By yearends and Akane
Previous story:
Canonically: https://omnipotent-girls.net/node/122
Noncanonically: https://omnipotent-girls.net/node/123
To say that Shizuka Hirose was angry would have been a serious understatement. To say that she was incensed, irate, mad, furious, enraged, livid, apoplectic or even wroth would also have been an understatement. Shizuka Hirose knew no word in any language to describe what she felt, and she knew every language that had ever been.
Yomi (she had to stop thinking of the traitor like that, she chastised herself) had been one of her closest friends. They'd known each other almost since birth, and Shizuka had given her any number of gifts (in addition to what Yomi got simply from being around Shizuka all the time). When she became governor of Tokyo, Yo--the traitor was one of the people to whom she'd given near-absolute power--as much power as anyone thought a non-Super Goddess could have until Paula figured out how to make people truly equal to Super Goddesses in power (and after she'd done that, the rest of the Super Goddesses had promptly locked down history to keep anyone else from doing the same).
The traitor had been at her side for trillions of years, never showing any sign of dangerous mental instability, governing her prefecture in Shizuka's intergalactic Japanese Empire well and justly, and was absolutely beloved by her people (and one of the best at relieving Shizuka's constant arousal). Shizuka thought her, as with all her closest advisors, completely trustworthy.
And then she'd gone and broken that trust by trying to change history--not only that, but trying to change history in a way that she should have known was impossible thanks to Paula's little stunt.
But however angry Shizuka might have been at the traitor, she was even more angry at herself, both because of her grave misjudgment and failure to make even the most basic checks of personality (which she had promptly done on all her other close confidantes), and because she'd have to admit that she was wrong. She knew Alondra would gleefully relate what she'd said to Paula--she'd probably gone so far as to mimic Shizuka's body and voice completely--and she had to admit that the "delayed Super Goddess"--no, Alondra was a Super Goddess, Shizuka wouldn't question that any longer--had the right to be gleeful after how Shizuka had treated her over the years, forcing her to do all her own investigations of crimes in Shizuka's territory--even the traitor's!--and only begrudgingly thanking her for keeping her Empire safe from what few psychopaths remained who were willing to act in a universe dominated by omnipotent, omniscient beings.
So she gathered in her regional governors, put on her Imperial regalia, and teleported all of them back to Earth, a planet on which Shizuka had not set foot since establishing the new capital of her Empire on a paradise world twenty billion light-years away, into the antechamber of the building still called PAULA HQ, despite that organization's having been defunct for trillions of years.
Looking around, she saw the ancient cathedral door, behind which Paula still kept her office. Shizuka had heard that it was still as it had been when Paula first became chief of police of Nueva Caracas in the late 23rd century, but since Paula had put up impenetrable wards around it to block all attempts at scanning (Shizuka sometimes wondered if Paula, Penelope and Alondra were plotting against her as revenge for Shizuka's dismissal of Paula's plan and later the other two's status as Super Goddesses), she never knew if it really was. Of course, given how sentimental Paula was--she had a 17th-century door as her office door and had stayed in Nueva Caracas when all its inhabitants had dispersed to other worlds because of a promise never to abandon the city--she was quite willing to believe the rumors.
A figure stepped through the door--Shizuka wondered why Paula bothered with a door when even the most powerless humans could pass through solid objects at will now--and froze with half her body still inside.
"What are you doing here?" said Penelope Sánchez.
"I am here," said Shizuka Hirose, Empress of Japan, third Super Goddess to be born, "to apologize." The words tasted like bile on her tongue and she had to force them out, but honour demanded them of her. She had been wrong, grievously wrong, and Paula had been right.
Penelope only quirked an eyebrow. "Well," said Paula's majordomo. "After me, then."
Penelope turned and stepped back through the door, Shizuka and her court right on her heels.
--
Paula stiffened ever so briefly as Shizuka Hirose walked through her office door, and out of the corner of her eye saw Alondra grin widely. She knew Shizuka had apologized to her via Alondra, but knowing how prideful the Empress was, she hadn't expected a personal visit. She definitely didn't expect Shizuka to go down on one knee and bow her head while her courtiers prostrated themselves completely.
"I'm sorry," said Shizuka Hirose, "for questioning you. I see now the wisdom of your plan. I only regret that I had not seen it sooner." She turned and looked at Penelope and then Alondra. "And I'm sorry for treating you as I have. You are Super Goddesses, equal to me in power and stature, and deserving of my respect as such. However you came by your power, that much must be."
Paula was, quite simply, struck speechless. Shizuka was, for all her kindness and generosity and good will toward her people--toward all people, really--still one of the most prideful, self-righteous, and stiff-necked people Paula had ever met. A personal apology was the last thing Paula had expected from her--she'd just hoped Shizuka would stop treating Penelope and Alondra as lesser just because of how they had gotten their powers.
She could tell that neither Penelope nor Alondra really knew what to say. Penelope looked every bit as shocked as Paula was, while Alondra's grin had just gotten wider and wider, quite obviously enjoying seeing the Empress eat so much humble pie.
Shizuka was silent, too, for a moment, until she got up, waving a hand at her companions to disperse them back to their prefectures.
"Now," she said, briskly and calmly, "I'd like to see the traitor."
Alondra held out a hand. "Any time." She glanced over at Paula and held out her other hand. "Care to come along?"
Paula said nothing but took the proffered hand. As Shizuka took Alondra's other hand, Paula's office faded from her ordinary senses and was replaced by an infinite white plain, once just a visual illusion called an infinity cove, but quite easily realized by an omnipotent Super Goddess.
Facing them was a lone figure, scrawny and unattractive, babbling to herself just to keep herself from going mad from the silence, not realizing that she had long since been driven insane by the solitude.
"The traitor," said Alondra, "in her natural state."
"How long have you kept her here?" asked Shizuka. Of course, it had only been a few hours in the real world, but time inside the prison of a Super Goddess's mind moved at whatever rate the Super Goddess wanted it to.
"Only a few quadrillion years," said Alondra. "I figure she'll need at least a quintillion to really break, though. Then the real fun can begin."
Paula felt rather uncomfortable hearing that. There was, for one, the fact that she had done exactly what the traitor had and gotten away with it--of course, that was only because she had the blessing of all the other Super Goddesses and hadn't tampered with anything that would actually change history. There was also the fact that Alondra's words were another reminder that the woman, however effective she might be and however worthy she might have proved, simply didn't have the same empathy all natural Super Goddesses had. That would always set her apart, and Paula wished she could have found someone else.
"Can you restore her for a bit? I want to hear from her directly."
Alondra hesitated, but only a moment, and then waved a hand at the pitiful figure. Instantly her babbling stopped and she perked up and looked around. Seeing Shizuka, she immediately ran over and began kissing the Empress's foot.
"Please, Shizuka, get me out of here, I don't deserve this, I meant well, I won't do it again..."
Shizuka kicked her former friend, backing up the shot with a bit of telekinesis to send the other woman flying. "Why?" said Shizuka as the traitor landed on her back. "You had to know it was impossible. Why?"
"Because..." Tears welled up and a sob choked Yomi Shirogane's voice. "You knew my mother. You know I never knew my father. You know how she kept me fed by sleeping with men for money. I just..."
"And I know," said Shizuka, "that the first thing you did after I told you who had fathered you was to go out and kill him with your bare hands. I know that you've always been as harsh as you could be with rapists. I should have realized you carried enough resentment in you that you would try something like this."
Yomi turned pleading eyes on Alondra. "Please. You understand, don't you? What wouldn't you give to go back and kill the john who kept you as a sex slave? Just... give me to Paula. That's all I ask," she said, realizing that she would never be let out of captivity when not even her oldest friend would try to defend her.
"You think I don't think about that every single day?" replied Alondra. "You think I haven't tried it millions of times in simulations? You think I wouldn't give anything to go back and save my parents? I was happy then. It was the happiness of ignorance, but it was happiness. But we don't change history. You know that. Everyone knows that. History happened, and we have to live with the consequences."
"She changed history!" said Yomi, pointing an accusing finger at Paula.
Paula was about to speak up, when Shizuka rather unexpectedly cut her off. "She did. But she did so with the blessing of the other Super Goddesses--and over my foolish and unwise objections--and her alterations didn't change what had happened, only what could happen going forward from when she had traveled back. She was careful. You were not, and I quite concur with Paula and Alondra that this is where you belong." She took one last look at her former friend, then flattened her to the floor by amplifying gravity where she was a thousandfold. "I won't say I'll miss you." Shizuka vanished.
"Do you think I'm being too hard on her?" asked Alondra, nodding toward the traitor, stuck to the floor by Shizuka's parting shot.
"If even Shizuka won't stick up for her," said Paula after some thought, "I think you might just be going a bit too easy." Alondra grinned.