Today would be the day Elle nor River would never live down for as long as they lived.
Even if it was just a bit of scolding from their respective captains, and a little bit of swallowing down gallons of pride for a simple “sorry,” for the rivals it felt like the end of the world. After all, being late to the job? Ludicrous! They’ve never been even a second late— quite the opposite, being the first to rise and the last to leave, those two. Not today, though. And that was a problem. A problem that led them to the front desk of a Galvanic Blue Overseer.
“Make it quick,” the woman, or rather young girl, behind the desk grumbled with a patience already beginning to simmer over as her fingers worked furiously against the keyboard. Toki Honma was similar to the two speedsters in the way that neither of them wanted to waste a single drop of time. After all, being the Overseer to the Space-Time R&D department to the largest conglomerate of the west side of the world, it was a taxing job that left little to no time to rest… that is, if you managed your time right. The tone in Toki’s voice was no different than the ones used by Elle and River’s superiors earlier in the day, and the two couldn’t help but fold at the rough sound, but only slightly.
“About that,” River began, fiddling with a coattail on his West Cardinal uniform, eyes downcast as he stuttered out a sentence. “It’d be easier for me to explain it… so if you don’t mind—“
“I do,” the teen behind the desk shot him a glare behind the monitor in front of her face. And even if he couldn’t see it, it made River shudder. Luckily for him, the boy had a partner just as eager, if not more, to get to the point.
Elle Takeuchi stepped forward, hands by her sides as she told Overseer Honma bluntly, “We need to travel back in time. Is that good enough for you?”
It earned a scoff from the purple-haired overseer, but a scoff that came from a grin. Not wanting to exchange petty banter between the two Compass soldiers any longer, she quickly gave in. “I don’t get paid enough for this,” she muttered as she waved a hand, dress shoes tapping against the glossy tile. “Not enough at all.”
“I know,” Overseer Honma resounded bluntly, a dash of pride in her otherwise uncaring voice. “But you have the Industrial Technologies department to thank for it.” She strode over, hands running over a few buttons on their uniforms to latch the watches on their chain. “Let’s make this quick.”
“The quicker the better, ma’am,” Elle whispered under her breath. And all Toki did was give the girl a passing glance.
“Ahem!” Those hands of hers clasped together with a rebounding clap. “To make it as short as I can: just go for what you need and come back without altering anything else. Got it?”
“Got it!” The two soldiers exclaimed, standing stiff like a board even if they have been for the past few minutes already.
“You’ll be entering the timeline-index shortly,” Toki continued, tapping at a panel behind the grand brass gear. The structure began to hum. “The gravity works like swimming through water, so don’t panic so much. When you enter a timeline, you can summon up a portal back to the index by pressing down on the top of your stopwatch. DON’T LOSE THEM.”
River steps back, hands raised with his wide eyes. Elle silently nodded.
“Noted,” he muttered.
There’s a loud click as Toki pressed down on a particularly bright button behind the gear. The room was flooded with a soft honey glow, overpowering the default white light of the lab. The honey color swirled, a hypnotic spin that filled the empty space of the gear’s mouth.
Toki’s voice suddenly came from behind them. “Have fun,” she chirped, and there was a sudden shriek from River Ashburn as the two were suddenly thrust into the portal via elbow.
“Gah—!”
The two were sent careening down into the honey light, as if the duo were sinking into molasses after the cannonball of a lifetime. The two opened their eyes to find that their hands were clenched in each other’s, their grip unintentionally desperate as their acceleration slowed. Elle quickly pulled away.
“That never happened,” she groaned. River nodded, seeming to be just as disgusted, though only in tone.
The duo scanned the vast expanse of the amber-colored space. Shards of glass danced through the air, each piece reflecting a different possibility in its surface. The shards decorated the space like stars in the night sky.
“Shoot,” Elle hissed, putting a fist to her mouth as her eyes scanned the world inside each fragment. Her eyebrows knitted together as she swam through, weaving past timelines. “How’re we gonna know which one was from today?”
“Uh…” River scratched his head, swimming up to Elle’s side. He frowned, examining each passing shard just as intensely as Elle. “I’ll be honest— I… don’t know.”
“…shoot.” Elle groaned, laying on her back as she floated through the amber space, throwing an arm over her eyes. “This is like trying to find a needle in haystacks from all around the globe!”
“Ah…” River shrugged in turn, shaking the girl by her shoulder. “Uh… lighten up! We’ll find it at some point…” but even so he wasn’t sure of himself. There were thousands, maybe millions of shards, and only two of them. A duo can only search so much. It took them a while to settle on one fragment, and by a while… really, they’re was only two minutes between their complaining and their searching before Elle gave up and gave up.
“Nope!” She growled, hands nabbing a random shard that only looked like their timeline in her hands. “I’m not doing this anymore! This is taking longer than it needs to be!”
River watched as Elle tried to fall back into the timeline like it was a portal. But she wasn’t swallowed up by the glass shard until she fell back and it spun like a revolving door. “Elle—?!” The boy reached out, but he was too late anyways. A rash decision was made, and he too fell back into the glass as it spun.
“Eiyaaaaaaa!!”
The girl’s scream was muffled by the ambience of the bustling streets below. The streets were so busy, in fact, that nobody noticed the girl who fell from the sky and into the alleyway, with a boy following suit. “Urgh—!”
“O-ow…” River whined, sitting up and rubbing his head as he glanced around, not even noticing what he sat up on, until it hit him in the side.
“Dude! Get off me!” She jabbed at his side again, causing him to jump up and off her body.
“Sorry, I’m sorry! I didn’t know! Geez…”
The two rose to their feet, Elle using River as a means to stand up, which he didn’t seem to mind all that much. Side-by-side, they walk together, stepping out of the dark alley and into the busy street of the city. To their eyes it sure did look like Starside, capital of Eden. The radio tower stands proud in the distance, a constant light blinking off, and on, and off again. The ink-black night wasn’t so black, as the vast expanse of buildings became the stars shining in the dark. People shuffled around the busy streets as always, cars always passing by with the subway doing the same underneath their feet.
It was normal. A normal night in Starside.
“So, I guess we’ll just have to find the West Cardinal base… right?” River cocked his head to Elle, nudging her with his elbow. She just shrugged, looking up to the clear night sky. An airplane weaves through the stars.
“Yeah? And we’ll be out.” Despite her flat tone, River couldn’t help but take more interest in Elle’s actions, especially when she slipped her arm into his. The two interlocked arms. “Well c’mon. Let’s get going.”
Those two shuffled with the crowd, weaving and squeezing their way through the gaps as they walked deeper into the city. While Elle led the way, tugging River along by the arm, the boy was more distracted by the sights of the city he already knew too well. He pointed to the takoyaki stall near the arcade.
“The vendor’s different,” he pointed out to the girl dragging him along. “It’s always been Derrin Chen manning that stand.”
“Is that so?” She did as much as give her company a quick glance, but only a quick glance. “Well, maybe Derrin’s taking a break— simple as that.”
But River didn’t shake it off so easily. The longer they walked, the more he noticed on the streets alone. There was a jarring lack of Mirroids, for one. A lack of Mirroids? In Starside? Galvanic Blue was all about their tech, especially their human-like robots— their Mirroids. But there weren’t any of them anywhere. They passed by the record store, but instead of Mirroid duo Emily and Sakura, there was a duo of brunette girls managing that store. The arcade… had completely different games, and none of them seemed familiar to his eyes. And the most dastardly of all? There was a significant absence of Soundchaser★SAGURE in the capital, multigenre sensational star who’d partnered with Galvanic just a few years back.
“Elle,” he spoke up, nudging the girl again.
“Again?” And for once she stopped, putting a hand on her hip as she pulled them aside. “What do you want?”
“Nothing looks right, dude!” He threw his hands in the air before he grabbed the girl by her shoulders, causing her to jolt back with wide eyes. “It’s all fine on the surface, but ONLY THE SURFACE.”
The girl held by the shoulders looked around her, and just shrugged. “I guess we could always go back to the timeline-index if we aren’t in the right time,” she muttered, reaching for her pocket watch.
Her hand, however, grasped thin air. She tried again, but felt only fabric under her fingers. Patting the emptiness desperately, she finally looked down to find an alarming absence of gold.
“Uh…” she stared wide-eyed, hands freezing up as her gaze remained downcast at the space that was once filled. River turned around, arms up in a shrug.
“Well, I still have mine. You think Overseer Honma put yours on wrong?” He tilted his head back to meet Elle’s gaze, hands trailing down his chest to grasp his own pocket watch. But like Elle, he felt emptiness when the space was once full… it drew a curse from under his breath. “Never mind,” he muttered as he swiveled right around.
“You— what do you mean—“ her eyes flitted between his eyes and his hand as it rested on his chest. “Oh, come on—!”
For a while, River had to watch as Elle paced around the alleyway they stood aside in. She was pinching her nose bridge, another hand on her hip as she grumbled to herself.
A hand stopped her again. “Dude, dude. Relax,” he whispered, a hand rubbing at her shoulder this time. “There’s always a solution to every problem.” But even as the words left his mouth, he himself didn’t seem too faithful in them. It was Starside, the capital of the world’s largest continent. It would be like trying to find a needle in haystacks from all around the globe, especially when you realize how small a pocket watch is.
But in the middle of River’s desperate attempt at comforting his rival, he couldn’t help but feel something. A feeling, deep down inside his chest… that meant nothing but good. So he turns around.
“Aw—!” A smaller girl, about thirteen, throws her beret down to the floor as his gaze lands on her. A redhead, with her hair done up in twin drills, with a discarded beret at her feet. On her arm proudly stands the Delta Elites insignia.
“Uh…” River stood back, giving her some space as he tried to hide Elle behind his back as discreetly as possible. Not so then the girl wouldn’t notice, but so then Elle herself wouldn’t get at what he was doing. “Hi, ma’am…”
It felt weird to address such a small teen by “ma’am,” especially when the two Compass soldiers were about two years older than her. But she had that huge scythe on her back. Hazard, much?
“It isn’t fun anymore!” The girl whined, turning around and covering her face with her gloved hands. “You saw me and it RUINED it.”
“Is that so?” The older boy kneeled down to her height. “What were you trying to do anyways, hm?” He kept his tone gentle when it came to talking to her. She was a 13-year-old who might’ve been perfectly capable of killing them both, but when it comes to younger people, it’s a habit that slips through every time. She seemed upset anyways.
“Oh, yeah,” she spoke, her tone blindsiding River as it seamlessly shifted to a neutral tone. It was as if she was never upset. But then she grinned, and it drew a frown from Elle. “You’re coming with me, guys. Sorry.” And there was a distinct click, as she opened a pair of cuffs. And then another, as she closed them again. Now she’s fidgeting with them.
“What… but you’re from the Delta Elites, right?” Elle suddenly peeked from behind River’s tall frame, a hand on his shoulder as if he was a wall she hid behind. “I know Compass aren’t on good terms with you folk, but arrest us?”
“What do you mean, ‘but arrest us?’ Dummy, the Compass are criminal scum through and through.” She huffed and spun the pair of handcuffs around her index. “Now hurry up and comply— they’ll get Volant involved and then it’d be a big issue.”
“You do realize we aren’t going to let ourselves go willingly, right?” Elle took a place standing besides River, hands on her hips again. “In fact, we aren’t going to let you get in the way of anything— so cmon, let’s get going, River!”
“Yo—?! Wait up!”
The two weaved through the crowd yet again. But rather than the smooth and leisurely maneuvering with a dash of annoyance, it was a haphazard frenzy of pushing and shoving amongst the crowd.
“Move aside, move aside! And make sure those Compass soldiers don’t get away!” The scythe-armed girl hollered, rushing down the crowded sidewalk, constantly glancing around as she made her dash. She tried her best to make sure the duo couldn’t get away from her line of sight.
But get away they did. Because that’s a short kid, and in the panic of their arrival they managed to hide away someplace else. Elle slumped down against the wall and held her chest.
“Compass… as a group of criminals… that’s a new one, huh,” she panted, eyes glancing up to an equally exasperated River Ashburn. All he could do was nod before swallowing down.
“Well, ‘least now we know this isn’t the right place in time, not at all.” His gaze turned to the night sky, the stars twinkling like the light atop the radio tower. They gave themselves a few moments of silence before one of them spoke again.
“So…” River began, closing his eyes as he let out a deep breath. “About the stopwatches.”
“No way out without them. We’re stuck,” Elle responded, fingers fidgeting with a strand of hair. “Somehow. She put ‘em on good, at least on me.”
“…tsk.”
“…”
“SURPRISE!!!”
“WHAT?!”
The two jumped back to their feet like springs, glancing around for the source of the shout. It couldn’t be Elle’s voice, because it was too boyish. But not River’s, because it was a little too jovial and high in pitch. Back-to-back they stood now, making sure both of them were covered on all sides in case they were “surprised” again.
Instead, it was less of a surprise, one that made your heart stop out of fear, but a surprise, a moment of “oh! How unexpected.”
“You guys SUCK,” he groaned, an arm over his eyes as he strolled in from the darkness. It was a boy with spiky auburn hair, a green hat, and green boots. He took that arm off his face to reveal a half-lidded glare. “Like, you both are rivals! Don’t you hate each other? Where’s the competition? The hate?! BOOOOORRRRINGGGGG.”
The duo looked at each other, exchanging weird looks before they gave the same stare to the boy. He was a tall one, maybe 17. But he acted 15.
“And aren’t you Trigger? The Downfall of Time?” Elle walked forward, arms crossed over her chest as she gave him a slow, a painfully slow once-over. “I expected more, honestly.”
“Why you— shut up, dude!” Trigger huffed, the mirroid approaching the two soldiers with his hands in his pockets. One of them left their hiding spot to gesture in the air. “Y’know, I was just gonna give you your stuff! And then you pulled that? What’s your damage?”
River simply nodded, a finger by his cheek. “The rumors look to be true,” is all he said, making the time-jumping mirroid groan again.
“Rumors are true, what? It ain’t my fault I’m so irritable,” he hissed, hand going to the brim of his hat. “It’s in the programming— all of it.”
“So then just go to some programmer to fix your attitude,” offered Elle. Trigger looked at her like she was crazy.
“No.”
And River just muttered under his breath. “Anyways,” he started again, like he wasn’t just mumbling some curse earlier, “what were you gonna do anyways?”
“Give you your pocket watches back,” he shrugged. “But should I really? Now that I think about it… hm…”
“Yes,” Elle interrupted. “You should.” And the guy just waggled his finger in her face.
“Not after that whole thing earlier,” he smirked, a wry, dry grin. “That was very rude!”
“Oh yeah?! How’s this for ‘rude?!’” And there’s this loud CLANG as Elle’s foot connects with the mirroid’s shin. The robot crumples to the floor like a discarded tissue on the Starside concrete and lays there for a moment. And then the pain sets in, with a painful, unruly scream.
“That wasn’t… necessary— Elle…” But she and River just stood over the boy who was now sitting up to clutch at his leg. “You okay?”
The bot drew in a deep breath, collecting himself before he could scream in any more agony. It took a few deep breaths to collect himself. “NO?” Was all he squeaked out, his voice cracking like a window after a game of baseball in the backyard. The two soldiers shared an awkward glance. “Apologize,” River mouthed to the reason the robot is curled up on the floor. Elle sighed, brushing the hair out from her face with her thumb before she extended a hand to Trigger.
“Sorry, for kicking your legs.” She mumbled it awkwardly as Trigger looked up to that outstretched palm. He took it, hoisting himself up to his feet with a bit of a stagger. Otherwise, he was fine.
Mirroids like him were just like humans— of course they looked the part, and acted the part too. But they functioned nearly on-par with a human body, being able to eat, sleep, and all those other functions. But they didn’t need to. They were so human, though. So human, they often used “robot” and “person” to refer to these kinds of robots interchangeably. This one was no exception, of course. But it would’ve been smart to have made him the exception.
Trigger sniffled, wiping away a tear as he towered over those two humans. He adjusted the brim of his hat again, and sighed. You could tell he was still in pain, even by looking at his face. “Thanks,” he uttered, feeling embarrassed to have been downed to his knees by a girl, a human girl that was three years younger than him no less. Silence held in the air before he reached into his duffel bag.
“What’s he doing?” River gave Elle a glance. All she did was roll her eyes though, even after such a caring display from her to Trigger. The bag zipped up as he finally found what he was looking for, though. Its golden sheen shimmered in the city lights.
“Well… then I guess you deserve ‘em back. But not because I’m embarrassed, okay? Geez…” the robot extended his palms, a golden pocket watch resting in each gloved hand. Elle bowed before she took hers, pinning it back to her uniform. As for River— he takes it up casually and stuffs it away in the recesses of his pockets.
“We didn’t say anything about that,” River muttered nearly absentmindedly, looking up to the still dark night sky. In turn, Trigger lets out a more irked breath.
“Shut up. I guess you have somewhere to be, right?”
“Right,” the girl nodded, and for once she smiled. It was an awkward, sheepish look she gave to try and ease the situation after she kicked the poor guy into yesteryear. She even fiddled with her fingers, a new sight to her rival who stood beside her. “Could you take us? We want to go back to our time, before when we were supposed to wake up. Is that okay?”
“I… guess so! It ain’t so hard— gimme a moment. And click open to the timeline-index,” he ordered. River shrugged and gave the top a click, opening a kind of rectangular cut in time to the honey-colored index. Not even glancing up from the arm he pressed buttons on, he waved a hand to follow him as he casually fell in, leaving River and Elle to stand alone in the alleyway, with each other by their sides and that portal in front of their faces.
It stayed like that, with a deafening silence filling the vacant space. If it weren’t for the street ambiance, that is. They did as much as glance at each other.
“I’m not moving unless you move,” the boy nudged the girl, gaze flitting between her and the portal as if to tell her “move,” but with his eyes. But she stayed there, unmoving. A pair of monoliths they were, as they stood in the dark.
“Then I’m not moving either,” she hissed. “You move.”
“...no.”
Still like statues, towering over the portal like a monolith… it went on until a voice came back to check in.
“You two makin’ out over there or what?!” Trigger hollered, peeking his head out from within the timeline-index. He had this wide grin spread on his face, from headphone to headphone as his eyes glanced between the two teens. “Hurry up over there, dude. I’m a time god but I’m a time god who doesn’t have all day.”
And he falls back into the honey, leaving the two soldiers staring with wide eyes.
“Then on the count of three,” Elle laughed, but only allowed herself a soft kind of snicker as she took River by the wrist, ensuring he won’t back out. “And you better not bluff.”
River just rolled his eyes, but grinned regardless. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Then it's settled- three…”
“Two…”
“One!” The two exclaimed in tandem with each other, with Elle falling forward as she tugged on River’s arm extra hard. The two plummeted into the timeline-index.
“Welcome back!” Trigger exclaimed, walking on literal thin air, as there's nothing to stand on in amber-tinted space. While Elle and River had to float like beach balls in a pool, the space treated Trigger like a whole different entity. He is after all, “a time god.”
“So, you look to come from Sector 92, timeline #238,007… year 40XX, right?” He looked to be going through a random filing cabinet he quite literally pulled from thin air. He hummed for a brief moment before he exclaimed a little “gotcha!” and retrieved a folder named… what he stated earlier. “You wanna go… before you were supposed to wake up.”
River and Elle nodded, Elle laying on her back as she floated around like an asteroid while she held onto RIver’s arm. Her grip slowly slid closer to his hand.
“Why?” Trigger sauntered over, bending down with the manila folder in his grasp. “I mean, really? What the hell happened at… I guess 4:30AM?”
“Nothing,” shrugged River. He was laying on his stomach, his back facing Elle’s. “We were asleep.”
“Are you serious?” Trigger began to float just like everything else inside the timeline-index, going upside-down as he flitted through what Elle would assume to be shards containing other moments in her time. “Like, you woke up late. Biggie. Just don't do it next time.”
“That's what they all say though,” Elle huffed, pulling her grip off of River’s arm to hold her own sides. She frowned as Trigger turned rightside-up in her upside-down view. “But it's just so…”
“Damn humiliating,” River said for her.
All Trigger did was shrug, not really seeming to care about something as trivial as waking up late. “You do you,” is all he said before he gave a shard to the two of them. Elle took it in her hands, watching the reflection of Starside in the golden-tinted shard.
“Thanks,” she said in turn, placing it in front of her. She and River turned themselves upright. “We’ll come back, though. Course we still need to come back to the present.”
“You say it like I didn’t know. Now go, dude!”
“Course, course.”
But then Trigger pushed the two into the glass, the shard spinning like a revolving door just like last time. And they were gone, once again!
“Gack-!” The two of them groaned as they hit the familiar flooring of a certain room. The curtains weren’t drawn back, allowing for the bright lights of the city to shine through as a makeshift night-light. Of course, none of the two needed a night-light to begin with, but if you wake up in the middle of the night it's always nice to be able to see from the get-go rather than to stumble around in the dark like a fool as you grab the air for any surface blind to the eye engulfed in darkness. The bed against the wall was stuffed a little over its capacity, a previous version of the two sleeping soundly. The two watched their past selves from next to River’s dresser.
He checked his pocket watch. 4:30AM.
“How nice of Trigger to plop us down right into your room,” Elle muttered, embarrassed to see herself as she dozed off peacefully, next to none other than West Cardinal River Ashburn no less. River made sure not to glance up, the color of shame dusting his cheeks.
“Right,” he muttered back to the girl. “So how do you want to go about waking us up?” River scratched his head, never having to mutter a sentence like that before. He wondered if his grammar was passable enough for Elle to ignore it.
“Shake ‘em?” Elle tilted her head, keeping her eye on herself rather than River. River just shook his head.
“Tsk- no way. It’d be confusing, cause we’re both asleep.” He tapped his fingers on his stopwatch face. “Eh… loud noise? Like something falling?”
“I mean… but what if it wakes Otto and Eirin downstairs?”
“But surely it isn’t that loud of a noise for them to hear? And besides its all I can think of right now.”
“It’s a random thud, River. A thud.”
“But it’s not like you have any other ideas! And plus Otto and Eirin have to wake up at the same time as we do- it’ll be fine!”
“I don’t like the idea though! Maybe there’s another way?”
The whispering elevated to a yell-whisper, a series of yell-whispers that unbeknownst to the two of them, turned from “spy talk” to “loud crowd” too fast for them to realize. And then Elle smacked River upside his head, causing him to yelp.
“Damn-!” His voice was muffled by his own hands. The two slowly turned to glance at the bed, where he saw the two past versions of themselves rise from their slumber.
“River,” Past Elle mumbled, her voice laced with sleep. “That you?” She rubbed her eyes to see an equally tired past River sitting next to her. But he shrugged, arms stretching over his head as he yawned.
“No…?” He rubbed his eyes, gaze fixed down at his lap. “Maybe it was a dream. You know how you are with your dreams.”
“Eh…” She cracked her knuckles, and let the question go with a shrug.
Past River’s eyes glanced up to the side of his dresser, and found nothing which was oddly unsettling to him, especially if he swore he felt a pair of eyes on him just then.
“How’d it go, lovebirds?” Trigger teased when they found themselves back inside Trigger’s personal gap between time, space, and the universe as anyone knew it. It's a surprise how Elle or River haven’t gotten their eyes stuck rolled back in their skulls, because they both roll their eyes again.
“You know?” River began, swimming through space on his back, legs kicking up, and down, and up again. “I wouldn’t say it was that bad.”
“Even if you shouted to wake us up,” Elle jabbed back playfully, as it was River’s turn to receive a shard. It floated through the air like a bullet swimming through molasses as Trigger shot it his way.
“Gotcha,” he grinned, as he let it float in front of him. The two stood the best they could as they stayed floating in the honey-colored space.
“Thanks a ton, Trigger.” Elle bowed politely, a formal 90-degree bend at the waist as she kept her gaze to the floor. Trigger gave a simple nod, pretending like such a simple move didn’t just inflate his ego.
“Pleasure doing business with’chu,” he grinned, shooting the pair some finger guns with the snap of his fingers. “And I’ll be seeing you.”
“Tch-” River scoffed, his eyes going half-lidded as he grinned back. “I doubt it. Unless we screw up big-time. Which I assure you, we won't.”
“Well either way I’ll still see you soon.”
“...huh.”
Elle picked her head back up as she straightened her posture. She suddenly pulled River in close by the waist and giggled. “See you soon, then!” And she fell back into the present day.
“...PHEW. OH MY GOD.” Trigger kicked back as he was finally left alone with his own thoughts, his hat coming off so he could spin it around his index. “That! Took SO LONG.”
The gear in the center of a now-bustling laboratory spat a duo of Compass soldiers out from its grandiose brass mouth. They lay on top of each other, seeming a little dizzy but amused nonetheless as they giggled. The amber glow dissipated as two other individuals came to stand above them.
“Oh! There you two are.” A tall man in a gray suit smiled, offering a hand to help those two teens up on their feet. Elle helped herself up as River gladly accepted the help into his own hands. He used his arm to hoist himself back up. “Least we know to better our tactics when it comes to weaving through timelines. Even you two seem to stumble in and out of places.”
The other individual, a certain purple-haired Overseer, just sighed, shaking her head with a grin as well.
“Thanks, Overseer Yamaguchi.” River bowed just as politely as Elle had to Trigger. And it made Overseer Yamaguchi step back in mild surprise.
“No need for the formalities, River. You know I’m not like that.”
The ride home was a quiet one. The air was still and silent if you ignored the hum of the car’s engine, but the silence was nothing but awkward. If anything, it was more of a drowsy silence. One that would easily be remedied by a good nap.
Elle kept her gaze fixed on the setting sun as River drew his focus to the road ahead of him. It wasn’t the same time as when they left. There was a significant jump- from 5PM to 6:37PM.
The hum remained unbroken for a few more minutes before River suddenly broke it. “You wanna check the behavior log thing?” He shrugged his shoulders but refused to glance at Elle, in fear he’d crash the thing the moment he peeled his eyes away from the road.
“Sure?” She muttered, fishing her phone from her pockets to do just that.
“Well?”
“Hold on, man. Let me log in…”
“...”
“So?”
“...”
Elle grumbled after some time. She brought the phone up to River’s face, even if he wasn’t going to look. The girl slumped in her seat as she muttered, “I dont think it worked…”
“Whaaaaat?” His face contorted into some sort of frown. “No way…”
And the ride continued in silence, just… a more upset type of silence that can only be remedied by answers.
As it turns out, you can’t exactly change the course of fate so easily- as Toki Honma put it as she explained it over the phone to River and Elle, “You don’t belong to the timeline you created. So even if you tried to shift there, what would happen to the Elle and River you’re replacing? You don’t belong in the reality where you woke up on-time today, and those versions of you don’t belong in the reality you tried to run away from.”
The conversation, of course, was brief. Because as the Overseer of Galvanic Blue’s Space-Time R&D department, time is money and she couldn’t afford to waste it, especially if it was for something she wasn’t getting paid for.
Elle laid on her side of the bed, defeated and drained, with River joining her right after. “Why didn’t she say that before?!” She whined. And all River did was place a hand on her shoulder, trying to reassure her that it was only a one-time thing. But even he himself seemed a little unsettled by the turn of events seeming so fruitless.