Cycles

Part 1: Descent

A/N: This was... an interesting idea I had. This story will be shifting from different points in time and is written in third person, but from Ness's perspective, who will be reminiscing about... many things.

The story shifts from many periods of time but the present is 12 years after the events of the game and so Ness, Paula and Jeff are 25 years old and Poo is 27. Anything in italics and quotation marks ('so like this') is someone saying something in a flashback – it should be fairly obvious who is speaking. Enjoy!

It was hard moving on. Of course it was. Ness had seen things. So many things. The dark side to Onett's Police Force, the Happy Happy Cultists, actual zombies that almost killed him.

Then Fourside happened. Ness won't ever forget the corruption he saw in the Runaway Five's manager and... Monotoli. Monotoli. Ness doesn't think he'll ever be able to truly forgive the man – and this is despite knowing Monotoli wasn't completely at fault. It was only on Paula's very desperate requests that Ness didn't manage to manifest a Rockin Gamma and obliterate him – even if doing so would have likely destroyed Ness's own mind as well.

And even after all that, he saw the strained bonds between the two Andonuts, he saw the madness those in the Stoic Club devolved into and he saw Poo's Mu training.

Even though Poo was the one to experience it all, Ness could still see it all. The breaking of his legs. The severing of his arms. The gouging of his eyes. The slicing of his ears. The taking of his mind.

Ness thought he'd have surely seen it all and he did get some respite – until the Stonehenge Base. For all that Buzz Buzz told about the future, Ness didn't, and now never will, know truly what would happen if Giygas won. But the Stonehenge Base gave more than enough of an idea... those people, lifeless, in those capsules while aliens and machines run rampant.

It's a future Ness is glad he'll never know.

Exploring the recesses of his own mind seemed like fun. And it was, he got to remember so many things, see lots of wacky stuff and even find a cool new bat!

And then he found the Mani Mani Statue again.

At first, Ness was confused – he had destroyed this thing, and he made sure it was completely destroyed — he whacked it for nearly an hour before Jeff could finally pull him away.

But in hindsight, it did make sense. It was responsible for Everdred's death. It started Pokey spiralling into Giygas's control. And, of course, it was responsible for taking her... her away the first two times – though, it mattered little when Ness thought about the third he lost her... that statue fuelled his nightmares for days... so, of course, his nightmare chose that form as a physical representation.

But even then... none of it compared to the end. That's what Ness always referred to it as. The end. Being robotised... it was a feeling like being dead... and yet very much still alive. Travelling back in time, knowing that he could very well die, and everything he worked for would be for nothing.

And Giygas. Giygas. What is there to say? For all the preparation he'd done for this moment, nothing could have ever prepared him for what this.

But looking back, it wasn't Giygas's Devil Machine and the fact that it was him, Ness, on it and the fact that Giygas could somehow use PSI Rockin, his, Ness's, own PSI.

It wasn't seeing what Pokey had become, so pale and... lifeless, just a shadow of what he once was.

It wasn't even bearing witness to the abomination that Giygas eventually regressed to and the fact that they were powerless before him, forced to pray for help against his inexplicable PSI.