the rarest kind of all.
A question.
A question that Pluto felt obligated to answer.
-*-
Watching the city burn was nothing new to him, he'd seen it before,
especially during the Second Great Kanto Earthquake. But watching the
city get covered with lava was something new to him. The eruptions had
started a few hours ago, the final card to be played in this age of
mankind, and he was caught in the unfortunate circumstance of being cut
off from MegaTokyo. Unable to get to his wife and the transports to
Jurai, or the cryostatsis area that Serenity had defined, he had no
choice but to try to run from the lava as long as he could.
In the years after his fall from Pluto's graces, he never felt he
needed her help more than right now. He would give anything to be able
to stop time and rush to his wife, or jump into the timestream out of
this universe and wait until everything had settled. Hell, he would be
glad for a hoverbike with proper filters instead of the slow moving
fission truck he was driving now.
Hoverbikes were fast, and incredibly maneuverable, but their large and
uncovered intake jets would clog almost immediately from the huge
amounts of ash falling from the sky. The fission cars had no intake
jet, and were generally self sufficient, except they ran a car at a
maximum of only 130 Kpm, far slower than the hoverbike. However, at
this point, it was the fission car or walking, a feat he was sad to say
he had not managed to get over 12 Kph for any extended period of time.
Turning abruptly to avoid another lava slide, he found himself in a
deserted area near a school. Driving up a hill he stopped to look back
at his natural adversary as it slowly moved down the road, consuming
everything in it's path. Looking about, he noticed that the school was
very old, probably build in brick, which could hold back the lava
better than most things around, certainly better than his body. Normal
brick hadn't been used since the late 1990's, everyone else was going
to brick substitutes like recycled plastic with tin.
He sighed at his own school days and went to turn down the road not
covered in lava when he was suddenly struck and the truck spun,
disorienting him. When he finally got his bearings he noticed the
truck was now upside down and the dashboard lights were blinking
furiously. Slipping out of his seat belt, he began to kick open the
door when all the lights went blank and only one returned, glowing
serenely.
He felt his stomach tie itself in a double knot as he looked at the
core meltdown light on the board. It took something big to get a
fission car to meltdown, otherwise they never would have become a
consumer product, and apparently the falling piece of erupting mountain
was just enough. He struggled to push himself out of the car, trying
to suppress his thoughts about the blast area of a fission car.
Crawling out of the car he ran towards the school and prayed that the
solid brick would protect him from the radiation. Rushing down the
halls he tried to find the lowest point in the building in which to
place himself. Finding a small section of wall cut away and a shaft
deeper than the basement, he jumped in and found himself in a strange
set of ruins.
It all looked weird to him, never in his travels though time, had he
ever seen anything like it. As he approached a cylindrical object, it
suddenly turned and began spinning like some top. It slowed and opened
to show the place were a body might have been placed at one point in
time but was vacant now.
He didn't have any time to investigate further as the far off sound of
the truck melting down was heard and he turned to face the cutaway
section of the wall that lead to the staircase. The white light
permuted the hall, then down the staircase, and into the ruins he was
in. Just before the light touched his body, he felt dizzy and suddenly
fell to the ground.
-*-
Pluto was actually sorry she had to use Adam the way she just did.
Deep down she knew how much he wanted to be left alone, but the
question from El-Hazard seemed too unusual to pass up. Pluto herself
wanted to know the answer having become involved enough to send Adam.
She felt, rather than heard or saw the intruder into her domain.
Turning around she faced the woman who had come to speak to her.
Recognizing the woman, she gave a quick, cursory greeting that the
woman promptly responded to.
Pluto opened her mouth to ask why she had come but just as she was
about to start, the woman began. "This affair has traveled out of your
hands, Goddess of Time."
"Have you come to take over, Goddess of Fate?" Pluto asked calmly.
"I must," she quickly responded. Pluto seemed confused about her
answer so she elaborated. "I have not come to take from you, but to
warn you that you have inadvertently placed them under my control, in
my domain. I will be dealing with them, not you."
"As you wish..." Pluto trailed off and returned to watching them.
"Just be careful with him, he is very important to me."
"I will do what I can, Goddess of Time," she returned before vanishing
back from where she came.
-*-
Tempest Creations Presents
The End of the Full Circle Saga
ENDLESS NIGHTS
-*-
Adam Christopher Leigh (Omicron@sprynet.com) - "She had studied the
universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For
small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through
love." -- Contact, By Carl Sagan