Strawberry Lives

"Glass clouds reflected the sun across a sickly black-green sky, an oil spill threatening to drown the world of curdling soil below, tree bark peeling away to reveal rotting meat spilling maggots like sap. Blue skies and fertile lands a distant memory in only a weekend contrasting with the sparkling pink savior dressed in frills and sequins standing on softly separating dirt, eyes full of a 15 years too long life spent fighting without stop, the young five year old excitedly naming herself Strawberry Blast after her soda a completely forgotten life by now. "Now isn't the time, Lives." The figure standing across from her snorted in amusement, a Hellhound wearing fur the color of death and Flame the color of Life wrapped around her neck, billowing out into dozens of blazing scarves stitched with memories of the yearly encounters between the two. "The apocalypse is always the time."

Strawberry's teeth grit and without a further word she shot forward, the hopes and dreams of everyone still alive on the planet bursting from her back like a jet engine to propel her fists and feet, each blow easily caught by the Hellhound, though the impact still blew chunks of indistinct matter out of her back and into the air, caught by her Flame and carefully scooped back in. "Aww, really? Done talking already? The world's ended! When are you gonna have some fun, Strawby Sis?" "When everyone else is smiling! Not before!" roared the magical girl, her shining fist caught and held ontothis time. "How many times have I heard that?" mused Sister Life, her body barely budging despite the frantic attempts of her foe to get free. "It was cute when you were really really little. It was endearing when you were only mostly little. Now it just seems like you don't value yourself."

Strawberry's response turned only into a yelp as she was suddenly thrown into the air, caught in the tendrils of the Lively Scarf that secured her joints at the same time it slithered into her uniform, the resolute face of the magical girl finally breaking into furious embarrassment. "Not me, though. I value you more than anything in all of Creation, Strawby Sis! That's why I've been here to play every single year!" beamed Lives, putting her paws to her face and wiggling with delight at the sensation of feeling every inch of her foe's skin, her tail wagging like she had a bone. "Hasn't it been fun? Haven't you grown a lot? Aren't you happy we can play like THIS now, too!?" she cried, pulling Strawberry Blast down to look her in the eyes while rolling her nipples between formative life moments, the magical girl just glowering at her between soft moans. "You know why it feels so good when you should hate it? 'Cause I'm your sister, so I know aaaaaaaaaaaallllllllll your best spots even if you don't! Let's see, what about he-"

"SHUT UP!" Strawberry finally screamed, throat raw with a rage that sent the sugar, spice and everything nice around her shaking. "I KNOW WHERE MY SISTER IS ALREADY! I already know the Rotting Empire took her, I already know she's the one whose hands are DOING THIS!!" her scream continued, an aura of pure magic, of love mixed with frustration and self-loathing surrounding her, the desire to see people happy rotting into the desire to crush her enemies. "I know you're not part of the empire either! You're just some selfish animal that keeps bothering me when I need to focus the most and IT'S NEVER HAPPENING AGAIN!!!" her scream reached it's apex, words becoming nothing more than incoherent fury that shook even the Flame away from her. Strawberry Blast has spent 15 long years as a sparkling, shining pink beacon of hope, of dreams, of the power of never succumbing, tasked with being not only a warrior but a role model for the entire world at the tender age of only five. When her feet touch the fetid soil, she is a deep purple and crimson stained berserker, magic wildly combusting in her body and soul as every swing of her limbs shattered her near-invulnerable bones and healed them in a single instant, Sister Live reduced from playful catching to skin of her teeth dodging, the air pressure alone from each strike enough to shatter the clouds and rain down glass across the rotten battlefield until Live was forced to swing back, a single open paw strike to Strawberry's torso sending her flying back several feet, rolling across sludge that had once been grass. "I won't let you interfere anymore..." Strawberry growled as she rose, the sclera of her eyes fading into an abyssal black as the unstable energy inside of her formed into a chaotic ball floating over her hand, sparking and shooting unaimed beams even as it was charging. "I've come this far! I've become THIS! I'm saving EVERYTHING!"

Heat gathered in Live's paw in a steady but rapid pace, space warping like a summer street in the distance. "I'm not stopping until you smile, I don't care about everything else." the Hellhound responded simply as the air itself combust in her palm, heat still gathering into a single point. The two sprinted at one another, one single moment of the past and future collapsing into the present's blind emotion and the other life in it's totality painting a Flame with every fallen paw, swinging energy wildly into energy when they finally hit in the middle, the Kugelblitz finally finished. The resulting black hole consumed time, space, memories, Life, joy and blind hatred without remorse in the scant cosmic nanosecond it existed, and then all was calm, nothing but the slow rot of a world that was once alive already filling the crater.

On the other side of the event horizon, however.

A Hellhound's Flame is them, the totality of their outer and inner worlds made manifest. It can shape realities, share emotions and memories with individuals. "Jeeze, sis. You're even stronger than I thought this time around." huffed Sister Life in the sphere of Flame keeping the two of them from becoming spaghetti and falling Somewhere on a time scale far too displaced for their liking. "S... sis? It's, but, I..." Strawberry stammered as an entire other life flashed before her eyes. "You're... from another timeline? Where..." "Where your little rage form killed you in front of me. The regeneration is a neat trick until you spend the last of your juice blindly shattering yourself and don't have any left to put yourself back together." finished Life.

"I... you..." a thousand questions raced through Strawberry's head, each of them answered with the life of her sister. Being freed from the metaphysical rotting of her soul at the same time her sister died a horrifying death was enough to spark Ignition, to create a monstrous beast that blindly rampaged through the entire Rotting Empire until absolutely nothing was left, a complete eradication that didn't bring her sister back. Then hundreds of years of soul searching after, of growing in power and knowledge until time became a map in front of her. She could go back and stop all of this before anything happened, but... being a magical girl is what made her little sister happy. She couldn't take that away. So she'd visit her once a year, watching from afar the rest of her career until the end. Try to guide and train her subtly, but Hellhound instincts around family are strong and for most of it she just played around and lost herself in how cute she was, at least until old enough to... well, y'know. "So... you know what's up. Now what do you want to do, sis?" asked Live, sitting criss-cross apple sauce like they weren't spinning violently to who knows where.

"I... I want to save you properly. I want to save everyone's smile, no matter what." Live huffed with annoyance at the answer, but Strawberry just laughed. "I'm one of everyone too, sis. Promise. Can we go back?" Live tapped her chin and did some mental calculations. "Ehhh, black holes are tricky, but... something like that."

Before Strawberry could ask any more she felt the Flame grab her and suddenly shoot her backwards at speeds her brain struggled to comprehend. One moment she was somewhere that human eyes weren't meant to see, and the next she was standing in the middle of a rotten crater like nothing had ever happened. She took a deep breath and let it out, reaching her hand out as if to grasp a tower in the horizon, a Life colored scarf erupting into existence around her neck as she took hold. "I didn't need to say it there, but... love you too, sis. Maybe even like... that. I'm getting you back, and the whole world too. Promise."