Author's Note: Hey, all. This is something that spun off my mind one day and I thought, hey why not? I still don't know which I will finish first, this or Hemorrhage but I will finish it. Anyway, this is a story set off when I remembered that deleted story I wrote once (some of you remember) Carved In Ice, Carved In Time. So, this story came with a question as a I looked about people tampering with time. So, I asked myself, what if someone with an Alice tampered with time? So, I got this, and I used, naturally, the darkest character of Gakuen Alice.
Natsume Hyuuga has a wish, basically. Using that old saying, what would you give up to see the person to whom you owed a debt alive again? Would you give up the people whom you loved the most for a younger sister who didn't deserve to die? Anyway, this somewhat corrospondes with the manga but there are some elements made up so I hope you enjoy yourself. For your viewing pleasure, I introduce to you, Time. Oh, by the way, this story has three parts, so read everything carefully!
I dedicate this story to November Romeo who made me really think about everything and sprinkled my dark perceptions of the Academy with absolute rib-cracking humour!
Past
Chapter 1: Post Mortem
You can never plan the future by the past.
-Edmund Burke
For November Romeo
Thank You
The past, present and future had their own place in the flow of everything.
Nodaachi knew this very well. His gift of time travel was unpredictable, inconsistent and virtually all out useless in a hand-to-hand battle. It didn't even matter then because he was almost always absent, disappearing from the present into some random time. He would shift suddenly, without warning and disappear.
He thought it a rather ironic joke on destiny's part.
But he never stopped dreaming to see a day when he could walk into another time without collapsing the time space continuum and being able to get back without shifting to a whole other unwanted era.
Again, it was ironic in a jacked up way.
The Special Abilities class was a genre all on its own. Their powers were unpredictable and volatile, like a summer's day. Something could explode one day and disappear the next. Their powers could make a student the most powerful person on the planet or the lowest of the low.
Special Abilities Alices could get a student transferred into the Dangerous Abilities class.
But when Hyuuga Natsume came to see him, Nodaachi didn't know he was going to play a part in a play that had all the hallmarks of being very peculiar, odd, head twisting, mind reeling, heartbreaking and goddamned against the natures of time itself.
Hyuuga Natsume loathed the past.
No matter how you looked at it, his past would always be a scorch mark, a burnt piece of time he would never ever care to relieve again even if Imai Hotaru threatened to castrate him.
Which she did at a certain point but that isn't what he was thinking of right then.
Cherry blossom petals were coming around in abundance and he was, for the first time in six years, feeling like he was lost, drifting in a place where decisions were his but the resulting outcome would cause a chain reaction that might destroy everything he loved.
As much as he hated his past, his present was as precious as gold.
There was still that little piece of longing though, in his heart. Maybe he would never contemplate on what he was going to do about this had he not heard what he did in Narumi's class that day. Maybe the whole fiasco would have been avoided if he had just skipped the class like he'd originally planned in the first place.
But the lingering thoughts wouldn't go away.
And so the mayhem ensues.
Present day, six years later, post Alice War, Alice Academy
It was pure anarchy that might have sprouted the random decision of Narumi to start dressing up in the frills and ribbons that gave the impression of a messed up sewing set of a twelve year old. Sakura Mikan couldn't fathom it and she suspected that whatever was going on in his head, it was probably the scenery of little white bunnies hopping around. Whatever it was, it was absolute madness.
She stared out the window and watched as the grounds slowly rebuilt themselves with the combined efforts of hundreds of Alices. The war had taken its toll, it was undeniable. She wanted so badly to turn back the hours of pain they'd endured for so many months but it wasn't going to bring back the time they'd lost.
It wasn't going to bring back Azumi Yuka or Tonouchi Akira either.
Or Hyuuga Natsume.
Something inside Hyuuga Natsume was dying a little a day as time passed. A little pain curled out from her heart and spread out in a whorl to the rest of her. She closed her eyes as the door of the classroom creaked open.
Narumi L. Anju was surprised to see a single student sitting in the classroom, what more, Sakura Mikan. The whole class had been taken out for their PE class except, the teacher said, for one other girl student and Hyuuga Natsume. It wasn't a new thing for Hyuuga Natsume to be absent these days.
In everyone's minds, something had begun to crack in the composure of the Black Cat, something slowly incinerating to nothing. Sakura Mikan couldn't find it, neither could Nogi Ruka. It was like he simply lost the will or need to live any longer. Something was niggling at the back of his head, something she didn't think she could fix this time.
'Mikan?' the teacher said tentatively. The sixteen year old turned to face him and poured sad eyes at him. Darkness so painful and ready to pounce on the slightest sign of weakness swirled around in her heart. It was worse than anything she could have imagined as a student of the Dangerous Abilities class.
Heartbreak kills where nothing else can.
'Are you alright?' he asked, sliding into the benched desks the Academy had installed when it first opened. The slight movement of his leg, limping and almost useless seared a little into his mind but he barely registered it.
Stupid question, Narumi, he thought. Was that really the question he wanted answered at that moment? It was trivial, cavalier and plain out sharp. She smiled a little. A little. When had Sakura Mikan's smiles become so small? She shook her head and little; her voice came out a little more than a whisper.
'What happened four years ago when the walls cracked?' Small pools of tears were welling up in her eyes. Narumi sat on that school bench and basked in waning daylight with the daughter of his long lost past. And he cried with her for what had been…
…as well as for what was.
Past, four years later, commencement of Alice War, Alice Academy
Everything and nothing was connected.
The Middle School Division Principal had told him that once. Narumi Anju was unconcerned, concerned and mixed up in a sea of confusion that tossed him around like driftwood. His hand was slowly healing.
Then they attacked.
Persona had been on a reconnaissance mission with Ando Tsubasa for the past six weeks in the outer regions of the city. The AAO was quiet; too quite in the Elementary School Division Principal's opinion apparently. All missions were to be on hold until the spymaster had returned with his student.
Including that of one Sakura Mikan.
Days that seem all too average are always on the brink of absolute destruction, he would decide later. They would be so peaceful and calm, always and illusion he was assured. Then, something of a catastrophe would sneak up on them and let it all blow up in their faces.
In this case, it was the breaking of the barrier and its wall.
The Academy had fought for a year and a half by the time a small group of agents consisting of Hyuuga Natsume, Nogi Ruka, Imai Hotaru, Sakura Mikan, Tobita Yuu and Shouda Sumire managed to take away the head of the AAO's Alice with the powers of the daughter of Yuka Azumi.
In return, Sakura Mikan had spent eight months in a coma and Hyuuga Natsume was kidnapped in a last shot attempt at bringing down of the largest institutes for Alices in history. They were reunited two months after Sakura's return to the conscious world.
Something out there in the world had broken the spirit of Hyuuga Natsume, almost permanently and no one could fix it. Maybe not Sakura Mikan or Nogi Ruka even.
The casualties sustained on both sides were dire. The AAO had lost Yuka Azumi, her companion, Shiki, Mori Reo and two dozen unnamed agents.
The Academy had lost Tonouchi Akira, Persona, a few of the Dangerous Abilities students all of whom had their bodies mysteriously vanished, and Sakurano Shuichi had his left eye gouged out. All of the lost were mourned as if the world was suddenly collapsing around them.
And it was. The Alices were weak and vulnerable to physical attack. Hyuuga Natsume was missing and Sakura Mikan, in a successful effort to permanently bind and destroy the Alice of Ukihara Ibaragi, uncle to Ibaragi Nobara and head of the AAO, had been trumped into a coma not even Imai Subaru was convinced she would recover from.
Lives had been destroyed that night.
Present day, six years later, post Alice War, Alice Academy, Hana Hime Palace
Hi-sama was impatient.
Men were always late, making excuses where none were needed yet the words that spouted from their mouths were always untruths, lies and futures promised. She had lived for a number of years no one would live to name but those who had been in the ground for over a decade.
Persona was gone but the bane of her existence, or men to be exact, she would never be rid of. The worst, in her opinion as of late, was Hyuuga Natsume, the high school freshmen who had Sakura Mikan, a very powerful and potentially great – in her opinion at least; her uncle, Yukihira Kazu and Narumi, yet another man she loathed, thought Mikan lacked a little common sense – Alice.
More of an Alice than her mother, Azumi Yuka, was. Sakura had shown extraordinary strength in her own battle against the AAO when she was ten and twelve. Both times – during the Hyuuga kidnapping six years ago and the Alice War four years back – she had shown something, one thing that caught her eye.
Her utter devotion to her friendship to yet another amazing Alice, Imai Hotaru, and her apparent and dominant affection for the Academy's Black Cat, a notorious figure Hi-sama would've loved to stab. He was a hypocrite, a heartbreaker, and a crusty piece of sea wrecked cow dung, asking for a helping of knuckle sandwich, courtesy of Imai Hotaru.
Of Nogi Ruka?
Well, Hi-sama had her opinions of him but they weren't necessarily bad.
Really.
But the matter at hand was the presence of Yamada Serina, the resident clairvoyant since Otonashi Yura having moved to the Paris branch after the Alice War broke out. Her eyes were glazed over with vision, seeing things Hi-sama would never imagine. Never wanted to, in fact. Knowing the future was as much a gift as it was a curse.
The past was worse.
'Hyuuga Natsume will tamper with the Time Alice, won't he?' Hi-sama said suddenly. When the seer nodded a little, her eyes never leaving the crystal ball on the table, the woman principal smiled that little smirk she'd worn for decades. 'He never learns now will he?'
'Problem is,' the English teacher said, 'if he doesn't leave it be, it might cost him everything he knows and loves.'
The principal snorted delicately and raised her fan to sniff the rose aroma that wafted from it. 'I hardly think he deserves to keep anything he loves at the moment. He's willing to throw away anything and everything to revive that person, am I not correct?'
'Yes.'
'Exactly,' she said softly. Her woman's heart thudded with a slow rhythm, pity in her eyes for a young girl who would lose everything. 'Desire is a powerful motivator as is power. He would give everything up to save her wouldn't he?'
'What happened during his kidnapping-…' Serina-sensei began but stopped when Hi-sama held up a silencing hand. 'That, is strictly Academy need-to-know information,' the principal said. 'Why do you think Narumi was shifted to the High School Division where Yukihira-chan could keep an eye on him? I think that whatever happens to Hyuuga is none of our concern. What I am concerned about is the welfare of Azumi Yuka's daughter.'
'Sakura Mikan? What does she have to do with anything?
'My dear, when it comes to the heart of Hyuuga Natsume, she is has to do with everything.' A thoughtful look came on to her face. 'Arrange for Nodaachi to be pulled back from the time space continuum. We are going to need him if we are going to teach Hyuuga anything.'
'Yes, Hi-sama.'
Time was turning.
