Ave Atque Vale

[Victoria Victrix]

((So this contains "my" explanation for the Parapocalypse and is the story of three more Bellas (Bella Primal having gone with her beloved Zach in "Safe Within You" http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,7170.0.html ))


                                              Ave Atqua Vale

Commissar Belladonna Parker paced the empty halls of the CCCP base, hearing the impact of the—meteors?—outside.  They were working their way inward now, from the outer edges of the city.  Soon they would be here, in King's Row.  The Void, that spinning vortex around a blot of absolute blackness, was nearly on them.  The flaming balls of debris that were raining down out of the sky were coming from it.

The walls and floor shook.  She was the last one here.  One by one, her comrades had gone—though some, she was sure, like JM and his Fire Elemental wife, Sera, were still, desperately, trying to help keep some innocents alive.  But others had fled—through Portals licensed and unlicensed, or magic gates, or any other place they could try in a last desperate leap for escape.  Some had died early on, extracting their hospital tags and going out fighting.  Some had gone home—to Russia, or wherever they had come from, drawn back to the place where they had begun.

She had nowhere to go to.  Her parents and grandparents had been some of those who had tried an unlicensed Portal.  No telling where they were now.  She could only hope that they had somehow, through some miracle, found a place that wasn't connected to the set of alternate Earths that Mender Silos and his meddlers had so thoroughly compromised.

For Vickie had discovered, via mathemagic arcane and obscure, exactly what had happened.  By sending heroes and villains repeatedly back into the same pasts to try and correct them, they had, in Vickie's bitter words "Turned the Space-Time Continuum into swiss cheese."  And eventually, it wouldn't bear the strain anymore.  The Void had opened, and the universes began collapsing on themselves, from the farthest out, back down to Primal.  Praetoria and Primal would be the last to go.  Primal Paragon City would be the center of the final collapse. 

Which...was happening now.

She finally stopped, staring sightlessly down at something.  And only gradually did she realize she was looking at, without reading, the bronze nameplates on the Monument to Fallen Comrades.  Commissar Zachary "Bestial Boy" Marlowe.  Comrade Katerina "Carpathia" Sucova-Marlowe.  12/11/2006  Comrades Forever.

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Commissar Bella Dawn stood back to back with her few remaining comrades of the CCCP on the roof of the headquarters in King's Row.  Not everyone had left; she would not face the Void alone.  Sturmfront, the old friend she had so many arguments with...Sister Soyuz...Reaktsiya...Mother Siberia...Grandmaster Te...Heavy Brother...the beautiful robot Faberge Gulag.  They were keeping vigil here, as the fiery meteors hurtled down out of the Void just beyond the disintegrating War Walls.  Soon they would strike here.  And soon she and her comrades would meet death, or dissolution, whichever came first.

Over the three months they had had of warning, she had gone through all of the stages of grief.  Now...she was resigned.  Or maybe just exhausted. 

Mother Siberia seemed to sense the tears welling up in her, and gave her a quick hug, with a hint of admonishment in it.  She was Commissar.  She must stay strong, so her comrades would stay strong.  She swallowed down her despair and blinked her eyes clear again.

There was only one thing she regretted, really, as she glanced to the side, where Krasnaya Zvezda--Alexie to everyone that knew him--and his wife Tasha stood together, arms around each other.  Not that she would ever, ever have done anything to disturb their devotion to one another.  Not for the world...

But as the first of the meteors burned down through the atmosphere and smashed into the King's Row War Walls, shaking them all with the impact, she still thought...

I wish I had told Alexie how much I loved him.

                                                       #

The meteors were crashing all around Atlas Park now, and Belladonna Aura of High Flight had given up all pretense of bravery.  But then, so had everyone else.  She had stood as long as she could with her torch, while all the famous names gathered and waited for the end, but as debris crushed hero after hero, they had all dropped their vigil torches and scattered for whatever they thought might shelter them for a little longer, and she had done the same.  Now she huddled in a basement corner of City Hall in the dark and wept with terror, and prayed for a miracle.