The Astral Express hummed through the void, a golden comet streaking through the silent, velvet dark.
Inside, the parlor car was a picture of tranquil domesticity.
"Okay, my turn," March 7th announced, slapping a card down on the table with dramatic flair. "I summon... uh... The Great Galactic Grouper!"
Dan Heng sighed, not looking up from his Phone. "March, we're playing 'Celestial Jade,' not 'Cosmic Creature Duel'."
"You're just jealous of my superior strategy," she huffed, crossing her arms.
The Express was en route to the Herta Space Station.
After the... everything... that happened on Earth, Himeko had insisted on a full diagnostic. Not for the train, but for its passengers.
Herta, ever the opportunist when it came to unique research subjects, had agreed to provide check-ups and a full system scan in exchange for detailed observational data on a crew that had successfully "debugged" causality and other worlds information.
Welt thought it was a prudent course of action. Himeko called it responsible trailblazing. Caelus just wanted to make sure Twilight was really okay.
Twilight, for her part, just wanted to nap.
She was curled up in her usual corner seat, a fluffy blanket draped over her, looking for all the world like a perfectly content housecat.
well this happen when she drink Himeko coffee.
For most people, drinking coffee makes them more energetic and keeps them awake all night. But for Twilight, it just makes her sleepy. Even Himeko's ultra-caffeinated, bitter brew didn't help the situation.
"Ugh, this is so boring," March groaned, abandoning her losing game against a silently smirking Dan Heng. "We haven't run into a single interesting thing since we left Earth. Not even a space whale!"
"but i think i see space whale an---"
Just then, a klaxon blared through the car. Red lights flashed, painting everything in an urgent, bloody hue.
"Pah! something hit the car!" pom-pom interject.
"Unscheduled encounter," Welt announced, his voice steady as he materialized from the corridor. "Looks like we've got company."
The main screen flickered to life, showing the view from the front of the train. A fleet of jagged, monstrous ships, looking like they were built from nightmares and scrap metal, swarmed around them.
The unmistakable sigil of the Antimatter Legion glowed on their hulls.
March squealed, but it wasn't a sound of fear. It was pure, unadulterated glee. "Finally! Something's happening!"
She sprang to her feet, grabbing her bow. "Alright, you ugly space bugs! You picked the wrong train to mess with! We're the Astral Express crime syndi—I mean, Trailblazers! (And my backup is now online)!"
Twilight cracked one golden-green eye open from under her blanket.
She watched the swarming ships on the screen with the mild annoyance of someone whose nap had just been disturbed by a noisy fly.
"Honestly," she murmured, her voice muffled by the blanket. "It's like they're actively seeking death. Don't they check intergalactic travel advisories? This route should be flagged as 'Extreme Risk of Annihilation'."
She let out a soft sigh and began to sit up, the blanket pooling around her. "Fine, fine. I suppose someone has to take out the trash."
A hand shot out and gently pushed her back down into the plush seat. It was Caelus.
"No," he said, his expression firm. "You stay here."
Twilight blinked up at him. "Emm, Excuse me?"
"You went through a lot," Caelus insisted, his gaze soft but unyielding. "That whole... 'erased from existence and then not' thing. It can't have been good for you. You should rest. I'll handle this."
Twilight stared at him, a slow, lazy smirk spreading across her face. It wasn't that she couldn't fight. It was that she just really, really didn't want to. Caelus volunteering was the perfect excuse.
"You just want to look cool in front of me, don't you?" she teased, settling back into her comfortable cocoon.
Caelus's face flushed slightly. "...No. I'm just concerned about your health."
"Riiiight," she drawled, pulling the blanket up to her chin. "Fine. Go on, then. Show me what character development you've got, Mr. Four-Paths. Try not to scratch the new paint."
He gave her a grateful look, then turned to face the screen, his expression hardening. His hand went to the Flaming Lance strapped to his back.
"Everyone, hold on," he said, his voice dropping to a low growl.
The Legion ships opened fire outside, their weapons lighting up the void. Caelus didn't so much as blink. Instead, his eyes began to burn with something cold and distant—like starlight reflected off ice.
Golden streaks suddenly erupted from the Express, faster than thought, cutting through space with surgical precision. They weren't just deflecting the incoming fire—they were carving straight through the smaller Legion vessels.
One by one, the enemy ships bloomed into silent violet explosions, their hulls crumpling like paper.
The swarm of smaller craft that had pressed in close simply... ceased to exist. Gone in heartbeats.
Caelus stood perfectly still throughout it all, not even breathing hard.
"ehhh," March said, lowering her bow. "Thugs deleted. Guess you didn't need me after all."
"They're not all gone," Caelus said, his gaze locked on a massive, whale-like mothership that dwarfed the Express. "That big one is still targeting us. I'm going out there to finish it."
He started walking towards the exit hatch.
"Wait, alone?" Himeko asked, a note of concern in her voice.
Caelus paused, his hand on the door. He glanced back at Twilight, a flicker of worry in his eyes. He didn't like the idea of leaving her, even for a moment.
Twilight just gave him a confident thumbs-up from over the top of her blanket. "Don't worry about me. I could probably sneeze and accidentally vaporize a small moon right now. This train is perfectly safe while you're out playing hero."
A small, relieved smile touched Caelus's lips. Right. He was overthinking it. She wasn't the fragile girl he remembered.
"Be right back," he said, and with a hiss of compressed air, he stepped out into the void.
...
For a moment back on the Astral Express, the mood was downright celebratory.
"See? What did I tell you!" March 7th cheered, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Caelus is a total powerhouse now! We're practically invincible!"
Himeko allowed herself a small, proud smile. "He has certainly grown."
Dan Heng, nodded slowly. "His control over the powers of the Hunt has improved. The precision was... remarkable."
It was a good feeling. The nagging anxiety that had followed them since Penacony had finally started to recede. With two god-tier powerhouses on the crew, what was there to fear? They were the galaxy's most over-qualified thugs, and business was good.
But I feel... off.
Twilight sat in her corner, the half-empty cup of coffee forgotten in her hands. Everyone was happy. Relieved. So why did she have this nagging feeling, like an itch in the back of her brain?
It was too easy. The Antimatter Legion were a bunch of mindless, destructive idiots, sure, but they weren't that stupid.
They threw themselves at the Express like lemmings off a cliff.
Twilight 'Something's Screwed Up' sense is tingling.
"Hey," she said, standing up and stretching. "I think the coffee machine's filter is misaligned again. It's making everything taste a little too much like... Tuesdays. I'm gonna go check on it."
"Need help?" Himeko offered.
"Nah, I can do it!" Twilight replied with a perfectly straight face, already backing away towards the corridor.
She made her way to the archives car, a place usually so quiet you could hear the data banks dreaming.
She leaned against a cool metal wall, closing her eyes and letting the deep, rhythmic hum of the Express wash over her.
She focused, reaching out with her senses. There was the familiar warmth of Himeko's presence, the bright spark of March, the deep, calm ocean of Dan Heng... and far away, Caelus's brilliant, chaotic star.
Everything was normal.
Except... it wasn't.
Behind all those familiar feelings, there was something else. Or rather, a lack of something. A void where a feeling should be. A nothingness carved out of the fabric of nothingness itself.
It was a presence that felt like an absolute absence.
Twilight's eyes snapped open.
Of course, she thought with a surge of profound annoyance. Just when I found a good napping spot.
A flicker of movement in the shadows. A whisper of displaced air.
A Small blade, dark as a starless night, shot out from the void, aimed directly at her heart.
Without thinking, Twilight's hand came up, a sliver of golden light manifesting to meet the blade with a soundless clang. There was no shockwave, no ringing metal. The impact was simply... absorbed.
Erased by the nothingness that surrounded her attacker.
A woman stood before her, her face obscured by shadows, her form indistinct.
"Well, this is rude," Twilight deadpanned. "You could have at least knocked."
---||---
The void of space was anything but silent.
Caelus parried a massive, jagged claw the size of a shuttle bus, the impact sending a shudder through his entire body. The Doomsday Beast, spawned from the belly of the mothership, was a relentless engine of destruction.
He could drag this fight out, wear it down piece by piece.
But as he dodged another sweeping attack, a sudden, ice-cold spike of pure, undiluted terror shot through his heart.
It had nothing to do with the monster in front of him and everything to do with the person he'd left behind.
His breath caught in his throat.
Twilight.
He didn't know why. He didn't know how. He just knew. It was the same gut-wrenching dread he felt when he recovered his memories, the same feeling of imminent, irreversible loss.
No more, a voice screamed in his mind. Not again. I will not be too late again.
He was going to end this.
Now.
He stopped dodging. He planted his feet against a floating piece of wreckage and faced the beast head-on. Power surged through him, a chaotic symphony of four different Paths.
The fiery orange of Destruction, the unyielding gold of Preservation, the subtle chorus of Harmony, and the sharp, lethal focus of the Hunt. (Elation: what about me?)
He raised his lance, no longer just a weapon, but a conduit for a force that could unmake stars.
"Get out of my way," he roared.
The lance erupted in a beam of light so intense, so absolute, that it bleached all color from the void.
The Doomsday Beast, the mothership, and everything in a thousand-kilometer radius simply... vanished. Wiped clean from existence.
Silence returned.
Panting, Caelus hovered in space, the afterimage of the blast still burning behind his eyes.
He had to get back.