Because every author that is worth their procrastinating ass must write a time travel fic that they will never complete.
Ouroboros
Chapter One-Post
True Cross Town, 2187/12/27, The Ruins of Southern Cross Boys' Monastery, Sector 42…
The sound of gravel crunching underfoot joined with the crunch of glass shards breaking. Finally stepping onto the holy ground of the monastery, he faced the once walled entrance, now nothing more than a few piles of broken bricks and twisted metal. Many people would have scoffed at the paint-peeling walls back when a loving hand could be afforded to such a mundane thing as aesthetics.
Now they would only shake their heads in sadness and pity the downfall of the Church. If anyone was left to do so…
He wasn't too sure. Everywhere he had traveled, he was the lone survivor…
"It's been a long time, eh? Kurikara…"
"…" The Koumaken maintained its silence. The silence it had taken the day Okumura Rin had decided to die.
"Meh, so annoying. Still giving me the silent treatment…ne?"
His childish voice echoed around the ruins that lay all around him, his breath coming out in wisps of vapor due to the cold weather. Bits and pieces of snow-covered rubble littered the once smooth pavement of the road. The buildings that used to stand so tall were now nothing but crippled old geezer's, way past their prime, crumbling in the decay that festered in the once grand town of True Cross.
If it hadn't already been there in the first place. The decay, he meant.
"Man…I missed this place you know. We grew up here… How long ago was that? 40, 90, 150 years ago?" He shook his head, dark navy locks spilling messily out of the ponytail that was disastrously put together in haste that morning. Or should he say night? It was almost dawn. Not that you could see the sunrise anymore. The nukes had taken care of that. "Eh, I can't remember. I guess I'm finally going senile?"
He tilted his head with a childish grin hoping to elicit a response. He was given none.
It was funny. That even though he possessed a human body it still couldn't get sick from the radiation lingering in the air. Even if many a comrade had fallen to that said fact...
He could still see their faces… Hear their voices… See their children and grandchildren grow and laugh and-
"I really missed this place."
His sword still did not answer.
The grin disappeared.
Head bowed, he rubbed the back of his neck with his free, black-gloved hand in sheepish embarrassment and spoke to himself and his blade even though it would not answer him back. "I never could find time to come back…and now I have all the time in the world…"
His nose was red from the cold.
He supposed there really was no need to talk aloud…
He would get a cold if he had been human.
But he hated the silence.
Just like Shiemi had. It had been a simple cold too…
It drowned everything. Ate everything. Devoured everything.
She had died; her immune system simply hadn't been strong enough. And the medicine had been depleted.
Just like the shadows watching him. Just like the glowing white eyes that peeked at him from behind the grey rubble that matched the grey sky and the grey world around him.
They hadn't been able to go get more. He had been out on a mission... And without medicine she had-
Just like the darkness bubbling out of the ruins that was left standing in front of him.
He wondered how many others in the world had faced that same problem. If they hadn't already succumbed to the Die Öde Syndrome yet by that point.
Closing his brilliant but tired, oh so tired, royal blue eyes the boy adjusted his bluish green-striped and white polka-dotted scarf. Nuzzling his nose into the old, almost ancient frayed cashmere fabric, he stepped forward. And then took another step. And another. And finally, he was walking again. Towards that maw that stood in the middle of what used to be two French doors of a Church.
Probably a lot. After all, there was no place in the world that was safe anymore.
He was just a boy. In body, he was no older than fifteen and a few odd months.
Not that it mattered anymore. He was pretty sure he was the only one left. Him…and-
He was just an old man. In mind, he was old. So very old. He, after all, had grown up human. Completely human. Time moved the same for him mentally as any other human had experienced. But his changed body, no, changed soul, refused to acknowledge that.
That monster.
So he didn't age. And yet at the same time…he did. It put a strain on him. To look in a mirror and see the same face staring back him with eyes growing darker and darker, harder and harder, colder and colder… And still he looked no older than fifteen.
They were all gone. His friends. His family. His everything.
It didn't piss him off anymore. It was just a fact of his life now. He was a Demon. A powerful one at that; and thus he did not age. Even when the people around him turned just as grey as the world had become.
Well, maybe the height issue still made him a little mad…
So he chose to fight. And keep fighting. Even as his comrades had fallen over the years, he fought. Oh, he fought tooth and nail and roaring, burning flame. It had danced higher and higher and then-
"I guess today is a good day to die as any. Happy birthday to us and all that jazz… Right, minna-san?"
No one answered him.
Not aloud.
But in his heart, he felt the fleet stirring of warmth and he knew he wasn't alone as the silence made him out to be. Humanity was a pain.
But the alternative was so much worse...
Even if his stupid Koumaken was acting like a two-year old and continued to pout.
"Ara, ara. There's just no placating you is there?" He clenched his free fist and smiled brightly one last time into the fabric around his neck that reminded him of happier times when the world still hoped along with him. When there still was other people to have hope.
His foot entered the darkness, swallowing it whole and he adjusted the thick black-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.
"The world is ending and you won't say a word?"
His leg followed.
They had been passed down to those that had need of them-
"Really now, I guess we really are one and the same."
And then the rest of his body.
From his children's children-
"Stubborn to the bitter end. Ne?..."
But even they had perished-
The inside of the church remained surprisingly intact from all of the damage the outside of it had taken.
All of his twin's descendants, they no longer had need for them-
"Toudou."
And so he took them up again.
A sword hilt was gripped.
A smile that spoke of madness uncontained reared its ugly head while the physical head it occupied turned towards him and laughed socially.
Fire illuminated the night.
Fire illuminated the alter.
And blood ran down its walls and steeped the already rotting floorboards once more just like it had so long ago that blue night.
A head rolled, a child collapsed, a forgotten promise was vindicated.
The devil was vanquished.
And a sword wept for its dumb-ass partner and spoke one last time while the walls began to crumble and the world turned to dust.
"If this doesn't work…You are going to wish you never existed...Rin."
And a pair of broken glasses lay crushed on the floor staring mournfully at the end of the world.
In Existence, there exists an infinite possibility for the future.
The past is what decisions have been made; the present, the decisions being made and the future, well, it can only be decided when the present moves forward. This, of course, is in relation to one single path.
The universe works on a balance, a tipping scale of unknown quantities or infinite categories that are forever wobbling this way and that at every little choice all living beings make.
That being said, when the past inexplicably changes in one path then surely, it is the culprit of a certain echo. An echo of a choice made far down the line in another place and Time.
Thus every action is balanced against each other.
Each one of the many fateful masses that roam the worlds that overlap each other like mirrors that sit facing their counterparts can attest to having a role in Existence.
The universe is made out of a hall of reflecting mirrors. The Past rests at one side and the Present at the other with the Future being reflected among the echoes and branches of choices already made and being made. Take away one side and Time and Space become fixed, a single straight line. Move one side slightly and everything is distorted.
At any place and at any time can this shift, this dissonance happen and the results of these echoes can either be seen as a balancing trick by the universe or a stumble that will shake the very fabric of reality to its core. It effects all Time lines sooner or later unless balanced.
Those who traverse Time and Space on these different paths willingly or not come to know these ideas as the Ouroboros Principle. At any time, a new concept can come into play or an old one deleted if the universe is distorted enough and the more options, the more paths of choice, the more complicated it becomes to rectify an echo that has become deformed.
Because the fundamental theory above all else of the Ouroboros has always been: Time is a loop onto itself and Space is mutable. Place a boulder in the path of a current and the current changes slightly along the way. It can realign itself without too much trouble but take it away and an entire current is held under a disastrous sway.
Time is a loop unto itself, devouring its own ends at the end of the day. Space is changeable and can easily be distorted. When Time is deprived of its end then and only then does it begin to devour everything else in its path, even twisting Space as it goes. It will run amok until it can achieve the loop once more to maintain the balance that the universe demands.
Even if a billion upon a billion lives are sacrificed in the attempt.
One man attempted to right these catastrophic occurrences when Time and Space became entangled with itself. He did, and consequently lost his life…and was forever erased from existence itself. However, Time was righted in the end. And Space was restored to its original form. He left only one piece of evidence as to him ever having existed at all.
The Ouroboros itself in metaphysical form—memories that spanned even Time and Space, and a hope to rewrite the Great Tragedy that befell Existence.
And so...I have a shit ton of chapters written for this. Now you finally know my dirty secret of the last three years. Yes...I couldn't help myself. You have no idea how many times I've rewritten this dumb thing.
(As for my Dadddy's Little Boy readers, the next chap is half written. I swear I haven't abandoned it!)
*The other readers for my other stories scream in frustration*
Tarry a while. Thou art so fair. ~ Wild-Tama