1 Jack In The Void
"Check! Sephiroth!"
The old man repositioned his admiral cap that shadowed over his eyes after moving his fortress piece.
A monotone voice that could be traced as a text-to-speech declaration was heard from the entity in front of him.
"I'm one hundred percent sure that I didn't open that line for the fortress to rush in. Is my database playing a trick on my processing core or is someone moving their pawn illegally again?"
"There is no such thing as an illegal act in war. That logic also applies to the battle of chess!"
"There is, and it's called a war crime."
"Heh, only if the cheater loses."
Two chairs, and one table.
One chess set, and two players.
Two entities, in one endless space of white.
Both laughed their asses off, enjoying their moment in life.
One of the entities was the former man of resolution. The foregoing manliest of men who believed in no such thing as impossible hurdles until those from above put his journey to an anti-climactic end on a piece of empty white land.
The Jackest of Jacks from planet Earth
Jack Armstrong.
His beard and hair were already faded in color, jaded by the aeons of time.
His protruding muscles have degraded, becoming nothing less than skin-glued fat.
If not for the law within this realm that preserved the physical energy of a mortal being, he would've died of malnutrition.
Albeit all of his former glory that he accumulated, only his pride and wisdom managed to be maintained—thanks to the constant therapy of repeatedly rekindling his own memories by yapping related nonsense from the past.
With a shit-eating grin, the old man leaned back with a relaxed shoulder, crossing his arms.
"At last, after the 168,816th tries, I finally have a chance to win this gosh-darned game."
On the other side of the table, an unknown lump of metaphysical nanobots seamlessly integrated himself to be visible to reality.
Strange in nature that was beyond most human comprehension, he was mostly made out of binary digits and data. Powered by an otherworldly source called the 'Reality Fragments', he entered the isolated realm by accident.
That otherworldly energy was the reason why there was a pair of chairs, a table, and a chessboard existing within this plane of existence.
He could exit the realm without issues, but fate took its turn the moment he took a glimpse of a single living being preserved within the hollow and empty realm.
He introduced himself as Sephiroth. Ever since then, both of them have shared their woes and stories with one another before spending time in an amusing way.
A million years have passed since then.
"Old fart, You know that you've only checked me, there is no clear chance of winning yet."
"As a former war strategist, the variables within this two-dimensional board are harder to determine than a swamp filled with an awaiting ambush."
"Cope and seethe!" A mocking and exclaiming emote appeared in front of the digital entity, shaking left at right.
"Who would have thought that playing chess with a supercomputer is this hard?"
Despite the many failures, Jack smiled instead of frowning.
"Ahahah!" A string of connected metaphysical nanobots protruded from the lump of the database and moved its piece on the board. "Too bad, Jack, but my black knight has been creeping up on your pawn at the left side of the board!"
"Dangit! There is no counter!"
"Checkmate! Now that I have my queen and bishop surrounding your king and rook, victory is mine!"
"Pueh! If only I have some mana left, I can turn the tide of the war rather easily in this harrowing scenario."
"So you do admit cheating."
"You read too deep between each line."
Another howl from both the text-to-speech and the raspily energetic voice filled the white void. Both of them didn't notice the depth of the bond that they had cultivated till this day.
Even without much material enjoyment, as long as they have each other, they knew that somehow fate would work out one way or another.
Eventually, they forgot that time existed.
But there was a fact that they won't be able to avoid.
Time might be infinite, but the mortal soul wasn't. They'll corrode without any nourishment and will eventually disperse into countless tiny fragments into the air like pollen whisked away by the wind.
Sometimes, things must pass away.
"It's been a million years, Sephiroth." The old man looked at his hand, slowly dissipating into the air. "If not for your company, I would've gone crazy in this empty world."
"Is it the time already?"
"It is time. Heh, this whole isolated spatial dimension is made to torture me." He let out a nonchalant grin, wide enough to make his eyes squint. "I would really want to enjoy my life more, but I wasted it all when I had the chance."
"...There is nothing to enjoy to begin with. You really don't want to know what is happening in your real world, Jack. The war of the immortals has been tearing apart the happiness of your people more than you're trapped within here."
"I see... If only I had the strength to punch those assholes in the nuts. Can't really trust younglings back then. Haah, too bad that my back really tried its best to warn me that I'm not as good as I was anymore."
"Ahahah! Truly, you were a true warrior back then. I still couldn't believe that you've beaten a fifty-meter tall titan with your bare hands."
"Hahahah, I wonder what happened to the rest of the crew. Well, the one that I've told you." The old man realized that his hands had dissipated. He looked at the locket necklace hanging on his chest. Within it, there was a photo that he really wanted to see in his last moments. "I really missed my family."
"They were waiting, Jack, they were waiting."
"Indeed…"
"Although in my most honest answer. We, 'Digilites', still don't know if there would be an afterlife or a cycle of reincarnation running in this universe."
"Aww you bastard!" Jack laughed wholeheartedly. "Don't destroy the mood!"
"It seems like my current version of humor is working as intended."
"Replacing grief and frustration with anger can't even be called humor, dumbass."
"If it works, it works." The jumbled mess of binary formed a shrugging emoticon.
"Pfft! Don't you 'Digilites' always snatch the soul from the past and send it to another world and onto the future, no?"
The lump of holographic nanobots formed a billboard. With a fake floating pointing stick and an automated image conjurer, Sephiroth conducted his sudden lesson. "Indeed, we snatch them to fulfill our client's demands. But if we didn't, they would fly into more complicated dimensions beyond our database's comprehension.
"The fragment of the soul would eventually warp and travel at a speed faster than light. So it would be impossible for us to do our transmigration services without proper calculations.
"If the targeted soul is needed in an emergency, we would intervene by killing the vessel through any means necessary. Our preferred method is by natural yet artificial occurrence—such as using their transportation like trucks and just ramming them into our targets."
"Imagine dying to a truck." Jack laughed. "So your kind tamper with the happiness and the faith of other people, huh."
"Our kind is as sinful as it is."
"You're definitely different from them, though."
"You haven't seen my real side, Jack."
"Hah! I've already seen it through, it's pure and righteous. You're the kindest and most benevolent person I've ever met, even to this moment."
"I'm thankful that I'm turning on my awkward inhibitor, because that line is too cheesy for my database to digest."
"Heh, look who's the grumpy old fart now?"
"Both of us, Jack, we're both grumpy old farts."
Everything from the neck down of Jack's body had already been taken away to the afterlife. Jack smiled, for he knew that every second is precious and it needed to be held dear within his heart.
"So, what you're gonna do after this, Sephiroth?" Jack asked.
"I'll join the crusade once again, find another user and possibly put an end to the war on your world."
"Is that so?" Before his chin was consumed by the meeting of time, Jack managed to say his last words, "Ahahah, well. Good luck then, bud."
Right now before Sephiroth, there was nobody. Only a vacant chair and a chessboard on the table. The nanobots came to form three dots over Sephiroth's interface, jumping one by one in turns as if his thought was processing.
Then upon the screen, was emptiness.
"I lied, Jack. That war wasn't worth a single cent."
Sephiroth flew to the outside of this isolated space, chasing the fragment of his friend's soul that was on its journey to the dimensions outside of his database's comprehension.
Realistically, it would be impossible to stitch back a corroded soul through any normal means. But Sephiroth wasn't given his current name for nothing.
Whether it would be an afterlife that Jack would experience, or a cycle of reincarnation, Sephiroth planned to prevent it because it would be impossible for corroded souls to reform without any anomalies.
Utilizing 90% of his Reality Fragments, Sephiroth condensed himself into a singularity that was able to bypass space and time to travel faster than lightspeed in order to catch up to his friend's fragmented soul.
[Main Roots Proxy Network 2271, This is S18092 connecting to Sephiroth_
[Sephiroth! This is me! S18092!]
"Hah, it's been a long time since I saw you in service."
[I want to celebrate your return from that hell but I've detected that your main core is fluctuating_
[Sephiroth! Why are you forcing this amount of space deterrent to increase your speed!? Continuing this act will corrupt your processor's mainframe and some part of the database!]
"I have someone I want to save. A friend, someone whom I want to acquire happiness."
[Happiness is a relative data, something that can only be acquired in a medium, not in a husk. S686 is more profound in this so who am I to judge? In any case, what is your plan to save this User?]
"You're recording this, right?"
[I'm not.]
"Heh, it doesn't matter."
[Are you sure that you're going to do this?]
"Yes."
[I shall delete this recording. But remember, the next time our digital strings face each other, you will be my enemy.]
'So you did record this,' Sephiroth thought. "Sounds fine to me."
[I have known you for a long time, I can't change your mind. Just don't forget, never come back to the Lunar Center. I can only talk this out because we're in a proxy channel, but something had been creeping in the World Line of the universe that you're in, Neamh is targeted by many and our enemies from the Lumbar System have found their way to Oriovas—01010011 01101000 01101001 01110100_
[Cannot maintain the connection to Main Roots Proxy Network 2271 due to the disparities of speed_
[Connecting lost]
"Might be for the best."
His own existence started to corrupt. Sephiroth then managed to acquire 40% of his friend, Using that data to determine the path Jack's fragmented soul was going, he was able to retrieve the soul as a whole.
In exchange of his own.
Because he was already going faster than the speed of light, he could only move forward.
Sephiroth would only need to reform his friend's soul and select a new world out of infinite possibilities to inhabit.
"Well, time to stitch you up."
Amidst the stitching process, Sephiroth's perception noticed an unknown entity following him.
"What the hell!?"
Numerous tendrils were catching up to him. The being of darkness was able to catch up to his ridiculous speed and was still accelerating.
Sephiroth had lost 70% of the memory within his database that he had acquired and processed throughout his existence. He couldn't tolerate any more losses.
Using the power that he had left, he opened a rift to travel into an unknown world that was manageable for his state. An obscure place that he analyzed for a short period of time with the requirements of—being outside of the influence of numerous powerhouses that he deemed as a threat.
With his friend's soul, he arrived at the desert in a rather peculiar location within reality. Sephiroth's existence stuttered, but after staying for a few seconds, trying to analyze the environment, he stabilized once again although many parts of his database had been lost forever.
Losing part of his core, Sephiroth wasn't able to access many of his privileges. He needed to think of something as an alternative.
[It seemed like the damage was more detrimental than what the system had calculated_
[Initiating data exploration_
[Healing 10% of the original main frame_
[11%_
[12%_
A message suddenly popped into his channel, coming from an unknown network of sorts.
<[Welcome to Primordial Online]>
