Day 20 (July 26th). Free Day II/ Support Fellow Creators

Today's prompt is open to whatever you wish! Go nuts, friends!

Hi

For this prompt I'm using a piece I've written from the POV of overthemoonday's OC Kallen from Road to Hell, which I highly recommend

She comes into contact with an OC of mine, White Rahlin. This was written as a result of me asking who her fav OC to write from was, and these 2 are each of our answers

stinkyday wrote this same segment from White Rahlin's POV and I suggest checking that out too on the main event page!

time & again

BANG BANG! A pair of cans rattled on the mesh metal tabletop. Lucy's grin was almost as bright as her yellow-and-orange striped turtleneck today, which read, "BE A GOOD WHITE BOY. GIVE ME YOUR CASH." My eyebrow lifted, and I tapped a fingernail coated in chipped black polish onto my boba. "The plan?"

She clinked the spraypaint together. "Lux is letting me ride his shoulders so I can reach the good part of the bridge leading up to the interstate."

"Fuck!" He'd spilled his boba, and the strawberry jellies sparkled amidst crowds of ice on the pavement. His sniffle came off like he was resisting tears. "Don't give me that look. Lucy agreed to slip into at least five conversations the fact that I've been working out recently. Five!"

I asked, "Have you been?"

"You gonna help me clean up or what?"

"Clever way to dodge a question."

"Shut uuup!"

I smiled and brought a stack of napkins with me. Green liquid soaked the paper. He went for the fruitier flavors compared to my coffee with tapioca bubbles. The cafés around us were busy; one must have had a band playing, for the song of string instruments drifted about the terrace.

"Happy now?" I said.

Napkins loaded with ice and jellies crashed into plastic boxes in the trash can. He slung liquid off his fingers and frowned at the stickiness clinging to his skin. Lucy chirped, "It's alright! I'll buy you another!"

"Really?"

Her chin dipped and smile spread. "Forrr an extra hour."

He groaned and made a counteroffer. Lucy snapped back in an instant. I flopped back down in the painful metal chair outside the boba shop. Nice. It was nice to hang out and pretend everyone was normal again.

Sure, the itch at the back of my neck of whatever watchdog Godwin picked today was still there and people still stared because of the Fortune Cup fame plus Jackass Asshole fiasco. But.

It was nice.

"Are you Kallen Rikiya?"

My finger drew rings around my boba's fat straw. "Who's askin?"

"I just- uhhh." The brown-skinned dude scratched his temple with his pen. His golden eyes were unable to meet mine. I sighed through my nostrils and tucked black locks behind my ear, and they nearly caught on a piercing. He shut his eyes tight and thrust a notepad and pen forward. "C-could I get your autograph?"

My lips twitched to the side. "Sure. Whatever."

Scratching the tip on the paper left a blue scribble. Wow. High-grade pen and a fancy little book with thick paper. Dude must've been some kinda collector. Almost enticed me into flipping through some of the book's pages. See who I was doomed to be immortalized beside.

Gliding ink left my signature on the page. Nothing cute or special – wouldn't want the poor little man to get attached. Rise would get onto me, tell me otherwise. Probably.

I reached to return the book, flapping it shut and laying the pen crosswise on top. "Here ya g-"

The pen and book hit the concrete. I nearly wheezed. The man had frozen in place, head bowed and arms extended. The once-blue sky was covered by a white haze. Fog wreathed my ankles and slithered through the tables and chairs.

The gathered people had gone silent. Lux and Lucy's argument had reached an inconclusive halt. I watched their statuesque forms, and a shiver rolled over my muscles. Her aura. The turquoise rush flowing around her – it was gone. What did it mean?

Were they dead?

My breaths quickened. Wait. The exchange of words had stopped. Something hadn't. The song, the calm playing of a string instrument, continued. I crushed the pen and knocked over a chair sprinting towards the sound. The footfalls of my boots echoed forever, forever as if nothing else existed.

A brick path rounded the connected cafés. Stone stairs led up to a set of benches in front of a highway guardrail. A wall, red brick like the walkway and cafés, went up from the stairs and nearly touched the highway.

Far, far above the base of the stairway, a woman in white played an ivory violin. Frozen time left a sixteen-wheeler paused on the highway behind her. Its large mirror had nearly decapitated her; the corner brushed the back of her head still.

Yet there she remained perched as though nothing was wrong in the world. I yelled, "Hey!"

Her playing halted. Lowering the instrument let me look at her face. There was an eyepatch over her left eye – the white medical kind, not the black arrr pirate kind – and her right eye was closed. She was able to perfectly balance the violin on the guardrail behind her despite the lack of sight. Her white-gloved hands spread on her knees.

The eye she had left opened. The empty blue had no pupil. Once we made eye contact, I saw it. Like an aura but so. Not. Black like ink lashed upward from her form and retreated over and over again. I squinted. The leaping shadows were like silhouettes. Dragons, I thought.

Fuck. Fuck, I was so over all this supernatural bullshit cropping up every other goddamned day. I commanded, "Make it stop."

Her head fell to the side, causing her cascade of white hair to touch the brick she perched upon. "What is it you believe I can stop?"

"Cut it out," I growled. "There's literally a truck stopped in place behind you! Whatever time stop is happening – end it. We're the only two moving. I know it's you."

"Me?" The question escaped her like a wish. She straightened and peeled back the sleeve of her white suit coat from her wrist. A silver bracelet with an emerald stud shimmered beneath her palm. "The god I serve seems to be reaching out to you."

Statues of Jupiter, Venus, and Mars – Zeus, Aphrodite, and Ares – flickered in her mind's eye. The likenesses were drawn upon textbook pages, which detailed their histories no differently than fairytales. I said, "Gods aren't real."

"And yet."

The woman in white flicked out her wrist. A neon green cylinder appeared and disappeared; the light deposited Lucy's still, auraless body in front of me. Green surrounded her midsection like an arcane circle. The circle spun. Her back hunched gradually. Wrinkles plagued her smooth skin. Her hair lost its sheen, and gray strands clung to her temples.

"Stop," I breathed. "Stop!"

The circle scattered but Lucy's appearance didn't change back. The woman in white said, "Tragic, is it not? The expiration of humanity's youth. Time is the force you are unable to alter, speed, or stop. The one I serve – the god of time – has a proposition."

I snarled up at the woman in white. "I'm not hearing anything until you fix her."

The way she looked down on me – I wanted to climb up there and push her off her goddamn perch. She smiled. She smiled but it wasn't like a smile at all. Her eye curled up like it was a smile, too, but both were the mocking kind.

"Just for you," she said, like correcting what she did was some kinda favor. She snapped her fingers. Green flashed. Lucy was back to the girl who'd pulled me along in the dark. "Are you prepared to process god's proposition?"

This lady had all kinds of ways to get under my skin. How was it, with all her fancy language, she never ever stumbled over a word? It was as though she was reading off a script she'd studied and studied. "The answer'll be no."

"I see." Whenever anyone said that? They didn't. "Even if…"

Verdant light blurred my vision. I blinked through the blinding brilliance. The environment changed. Garbage surrounded my feet. The scrapyard went on and on. Not just some scrapyard – the spot where Yusei said we'd met.

How? How was this place so detailed as if I'd been there yesterday instead of all that time ago, when I was her instead of me? The part Yusei and I'd squabbled over lay at my feet. A spire of white broke the blue horizon.

The woman stood upon a fallen washing machine; the open, glass door lay cracked beside her. Despite the crooked position of the washer, she stood perfectly upright and held a cane for support. I barked, "How the hell do you know about this place?"

"The past is set in place like the foundations of the Great Pyramids." The manner with which she spoke was more like she was lecturing to a whole hall rather than speaking to me. "Imagine the opportunity to go back and change whatsoever you wish; imagine deciding the location of those blocks before their tomb was ever filled, or even-"

She reached into her coat. A heavy revolver fit into her palm. She fired into the sky, and the gunshot split the air. That sound rattled me to my vertebrae. She looked over her shoulder, and her stare burned through me.

"Diverting the fate of someone who died on the job."

Sweat built in my palms. Changing the past was impossible. The answer was easy. Why change when I didn't even know what I was missing? I would be missing who I knew now – my life with Rise, reconnecting with Jack, finally patching it up with Yusei, living with Lucy. If I went back, they'd all go away. Nothing could be worth that.

Could it?

Bile rose with panic at that memory. Her fuckin gunshot was bringing it back. She knew. That goddamn smile of hers said she knew how it would make me feel. I said, "Screwing with me isn't gonna help you any. The fuck is it you want?"

"First, the offer." She tucked away the revolver. "You will obtain a chance at a 'do-over.' If there is an event in the past you would like to be changed, the god of time will allow you to alter the flow of the timeline from that position."

"For what?"

Her cane thunked against the washing machine in her movement to face me. Both hands folded over the handle as she said, "The god of time will issue you a directive which you must fulfill no matter your personal beliefs."

"You're throwing out a devil's deal and think I'll bite?"

That smile curled up.

She reached into her coat again, this time producing a card. She threw it at me. I caught it between my index and middle fingers. The spell card was titled, "Z-ONE."

The woman in white said, "A sign of god's promise. He directed me to give it to you. When the time comes, the decision is yours. If you fulfill what he asks? The ability to change the past will be gifted unto you and only you."

I threw the card away with the rest of the trash.

"Answer me," I said. "Who are you?"

"A servant of god's."

"Sure, but why? And how are we here? And how did you know-"

Her fingers snapped, and the green blinded me again. A stiff arm pushed me back into a stool. I was sitting in a park at an empty chessboard. The woman in white was across from me in a higher chair.

"You yearn to understand me? Do it the way you know how. Read my fortune."

I could strangle her for how she constantly acted like she knew every little detail about me better than I did. I'd read her fortune just as soon as I pushed up daisies, I wanted to spit.

But. This whole day was a fuckin' mystery, and here was my chance at a piece of clarity.

I thumbed forward the top card of my deck and flipped it onto the black-and-white checkered table. VII. The Chariot, an unrivaled and unstoppable drive and conviction. Second card: XXI. The World, a big accomplishment usually meaning completion of something that wasn't whole before. And, finally…

My heart lodged in my throat.

IV. The Emperor in reverse.

A result I knew too, too well – a result that should've warned me about him. It meant controlling. Extremely controlling to the point of obsession in the micro, of dictatorship in the macro. Combined with Chariot and World, it could mean a horrific tunnel-vision goal was coming to fruition.

"An intriguing result."

Though I hadn't spoken, the upward tilt of her chin made it appear as though she'd heard every thought. I said, "This 'god' of yours. What does it need my help for? What's it trying to accomplish?"

That smile. And her eye. Laughing at me.

A sweeping darkness like a crow's flight stole away my vision for a millisecond. Adjusting to the new color scheme left me bewildered a few moments. Screaming reds clashed with the black horizon.

Scarlet shone from lakes of fire below, which surrounded littered messes of debris forming crude towers. I was atop the next-to-highest one and, naturally, the woman in white stood upon the tallest.

The weirdest thing?

Weirder than all the rest?

The sky. Where it should've been open or cloudy or rainy, an upside-down cityscape spread out. From her spot, the woman in white could touch the highest skyscraper. The buildings seemed to be coming closer.

And that city. I knew it like the beat of my own heart.

The woman in white said, "Being chosen by a god may inflate the ego, but take care to remember, human."

Gravity abandoned me. My feet lifted from the spire of debris. Similarly, portions of the city-sky's street broke apart and floated. Fuckfuckfuck. Where was I going? I scrambled to find purchase on the woman in white's tower. My body kept moving up.

I stopped. The woman was holding me, but I couldn't feel it. My necklace. She was holding the pentacles attached to my choker. The anti-g had flipped me, so our eyes met upside-down like her fortune, like the manic reverse Emperor.

With that smile in her eye, she finished: "There is always a greater power."

Gravity returned. My necklace snapped. I fell towards the skyscrapers. The ground came closer, closer-

I awoke with a start. Sheets clung to my sweaty thighs. Shit. A nightmare. No. No, it's a good thing. Just meant too much alcohol before bed. Again.

I almost laughed as I padded my way into the bathroom. Like normal nightmares, the details had already started to slip away.

Woman in white? Who even?

I twisted on the faucet and watched the glass fill. Raising the cup to my lips, I paused.

My pulse thrummed.

My necklace was broken.

Almost as if the pentacles had been snapped off.