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Now. The time was now, or never. If never, then the Dark Kingdom would never eventuate. If never, then Yoshihiro's existance would be for naught. If never, then billions upon billions of monsters would forever be locked into stasis, sealed behind the barrier erected by Serenity in the outrush of energies from the destruction of the destruction of the Moon Kingdom, lives cut short by an arrogant bitch who thought she could alter the laws of nature without effect.

And yet, Yoshihiro knew pressing the button would commit him to something he had only just found doubt for. This action would doom the world of his host's birth, doom any humans, animals, plants, rocks... everything... mostly, he didn't care. Mostly, he had the memories of a general inside him, a chief of the armies of the Dark Kingdom, a King in his own right, adored by billions in his time, now barely remembered in crude cave scratchings deep below the Earth's surface. And that was the problem. He was aware of the fact he had no other memories, and the reasons why. As a newborn, his first memory had been of his death, and then the waking, his first killings, his first mutation of another, and his first facing against the senshi and their new companion, Ranma Saotome. He knew these were his memories, and yet, they were from someone other than him.

That was what caused him to pause. After this action, after this gambit played out, there was no exploration of what existed within him. There would only be the Kingdom. What kind of king did not give himself completely to his subjects? And that he would, he knew, and his existance, his personal existance, would disappear, forever replaced by the regal trappings of state.

Yet, the engine start-up needed to happen now. Four weeks for the engines to build up enough of a head of steam as it were until they could not just displace itself through spacetime, but break the enforced seal that contained the Dark Kingdom. The cross-dimensional energies would have to build to a screaming tangent to realspace before it could use the energies of the people locked into the system's core.

He knew he would press the button, but he still held back. Something that would change the world, that would change him, was something that should be savoured. And what better way to savour something than to leave it in anticipation?

Love, Chapter 17