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Ironically enough, our story begins at an end. Specifically, the end of a large planet in a Galaxy known as Takrooo'th. This planet had a good run, nourished three civilizations, two dominant races which eventually learned to cohabitate, and had the brains to skedaddle when the heat got turned up. Literally speaking, I must clarify: its sun had become a red giant by now, and scorched the entire sky in the day whilst the night sky rippled in an enormous corona of fiery flags. All life had been reduced to cinders long, long ago.
From out of a conspicuously well-kept door, a familiar girl stepped out. She had the same yellow fur - now with faint glowing orange stripes, a similar case for her hair-spines - and a glowing orange cybernetic replacement eye in her right socket. She walked by support of a tall golden halberd, as one leg was half-mechanical. Yes, Prudence Franklin: missing a few bits and pieces, still half-wrappd in bandages, and, in this iteration, infused with dangerous levels of raw temporal forces, but still just so damn cute as a button.
Prudence tapped a now-ancient street cleanup drone with the tip of her halberd. It promptly tipped over onto its back, with a faint poof of soot. "Yes, yes, this is quite fitting to your aesthetics, J'ragg," she said calmly, despite the sizzling and crackling noises above. "A fitting place where we'd first meet. Well, from your perspective. From my perspective, this is the third time we've met. I'll need to tell you how fun it is to be unstuck in time, someday! Don't worry, I will." She suddenly spun to face a back alley.
Out of the darkness whirred some kind of hovering platform, atop which was set a glowing blue-green dome separated into pentagonal panels. Two pods hovered alongside, ended by narrow, blunted claws. A slightly strained voice declared from somewhere within, "Ahhh, Prudence Franklin - the one who survived the end of a Universe, I see. What, may I ask, was it? Heat death? Saturation of dark energy?" It seemed that the 'passenger' was smacking his lips.
"Neither," Prudence chirped, "in my timeline I failed to stop Mrotthurr's doomsday machine. The entire Universe started coming apart at the seams. By a tiny chance I got unstuck in time due to everything getting all manners of crazy, and got warped to right after our Universe was deleted for the safety of Reality. Luckily every living thing was dead and passed on by then, and the afterlife is not in fact conjoined to its complementary Universe!
"Ethereals came across me, dissolving into magical energy particles, wrapped me up out of pity, and I'm fairly dandy as you see! Now," Prudence cackled, zipping with orange sparks, "you are a business man. What business do you have on this planet?" She began to spin her halberd beside her, whistling idly as the planet began to increase in temperature even further.
J'ragg chortled. "Simple, my dear," he said, "I know that when a being of your kind travels through time three times in a certain cycle, then they must wait until that cycle completes, and another runs its course to jump again. You've used up all of your tries, and I have fine-tuned my defense systems to negate your electrics. Magic will fizzle out on such a dead planet, since you are so keen on your link to life. Think, what could I do to the little cretin who can jump through space and time? You'll simply require a bit of, hm hm hm, breaking in." He suddenly noticed that Prudence's halberd had changed.
It was now some kind of piece of technology, hanging by a long cord. J'ragg's dome flashed orange and yellow, and he began to give off trills and whistles with alarm. "Ohhhhh yes you know what this is, don't you, you putz!? I was sure you'd recognize your own biotechnological control interface! I've had this for three minutes by my time, six seconds by yours, and my last two time warps were to nab this baby! I also took the time to upgrade your ship a few pegs and figure out how your manservants, foolishly dismissed by yourself, run the manual controls!"
She proceeded to pitch the device straight up into the sky, where it disintegrated into the closer, ever closer-coming sun. Prudence squealed with glee. "Oh my goodness! A loathesome merchant, a ship that doesn't belong in this time and place," she paused to lick and gulp at the air, "and this planet tastes like someone who has been wiped out of existence has been here!" She proceeded to hop on top of J'ragg, and ride him like a trolley back to his ship as the red sun grew and grew.
With a last cry of "Someone knew what I wanted for my birthday this year!", Prudence and her reverse-hostage were taken into the ship via warp beam. And so, as the Atrocity wheeled away under her juryrigged control, and a planet met its end by the sun which had allowed it to once live, the story of a girl from a vanished Universe began.
And I swear to you now, as the one who knows her situation best, this will be the most amazing story I will have ever told.
From out of a conspicuously well-kept door, a familiar girl stepped out. She had the same yellow fur - now with faint glowing orange stripes, a similar case for her hair-spines - and a glowing orange cybernetic replacement eye in her right socket. She walked by support of a tall golden halberd, as one leg was half-mechanical. Yes, Prudence Franklin: missing a few bits and pieces, still half-wrappd in bandages, and, in this iteration, infused with dangerous levels of raw temporal forces, but still just so damn cute as a button.
Prudence tapped a now-ancient street cleanup drone with the tip of her halberd. It promptly tipped over onto its back, with a faint poof of soot. "Yes, yes, this is quite fitting to your aesthetics, J'ragg," she said calmly, despite the sizzling and crackling noises above. "A fitting place where we'd first meet. Well, from your perspective. From my perspective, this is the third time we've met. I'll need to tell you how fun it is to be unstuck in time, someday! Don't worry, I will." She suddenly spun to face a back alley.
Out of the darkness whirred some kind of hovering platform, atop which was set a glowing blue-green dome separated into pentagonal panels. Two pods hovered alongside, ended by narrow, blunted claws. A slightly strained voice declared from somewhere within, "Ahhh, Prudence Franklin - the one who survived the end of a Universe, I see. What, may I ask, was it? Heat death? Saturation of dark energy?" It seemed that the 'passenger' was smacking his lips.
"Neither," Prudence chirped, "in my timeline I failed to stop Mrotthurr's doomsday machine. The entire Universe started coming apart at the seams. By a tiny chance I got unstuck in time due to everything getting all manners of crazy, and got warped to right after our Universe was deleted for the safety of Reality. Luckily every living thing was dead and passed on by then, and the afterlife is not in fact conjoined to its complementary Universe!
"Ethereals came across me, dissolving into magical energy particles, wrapped me up out of pity, and I'm fairly dandy as you see! Now," Prudence cackled, zipping with orange sparks, "you are a business man. What business do you have on this planet?" She began to spin her halberd beside her, whistling idly as the planet began to increase in temperature even further.
J'ragg chortled. "Simple, my dear," he said, "I know that when a being of your kind travels through time three times in a certain cycle, then they must wait until that cycle completes, and another runs its course to jump again. You've used up all of your tries, and I have fine-tuned my defense systems to negate your electrics. Magic will fizzle out on such a dead planet, since you are so keen on your link to life. Think, what could I do to the little cretin who can jump through space and time? You'll simply require a bit of, hm hm hm, breaking in." He suddenly noticed that Prudence's halberd had changed.
It was now some kind of piece of technology, hanging by a long cord. J'ragg's dome flashed orange and yellow, and he began to give off trills and whistles with alarm. "Ohhhhh yes you know what this is, don't you, you putz!? I was sure you'd recognize your own biotechnological control interface! I've had this for three minutes by my time, six seconds by yours, and my last two time warps were to nab this baby! I also took the time to upgrade your ship a few pegs and figure out how your manservants, foolishly dismissed by yourself, run the manual controls!"
She proceeded to pitch the device straight up into the sky, where it disintegrated into the closer, ever closer-coming sun. Prudence squealed with glee. "Oh my goodness! A loathesome merchant, a ship that doesn't belong in this time and place," she paused to lick and gulp at the air, "and this planet tastes like someone who has been wiped out of existence has been here!" She proceeded to hop on top of J'ragg, and ride him like a trolley back to his ship as the red sun grew and grew.
With a last cry of "Someone knew what I wanted for my birthday this year!", Prudence and her reverse-hostage were taken into the ship via warp beam. And so, as the Atrocity wheeled away under her juryrigged control, and a planet met its end by the sun which had allowed it to once live, the story of a girl from a vanished Universe began.
And I swear to you now, as the one who knows her situation best, this will be the most amazing story I will have ever told.
