chapter 0000

He stood there,, one hand on his weapon, the other at rest.
"tell me, what right does the past have to dictate the future?" he asked as he leaned forward on the throne, judging his past self.
"I am your future, I own you. You are me, and I am you. so why? why resist? why rebel? accept this card you've been dealt."
"I refuse." zero said evenly. "You claim that the right of ownership goes to you, but in the end you are my future, doomed to be another possibility in an endless ocean of time!"
"yet i am the only possibility that has ever presented itself." the lord of time muttered. "You are not some noble hero, destined to save the world. you are the lord of all and aught, this world, this creation, and all the space beyond it belong to us. to fight the future is to forget your place!"

the dark lord of time rose from his throne, hands outstretched as the walls of his clockwork castle began melting away like a great dream, revealing a platform composed of gears and clock faces.
"This universe I have created-"
a gear began turning, followed by many more noisily humming in perfect coordination with one another, and the air grew noticeably brighter.
"Belongs only to me! you, the past, the future, the present, are all nothing but a dream I created!! or was the last dream you had not proof enough of this?! you are lost zero, and so lost you cannot even admit to yourself that you have already faced these trials and overcame them!"

the lord dusted off his robes and drew a mask out of his robes, one with a strange, almost insect-like appearance to it, it reminded him a bit of a grasshopper's face.
his horrific golden eyes fell behind that mask as he put it on, until only they, in their awful golden glow, like the fires of heaven and hell merged in an unnatural forced union could only bring, shone forth from behind the mask in all their awful splendor.

"tell me then." the lord of time hissed. "what good is the future when the result stands before you? what good are hopes and dreams when the true nature of your existence is now here, to stop you from having anything? your freedoms have been dead since before you were born! your life is nothing but a dream within an endless nightmare! my nightmare!"
"then tell me king of the nightmare, one who wears so many faces, since you discarded your name, what might i call you?"

a silence ensued between them as the rumbling gears continued their incessant groans, the many images composing the skies of the ocean of time showing events of death and birth from every possible angle of reality all in unison, flickering like countless television screens.
"I abandoned my title ages ago, that silly name you love so much, zero, the symbol of nothingness, ill-suited me, so I named myself something else entirely."

He summoned a spear to his hands.
"the men praise their gods of life, so I thought to myself, why not masquerade as something truly ironic? I, the symbol of time, the lord of inevitability, the king of death, one whose aspect is everything and nothing should have an ironic name. so I gave myself one."

His golden eyes flashed from behind that nightmarish mask.
"Izanagi No Okami. fitting, given how I created this universe, i always did love the asian cultures of that silly little world."
"we both know master zhen had more to do with that fascination." zero shot back slyly, but izanami, being billions of years old, his true memory of the past having been worn away by the endless passage of time, could only cock his head in curiosity at the statement.
"don't tell me you've forgotten that detail too." zero shot back.
"whatever happened to being omniscient?"
izanagi did try to recall, after all years had passed, twenty billion years is a frightfully long time, but after a time he did vaguely recall the name, if not the source.
"He must....not have been important..." izanagi mused.
"don't feed me that bullshit. you act high and mighty now because you unintentionally created this hell we call life and death, but you can't mean to tell me you've forgotten the man who taught us how to fight, how to speak, how to be human?! some god you are, can't even remember the people you used to care most about." zero spat on the ground as he advanced on the lord of time, drawing his sword.
"whatever. let's get this over with, yeah?" he pointed his sword at the half-grown god.
"I'll give you a lasting memory to carry out of your nightmare, then I'm taking my future back, all of it! the terrible things you've done? I'll unmake them. all of them! you don't get to decide the past, I'm the dark lord zero! and the future, and all in it, belong to me!"

Izanagi let out a long laugh at that, turning all around to gesture to the open area they were about to clash within.
"Have you forgotten your place? you're nothing but a memory! how can yo-"

"a memory you've forgotten."
izanagi glared hatefully at zero, the statement he made quite loaded.
"to be forgotten, it's worse than death....isn't it? go on, tell me again how I'm your memory so you can be reminded of the fact that you forgot yourself! tell me again how instrumental I am when you couldn't even remember how important I was to begin with!! face it old man, you're just another sad, lost possibility that's damned determined to be free of the hell you put yourself in. godhood? power? the hell use are those to me? I just....wanted some damned happiness to go along with trying to save people...."

zero's sword went to his side.
"save them from me."
"they were unimportant." izanagi replied flatly.
"you can't mean to tell me you really believe that bullshit." zero stated.
".......No....no i suppose I don't." izanagi admitted. "that's more izanami's thing."
"then why?" zero asked angrily.
"Because I remembered what took place, and remembered why it took place. when it comes to a time loop you must use memories to reenact events and ensure the timeloop is stabilized, if you fail, time and space collapse into a singular point and you and i would cease to be. in the face of that calamity, what are lives? indeed what is life? I made a hard choice and I stuck to it despite what it would make me do. when you are a god life and death are not so important. when you are a being who creates the rules of the universe, you are above those same rules and above the simple struggles of being alive. that is why I did what i did, and why you will eventually do so too when I send you roaring into the past, right before everything has to exist by your hand."

zero glared hatefully at his counterpart.
"I'm changing the rules then." he growled.
"You can't." izanagi sighed.
"Yes....I can." zero retorted, raising the weapon

Before turning it on himself.