Tales Of Connections

Chapter 13: unforeseen consequences.

Portal girl began digging her elbow into Onyx's back. "What the heck did you do!?" she stated again. Beth then opened up a portal under the pair, reorientating the exit portal to drop them out upside down, letting Onyx pin Portalgirl to the ground. "Alright, why don't you start explaining stuff, exposition machine," Charlie stated, holding her earthquake hammer over the pair of them. "You killed cosmos, didn't you?"

"So what if I did, dude killed my brother and broke Ava's legs, and let's not forget the hundreds of guardians he killed. Dude had to go."

"Well, let me give you a little thought experiment, you killed a connected, somebody who is connected to celest and who the universe needs to keep alive, dies, what do you think happens when only one of the two is alive?" everybody paused and gave it a moment of thought.

"How do we fix this?" Onyx demanded to know, holding her sword inches away from portal girl's neck. "There is a way, but you're going to have to do it alone."

"No way, I'm going with." Beth cut in. Portal girl looked at Beth, and rolled her eyes.

"Unless you've been exposed to the energy in those crystals, you ain't getting in."

"Well, lucky for you, I figured out how to share it with a friend, now..." She leapt into the air and landed back on her hands and feet. "...let's get going, unless you have another random stipulation we need to be aware of." onyx responded, tapping her foot onto portal girl, who opened up a portal under them, sending them to some kind of endless, black void, a single light miles above illuminating the area.

"What is this place?" Onyx asked, as portal girl pulled herself back to her feet, that's when an unfamiliar voice called out to her. "This is a place for the connected who mess up, and rip apparat the thing fabric of reality, and create holes between dimensions." a man's voice called out. She turned around, both her and Beth, and they found a man standing there. He wasn't wearing anything of note, or had any distinguishing features, besides having no mouth at all, yet his jaws still moved as if he did. Bth was unnerved by the sight, and only just pushed it off. "You must be this eternal I've heard so much about, wanna drop the mystery-mongering and just tell me your super evil plan?"

"I wish to end a never-ending cycle."

"Oh yeah, that means so much to me." onyx responded sarcastically.

"Do you want to fix this mess or not?"

"Sure, and let's do it fast," she stated, getting into a battle stance. "What do I need to do?"

"You both need to go and place your hands on that pedestal over there." Onyx and Beth looked at each other, Onyx was ready to jump the gun. "You wanna do this?"

"Yeah, let's do this partner." onyx responded, the pair placed their hands down on the pedestal. The ground began to shift. Reforming and reshaping to take on a mix of the terrain from midtown and Crystalopolis. And then from where the pedestal stood, a massive tower began emerging from the ground. A black, spiralling Tower, with platforms and rails spawning around them, white walls also began appearing around the platforms. "Seriously, we're ripping off needlemouse rangers now?"

"The platform is creating a challenge around your skill sets, for some that's a massive platforming challenge. For you, a challenge that will involve your speed and gravity manipulation and her portals. You must make your way to the top, and place your hands on the pedestal once more. All the cosmic energy will be drained from both of you, and the universe will be re-stabilised. Good luck."

"yeah, we're ripping off rangers now, whatever, I'll just cheat our way up there."  Onyx tried to attach herself to the tower, she then immediately fell. Beth tried to open up a portal, however all she could do Was open the portals up on the white walls. "Not making this easy on us, are they?" Beth asked, onyx walked over to the grind rail that was clipping through the ground and she jumped onto it, sending herself flying upwards, after hitting the booster, she landed back down next to Beth, and grabbed her by the arm. "I'll do the running, you do the portaling." She stated, instantly taking off, leaping back onto the rail, having been flung high enough for Beth to place a portal on a higher-up platform, where they then fell into a floor portal, keeping enough momentum to land on a series of platforms. Onyx began running around the loop of platforms, her gravity shifting as they moved up and down and all around. Beth continued by shooting out portals where she could. Opening up portals that forcefully redirected their gravity, and that connected several platforms, letting them build up enough speed to jump from platform to platform, to connect rails so that they could grind continually. "Is this what it feels like for you every day?" Beth asked opening up the next portal for Onyx to dive through, and launch them onto the next spiralling rail. "More or less. We're nearly there." With one more rail connection, they had made it to the top of the tower. "Now or never, right?" Beth asked, onyx only responded by placing a hand down on the pedestal. Beth followed. While the process took 5 seconds for Beth since she didn't have much cosmic energy left in her after going cosmic an hour ago, onyx fell to her knees and let out a blood-curtailing scream as it began being drained out of her. She fell to her knees knees, Beth ran over and tried to pull her away, yet, she couldn't pull her off. After a full minute, onyx just lay down. "Get me to a hospital." He laughed out, before passing out. Beth started dragging her body, and with the tower now shut down, her portals began working again. "Look, we did the thing, towers shut down, we're out of here."

"Very well. Emily, get them back home, maybe get them to a hospital." Cosmos responded, opening up a portal and walking through It. "Wait, your real name's Emily?"

"Tell a single soul, and I will kill you," Emily responded, kicking the pair through a portal and to Crystalopolis' hospital.