The sound of gunfire and explosions shook the building. The Engine was ready to fire. He knew she wanted to activate it, but the cost was too high. She was blinded by rage, and he knew she wasn't thinking clearly. If he allowed her to get past him, she would make an irreversible mistake and cause a tragedy too great to measure.

  “Lulu please, you don't know what you're about to do, think for a second!” he pleaded with her.

  “Get out of my way Soren, I will go through you if I have to,” she replied hotly.

  “Look, there’s no telling what will happen if you turn this thing on! But we both know nothing good will come of it; it’s too powerful and there’s way too much we don’t know about it!”

  “They have to die Soren, and I will not waste time debating this with you,” she began walking towards him.

  They were about 50 feet apart and she wasn’t running, but it wouldn't take her long to reach him. In all the time he had known her, she had never been more to him than a friend, a colleague, and he had never looked at her as more than such. But it became strikingly obvious to him as she approached that this may be the last time he ever looked at her. She was one of the most beautiful sights he had ever seen.

  The Professor had turned her into something he scarcely understood. He had seen her do things no human should be capable of, and he was sure he had only witnessed a fraction of what she was capable of. The Professor had imbued her with great power, but also with the means to control her against her will. And she had been forced to do terrible things. Now free from anyone’s will but her own, there was sadness and cold rage in those eyes. Anguish gripped Soren’s heart as he accepted his inability to help his friend.

  When she was about 15 feet away from him, he charged at her. He knew it was futile, but he wasn’t going to give up without a fight. Soren closed the distance between them in 3 quick steps and wrapped his arms around her arms and torso, clasping his hands together behind her and attempting to hold her in place with a bear hug.

  He heard her inhale before pulling her head back and smashing her forehead into the left side of his face. At the time it happened, he didn’t hear the sound, but in retrospect he could remember the distinct noise of his cheek bone and eye socket shattering. Completely dazed, he recalled blinding flashes of white from a black void. As his vision slowly returned, he could only see out of his right eye and he tasted blood. He saw his legs stretched out in front of him, he was sitting on the floor of the laboratory with his back slumped against something. Even though she was extremely drained from fighting, she was much stronger than him. The force of her attack had thrown him back away from her.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  How could a mere human stand up to this thing she had become?

  His back was up against the large control box of the Graviton Engine, and she was standing above him glaring down. Her nostrils flared, she sighed, and said, “I’m sorry,” before shoving the lever forward on the control box. As the mechanisms inside the control box began to cascade in sequence, Lulu swung a powerful right hook into it. Her fist sunk through the metal panel as if it were tissue paper. She destroyed the activation lever, much of the control box around the lever, and exposed the massive crystalline power cables surging with thousands of tons of Aether Dust. There was no way to stop it now.

  Soren pushed himself back up onto his feet using the remnants of the control box as support. What happened next took less than two seconds, but when he thought back on the moment, every instant felt longer than a year.

  Lulu turned to her left to face away from him, as if moving to walk away, and he caught her wrist with his right hand. Perhaps by reflex, she jerked her hand up towards her chest, but Soren managed to hold on tight. He threw out his left hand behind him to grab anything as support. His hand grasped tight around a crystal power cable the same instant a massive surge of electricity slammed through the Aether Dust within. Soren felt the heat of neutron stars, the universe, and dimensions he couldn’t even comprehend surge into his body through his left arm. It spread into his chest, down his legs, up into his skull, and out into his right arm. He saw his skin glowing pure white with energy and watched it flow into Lulu where he held her wrist. He remembered feeling like he was simultaneously exploding and being crushed under the weight of the universe as his consciousness faded to a burning white perception.

  When finally his consciousness felt to be returning, the passage of time felt quickly slow. How long had it been? Was he still on the planet Mandachor? “No,” he spoke to himself, but he couldn’t hear his voice. “I think I am the planet Mandachor. I can see the star that I orbit, and I can see the other planets in the star cluster. There’s Avantasia. And over there is Hydros the gas giant. Back there I can see Perolan and Nox. I see them all clearly, moving so quickly they are a blur, surely they must be getting dizzy spinning so fast around that star. Maybe they’re not dizzy though, they seem to be standing still.”

  Soren observed as ships zipped in and out of the star system, down onto the planets and back up again. They moved so fast, like tiny insects, their trips in and out taking less than a nanosecond each. Had he always been a planet? He thought he remembered more.

  He couldn’t recall, and he spent some time observing his cozy cluster of stars. Being a planet wasn’t so bad. But why did he feel like it sucked? Like, he should feel big and round, shouldn’t he? He felt so empty. A gaping empty hunger zipping around a star in space.

  For a brief instant he felt a heat twang at his heart, and a bright light flashed across his star cluster, seeming to emanate from within him. He thought he saw a comet after that. He couldn’t remember seeing the comet enter his star cluster, but he watched it leave.

  “I think that might be the most beautiful comet I’ve ever seen,” he said to himself, and he felt the heat of neutron stars, the universe, and incomprehensible dimensions overcoming him once more. He felt like his body weighed more than a planet. He felt exhausted, he felt cold, his face hurt, did that beautiful comet hit him in the face?

  Soren awoke, naked and drooling under someone's table.