the other side

"HAHAHAHAHA! We did it! WE DID IT!"

Air raid sirens wail over Seraph City as a circle of absolute darkness widens in all directions overhead, blocking out the sun and plunging the city into starless night.

Atop the tallest building, a grayed old neko in a shimmering robe stares upwards, laughing in jubilation dancing across the border to madness. He bares his remaining fangs as his half-blind crescent pupils stretch across crimson. His silvered ears twitch as he tries to ignore the panic of the masses far below.

"It's so beautiful!" he shrieks. "Total Oblivion, all the way across the sky!"

The urchin with the gaslamp heart clutches his leg, her expression of terror betraying her smoky glasses reserved for the blind.

"What does it mean, Regent? What does it MEAN?"

"I'll tell you what it means, Wren! It means my plan WORKED! That lucky young bastard SUCCEEDED! It means...we're saved! WE'RE SAVED! WE'RE SAAAAVED!! HAHAHAHA...."

From the vantage of space, one would see the moon and slowly the Earth itself disappear through the Void's diameter.

Shortly thereafter, everything else - the Sun and the stars and nebulae blur and fade into nothingness.

Elsewhere...there is a universe very much like our own. Except there is a yellow sun missing a blue planet. And exactly where that orbit is missing is where a portal of lightless Void expands from an atom's width to the point where a planet and its moon slides through.

The Regent stares up at the new sun in silence, his knees buckle and he collapses to the concrete. Wren props up his head as the shadow of angel's wings cross over them both.

"Xavael." The Regent chuckles as he gasps for breath.

"Yes, Regent." A pale hand takes his gnarled paw as the white-robed angel kneels beside him.

"The Sephiroth?" The neko's ears perk anxiously.

Shimmering lights begin to glow through the angel's robes.

"The Tree of Life that your sister carried was connected to the greater. It's destruction hastened the End of All Things. That is why the Void became so powerful in you."

The Regent nodded in solemn agreement. "That's why...the Time Lords..."

"Yes. They taught you well. Here, the Spheres are in harmony again. Now Qlippothic can be rebuilt, and I may awaken her with this gift again. And perhaps...Ash may be rebuilt as well."

The Regent smiled. He looked beyond Xavael's face, and saw fresh grass and boughs gently swaying with springtime's blossoms. He recognized the face of the one sitting there reading a book, ,then standing and running towards him with arms oustretched.

"It's...it's Kira!"

"Yes, Koen." The angel closed his eyes and swallowed. "Go to her. She is waiting. The Void burdens you no more."

The frail old cat's chest rattled sharply a few times. Then he shut his eyes and breathed his last.

Xavael whispered a prayer over him as he nodded to the urchin. "The Regent is dead..."

Koen's body shuddered as the Gallifreyan lifecode woven into his cells began the rejuvenation process. His features flowed like wax. The sleek paw of a young neko with snowy fur squeezed the angel's hand. Xavael smiled warmly down at jade eyes marveling at the world.

"Long live the Regent!"

Later that night and across town, a young boy, shoeless, clad in castoff rags and his face covered in grime, stares at his reflection in the plate glass window of an abandoned storefront. Under the flickering streetlight he watches in astonishment as his scalp bulges and separates, and a pair of horns stretch from his temples. He whimpers from the pressure beneath his shoulder blades as two red shapes rip out from under his shirt...

THE BEGINNING

time may change me

What was it that made me and the frozen urchin stand there slack-jawed like a Japanese tourist who stumbled into a Caledonian Burns Supper?

"'Oh hell no?' Is that any way to treat your Regent, Koen?"

Floating in the air. Gold and crimson robes. Red demon wings. The crest of House Bloodwing on the chest.

"Would you expect any less from me?"

An exquisitely decorated staff from an estate sale at the other side of the galaxy.

He descended as quiet as a thought in sleep.

"Yes, Koen. This is my doing."

A gold headdress of a bent circle perched on his shoulders and fanning out behind his head.

I cautiously padded forward. "When did you decide to become Regent?"

Gray fur with traces of black. Bags under his scarlet eyes. Slightly trembling paws with overgrown claws. I won't even think about the teeth.

He let me come close enough to scent him. I lurched back. He ignored my response as he ambled towards Wren. "I had no choice. A construct can't become Regent..." He lay his paw on her shoulder, and her flame danced again. She looked up at him with a quivering lip and frightened eyes.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Regent. He chased me..."

"It's alright, Wren. He's unharmed. That's what matters."

I scratched the back of my head, trying to wrap my head around what he was telling me. I couldn't even put together the words. I was afraid to.

"You understand now, don't you Koen? Why a reconsolidated version of your Qli-Nova just happened to be right under you when you arrived from a fifty-year jump?"

"That was you..."

"Yes. Yes it was."

He scratched the back of his head. Looks like he never quit that habit. Still a bit of red on those silver ears.

"In this timeline..." He leaned over on his staff. Was he exhausted from the giant Void bubble? Or was the headdress or his wings the heavier burden? "The Bloodwing's Revenge crashed before it got to Babbage. It didn't get to Qlippothic in time..."

"The most likely outcome..."

"Yes, Koen. You saw how it ended. No one was there when the Vesprium broke through. No one to hold them back at the hellgate. No one to raise the alarm..."

Wren embraced him while he sank to his knees, leaning on his staff for support.

"I miss Father..." Wren whimpered.

"We didn't even have time to finish mourning and rebuild the Foundation before we realized the Steamlands were being overrun!"

I knelt down next to him, whispering as I shook my head. "Why? Why are you telling me all this? We're not supposed to change..."

"You already changed it when you watched this world through the Time Window! The first thing I did after becoming a Time Lord was to trace those energies back to your ship and devise a rescue! LISTEN TO ME BOY!"

He gripped my shoulder with his other paw.

"Don't end up like me! Trapped with a legacy on your shoulders and nobody left to pass it to!" He looked up at me, trembling with bitterness growing in his eyes. "Look at you, aging yourself in a timejump! You can get those years back with the turn of a dial! I'd give up my last moments just to spend a do-nothing day in Kittiswitch one last..."

"FOR THE LOVE OF BAST WILL YOU JUST STOP!" I broke his grip and leaped to my feet. The bunnies at the other side of the building snapped back into land-piranha mode, converging on the space where I had been cowering moments ago. Theirs ears perked and I saw a hundred pair of green beady eyes staring at us. I assume it was the sight of the Regent that made them leap down to the fire escape.

I felt my back arching and the fur on my neck standing on end. "What do you want me to do?", I snarled.

The old, sad, bitter, weary version of me rose and tilted his staff towards me. I looked down at Wren as she pulled a yellow and tattered old newspaper from under her jacket....

frozen

There's a giant fuzzy tidalwave of serious bionic pain bearing down on me. I spin and run like hell (on all fours no less!) back towards the fire escape, but there's a line of gaslamp bunnies already waiting for me haunched up in a row, all fuzzy wuzzy cute except for those steel uppers and beady radioactive eyes staring at me like I'm a giant carrot. These lop-eared rodents are hopping circles around me! I draw on what little magic I already recovered and hurl a Void bubble as they stretch out their shiny claws and...

...freeze in midair?

Yeah. All of them. Just floating. Lines of bunny drool trailing from their carnivorous bunny mouths. Even their gas flames in their little glass tummies are frozen in place. Except for the one that was caught in a Void bubble the size of a Caledon football. It's scratching furiously at the inside of the bubble, trying to get out.

"What the...?" If I had Qli pouring time-energy into me maybe I could pull something like this off. But my powers don't work that way!

So I carefully slip out from under the bunny-avalanche and look around. I still see the neon signs of Seraph City blinking in the distance. I look up and the stars are twinkling, probably from the clouds of exhaust from the airships. At least I know I didn't freeze this whole freakin' dieselpunk world.

Ah, there's Wren. She's frozen too, just like her pets. She's pointing towards where I was. But she's got this surprised look on her face? She's not looking towards me at all. She's looking up at...

OH. HELL. NO.

smackdown

I kinda like this Seraph City, once you get over the exhaust fumes. But you really gotta watch your step. It seems anybody who's anybody has a horseless carriage and drives like a maniac! But the clubs! They got these crazy new kinda sounds called jazz and swing...wow, how do I even describe them to a Caledonian?

But anyway, at dusk I was struttin' down the street in my new black pinstripe suit and matching fedora en route to the next juke joint when I hear this girl shouting,

"PAPER! GET YOUR NEWSPAPER!"

Aw man, what a letdown. Of course, they would still have urchins in the future. Just look at her in her white blind-glasses and blonde ponytails and her smock glowing from the light in her...WAIT A GODDAM MINUTE!!!

She saw me alright! She ripped off her glasses and smock and dashed for the alley. I bolted after her. Yeah, she's still small and probably knows this city like the back of her hand. But I'm a neko. She covers her light, but I can still see in the dark. She hurls garbage cans at me (note to self: Mason hydraulics) and I leap over 'em.

"You almost cut my FOOT off you psycho little BRAT!"

"That was FIFTY YEARS ago! Get over it!"

"For YOU it's fifty years! I've still got the STITCHES!"

I turn the corner and it's a dead end. She's not there. Then I hear the clatter of the fire escape above. She's zigzagging from one level to the next. I'm jumping from railing to railing. I reach for her ankle as she hoists herself over the rooftop. I grab her ratty old shoe which slips off in my hand.

"WREN! I got a nine letter word for what I'm gonna lay on..."

I land on the gravel of the rooftop. She's standing there, her heart burning under the night sky, her beady eyes glowing a reanimation green...no wait, that's the bunny on her shoulder. And a bunny on her other shoulder. And the dozen at her feet. And another twenty behind her. Here comes another hrair of them. She's surrounded by what, a hundred...gaslamp bunnies?

They've got shiny teeth. Razor-sharp steel I must assume. Aw crap, the claws too?

"Hey..." I chuckle, "Y'know...fifty years is a long time..."

She just points at me.

"GET 'IM!"

Now if I was Doc Mason I'd write something like, "as one, the leaping legion of lepuses advanced upon me" but really the only words that came to mind were "OH SHI--"