Meanwhile, in another another another universe…

******

“Are you ready?” Demi turned to her partner. Her familiar black eyeliner and dark jacket was a comforting sign. Around the group, dozens, perhaps even hundreds were awaiting the pair’s presentation. The clocks were striking fourteen. The aisle was free and clear for them to proceed henceforth to the raised auditorium stage where their machine sat, intact, waiting. It had been inspected by the judges prior to assure its safety, a process which nearly gave Agatha a heart attack, but on the whole nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. The time was officially now.

“Now that we’re together,” Agatha said, taking Demi’s hand in hers, “I’m ready for anything. When I’m with you, Demi, I feel like I can fly. I feel like I can… do you… do you feel that?”

Demi felt it too. She looked to her feet, and looked around her, feeling the quake. She had an idea of what it was, but was too terrified of that possibility to even consider it.

The lights went off, and several of the light bulbs in the auditorium cracked, showering the audience with blades of sharp glass.

“Oh my gosh!” Demi yelled, covering her mouth.

The science teacher rose his voice, announcing, “Demi and Agatha! If your machine caused this, I will – ”

CRASSSHHHHOOOOOM!!!

The auditorium had been breached by a massive flip-flop, atop which a pale foot wiggled its toes in ecstasy at the devastation it had just created. The entire right half of the seating area had been caught beneath it, burying students and teachers in an avalanche of metal and plastic and blood alike, and sending those not immediately in the strike zone dozens of feet away in the massive shock-wave. Demi had only enough time to grab Agatha before the pair were flung against the far wall.

“Ungh!” Demi shrieked, feeling something important break in her torso. She had graciously taken the brunt of the impact when the pair flew.

“Demi!” Agatha shrieked, flipping from her side and barely struggling to her knees as she raised Demi’s slumped over position to against the wall.

“Ach!” Demi said involuntary, prompting apologies from her friend.

“Sorry, sorry! It’s just… we need to – ”

“No…” Demi said, tears in her eyes. “No, we don’t.”

“We… what do you mean?”

“I mean we’re through!” Demi said, raising her black-stained face to Agatha’s. “We’re done! The game is over… We lost.”

Another massive CRASHHHHHH!!! that sounded close, but not immediately affecting the auditorium. A falling piece of debris crushed an amputated straggler. Demi thought it might’ve been Juliet. She couldn’t tell. Her vision was already going out.

Agatha heard Demi’s cold, dead resignation. “What do you mean?” she repeated, far more urgently than last time.

“It was…” Demi coughed. Blood came out, painting Agatha’s cheek. “It was always a fifty-fifty. Always has been.”

A… fifty-fifty.

Agatha felt the tears well up, the tears and the pain.

“Aw… Aggie… please… don’t cry,” Demi said, taking Herculean pains to lift her arm up and place it on her friends shoulder. And Demi smiled a true, sincere smile.

“This still means that no matter what happens… we’ll be together until the day we die.

The hole of sunlight in the roof became shadow.

“Okay, Agatha, Agatha, listen to me,” Demi said, urgency rising. “We need–”

“Demi, I love you! I love you, you hear me?!”

The roof completely collapsed. Rock was coming down around them. The screams got louder.

“I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU –” Agatha covered her ears and shouted it again, and yet somehow, she was able to hear Demi’s response.

“I LOVE YOU TOO! AGATHA, I LOVE –”

BRABOOOOOOOOOM!!!

The black-heeled boot of the Black Goddess ground the sacrifices under its rubber sole. Standing their, hands on her hips as she observed the former schoolhouse she had made herself believe was fit for her, she felt a quaint affection for it. A paternalist sort of nostalgia.

Demi shivered, and not merely as a result of cold from being thrust into the outside at two hundred fifty feet tall. Lifting up her boot and grabbing it by the ankle, she noticed the familiar sheen of red paste stuck in the treads.

“You good?” Agatha said, crouching down and glaring at the city with a mischievous obsession. Already, some were exiting their cars and buildings, breaking down to tears at the arrival of these women. Those who had known Demi and Agatha all throughout their altered lives were even more flabbergasted at the fulfillment of prophecies cast ages ago being made manifest by two ordinary high school students.

“Oh I’m good!” Demi said, planting her foot absentmindedly on the greater part of the rest of the school. “It just looks so puny from up here.”

“Ey ey! Careful!” Agatha warned. “Remember, we can crush whoever we want, but we need the machine.”

“Of course, of course… my love.”

It was such an exceptionally formal manner of address for the two, and it caused Agatha to burst out laughing. “Ahahahahahaha!” she giggled, and she couldn’t help but fall back, crushing the post office across the street to dust beneath her sweatpants.

She let the giggle peter out as Demi looked down at her lovingly.

“Oh… hey! Look who’s here!” Demi pointed out, and Agatha turned her gaze to the ground around them.

People had stopped their work. They were coming toward them, hypnotically, fearfully, but steadily. The crowds were streaming from buildings and vehicles, and it was only getting thicker. They didn’t know what to do, but for once, as Agatha and Demi performed their work, those around them weren’t screaming in fear.

They probably should be. But for the moment, they weren't.

“Oh… um,” Agatha started, as some of them had finally reached her, hands outstretched but too scared and hesitant to lay their touch upon an avatar of their goddess. “Hey there… fellas! We’re here! We’re back!”

Now it was Demi’s turn to laugh. She turned to the crowd of willing worshipers as they descended, bowing to the might of the Twin Goddesses. Demi put her hands on her waists and simply smiled, gazing with a curious sense of possession at the tiny humans’ devotion. “That’s right,” Demi purred. “Kneel. And know…” Demi continued, raising her boot up once again and casting the kneeling, crying, worshiping group into shadow.

“Know… that you have been saved.”

SLAAAAM!!!

Once again her boots made a mess.

“Demi!” Agatha chastised, though her own obsession with Demi’s display of power was evident in Agatha’s blushing. “That seemed a little mean.”

“Does it matter? Do we even have to pay attention to the needs of these dust motes? Hell. No.”

And then Demi raised her foot again, preparing to truly reduce the last remnants of the school auditorium to sediment, but this time Agatha grabbed her heel before it fell.

“Whoa, whoa!” Agatha said, serious now as Demi looked at her curiously.

Agatha took her thumb and forefinger, digging into the rubble for the glint that caught her eye until –

“A-ha!”

In her fingertips was the smaller version of the time machine.

“This is what we came here for…” Agatha said, dreamily, looking up at Demi, who was just as enraptured.

Agatha stood up and looked in Demi’s eyes. The held the miniaturized time machine between the two.

“With just one machine, we have so much power. But if we can combine the two…” Agatha looked at the giant machine, seated at the intersection just a few steps from where the school once stood.

“By my calculations, the energy unleashed from that transformation will be limitless. We still don’t know what it will do…”

“Hmph,” Demi replied, placing a hand on Agatha’s chest. “Whatever happens, I don’t care. Whether we live or die, it doesn’t matter to me. As long as I get to be by your side when we do it.”

The pair nodded, and then Agatha leaned in for the kiss, planting it on Demi’s ajar lips.

Helicopter wings began to whip strands of Demi’s hair out of place, who sighed in exasperation. The news choppers had aimed their cameras and megaphones at the pair, flitting about their heads in confused curiosity.

“They’re just ants,” Agatha offered. “And we will soon be free of them.”

Hands within one another, Agatha and Demi returned to their time machine as it sealed them in once again with a hissssssss.

Once inside, Demi manipulated the controls. On the console, a small compartment opened not unlike a slightly smaller than normal USB slot. Agatha inserted the miniaturized machine into the slot by the battery pack, then looked at the numbers.

“When do you want to go?” Agatha asked.

Demi pondered for a moment… Then she reached forward and pressed the “Go” button.

The machine whirred, and Agatha smiled.

This was virgin terrain, and nobody had any idea where it would take them. But the opportunity to travel to new heights was all the pair needed, especially when they were together.

The heat was rising, and to feel as though she were doing something useful, Agatha pulled the seat belt over the pair’s chests.

“Do you feel it coming?” Agatha screamed out, the electricity already making her mouth taste of metal.

“I feel… I feel something!” Demi replied, pins and needles piercing her legs, arms, every limb of her body. “I feel…”

She didn’t know how to describe it. The machine was shaking. Freezing cold and burning heat were combining. Up and down, time and space, together in their perfect little spherical box, Demi could almost comprehend the sound of the universe, but it hurt. It actually hurt more than it ever had. Her head ached, her skin itched, but she couldn’t do anything to assuage this pain because she had all but lost the ability to move, and barely maintained the capacity to think. She was electronically locked, and she couldn’t do anything save the slightest actions as the machine was flung further and further to an unknown destination.

“I feel… Agatha!?”

Agatha was burning away. Demi performed the nigh-insurmountable action of turning her head to see that Agatha was falling apart. Like a sandcastle blowing away, from the top of her head, Agatha was being ripped to atoms by their traipse through the space-time continuum.

“NO!” Demi commanded. It couldn’t be. Not after everything. Not after beating the odds. Not after finally finding the one she loved. It couldn’t all be for nothing.

“Agatha!”

Demi shrieked. She could not bear it. She simply could not. It could not be.

“Don’t leave me!”

The machine’s wiring was burning out.

“I NEED YOU!”

The machine’s construction was ripping itself apart.

“WE PROMISED TO NEVER LET EACH OTHER GO!”

Scraps of the fabric that made up creation were becoming visible as more and more metal was scraped by the speed at which they made their fantastic voyage.

“And I am going to keep that promise.”

And Demi summoned it within herself.

Her desire. Her fear. Her defiance. Her love.

The machine was being torn apart now, and as the roof was flung far back into the Mesozoic Era, Demi could glance up and see stars. Agatha was still being split apart, untouched legs and feet at stark contrast with a face and upper torso that seemed as though it were a work by Salvador Dali.

“Demi?”

Demi could not make out Agatha’s mouth, but she could hear her voice.

“Agatha! I’m here!”

“Are you there?”

“Yes! Aggie! I’m here! I’m right here!”

“Where are you?”

“I-I’m here! Agatha, can’t you hear me?”

“I don’t know where I am… I don’t know where I am!”

Demi now could not tell if she herself was speaking or not, but as the tears that leaked from her eyes were frozen and sublimated into crystalline comets of untold energy, Demi called upon the power she summoned.

She glanced at her hand, there on the seat next to Agatha’s quickly disappearing thigh. Agatha’s own hand had long since vaporized, but Demi’s fingertips were now following suit.

Demi reached into her mind for the will to do what she desired to do. But that was not enough.

So she reached into the cosmos for the knowledge of what she needed to do. But still, it was not enough.

Until… Demi reached into her heart for the love that dictated what she wanted to do.

And she commanded:

“Stop.”

And the journey was over.

And so was everything else.

The void was vast. The machine was gone. But when Demi looked to her side, she could see the form of Agatha reconstituting itself, becoming human once again as it floated next to her.

Agatha’s eyes remained glazed, unable to truly parse what had been happening to her. It was only a gentle prod from Demi that caused her to gasp and paint for air, or whatever it was here that their bodies tricked themselves into believing was air.

“W… what happened to me?”

Demi answered her by pulling her into an embrace. “You were almost gone,” Demi could barely keep herself from sobbing. “But I… I think…”

Agatha’s eyes widened as she smiled, feeling the warmth and energy flow into her from Demi’s form. “You saved me again.”

Then they pulled apart and examined their empty environment.

“So… what now?” wondered Agatha.

“Oh… so, actually, I think we might’ve destroyed the universe on accident.”

“No, you. You destroyed the universe on accident,” Agatha clarified, causing Demi to look at her with sinister sarcasm.

“Hey, if I didn’t do that, you wouldn’t be here! And besides I’m sure I can bring it back. Hey, watch!”

And then Demi cleared her throat and announced:

Be.

And they were back in the auditorium. Standing on the podium. The time machine was there, but any signs of whirring or mechanical energy had ceased, as though it were an empty, useless box. Nevertheless, the audience was clapping, offering a standing ovation to the pair as if they had just completed their presentation.

“Whoa… shit,” Agatha said, grateful the clapping obscured the swear. “That’s sort of insane. Wait, can I... ”

Agatha cleared her throat, and thought…

Go.

Answering her own question, the pair was now standing above the desiccated ruins of their former city. No longer limited to a mere 250 feet, they had by now exceeded six thousand feet, such that even the tallest buildings in human history couldn’t even reach their knees. Much less the paltry structures made by their hometown.

“So… goddamn… cool,” Agatha breathed, shuddering with the power she now wielded as a result of their return from the transit nexus. Her voice carried across mountains and oceans and rivers; her presence was itself a natural disaster. “Wait, did you bring back the old world or create a new one from scratch?”

“God, who fucking cares?” retorted Demi, already magicking her boots off as she dragged her bare soles through the mud of the world. To anyone else it might’ve sounded abrasive, but it only made Agatha fall in love with her even more as she realized how right Demi was.

Flashes from the surface. Streaks of light and smoke, aimed directly at the pair’s faces. Yet exploding harmlessly, like fireflies as though impacting a solid barrier directly in front of them.

“We’ll never have to worry about pain ever again,” Demi said, once again sending a colossal kick through the soap-soft skin of the Earth, carving a torrential trench through the heart of the metro area. From this height the military forces weren’t more than gray muddy spills, and she had just erased them.

“Or fear,” Agatha offered, putting her hands out to her side and letting herself fall forwards, perfectly posed. The people that looked up at that moment would have seen the last event to blot out the sun, as she compressed the air beneath her descent in an ear-popping shockwave before utterly ending everything from her shins, to her thighs, stomach, and enraptured face and eyes. It would truly be a blessing to met one’s end beneath them.

BOOOOOOM!!!

A tsunami of destruction roared across the land in an outline of Agatha’s silhouette, and she rolled over onto her back and began to carve an earth-angel in her image.

Demi knelt down next to her and smiled, before digging her hands into a patch of (relatively) unscathed earth nearby, collecting buildings and people and vehicles all drawn up in the quagmire. Some were staying to offer supplication to their deities. Others had renounced the old religion in favor of survival. All of them were taken above Agatha’s shirt collar and sprinkled within like baby powder.

“Ah, ah, ahahahahaha!” Agatha giggled awkwardly at the feeling, the semi-scratchy, semi-squirming feeling as she sat up, distracted from earth angels and punched Demi in the shoulder. “Quit it!” she said, standing up once again and airing out her outfit. Most of the dirt fell through the hem of her clothes, but much of the buildings and people remained, having found themselves sticking in the most personal nooks and crannies of Agatha’s sweaty body, some already being squashed by the contractions of her movements.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I think I’ve had enough of this for now anyway,” said Demi.

And they were off again. At first, Agatha wondered whether they were back in the endless void of the transit nexus. Had something gone wrong? Had their powers wore out? Had the machine’s malfunction had an unforeseen effect? Why had they been transported to this limitless expanse of darkness once again?

But no; a passing meteoric body burned up as it encountered the two girls' gravitational pull, and suddenly Agatha knew where they were.

From here, it only took a few moments until the stars came into her perception, and from that point a few more moments as the group pinpointed the location of Earth, hanging above them, eclipsing them in darkness as it blacked the sun’s rays.

Above the pair, Earth lingered, roughly the size of a yoga ball. There lay all of human existence and civilization. Every man and woman and child, saint and sinner. And they were in the palm of their hands.

Agatha could only imagine it… there on the dark side of the Earth, the faces, unfathomable, incomprehensible, of this society’s objects of worship thrusting out of the expanse of space, a message, a warning to all of what power the pair possessed. A warning that was ultimately meaningless; the affairs of these bugs – less than that, really – had no real effect on what it was the pair desired and did. But so long as this little experiment continued, she figured they might as well string it on to its logical conclusion.

“I just needed to see it from this view, once. For now,” Demi said, waddling a bit as she floated away before Agatha grabbed her.

And with a frankly unnecessary hand gesture, the pair were in a pure white room supported by six columns. A single, massive, made bed was placed at the head of the room, and a short pathway nearby brought in what seemed to be a natural light.

“What the…?” Agatha asked, quickly realizing her clothes too had changed. Rather than her dingy school-wear, she was wearing a silken white robe, expertly tied about her waist. Demi too was wearing a robe, this one made of a shimmering gray and equally soft material. Both women now were barefoot, and the marble makeup of the construction brought chills to the bottoms of their soles.

“Where are we?” inquired Agatha.

Demi smiled and jerked her head in the direction of the hall. “It’s not where, at this point. But when – ”

And she took Agatha’s hand, dragging her exasperated friend through to the end of the path.

A balcony. Light shone down amidst a gray cloudy sky, and hills lined the vista, providing a beautiful view that could see hundreds of miles in the direction if one squinted hard enough. But neither needed to in order to make out the two perfect, statuesque depictions of the both of them, standing at the center of the hill. Demi had her right foot out, ready to crush, and Agatha mirrored her with her left foot.

“I guess this is how they honor us in the year 2307,” said Demi.

“You guess? You mean you didn’t know?”

Demi shrugged. “How could I? I’m omnipotent, not omniscient. Unless I want to be. Which… I guess I sort of do?”

Demi blinked. Her face twisted into a grimace.

“You know what, I take that back. I do not want to be omniscient anymore.”

And like that, Demi’s face returned to normal.

Agatha blinked at her friend, then poked her head out over the balcony, gasping in amazement as a solar-powered aerial vehicle zoomed past her roost, nearly slicing her head off.

“We can really do anything?” Agatha asked ethereally.

Demi nodded. “Do anything, go anywhere… so what do you say? Do you want to explore all of creation with me, for all time?” She took Agatha’s hands in her own and looked her in the eye.

Agatha, tears in her eyes, broke into a smile once again. Demi needed not omniscience to know what her new lover was thinking.

“I do.”