Chapter 1: Noah

"Very soon, the stilled flow of time will restart. You can change you mind, if you act now."

"Uh-uh-uh," Lanz tutted. "You did not just tell us to become Moebius."

"Yeah," Eunie laughed, a laugh born of relief and hardship, "can you even imagine...?" She paused, noticing that Noah wasn't joining in.

"Uh, Noah?"

Noah awoke with tears stinging his eyes, blurring his vision.

It was dark, wherever he was. Blinking, he tried to remember why he'd been crying, the memory of it just out of reach. Dragging his arm up to his eyes, he scrubbed them away on the sleeve of his red jacket. As he lowered his arm however, he froze.

Light flickered in his cleared vision in the form of moving images projected onto a screen at the back of a stage. The images depicted himself and his friends fighting an amorphous collection of violet energy in the shape of a head.

No.

The images changed scenes, flashing to those same people overlooking a cliff. A chill ran through him as he saw their mouths moving. Though no sound was played, he could hear their words because he remembered them.

He was in a seat, in a large, grand ampitheatre.

No. No.

The images changed; the world tugged apart, dragging each party away from each other. They ran futilely towards each other, arms reaching out to maybe, just maybe, clasp hands, delay the inevitable. But it was fruitless, and the two worlds drifted apart, taking their respective residents with them.

"It is fascinating, is it not?"

Nonononono.

Noah's head whipped around to face the once who had spoken. Sitting calmly in a chair, eyes reflecting the light of the moving images on the screen as he gazed on them.

Z.

"That despite your choices, you find yourself here once more."

Anger boiled inside him at the sound of that voice.

Leaping to his feet, Noah tried to summon his Blade, but the outline of it in his Iris display wasn't even there. Unlike before, when it was blocked by X through Z's power, there was nothing to call.

"Did you not cast it away?"

The statement was punctuated by the projection on the screen, him casting away the sheathed Lucky Seven - The Sword of the End, the Sword of Origin - into the Great Sea. It had felt right at the time. After the end, he had figured he would have had no need of it anymore.

A subtle self-satisfied smirk settled on Z's face, and his mouth opened to speak-

Noah's power frame whined as he hurled a punch at Z's face that would have made Mio proud.

Unfortunately, his fist didn't connect. One moment Z was there, and the next he was not, leaving behind bits of purple miasma. His punch simply dented the lip of the chair Z had been perched, the impact busting open one of the scars on his knuckles.

He paid little attention to that and instead glared at the theatre around him. In what couldn't have been a coincidence, the screen was silently showing Moebious P and O's interlinked form sliding back from the force of Mio's punch. As if Z were mocking him.

Where did he go?

"O you who floats in the currents."

Noah whipped around behind him, fist curled again, power frame whining. Another dented chair, another split knuckle.

"How many times must it take for you to understand?"

Z now sat in a seat near the end of the row on the opposite side, hands folded primly on his lap. Noah's own hands clenched and he settled for glaring at him instead.

"How?" Noah growled out angrily. "After everything we sacrificed, after everything the world sacrificed, how?"

"You are aware of what I am. My nature."

"A concept," he repeated Melia's description of him. "Fear given form through the will of the people in Origin. The fear of the unknown future that lies in each of us."

"And did you not taste despair at the end?" As he spoke the screen started up again. "The same fear that was shared by countless individuals as the two worlds moved towards their inevitable collision, now repeated. Yearning for safety of the known - of the now - in that moment of desperation, countless voices cried, wishing that time would simply stop."

The projection's images shifted, flipping through the faces of countless individuals, most of whom he didn't recognize. Each expression was twisted with anxiety, fear. Some were better at hiding it than others, but Noah could see fear in each one of their eyes.

"And so once more, I answered their call. Nothing could stem the tide."

"You're wrong!" Noah shouted. "People are more than just their fear. They want more than this endless bloody cycle you created. Yearn for the future unbound by the shackles of this world, even if it is uncertain."

"So you say." Z shrugged. "Yet that we are both 'here' makes their choice, as well as your own self evident."

Noah's fist clenched again, and his breath hitched, stopping the denial on his lips as he looked down, teeth clenched. Because hadn't he? Wished for just one more moment before the end? As his arm stretched out chasing an impossibility.

He was ashamed to say there was a part of him that was glad. The uncertain possibility of reuniting with Mio, the Mio he knew, had gripped the back of his mind. Having observed him across countless lifetimes, Z had to know how much he yearned for that.

But then the moment was gone. Having already seen with his own eyes what that did to N, he wouldn't repeat the same mistakes, no matter how tempting, no matter how much that part of him wanted it.

He breathed out.

"Maybe, in the end, my resolve did falter. Maybe I wanted just a moment more." He looked up, facing Z directly. "But even then, after that, even if I had that moment of weakness, I still want a better future, even if it's unknowable. That's just human nature. If you continue to stand in the way of that, I will resist it with every fiber of my being! And if I can't, others will take up the torch."

The silence in the theatre that followed was heavy, broken only by the consistent whir of the device projecting the moving images on the screen.

Z chuckled. "As ever, your dichotomy fascinates me. Very well."

Noah was taken aback. "What?"

At last, Z turned to face him, and his eyes glowed with Moebius' never-ending Iris. Blue motes began flowing off of Noah clouding his vision. So…that was it then, was it?

I'm sorry, Mio. I'm sure we'll meet again, one day.

But that same, small, shameful part of him was glad.

"Let us see how far the flow takes you this time."