Xev and Stanley stood dressed in the shiny gold suits which provided warmth,
some nutrition and above all, air.
 They watched as Kai became the equivalent of a human sized and shaped fuse.
They were watching from more than a kilometre away, sealed inside a large
non-conductive glass box.
790 sat in-between them, the three of them standing there gave the
impression of an absurdly glitzy Christmas time mantel piece designed by
some very bitter advertising agencies.
 Still, they gazed intently as the ridiculously proportioned  cord
tightened, such was its entire width that Stanley, Xev and Kai had been
unable to encircle its entire circumference.

From far above the cord flashed with power, raw naked power crackled around
in the heavens above like a tentative axe wielding psychopath in an attic.
When  suddenly and possibly against the laws of physics, arched fingers of
power surged downwards with lightening speed.

To Xev the jagged fingers looked 'Greenish', to Stanley 'Bluish', and to 790
'Goldish with perfect red hair and a perfect body', whilst in reality it was
more of a dirty yellow.

Holding onto the cord with both hands, Kai looked up to the heavens far
above. He felt no fear, he felt no sorrow. He felt nothing, he was dead
already. A mockery of life.
A singular, shimmering white feather drifted down towards him with infinite
grace. Kai stared at it hard.
 Tiny droplets of rain began to coats his up ward looking face, welling up
on his brow and spilling down his chin.
 On a back drop of a bluey-green mix, a figure appeared to him soaring
downwards with more grace than the feather. An angel beckoning him to her,
it was her. The woman he had loved in life and she had died with him and his
friends as they had tried to save their planet and failed. She was dead. She
was calling him.

Stanley was impressed. Xev too, 790 was aware of something happening a
kilometre away with Kai, but the folds, lines and creases of Xev's suit were
mouth-wateringly good, the gentle rise and fall of her chest beneath a
veneer of gold were mind blowingly good.
 790 slowly became aware something wasn't going to plan when Xev ran out of
the box, followed by a reluctant Stanley. 790 hurled as many insults as he
could after Stanley. He even invented some new ones.

A mangled and charred lump lay on the cold, alien world countless metres
from a cord which throbbed with power and life.
 The charred wreckage simply did nothing but look burnt and very, very dead.
Xev ran to it, every breath that she drew tasted bitter and stale, a faint
tainting of fear crept in as she waited expectantly for Kai to heal and sit
up and then she could hug him and make it all better, maybe this time he'd
hug her back....
 As she waited for the miraculous transformation that she knew Kai had to
undergo Stanley wheezed his way to them. Neither spoke, the air around them
was toxic if inhaled for a pro-longed period, now it stank with the full
richness of death. A gentle breeze picked the smell and sensations up in its
embrace and rammed it against the two living occupants of the planet seeking
a way into their bodies and minds.

Time passed slowly, like an ice age. Still, silence permeated the planet,
and neither spoke to the other in case the spell was broken and it all
collapsed around them.
 Gently Stanley placed a hand on Xev's shoulder.

The moth hovered above the surface of the planet, clouds of dust rising and
falling almost like a sea, each rise crashing bloodily into the fall,
dispersing itself and living again undiminished.
Weeks had passed since Kai's brave sacrifice to free the Lexx from the
planets trap, Xev had not moved from the side of Kai's corpse for many days
and as Stanley had watched over her, he'd seen her grow paler by the day. He
learnt something after all. He loved Xev and Kai, Kai was the closest thing
Stanley had ever had to a friend.
790 seemed subdued, sure enough he insulted but his CPU wasn't in it. 790,
did however, design a  monument to Kai. A man size statue of Kai himself. It
had taken Stanley days to build the machines that in turn would build the
statue.
The moth hung in the air, as if it were paying it's last respects to Kai and
then slowly lifted upwards towards the huge bulk of the Lexx, a faint
sorrowful chirrup came from the moth as it left the planet.

Dust whipped at the monument, lashing it with the full force of nature. Tiny
pock-marks erupted across the glazed surface of the statue. A mesh work of
small greyish machines worked to repair the damage. Like larger, slower
versions of Kai's Proto-blood.
 And then the wind died completely.
 
 
 
 End