"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." - Albert Einstein

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Time; nature's way of keeping things from happening all at once. You can tell time, be on time, make time, take time, give time, set time, loose time, and race against time. Times could be hard, or times could be good. Time stops for no man, and it makes the world go round. Time never stops, constantly moving forward and taking everything with it.

But what if time could fall victim to chaos? If time was freed from the constraints man had put on it? If time could warp and twist and move in any which way?

What if time fell to chaos, and took everything with it?

What would happen to humanity then? Would everything we once knew warp and change under time's influence, or would people stay stagnant, watching the world around them fall victim to the very thing they had tried to limit?

There was honestly nothing nearly as royally fucked up as time. Time was the only thing that separated the young from the old, past from future, and yet time was limitless.

"Timeless" is a way to describe something immortal in the eyes of humanity. Does that mean that time was merely in the eye of the beholder?

No one would ever know the answers, since time no longer existed.

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Time was constant, flowing, and followed a set of rules that someone had decided to put on it. Time separated decades from centuries and classified things by era. At any given time, though, there were always two people who could bend things to their will without the assistance of some great spirit or separate power. They were deemed sorceresses, witches, or just about anything that society could think of.

There was a point in time where a single sorceress tried to reign supreme over her world, trying to hold power of that time. But, alas, the sorceress doing all this was not the one responsible for her actions. No, she was being possessed but a sorceress from a future time who was trying to do much the same thing, but throughout all time. It was known as time compression, a collection of all times into one big era under a wicked rule.

The plan never came to fruition, though. The great sorceress, foiled by a group of mercenaries, fell. Her spell was never completed, and time was left a mess. The very definition of it had changed - time was no longer in a constant flow. There were rapids slowing and speeding and displacing everything, catching all in a tangled web of time. Buildings formed and deformed with different paces, landscapes shifted, and people…

People got screwed over the most. Age was insignificant - a person could be old and look physically young, or look old and have barely seen the ways of the world. Internal time could pause, leaving the person near immortal, or halt, leaving said person in a sleep-like state.

Or their time could stop, and they could forever be lost to the world of the living.

No sorceress - or sorcerer, for that matter - had the power to correct the chaos that the great and terrible Ultimecia did, though. All they could do was try and keep their little corners of the world as normal as they could, while trying their hand at a more permanent fix.

Twilight Town was one of these corners. Two years "proper time" after the fall of Ultimecia, the town was formed in the shadow of her old castle to celebrate the peace they had finally achieved. A master sorcerer dragged into that time named Yen Sid took residence in a magical tower that had appeared at some point in time on the outskirts of town. He kept the city relatively stable, with only a few people affected by the broken flow.

His apprentice was his only stable help, sorting through any old grimoires that had been found over the years and trying to find some sort of stability in the chaos.

And this is where our story begins - an apprentice, a master, and a hell of a lot of paper.

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So, looking forward to it? I've been fine-tuning this sucker for the last year and a half - no joke - and now I'm finally ready to start sharing it with the world!

Now, some things you should know before getting into this story. First, I don't know how frequent my updates will be. The first chapter is almost done (needs to be hacked at still) and the first 8 or so are planned and have rough copies to them, while the rest still have some key points I need to flesh out. Second, this will be a kind-of-sort-of-but-not-really romance. It's more on the side of everything, but it WILL happen eventually, given time. If you expect lemons, prepare to be disappointed - I'm so uncomfortable even thinking about writing that. Third? I'm not putting this in crossovers because all the main characters ARE in Kingdom Hearts, and the main plot is a blend of just about everything, which i basically what Kingdom Hearts is. This prologue is intended to give you background information on FFVIII just so you know what the premise of this story is. It is one of the main aspects I focus on - both because I'm completely obsessed with it and because time in here is confusing as hell without some sort of explanation. Best way to describe the way I use it is how the Doctor described it as consisting of many circles, or whatever that explanation was. I dunno; Youtube it?

Anyways! Hope I haven't rambled on for too long, and I hope you enjoyed it so far!