Disclaimer : All characters and places belong to Nintendo, Sega, and Sony ©1999-2008.

A/N: This fanfic features Brawl's most badass final boss, the fearsome 'one-hit kill butterfly' Tabuu! I'm sure there are people out there who wonder what exactly he is, as I have. The idea for "Oneless" came to me some time before the American release, and has since stayed with me then. Deep philosophic issues are abound, which may make "Oneless" (most particularly its first chapter) somewhat hard to read.

Overall, please enjoy. Concrit it always welcome.

Oneless

I.

Age of Aquarius

"In a Universe of Sin, there is only One of Pure Mind."

He was constantly traveling.

He always had been before the Beginning of Time, before Time constricted and before Time existed. But what was Time to an all-powerful, limitless being without anatomical form? Simply so He was just there, moving at speeds light and sound could never surpass.

Time was inconsistent. Time was constant. A common variable to an uncommon equation.

Algorithms did not suit a being such as He.

Nothing mattered when the elements were right before Him. He had an affinity none could match, a mastery in the manipulation of Time and Space. Time was a half-life; it decayed like all the other elements. Planets rotted, stars went supernova, galaxies collided, and suns burned out; ends always justified the means. When you have a power beyond your imagination, things are bound to be changed by your hands.

Change was consequential. Change was inevitable. Change was the pinnacle of Free Will and Decision.

The Space-Time Continuum was a dream unlike anything He ever had. While dreams rarely made themselves known to Him, it was without a doubt that Space and Time were dreams. A waking dream, something no mortal could hope to experience. He was Enlightened, appraised that He had this ability. The feeling of tearing a hole in reality, outside Law and Matter and Physics, was phenomenal! Intoxicating! All-consuming! Words could not describe the sensation derived from the fourth dimension. Whatever happened, happened; what was, was; what is, is; and what will be will be. That was the Science of Everything.

And yet, a thought stoked His conscience. Would variable A be variable C? Will variable B become variable D? Was variable D as fixed as variables A, B, and C? Would all variables be changed by one constant, one equation?

Correlation does not equal causation.

His journeys began when He first stepped into the wormhole, and from that point on there was no end. He wandered aimlessly, gaining His bearings as He hopped one dimension and slipped into another. He learned of many things unreachable and inaccessible. He was not ashamed of the damage He was putting upon Himself, but it was something He could not reverse.

Even Gods had Limitations.

Each reality is encompassed by a single rule: reality can be changed by altercations of Free Will and Decision under the teachings of Presentism/Endurantism and Eternalism/Perdurantism. If said reality can be changed by Free Will and Decision, then a separate set of alternate realities can be attainable by the choice per individual. However, if said individual were to pick Choice A from Choice B, or Choice B from Choices A and C, then Choices A, B, and C cannot become reality save in the alternate reality itself. Therefore, all realities exist in a pocket dimension which exists in a giant dimension encased in a void of nothingness.

He did not let such things of enormity bother Him. Instead He ventured further into the unknown, bypassing event horizons and distorting the flow of gravitational time dilations, bending accretion disks and particle matters to His whim. With this method He succeeded in entering multiple universes, the disorientation of exiting numerous black holes having little to no effect on His metaphysical conscious. For lo, His mind and thought transcended the height of mortal logic, He who understood all things simple and complex constructed from the very micro-fibers of the cosmos. Nevertheless, His interest provoked Him to make His rounds across the uncharted vast, taking in every titillating detail of civilization and machination as much as possible.

He later learned the art of sealing black holes and wormholes into a dimension outside Time and Space, hidden behind a veil of unstable star clusters. It was a veil that never was. By the time He perfected the technique it was too late to pull out the lost souls sucked into the ghostly vacuums.

He didn't feel an inch of despair when they hit the singularity. It was merely a matter of Fate.

Fate, what an idyllic concept. The lesson behind it was that a person could change his or her Destiny, but not their Fate. Fate was the setting stone, the marked arrow, the bullet with your name-tag, which ultimately decided outcomes of death and war. To Him it was a very narrow-minded concept. Again, what was Fate to an omnipotent, omnipresent being? Time was nonexistent, a Socratic method to deduce madness. Fate was a predestined choice, a forced decision made upon irony's reflexes. What did Fate mean to Him?

He gave it much thought for a very long time (in spite of His convictions). When He saw and heard much from the galaxies, He deemed His question answerable:

Fate was not forced. Fate was a Given, a Choice molded by Change.

In order for Fate to be Fate, Fate had to be cultivated. There was just one problem: it was of an ordered agenda. Events worked themselves out and brought the dread of finality which Destiny (ever cruel Destiny!) willed unto its abstractions. You cannot fight two Gods with a pen or sword . . .

One thing Gods were not capable of was unwinding Time and resurrecting the dead. To corrupt the natural balance would be breaking an unspoken golden rule: to never integrate two existing (alternate) realities into a primary reality. In other words you can never have two (im)possibilities, two random alternate realities, co-exist with an on-going reality.

But He had power, power to change everything! To make the impossible possible! Who was there to stop Him?

Men had fought Gods, and Gods fought with Men. Man and God had fallen, one by one, but He concluded then and there that He would not be like them.

He Would Not Fall.

And so He fought, and He dared to challenge the laws of quantum theory. He broke through the binds which reality held and consumed the power of dead stars and black matter. He churned the threads of fate and entangled them in twines frail as spider webs and strong as steel. With His Hands He changed the ways of the multiverse, watched as worlds ended and became engulfed in darkness; watched as solar systems burned in entropy and ripped at the seams; and watched as uninhabited rocks of ice thawed and spawned their own geneses.

He wanted more. He wanted to control by His Whim and Word Alone. Why go into dimensions and enact Change when He could do so at the tip of His Finger?

He spoke to His Hands, and the further the conversation went, the more sound the idea seemed. They agreed without complaint, and with them under His rule of thumb they set off to the darkest reaches in the center of all realities.

It would be there that He would begin His Conquest. It would be there that Subspace would be born under the light of a dying sun. It would be there that the Smash Tournaments would be conceived and that the role of the Hands would ascend to greater heights.

It would be years before He planned His grand scheme. It would be years before He breathed life to the Shadow Bugs and the technologiks that followed. It would be years before He would capture the multiverse and struggle against the Beast that was Chaos, the First and the Last.

And it would be the End of Everything.