Somehow she completed him. As cheesy as that could possibly be. Her intellectual prowess had secured a place in his heart. Making him more of a man than he ever was before. 

 

*

 

 

 

* 

 

They were only philosophers. Useful in strategizing, but not in battle. But most of the fighting happened behind the scenes, anyway. It had certainly started out that way. 

 

They weren't even on the planet a long time before they found out what their powers could do there. Unlike the other worlds they had lived on all those years, that one had a unique, almost sentient make-up that allowed wishes to form into sudo-reality. And finding this out, they'd collectively agreed to never abuse this feature. The truse lasted for only a very short time. 

 

After all the land had become ravaged by fire and pollution and war, Arthur and Kenneth finally conceded defeat and asked for help. Funny how Mer and Louis had been at the start and end of the entire episode, but never wished a single bad thing onto the world. Some would say that was a lie. They had told other - more power hungry members - how to manipulate the world. They had accepted the adoration of all the people without a hint of remorse. But in the end, it seemed to them that it had never been their fight. That more active members had began the full-out conflict that had created the red force into existence. And even though the red force began as just a metaphor, it had morphed into a physical manifestation of power, greed and eventually, corruption. 

 

The last thing they were instructed to do - with the help of Dominic, who would be in charge of the physical aspect - was to select the hundreds of people on the planet who were freaks of nature. Unable to create fantasy into reality. A group of metaphysically castrated individuals, that would neither talk back or wonder what their life could be somewhere else. The plainest of the plain were to be their hope of survival beyond the wasteland that had been their home for the briefest of time.