Violet was silent, looking out the window, appearing to think. “Violet? Any time now…”

She turns to me, getting close, placing her hand on my shoulder, “Alice, when you broke through the quantum foam to return us to the past, what did you do?”

I furrow my brow, thinking back to exactly what I did, “What did I do? I broke time.” I pause briefly as she looks into my eyes, probing for a more thoughtful answer, “Vi, I’m not sure of the physics, but I know how it felt to do it, and that it required some kind of energy.”

She smiles, and running her hand down my arm, “You shrunk a little bit dear, you took energy from your mass and used that energy to split time wide open.” She gets a little more serious and points out at Aurora, “She is doing the same thing, in reverse, but instead of traversing time, she is stealing energy from the star and using it to grow!”

“She can do that?” my mouth slightly ajar as I look out the window, “Then, I can do that…” All of the sudden it made sense. El-Humans can access that energy through their fifth dimensional transversal. Touch the energy or mass outside time and it’s much like a sponge, what’s the difference?

It’s just a piece of energy in space, and without time to protect it, it can be siphoned away.

Violet turns and holds her finger up, walking off and around the corner. “We can do this, she isn’t invincible.”

I follow Violet, “How can we stop her though? There isn’t enough mass left in Sol for me to match her size!”

She reaches into the hold, pulling out the relic from the dead planet we had visited days before, she had a wild look of excitement on her face, “We don’t need Sol’s mass love, because we have this!” she plunks the Dimensional Link on the floor in front of me.

It was then that I realized, holy shit, what am I thinking? Growing to stellar sizes? This is insane. “Wait. You want me to take the energy from that and then…” I point out at Aurora again, “grow to her size and do what? Punch her?”

She throws her hands up, “Yes, that’s exactly what I want you to do! I want you to go and kick her lying ass with your planet sized foot!”

I walk to her, and take her hands out of the air, holding them tightly, “Violet…”

“What? You are the same species as her, whatever she is, you are the only woman who can do this!”

My eyes drop to the ground, barely able to deal with this new responsibility bearing down on me, “…I’m also the same woman who was caught in a power trip and carelessly crushed buildings.” I sigh, feeling tears form in the corners of my eyes, from the fear of what my character actually might be, “I… I destroy things when I can, what if I do something and damage, or destroy my home-world…”

She doesn’t respond for a moment, only squeezing my hands, so I continue, “I’m afraid I will become as evil as her, all Aurora does it destroy, because she can, she is the very being that scared the people who made this Dimensional Link.”

Violet nods, “That’s true, they destroyed their source of heat and life, just to hide from her.”

Violet looks back up, her eyes as wet as mine, “When you first met me, you were an abused tortured woman, hidden away and you had no reason to help me, but you did.”

She grins, “You protected me from your father, you cared for me, despite my fear of you. You saved me Alice, and I don’t believe you are capable of becoming that.” She spits out the last few words, breaking away from me and pointing outside.

“But, every time I grow, I get impulses to crush things, to end them between my fingers and toes, what if I destroy Earth… on some kind of power trip?”

She puts her hand on her face, massaging her temples, “Then you would be a terrible person, but all I know right now is that Earth, your home, is doomed without you, Aurora is making sure of that! If Earth has any hope, you must do this sweetheart. If you can’t we should just turn around and go home. Could you live with that?”

This is just too much to handle, I turn around and slam my fists on the deck plates. I scream, “How the hell could this happen?” then I collapse on the floor. Staring at the deck plates, I realize I could go out there and fail to control myself, becoming a world ending criminal, a woman hated for the destruction of her own world. Infamous… and evil.

Or I could save it. A world where I experienced abuse, torture and repressive sadness… the same world where sweet people outside my home treated me with compassion. My coworkers from what seems so long-ago flash through my mind.

No world deserves to end.

I can do this, there is good in the Earth, and I think I can control my urges.

“I can do this…” I mutter quietly, under my breath.

“You can what?” Violet asks, as she sits on me.

I close my eyes, “I can do this.” I say, more firmly, attempting to be more certain.

I feel Violet’s lips on my cheek after she lied down on me, kissing softly before she moves to my ear, whispering, “You can do this, I’ll stay on the radio with you every step of the way.”

I nod and close my eyes, “Let’s do this.”

I feel Violet all around me, and she kisses my cheek, “Let’s go super-girl.”

“Oh no, are you going to call me that now?”

“Maybe.” She smiles, “It depends if you save the day.” Then she attaches the Dimensional Link to my belt, it is such a heavy device, nearly twenty-five thousand kilograms, it pulls me down briefly, until Violet disables the gravity, shooing Ganymede back into the main cabin and shutting herself in.

“I’m opening the hatch Ali, we are behind Jupiter, so you will have some time to grow.”

I push off the bulkhead behind me, the Dimensional Link lags, then starts to push me along after I bump the hatch on the way out.

I then focus on time, or rather breaking it around the Dimensional Link.

When I reach out through the dimensions in my mind, I can feel a large ball of energy, it’s so close to me, yet so contained.

I push against it with all my mental faculties.

Then I decide to use my hands, and I touch the Core, and suddenly it isn’t contained, it’s connected to me and I’m not stopping it.

Waves of energy pulse over me, and I watch in fascination as my body starts to expand, the Arrow was looming in my vision, but suddenly it looked more like a small ship, then a toy, so I reached out, running my hand over the top of the ship, “Alice, don’t crush the ship!”

I giggle a little at the situation, “It just looked so cute. Sorry.” But by then the Arrow was only a dot, and as quickly as it had become a dot to my vision, it was gone.

My body growing steadily, I floated beside Ganymede… not my bird, the Jovian moon he was named for. I pointed to Ganymede, “This is the moon I named Ganymede after.”

Not really considering the effects, I decide to draw a little bird on the surface of the moon, it’s not hurting anything… right?

I lower my rapidly expanding finger to the surface of the moon, and with very little effort, I push into the crust, drawing a beak, and little body, with two talons, I finish with his wings before a crackling comes over the radio.

“I had to fix the frequencies to account for your grow… wait, what the fuck are you doing?!”

“It’s just a moon! I’m not hurting anything right?”

She sighs, “No, but come on Alice, you need to focus, listen to me, just breathe and grow, focus on Aurora.”

I breathe in and out, focusing on that effort, taking in air and trying to not be nervous about possibly saving the world.

Watching the celestial bodies around me appear to shrink smaller and smaller is a surreal experience, it’s unreal, like it’s a video game, and things just continue to shrink, with no regard to reality, scaling down to allow you to observe them at realistic timescales.

Except this is fucking real, my body is now larger than many moons in the solar system, and my growth only feels like it’s accelerating, as energy continues to enter on the back of my spine, I start to feel a tickle between my legs, I moan lightly and try to ignore it, as wonderful as it feels.

I arch my back slightly, and curl a bit to continue to hide behind Jupiter, a planet which once appeared to be a massive gas giant, a slightly failed star, I was now almost as tall as it was.

Curling, I hold my breasts in my hands and tuck my feet in, until the inevitable, and a new voice breaks into my headset, “Well, hello Alice. What brings you here, using your powers I gave you?”

Realizing the hiding no longer mattered, I hovered out from behind Jupiter and started to approach her, “Of course I’m here, I’m curious what makes you think you can terrorize anyone you wish?” I hoped to at least distract her, until the energy had completely transferred, so I continued forward.

She smiled at me, with a smile that would make an infant cry, “Well, I just figured your home needed a visit, I usually wait until civilizations might be a threat to me, but this, my dear, is a special case… a world incapable of defending itself in any way.” She laughed, running her finger through the diminished Sol’s Chromosphere, stirring up storms in the convective currents below the surface. “Now I have a question for you, where did a whelp like you find enough energy to grow like that?”

“Why would I reveal that, you’ve proven to be a liar, and apparently some kind of war criminal, it doesn’t matter where I got it, only that I did.”

Approaching her, I hear Violet in my ear, “Don’t talk back to me, I’ve encrypted this transmission, she doesn’t know everything, she hasn’t noticed me near her, taking scans.”

I say nothing to Violet, but keep Aurora occupied, “You know, it’s amazing that you never learned what I did.”

She raises an eyebrow, “Oh, and what is that Alice?”

“You are about her mass Violet, go!”

I thrust forward, and over Sol, slamming into Aurora, punching her stomach with my right hand, grabbing at her with my left. She grabs me and kicks me in the groin and slams her enormous head into my helmet. No cracks, no issues, but a deafening reverberation in any case. She pushes me off the moment I am stunned.

“I controlled that little man Richar, I attacked Auru, and did that all in my sleep, what are you capable of doing against me?”

“I fixed that problem, I went back and stopped the attack.” I orient myself to face her, pulling the last of my energy from the Core, expanding to about 140% of Sol’s mass.

Then I looked forward at a little blue ball, floating in the darkness.

My home world, a place I dreaded for every single day I lived there.

“Look at your pathetic planet Alice, it’s a small, wet rock, covered in fucking moss.”

By moss I suppose she meant humans, as disdainful as she is of them. “It’s still my home.”

I look down on the world I originated from, as sudden thoughts of violence start to invade my mind. A sudden, unnatural remembrance of forgotten memories, of my father’s abuse, of the ignorance of social workers, and teachers. I was left my entire life to rot in a basement.

It required a person from another planet… another place altogether to save me.

“Earth.” I grind my teeth in anger, “The fucking dirtball!”

“Good Alice, that’s the right thing to do. Make Earth pay for your suffering… it’s literally beneath you.”

I reach out, placing my hand behind the world, folding my incredibly long fingers around the world, not touching the atmosphere, but enough that every person on Earth knew… I was holding the world.

“Now squeeze girl. End it.”

I consider it, for a brief moment, until I hear a soft voice in my ear, “Alice stop!”

I pause my motion, loosening and pulling my fingers away, as my thoughts start to clear. Remembering the people who did help me, and the good people who do their best. Someone falling through the cracks… is inevitable. My voice cracks as I speak, “They don’t deserve to die.”

“Oh?” she thrust herself at me tossing me back and grabbing my ankle and twisting me around, “Then perhaps I need to go back and set that event on Auru back in motion, because I have only one purpose little Alice, to prevent anyone from surpassing me.”

She grips my leg tighter, and I feel an extraordinary pain, radiating out from her grip, as my energy starts to tear from me, flowing down and out of my leg, actually paralyzing my body! As she steals my energy, a pair of plasma wings erupt from her back, fluttering softly in the vacuum of space, brighter than the sun she stole to power them.

She continues her monologue, “People live, and they die, lasting fifty, a hundred, or sometimes a little longer. They share knowledge slowly and are generally just incapable creatures. On the other hand, I have had millions of years of immortal life, to learn, and perfect my knowledge, and I will not be threatened by the likes of you!”

She squeezed my shrinking leg tighter, as I strive to inch my hand to my belt, gritting my teeth, “You know what Aurora?”

She leaned closer, cocking her head, “Give up yet, little girl?”

I grip my sword, turning the hilt upward, igniting its powerful plasma edge.

I am instantly sprayed with blood from the large gash in Aurora’s arm, as she reels back in pain, “You are just as mortal as I am, and I will end you!”

She retreated to Sol, placing it between me and her, I spin around the side and fire my suit thruster, slamming into her, sending her careening back behind Mercury. She turns quickly, thrusting to me, her right hand open, taking me by the side. I tried to block her, but her motion was so fast and fluid, that before I could stop her, her left fist pulled back, twisting me around, Mercury getting caught in her path, and crushed instantly between my breast and her hand.

I squeal heavily, grabbing my impacted breast, because it hurt terribly, as I tried to get ahold of her, somewhere… to stop her in some way, I flip around and swing my sword, catching her in the leg, making another spray of blood and a blood curdling scream. She flaps her wings wildly, trying to catch me in them, but realizing she is probably desperate, I retreat to Earth, placing myself between her and the planet.

Violet’s small voice crackles in my ear again, “Stay here Alice… I have a plan.”

Aurora closes in, her fists pumped, and wings flaring brightly, “So it’s come to this, you protect your dirty world… from a Goddess.”

“It’s not dirty. It’s beautiful, and you will not deprive these people of their lives.” I smile, “and the word Goddess implies a good person, you my dear, are a demon.”

Then in my peripheral vision, I see a form, looking to my right, I see Violet her sword in hand, the same size as me.

Aurora backs away, holding her head as she drops toward Sol, “No this isn’t possible, your wife is only human!”

I take the advantage of her confusion, thrusting forward and grabbing Aurora by her wing emitters. I swing her around and push her into Sol, she screams madly from the immense heat of the star burning her through her suit.

“NOOO!!! This is NOT how I END!” she reaches back, grabbing me to try to pull herself out.

I kick her back, flipping my sword around toward her and thrust it deep into her chest.

Her energy flares around her, her wings collapsing, as she rapidly dwindles away, her energy being reabsorbed by the star. I back away from the rapidly destabilizing mix of broken woman, and plasma ball, realizing if the sun reforms… Earth might need a shield.

“Violet, fly behind me! Now!”

Sol darkens for a moment as Aurora’s burning body collapses into the core of the star, disrupting solar fusion for an instant, before her entire mass is returned to the star as the total sum of energy she had stolen.

Then the darkness exploded.

A fire wave spread out, impacting the remains of Mercury, then Venus…

It rapidly approached me, I brace myself for the heat, but the impact was beyond my imagining, the fire immediately compromised my suit, overheating systems and burning out my visor. “You are doing it Alice! Earth isn’t being touched!”

I scream in pain, holding my fists tightly, hoping the wave would soon pass.

Not a moment too soon, the heat abated, as Sol reignited, burning bright yellow, like a G-type star should.