52When we last left our heroes…
Son of a Dickson, it's been three years since the inception of this crackfic! Three years, and we've finally reached the end of our journey together with Reyn's merry band of eccentrics. I'm very, very thankful for everyone that has given support to this little project over the years.
When I first began writing this fanfic, I didn't expect it to have lasted this long. Just the fact that I managed to finish it I feel is an utter testament to my insanity, but an achievement, nonetheless. I also never expected it to get the support it has! Guys, you're AMAZING. Thank you so much, you are wonderful people! And a big thanks to everyone who gave an idea, too! :)
When we last left our heroes, Zanza, in Memory Space, is forced to reminisce bad memories as he waited to die. Alvis tries to help Shulk come back to life in his rotted corpse, but unfortunately(?), he didn't have any gem slots for the mystic Regeneration IV gem. Meanwhile, back on the Bionis, Dickson tries to confront the ragtag team of heroes—but with little buildup or explanation of his villainous twist within this fanfic, he's killed off within 500 words. And now, in the final installment of Xenoblade Chronicles Abridged, Zanza…discovers a cliché reality.
As the last of life escapes the Bionis, Zanza, from Memory Space, watches the world collapse via his Passage of Fate Hi-D television screen. He stares at it for a long while, and soon, the god sheds a tear.
"Goodbye, Noob Cave… Goodbye, the colony on my leg that somehow got debris rain even with my thicc calf protecting it… Goodbye, crotch colony…" He sighs. "Goodbye, toxic swamp and permanent open wound on my body that could have gotten infected from the toxic swamp. Goodbye, humid forest where the carnivorous nopon live… They can stay there… Uh, and goodbye, Entia, thanks for worshipping me for at least a few thousand years. Those were fun times." His reminiscing smile fades as a scowl creases his mouth. "Sayonara, High Entia, you guys were nuts. 'I'm really feeling it,' my bare buttocks! Get outta here, I am so glad those red pollen orbs backfired on you guys, you deserve to be Telethia!"
As Zanza finishes the last of his goodbyes to his special world, the remains of the Bionis crumbles into the endless ocean.
Zanza looks down at his hands as they begin to fade away in that typical cliché way some people die in popular media. And then, as he begins to accept the fact that he too will fade away undramatically, he sighs out, "Great. I don't even get a good death."
Eagleflame, in this moment, reconsiders their initial plan of action and decides to honor Zanza's bemoaning.
Lord Zanza explodes into a blinding light and dies. What a plot twist!
A faint beeping sound echoes in a sea of black. The man struggles against this heavy, crushing darkness, and the more he fights it, the more it clears up, revealing a blurry white space.
Is this…Heaven? the man thinks to himself. In a way, he feels rather accomplished despite being dead. He also can't believe how God let him in, considering he's been calling himself a god this whole time.
The white expanse shifts—and suddenly, it's been replaced by red.
The man, momentary panic setting in, struggles harder to escape the crushing dark as he thinks, Dear Zanza, God heard me, and He's taking what He did back!
The blurriness clears up further, and he realizes that the red was not Hell, but instead, the front of a shirt. What a funny joke his deceased relatives played on him. It was probably his great-grandad, still angry at him for some reason or another. He really doesn't know why, considering he even went so far as to model Dickson after him.
The man goes to speak, to tell his ancestor sorry not sorry, only, his voice comes out as a very unmanly, mangled squeak. Oof, he thinks with an internal cringe.
The shirt in front of him shifts more, and as his vision clears up, the man realizes that—no, it wasn't good ol' Dick at all! It's—
The cleavage of a woman in a red dress.
I'm in the Matrix?
As the man stares in dumbfoundment, the woman glances down at him and instantly widens her eyes as her lips part.
Now this is a plot twist, the man muses, a plot twist I'm more than happy wi—
Wait.
He stares hard at the woman's pale face, her soft eyes, framed by locks of grey hair that shines from a light coming from somewhere in the dim room. "Klaus," she whispers, as if shocked.
And oh, boy, was Klaus shocked, too.
Now, Klaus specifically remembers that he and Meyneth changed forms into his roleplay idealizations for them after the space station blew up and careened them into the other world he was studying that just happened to be exactly like his roleplay one.
He knew he never liked that red dress of hers, so he gave her a pretty blue and violet goth creation instead. Much better. But now, all that's gone! Here Meyneth sits as if nothing ever happened in her stoplight-red clothes.
Klaus, too perturbed by the dress to even bother with giving the stunned woman the time of day, decides to go back to sleep.
"I still can't believe it," Meyneth says, putting her hand on her chin as she looks over to Klaus.
Klaus, sitting up in his hospital bed with a tray of food, scowls at her. "What's unbelievable about it?" he asks. While his voice is still pretty bad, he's made leaps and bounds with talking, so much so that the first thing he told the constantly-visiting Meyneth was to kindly stop wearing that red dress.
She turns an annoyed glare his way. "I don't know, the fact you woke up from a three-year coma?"
"Oh." Disinterested, he returns to his food. "I thought we were talking about Xenoblade. The scene opened so vaguely, you really can't blame me."
The scientist straightens in her chair beside the bed, her blue blouse creasing at the movement. "You still have no idea what happened, do you?"
He waves his fork toward her. "Enlighten me, Meyneth."
"It's Galea! Galea!" she snaps. Klaus snorts a childish giggle out, which makes Meyneth roll her eyes. "Like I told you twenty-five times now, the phase transition experiment facility exploded when you just had to hit that button. You and I and some nameless coworkers—I couldn't care less—survived, and you've been comatose this entire time."
"How'd you make it?" he asks in disbelief.
Meyneth replies flatly, "I was nearest to the emergency oxygen masks."
"Well, how'd the nameless coworkers make it?"
"They left you and I to die while they ran for the escape pods."
"Of course they did." Klaus pauses and turns his blue eyes to the window. "I swear it, it was real, that world we discovered in our studies—I was there. I was grand. Our phase transition experiment worked!"
A scoffing laugh escapes Meyneth. "The only thing it did was give you a three-year-long fever dream."
"Did I tell you about it? I can't remember. I followed your dare, by the way. The one where you told me I needed to be naked and in gold in my roleplay?" A stupid smile widens on Klaus' face. "Yeah."
Meyneth's eyes dart across Klaus' atrophied frame, under a blanket. She then raises an eyebrow. "I take it back, you had a fever wet dream."
"Did I tell you about it?" he asks again.
"About as many times as I've told you about what happened," she grumbles, putting her head back into her hand.
Klaus furrows his brows. "How's your VHS collection? Some freaks ripped your copy of Ladyhawke open while I was in the world, just saying."
As he gives her a pointed shrug, Meyneth jumps to her feet. "Hold up now, who did what?! I've forgotten about them completely, what if Egil got into them?!"
She bolts out of the room as Klaus chuckles darkly. "I should've told her her dog worshipped her in the world. Maybe then she'd want to marry me."
"Well, just some more therapy, and then I can return to work." Klaus, tying his tie using his reflection in the front windows of the hospital, turns to Meyneth, who's sitting, scowling, in the wheelchair the hospital staff insists he has to leave in.
"Funny, a company usually doesn't pay for three years' time off," she replies dryly. "Especially if it was, I don't know, blown up."
He waves a hand her way. "Details. Where're you working now?"
"Pyra Electronics. But if you dare think I'm going to put in a good word for you—," she threatens.
Klaus gives her a smug smile. "Even when you've been visiting me every week while I've been here? Face it, Meynee, we're perfect together."
She casts a dirty sneer at him. "I am so not working with a man who can't even remember my own name."
"Of course I can, it's Galea."
Meyneth, starting to stand as Klaus moves toward her, stops and gives him a long, stunned stare. She hastily moves to the back of the wheelchair to allow him to sit.
And then Klaus busts up laughing.
The woman yanks him into the chair with a sharp mutter.
The bus rattles as Klaus grips the upper rail tighter. It rounds a corner, and he smoothes over his blue and white-striped button up—he must be nearing Pyra Electronics soon. Best to look his best for the job interview.
He glances down to the Japanese man sitting in the seat beside him. For the past thirty minutes, he's been focused on his laptop. Klaus has no idea how he could, with how much the bus rattled back and forth.
His eyes go back up to the electronic panel at the front of the bus. They're still a good twenty minutes out.
"Hey," Klaus greets—his goal to figure out how the man can work like this.
As he looks up from his screen, the man blinks and furrows his brow at Klaus. "Hm?"
His goal is to figure out how the man can work like this, but what comes out instead is, "I just recovered from a three-year coma."
The man stares at him before awkwardly replying with, "You look great."
"What're you working on?" Klaus asks.
"Oh, a video game script," he replies, closing the computer. "Though I don't think it'll ever see the light of day…" With a sigh, he puts his head against the back of the bus seat.
Klaus nods. "That's cool. What game is it for?"
"Xenosaga IV."
"Huh," the German replies. Never heard of it before.
"Eh, it got cancelled… I'm not even sure why I'm still writing the script out, truthfully," he admits. "I guess I'm still hoping my team'll get rehired by Namco again. Third time's the charm, eh?"
Now's his chance. "Hey, since you're into writing stories and all that, you'd probably appreciate this way more than my girlfriend would. I had this crazy dream, see, while I was in that coma? Thing is, I don't really think it was a dream, but details." Klaus shrugs.
The man's eyes wander to the electronic panel Klaus was looking at earlier. "I have time. And hey, it's got to be better than the last person I spoke to on the bus who told me some cryptic message that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is free real-estate. I felt threatened."
Klaus could really care less. "Yeah. Okay, so there were these two titans…"
Takahashi, back from his trip to Europe, bursts into the conference room of Monolith Soft headquarters. His voice brims with elation. "I have a new game idea!"
