Ghost And The Writer
Chapter 33 - Tale from two centuries ahead
I saw the world end 5 678 times.
First time was a surprise. The sky shattered like glass and all the aether was s.u.c.k.e.d up in something like a black hole.
We all died.
The system maintaining this world had collapsed. Turned out our god, or the filter that recycled aether would eventually go corrupt, lose her mind, go out to rampage and be eaten by a Titan, and then the titan, having gained the authority to, would suck up all the aether within minutes.
Back then I didn't know that, of course. The world quit on me about fifty times still making me no smarter than when I started out.
By 1 345th collapse I finally saw it in person - the god being eaten by the titan.
By 1 956th collapse I had tried everything I could to prevent our god from rampaging or prevent her from meeting the titan.
She had gotten too corrupt and the only way she (and also I, at a later point) saw it was - we needed a substitute. Someone strong who could consume her yet felt fondness towards this world.
I killed myself a few thousand times, leaped back a few thousand days and started preparing from the day since the day I gained this ability.
I could only go as far as to the day when Bruno, Celeste and Yugo drowned while trying to clear a gray storm and I, well, being a fish c.u.mimi could breathe under water, so when that dream world fell apart, I snapped out and saw that I was the only one remaining.
Perhaps that's why I gained a far bigger portion of aether than anyone expected.
First time around I was an idiot, the humans found out and shipped me off to do an operation on me to cut off half of my brain. That's when I discovered that M ability types (like myself) could protect humans from other
Ms by touching them. Also, priests who took care of us knew nothing. If that wasn't so I would have, firstly, known what was coming, secondly, brainwashed the humans or scared them away with illusions and gotten away.
Having learned this sad truth late, I spent about a year being connected to some survelience system like a vegetable marinated in a sauce. I couldn't move, I couldn't even control my ability, I could only watch the territory alongside nineteen more of my kind, marinating in that juice that prevented us from aging a single day from the moment we were put in.
I can't look at pickles the same way now, I think they must all be insane. I 'hear' their soundless screams.
Turned out, if you got insane enough, other Ms in the system joined you in 'complaining' about it - in other words - error error error, then it became 'hey, why don't you kill me?' and so we made the living insane as well and they shot us. In the end that was our best bet at revenge. M's were rare, this warehouse was valuable to them, they would lose a lot of money and might get robbed. We hated this life anyhow. Perfect solution.
I welcomed the development.
Being a pickle was THAT bad.
And then I discovered I had this ability. When I died, I returned to my own body just 24 hours ago.
I was a pickle again.
Shit.
Then it became a grind of going insane till I got so good, it only took me 20 mins to rile others up and burn the system.
How did I achieve that?
Of course, you'd like to know. Everyone needs the skill to go insane quickly if need be.
It's simple. "World is unfair and someone else is at fault", drive it in with emotion and conviction. The helplessness and hatred will do you in. That's it.
Easy for c.u.mimis to do - we were made to fight grays to filter the world's aether, risking our lives and seeing our friends die every day. With the promise that if we lived till 13, we would be free.
Even easier for c.u.mimis in this system. They lied to us after all. No one said - if you do an excellent job we will make you into a pickle just so you can protect some warehouse + we'll also make sure your body never ages, so you will never reach 13 ha hah!
Was that their attempt to bypass the promise?
Sneaky.
I omitted that part of course. No need to dampen the mood by 'hey we're still biologically twelve, they didn't say we wouldn't need to work as pickles'. They also never said it was our factual age 13 when the freedom would come?
I know it's a sophism.
Where was I?
Right. Going insane. It might have taken me a few hundred attempts, but eventually I did snap out hours before the operation and used a spoon to kill myself. I will spare you the details. It wasn't pretty.
Other times I could get a knife and so on till the time when no one yet knew that I had gotten as strong as I had.
I still had other friends in the house and instigated them to run. That turned out to be hard, took me a hundred times till we managed to escape and even more times till we found a secluded spot with plenty of resources. A shaded oasis by a cliff in the middle of a desert. A place rich in fruit, birds and water.
Building a village together was hard, but it was also fun.
To rain on our parade, though, it turned out we did only have about six years to live afterward.
At age of eighteen I died in my bed surrounded by my wife and two kids.
How is that possible, you ask?
You know the maths, if you start early enough...
But If you meant to ask how the heck did some guy who looks like a frail girl managed that, then - firstly, you are rude, secondly - lesbians in denial.
I did pull a Mosus on them all - leading them through adversity into freedom, so I had that leader's halo. Sadly I had the halo of a prince...ss, so my popularity skyrocketed among dudes and two girls. One was tall, beautiful, serious and wanted to protect me, other was short, even shorter than me, and bipolar with violent tendencies, but nice b.o.o.b.s.
Short one it is.
Despite being able to read minds, I got the air of her mood swings at the same time when everyone else did, so being with her was thrilling. In various ways. I mean, she killed me about three times when she thought I was cheating.
I wasn't. Seriously. I'm not into dudes. So even if they did make moves on me, it wasn't like I responded in kind. But I did like gifts, so... perhaps I did lead them on a bit.
Bright side - we had super cute kids, like little princes....es. Yep. Luckily the world had plenty of lesbians in denial. I figured they'd be ok.
When I snapped out in my bed after having died from 'old age', I got a knife and went back into the past a bit. Just something like six hundred lethal stabs.
So, at age sixteen I kissed my wife and kids goodbye and went on a journey to find a cure. By now I knew that many places had c.u.mimis survive till old age, so there must be a reason for our early demise. We weren't clones either - those were born with frail bodies, we were normal. Yet then we started weakening and died and it wasn't a bacteria or a virus, or radiation as there
were a few c.u.mimis among us whose very type made them immune against those things.
To everyone else, my journey must have seemed like five months, but in reality, it took me two years to discover that they had implanted a ticking poison time-bomb into all of us in the church (at random spots) and then it took me close to ten years to finally find a person who could fix it.
Her name was July, when I met her she was a high-end p.r.o.s.t.i.t.u.t.e at a nightless city called Noctis, she was also a rabbit c.u.mimi with a creator type ability so strong she might have pretended to be a goddess and I would have believed.
My wife was also a creator type, but all she could do was heat up milk with her hands.
July could read the aether in bodies and she could also use her aether to split molecules and rebuild them into something else. In Noctis I also learned that July was not the pinnacle of ability use either - they weren't many in count, but the world had c.u.mimis who could puppeteer a whole army with the same type of ability I had (M type), there were C, creator, types like July who could not only alter matter and heal, but also grant immortality, there were also R, resistor, types who could make big enough barriers to submerge cities underwater and there were D, deva, types who could not only float feathers with their mind but move mountains and speed through the air like jet planes.
But to develop this ability, it had to be done before the c.u.mimi hit the age of 13, so it was too late for me and too late for the group I had led into the desert. But seeing what had happened to me when the humans got a whiff of the stage I had reached, leaving had been the right choice.
Had Bruno, Yugo or Celeste survived something similar to my pickle life would have awaited them.
In fact, everyone who had developed an ability that went above floating feathers with mind or heating tea with hands or toppling a chair with thought had already been sent away. I only slithered around for so long, because I hid my ability and had a magic skill to stay deadpan when priests thought disturbing things on purpose to see if that would shake me up.
Just how expressive did they think an eel c.u.mimi would be? I'm a fish, looking at others with eyes of a dead fish is my trademark skill.
Getting July as an ally required me to kill a dozen humans and two c.u.mimis, the humans were easy, but the c.u.mimis were something. One of them was the same type as me, so I couldn't brainwash the other one, it took plenty of scheming and failed tries till I both managed to kill the one of my type and then luck out with brainwashing the other one.
It would have been a happy ending had this move not marked me as a high-grade threat with the church. Escaping the eyes of pursuers and otherwise avoiding people was a pain, but somehow we did arrive at our hidden village just in time before the first one died.
The only causality was me.
My wife thought I was cheating with July, so she killed me.
When I arrived as take two, I entered the village alone and had someone else pick July up and take her to the weakened c.u.mimis. When Emma met July in this setting she no longer jumped to those conclusions right away, and... I did use my kids as a shield, carrying them along.
Emma was never violent around our kids. That was what saved me. And they did keep clinging on to me for the following week, that gave Emma enough time to cool down and properly observe both me and July to figure that she had a fondness for buff muscular guys, so - hah! There was no way July would be into me! And Emma knew I was passive about approaching others, so happy end.
And then, five years later the world collapsed and I spent two centuries of my subjective time going back into past at various points to try an change something, but in the end I had to discard everything and go back to square one - the day when I snapped out with the now-dead faces of my three friends floating around me.
At times, I no longer knew what kept me going, but that was fine. You wouldn't expect sanity from a person who ended himself with a spoon once. But if I had to guess, then I still remembered the smiles of my kids that didn't even exist in this time-line.
And I also remembered that time before they found out I was a c.u.mimi - fish c.u.mimi don't have any obvious give-away traits, so I was adopted by humans and went to a human school and it was fun! As an eel c.u.mimi I did generate some electricity in my body, but I discharged every morning and evening and it was fine till one day, lightning hit me and I ended up being ok.
Turned out it wasn't puberty that made me generate electricity, but my species. My parents loved me, but rules were rules - they couldn't keep me.
This world had granted me happiness two times. I had been loved as a child and I could give love as a parent, that filled me with enough happiness and gratitude to give my all to save it.
There were no golden eggs without the goose so I used everything and everyone I could - I used my short 12 to become as powerful as I could, sadly, even that wasn't enough to make me into a possible substitute for the god, but if I couldn't, then I had to make someone who could. I allied with grays, c.u.mimi terrorists, some titans even, created gray storms, set up traps and waited, and then a miracle happened.
I had gone a bit too wild in the church's house that had fostered me and it ended up being abandoned for a decade, and reasonably so - it was my experimental grounds for creating every possible nightmare out there for god-substitute training.
But then the region got too infested and due to pressure from church's higher-ups, they tried to restore the place not too seriously by sending various troublemaker priests there and c.u.mimi kids as well. Like expected the death rate was 90%, but one kid survived it all.
The church was being a great help by attempting to kill that kid off by sending him out on impossible missions - he lived through them all and even pulled some of his friends through having them attain impossible strength as well. I was hesitating about the timing, but then an annoyance happened - he and
his friends attracted the interest of White Rose Brigade. A c.u.mimi faction within the church, if they got tangled up in that, even I wouldn't be able to push him into substituting the god.
It was difficult but I did manage to delay information flow, and thus their interest in them, for long enough to make my move.
That too took some deaths and finding the right allies to pull it off, but eventually, I found a gap and kidnapped the kid. He did end up consuming the god and took her place.
I thought it would be fine now, but then I discovered a problem. Turned out that if you killed the titan who consumed this world once - then the world would collapse as well and just two months after the god was substituted someone did kill the titan.
Close to three thousand attempts later I finally came to a sad conclusion that - there was nothing I could do.
The place that would collapse last was a small apartment floating in air with a forest growing in it, I took my allies there and told them my story and what would happen from now on. They never quite knew what was up and what I was doing, but had followed me nevertheless, I thought they deserved to know at least.
In the time-line of pursuing strength and creating a mess above all else I had met Evelyn first. She was a gray or the very same apparition we c.u.mimis had to clear to grow stronger, she hated humans yet loved the world and was someone I needed to start the talks with other grays and titans. She was permanently stuck as a fourteen-year-old, having died once, had ginger hair, freckles , and blue eyes.
I met July next, two years earlier than the first time, this time as well she agreed to follow me as long as I freed her from that city. She was tall, a rabbit c.u.mimi, with waist-long light brown hair and bright green eyes. She always donned high heels and red lipstick.
And the last one was Theresa - a powerful deva type c.u.mimi that would be consumed by the god herself just a year later. Humans too had realized the filter needed replacement, but no matter what kind of c.u.mimis they threw at her, they all ended up consumed. I needed her to move fast, she was... a lot like Emma, in bad ways and in good. A shima bird c.u.mimi not a mouse, but also shorter than me and a lesbian in denial. I was her type in other words. She had
silvery-white hair and wings and despite her flat c.h.e.s.t she wore dresses with an open cleavage. She was already nineteen so that flatness was a status symbol not a sign of youth.
The three listened to my tale in silence and while I knew they hadn't made the connections to figure out my motives, they accepted it without much doubt. They pondered, tried to come to new things, but they too couldn't come up with a single extra thing I could have done and we decided to watch the world end together. I had a feeling that when this apartment would collapse there would be no aether left to power my ability anymore either. This would truly be the end.
I would lie if I said I was fine with it, but there was nothing else I could have done. There were timelines where I had tried to reason with white rose brigade, timelines where I had explained it all to the new god, timelines where I had tried to kill off as many church executives as possible, but every single one of them led to someone picking a fight with that titan. Someone always had a reason and it was impossible for me to brainwash those strong enough to tackle it, they were already protected by an M type above my rank. Even at the time when I got the new god on my side and we fought against white rose brigade, we ended up losing spectacularly more than three hundred times. My ability might be a cheat, but I was far from being the strongest.
Slippery I might be (Eels are slippery by definition, cough), but that was all I was compared to some others.
Yet, as the world collapsed, the very same people who killed that Titan this time around teleported in - the substitute god, Neo, and seven of his friends, half of whom had sworn to kill me and also - Mirose and Dave, the top figures of white rose brigade. I don't think anyone has killed me more times than those two, if suicide doesn't count. Jan, the best friend of the new god, was in third place on that killing-me-most top.
Neo had already grown to reach my height despite being twelve - he was a newfoundland c.u.mimi with a friendly air, warm brown eyes and messy black hair. His downcast dog ears blended in with hair and he could have passed as a human if he didn't have a fluffy tail and clearly pronounced canines. He was an M type ability user just like myself, even if he had outranked me already. He could thus read minds, peek into memories, create illusions and brainwash others if needed, yet the ability that made it possible for him to take on the role of a god was that he could split his conscious in numerous copies and deal with an endless stream of information.
His best friend Jan was a Shiba dog c.u.mimi - the same type as me in the sense that he was a lesbian-in-denial bait - he had long dark blonde hair, braided over his shoulder, fair face, both of his cheeks had a beauty mark in the middle in complete symetry and he had light amber eyes. He had two upright Shiba ears on top of his head and a curled up tail. He was a C type ability user like July, but since he could speed up his own thought process, he could conjure weapons out of thin air in a split second. He might be the deadliest C type in existence. (It was actually him who attracted white rose brigade's attention)
Then there was a chimimi kid - a c.u.mimi with multiple root animals - Bruce, who looked like a fictional demon with dark skin, gray hair, red eyes, horns and bat wings. A barrier user, R type, with a unique ability to randomly teleport, that was what brought them all here no doubt.
There was also a goose c.u.mimi - Alan - also an R type, his unique ability was to pull others into a dream world of sorts, but, knowing from experience, that dream world too would collapse when the world broke down. He was a serious-looking kid with glasses, blue eyes, and dark brown hair.
Next to Alan was a cat c.u.mimi kid - innocent looking and naive, but with genius battle instincts, a deva type who could always find his friends or those he locked down as targets. His name was Kiri and he was a relative to one of the c.u.mimis I had once, in a different time-line taken along to the desert. She too had been easily embarrassed about everything.
And behind the boys were two girls - one was a tall goat girl with long slick black hair and black eyes, oriental kind of beauty, who would regenerate even if her head was blown off. We looked kind of similar, except, I was a princess-type and she was a queen-type. She would make a better prince than I would if she crossdressed in the future. In the time-lines I knew her, she always slacked off somewhere in the back with a wine glass in one hand (Despite being 12). Although she did conjure up gourmet food whenever it was meal-time. Her name was Claire.
The other girl was a centipede c.u.mimi, tiny in height, with pure black eyes - sclera and all, gray skin and bright red hair. If she had a unique ability, she never displayed it, keeping to a standard routine of R type defense and attacks. Her name was Ray, although she mostly kept to herself, so I hadn't interacted with her much even at the time-lines when we allied.
Mirose was a platinum blonde cat with green eyes and a royal bearing. M type like myself, but far stronger, while we could both make illusions, her's were lethal. She was a far worse opponent to M types than she was on others, as M types were lulled into a false feeling that 'that's just an illusion'. She looked like she was twelve, but that has been the case for the past century.
And Dave was a golden retriever c.u.mimi, tall, muscular, even on the buff side with bright blue eyes, messy long hair and an easygoing, friendly air, but that changed into an aggressive fierceness at an instant he targeted you. He could move above the speed of sound and was known as the strongest c.u.mimi out there. No one had defeated more titans than he had. He was a D type like Kiri and Theresa but was overwhelmingly above them. He looked to be seventeen but was also a century old.
Seeing them arrive here, I thought I would need to tell my story to my allies/friends one more time and go through this again, so I invariably let out a sigh.
But then, something unexpected happened.
Neo, the new god, stood in front of me, not intent on letting anyone follow up on their intentions of ending me yet again. He had the most aether left in his body, so he was, at this moment, the strongest in the room.
He looked back at me with a sad yet understanding expression. "So it was hopeless after all?" He asked.
I opened my mouth and no words came out. In none of the timelines where we worked together, he had shown an expression like this.
"Your ability isn't future sight, rather, you've been going into past over and over, right?"
Wow. Just how had he figured that out? The aether here had become so thin he shouldn't be able to read thoughts anymore. Not that there was any meaning to hide it at this point. "Yep, I've seen this world end 5 678 times."
That startled everyone, but they didn't all believe.
"Was there a time-line where we worked together?" Neo asked.
"322, white rose brigade always annihilated us eventually," I replied.
"Was there a timeline where you worked with white rose brigade?" Neo asked as he looked towards Mirose and Dave.
"There was one time when I got somewhere talking with Mirose, but Seraph--"
Dropping that name made both Mirose and Dave pale.
"Took over any other members' body to kill me every time without exception."
"Like hell, I could trust whatever a heretic like you would say," Dave's air changed as he spoke. I figured she would have survived as a part of Dave.
"And that's why the world ended," Neo stated the obvious, not seeming all that surprised about the take-over. But that made sense - Neo was an M type of a similar ability rank to Seraph, he too had vassals and was capable of taking over any of the friends he had in this room. There were some odd timelines where Neo had died and ended up showing up in the body of someone else.
Although that didn't make him stop his filtering god duties, those kept going on like before. Did Neo even need a body? Who knows.
If it wasn't like that, I would have never considered allying with him to take on the white rose brigade, but there was one difference no amount of strength could overcome - numbers and experience.
Mirose and Dave were a century old, Seraph might be even older and she had so many strong pawns that there just weren't enough strong people in the world to match them.
"Would you have trusted me if I came to you as a twelve-year-old runaway?" I asked, but there was no meaning to. Seraph did not trust any M type. Not even Mirose she had worked with for a century already. In the timeline where I pulled Mirose to my side, Seraph had killed us both.
She bit her lip, although it did look funny to see a handsome buff male make a feminine gesture of that sort.
The air around Dave returned to the previous one. "This always weirds me out," he said.
"You aren't the only one," Mirose added. Kiri, July , and Claire looked especially weirded out.
"What is this place?" Neo asked looking around - this room had a crab apple tree growing in it, small apples looming down from the branches, the other room visible was also overgrown with branches, moss and flowers, at some spots above and below, a bit of white light seeped through, even if the view outside the windows showed a black abyss; the world around had already disappeared.
"The spot where they found being x," I said. Or the ancestor of all c.u.mimis. The papers Jan had taken when he came to rescue Neo (after I kidnapped him to have him consume the old god) explained some things about the past and how c.u.mimis came about.
Neo, Jan , and Mirose showed traces of recognition, others seemed clueless. I had told my allies about it just before, but it didn't look like Neo had told his own friends in this timeline as well.
From the corners of the room, bits of matter started to scatter away, more aether drained, and it became painful to breathe.
"Lai," Neo spoke my name. "Why did you try so hard?"
Hard? Yeah. I guess it was. But it would have been harder to give up. So this time was the hardest. Even now, I felt only regret. Tears started filling my eyes against my will, I was angry at my own weakness. "I didn't want this world to end."
Theresa and Evelynn took my hands.
Evelynn, your touch is cold like Ice, it's not comforting at all.
Tears started streaming down my face.
Then Theresa pulled me into a hug.
Theresa, your c.h.e.s.t is flat, it is not comforting at all--
Yet the only person who had a comforting body - July - was right now staring at Dave. He was her type, it couldn't be helped... so Theresa would need to do.
And so I made the last moments on earth awkward for everyone. Somehow we had all moved over to one spot, the very middle of the room. I say somehow, but the corners had started to disintegrate so it would be plain scary to stay by a wall.
And then Kiri started crying. "I don't want to dieeeeeeee~"
Bruce also teared up.
Alan resolved himself and used the last bits of aether at his disposal to put up a barrier at the very moment when the walls broke. I thought I had accepted that I would die, but I guess my resolve wasn't there and I placed my hand on Alan's back to focus my own aether on it and everyone seemed to follow my example.
As all our aether mixed together a myriad of colors glazed over the barrier, an array of glitches passed it over and then we ended up in the same room, but now it had sparkling fog in the air and from the outside sounds of traffic seeped in. Windows showed a peaceful evening over a city.
Alan was still keeping up the barrier and it was still painful for us to breathe. Were we seeing an illusion just before we died?
A group of people teleported in. My eyes stuck on one of them... he looked like a tall and somewhat cooler caucasian version of myself. Dark brown hair and eyes, lesbian-in-denial bait, an ethereal beauty. He looked at us like 'this is a pain to deal with' as he buttoned up his shirt.
Being X.
Most likely we were seeing an illusion of him, yet... why was he seeing us?
"What is this mess?" A girl next to Being X said, looking at us with apparent worry. She was an albino with snow-white hair and sky blue eyes.
My eyes looked over the other people - a bit behind Being X there was a tall blonde male who might match the feeling of a novel light elf, except he had human ears. A look of amus.e.m.e.nt passed his eyes as he looked at us. "They aren't messengers," he said to Being X. "They are refugees from a future that can no longer come."
Hah? Huuuh? No way. There was no way...
We weren't seeing an illusion.
This was past.
Yet if it was past, why did it hurt to breathe?
The Albino girl answered that. "Unless they take off that barrier, they will all die soon."
And Alan could no longer keep it up either. As soon as the barrier broke, the shimmering fog gushed around us and we could all breathe. The pain was gone almost in an instant and another thing changed - Evelynn lost her transparency, she looked alive and a new figure materialized holding around Dave's neck - a petite lacewing c.u.mimi with pointy ears, shoulder length pastel green hair and transparent wings.
Her shape became solid within moments and she slid off Dave's neck in shock. Holding on to her b.a.r.e c.h.e.s.t in fright. Yes. She was n.a.k.e.d. No, there wasn't much to see.
"Seraph?" Dave too looked surprised.
"G-g-give me your jacket!" She panicked.
"Sure," Dave said and passed it over.
I looked back over to the Being X and his group. They looked at us with various gazes. The Albino was still squinting looking worried, Being X was still looking annoyed, the elf-like man was still amused and so was another beauty next to him - this one with long black hair and brown eyes, she was of the same height to Being X. There was also a short girl of the cute type nearby - long dark brown hair, blue eyes, a white dress, and pretty small hands and feet. She looked curious. And lastly, somewhat behind the group were three girls with blood-red hair and bright red eyes and slightly pointy ears - all well endowed and skimpily dressed.
Being X had one heck of a harem...
Would I also have one if I was taller and cooler looking? No, Impossible. Emma had been a handful on her own, I doubt I could have handled any more. And Emma would have murdered me and the extra girl.
Seraph finished putting on the jacket and after zipping it up, she coughed to attract attention. "My name is Seraph, who do I have the honor to have in my presence?" She stood straight and dignified.
Being X let out a sigh. "August," he said his own name, then introduced the rest - The white dress girl was Mandy, the albino was Albus, the elven male was Leum, the black-haired girl was Veri, and it looked like he was making up names for the three in back on the spot.
"Uh, Lisa, Lucy and Bliss, will that do?" He asked the three in back only further revealing that he had named them only now.
The three made bright smiles, revealing their vampire-like teeth. "Sure," "I love it" "It fits," they said.
Mandy squinted at August shaking her head at this, everyone else seemed okay with it.
Albus spoke up. "Aug, their aether circuits are a mess, but most of them have exactly the same alignment pattern as you do."
And so the Albino confirmed that August was indeed the being x from the records. The sleeping person found in this apartment who seemed to be breathing in corrupt aether and breathing out pure one. Only faint amounts, though, so the scientists had decided to use his tissue to clone him, but that had only worked out when three ingredients were in place - a different human, an animal, and being x. That's how c.u.mimis had been born.
Until the age of thirteen c.u.mimis did not form souls and any aether they gathered on their bodies was clear if they died. They could also clear the lingering fragments of human souls, grays, by touching them and guiding them.
"August, do you have animal ears fetish?" Mandy asked.
August squinted. "Mandy, they would not have an exact copy of my alignment pattern if they were my kids unless I can breed by mitosis in which case they would look like my copies."
"Um," Neo spoke up. "We were actually engineered by taking an animal, human and... August's DNA, probably."
Mandy made an 'Oh, I see' kind of look as she crossed her arms.
Neo took advantage of the pause. "Right, pleased to meet you, I'm Neo, this is Jan, that's Lai," and introduced everyone else in the room.
August let out a breath. "Okay," he looked over at Leum. "So you said that the future won't happen?"
"It won't," Leum confirmed.
"Would it be a useful reference?" August asked then.
Leum smiled. "A warning tale against trying to do everything on your own without relying on those around you, but you are relying on us, so--"
"Okay, then I will heed the warming," August said and looked over us. "Albus, Mandy, Leum, figure out what to do with them please."
All three of them nodded and turned serious looks in our direction.
"Veri, my sister, and her shitty boyfriend are bothering Lily in the library, go throw them out, no, better - throw them in Roy's nest."
Veri broke out a grin. "Sure," she said and disappeared.
Then August turned around to head into the next room, speaking up to the red-haired siblings - "Lisa, Lucy, Bliss, what do you want to do? Freeload or a familiar contract?"
"Hm." "Hmmmm", "Hmmmmm," the girls let out pondering sounds as they followed and none of us interrupted.
It was hard to. It would be accurate to say that all of us were following August with our eyes in wonder. He was our ancestor, this was the past and from the things Leum had mentioned it seemed like our Ancestor's choices had a lot to do with the way our world had turned out.
And it did feel odd not to have an ability after using one for so long. I couldn't hear thoughts and from the anxious look on Seraph's face, I guessed she couldn't either.
Jan clutched on his eyes all of a sudden and Albus turned to look at him. "Do not use magic right now."
"I will say this to all of you," Albus said, crossing her arms. "Your bodies are currently unstable, do not use magic if you want to be fine."
Even if we did not use the term 'magic' for abilities back in the 'future', everyone understood what was meant with that and made nods. Her wording too was calming - 'if you want to be fine' implied that as long as we chilled we would be fine.
Some busy chattering seemed to come from the other room and soon a high-speed cl.i.c.k.i.n.g sound joined that sound as well. Neither Mandy, Albus nor Leum seemed bothered by those sounds, so it was probably fine.
Us travelers started to gradually relax and sit down by the walls and on the roots. Theresa plucked off a crab apple and bit into it. Her eyebrows scrunched up for a bit, but she kept eating.
Evelyn too did the same, also scrunched up, but then her eyes filled with tears. "I can taste it," she said in low volume.
I smiled at her. That was good then, perhaps in this unknown and mysterious past, there would be a way for Evelynn to live normally, and perhaps I would be able to live without worrying about the world ending? And perhaps July would be able to catch her dream hunk? She was still staring at Dave... Okay, at least she had a near target.
And perhaps there was magic to add some mass to Theresa's c.h.e.s.t. She would be very much my type if that was settled.
As I looked at her c.h.e.s.t, Theresa puffed it out like 'keep looking!'
Theresa, there's nothing to look at.
Was something I would not say.
Because... if she killed me, I doubted I would snap out of it. I wouldn't risk it. And I felt hope. This time... there would be a lot of time before 5 680th world end comes, right?
I hope it never comes.
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