I'll be quietly smug over the fact you were so excited you couldn't wait, WriterGreenReads. Mitsuo the Universe jumper, hopefully my updates will be coming more frequently!

In which scenes are the grammatical errors, M1LK T3A?! I thought I got 'em all! Then again it was ten at night…eh, I can always go back and scrub the chapter later. As far as news goes, thankfully I managed to get into the Renfest! Not in any sneaky-break in-illegal way, mind you, the festival overlords were clever and organized a sort of car-parade thing and I went with my sister. Not sure how the pics turned out, but it turned my possibly-haunted-for-years feeling into only mild disappointment over not being hired this year. Which I totally get, it was a skeleton crew of food people and like half a dozen artisans with their most popular items as we wound our way throughout the grounds. No point in hiring extraneous T-shirt vendors.

Also, Minnesota might be getting it in the teeth as far as social issues go, what with the whole beginning of public police brutality this June here in Minneapolis, but at least we're not on fire…er, aside from some scattered fires set during riots, maybe. That's one of the nicer things about my state –we don't get hurricanes, or tsunamis, or volcanic activity, or wildfires, or earthquakes, just the very occasional tornado down towards the south. And even then, it's been YEARS since we even got a serious tornado warning where I live. Also, side note: tornados, like, HAPPEN outside of Tornado Alley, right? I mean they gotta. Someone would've said something if they were a USA-only thing. But I can't for the life of me remember a time when a tornado was mentioned outside the US. It's like how animals can have nearly every damn eye color in the rainbow EXCEPT purple, like purple is DISALLOWED, because why? Both these questions came up at work and me and the other bakery workers were all in a state of haunted perplexion for like a solid ten minutes each because there's gotta be an answer to both, but none of us could think of one.

Also, when I added therapist scene I was all like eh, I should probably just remind people that Arya has experienced legitimately traumatizing events, and then when I actually got into writing it I was like…wait…shit…why doesn't she have PSTD?! Like she has experienced some truly awful stuff and the fact she's still basically completely even-keeled anyways is a little bit unrealistic on my part. Oh well. I can fix that!

Also also, the entirety of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, plus The Hobbit, is 550,147 words, so I can at this point say with great confidence: SUCK IT, TOLKIEN! (In other words, I've written more than that for this series, discounting the AN portions of course.) We won't say anything about the quality of my work compared to Tolkien's, of course, especially since a decent amount of my material –this being fanfic– is leapfrogging off of someone else's ideas. I think to think I'm at least half as good as he is when it comes to creating characters, at least. Next is that Potter bitch, with 1,084,170 words.

September 28th, 2020

Arya's POV:

We spent most of the afternoon cooling the desert heat with ice cream and talking about more commonplace things, like families and siblings and favorite items, and I was once again left to sprawl worriedly in my shared room as night fell.

See, I'd been mostly winging things so far, solving immediate problems like "how do I get food/shelter" and "what world am I in" rather than complex and lasting problems like "how did I get into this mess" and "philosophical consequences of an existing god in an alternate dimension?"

That was going to have to change.

Given my conversation with Rex about the corrupting powers of magic in this world, I was going to have to tread very, very carefully. See, I had already long-since established that being in an anime world meant you conformed to certain laws of anime physics, even when you weren't actually from that world. In Hetalia, wearing a ninja costume had made me preternaturally stealthy: in Black Butler, I had used my knowledge of the world's moral leaning (and implicit metatextual lesson) to avoid dangerous political entanglements. Presumably, in Soul Eater, although I had grasped and possibly awakened my magic powers in one world and honed them in another, my magic would, possibly, begin to conform to the laws of this world as well.

So. You know. That was worrying. (Possibly terrifying, if things played out badly enough.)

The thing was, the way I had and understood my magic was closely tied with the way my teacher had taught me, which was, of course, also closely tied to his world and how it operated. Was my magic something like a foreign entity to the laws of physics in this world, or was it something that would, like an ordinary Witch, draw me inexorably towards destructive tendencies?

Either option seemed unhealthy. My magic clearly worked on some level here, due to the fact I had been able to get to this world in the first place, but if it was fundamentally outside the way Soul Eater as a universe operated, there was a chance that me trying to actually use magic here would blow me up or something. Or the universe would try and kick me out like the foreign irritant I was, possibly into some hellhole dimension, possibly fucking up all my efforts thus far, possibly just killing me outright. Or in the case that nothing horrific happened but my magic began to conform to the laws of this world, as I had (presumably) conformed immediately on a physical level, I would, possibly, begin living under the pull of magic and slowly descend into a destruction-crazed rampage.

Fun options. Fun, fun options.

An important corollary to this issue was the fact that I didn't actually know how all this would play out. Shockingly, an ordinary education in backwoods nowhere that topped out at my sophomore high school year didn't exactly lend itself well to the complex interdimensional bullshit that got tied up in all this world-shifting, even if I had taken a philosophy elective.

"Ngh." I groaned, rolling over to bury my face in the pillow. In that pose, I felt absurdly like the lead in a stupid teenage romcom, but then again, I was stuck in a magic shounen school. Perhaps I should feel lucky that I hadn't gotten tangled up in any ongoing harem shenanigans or…whatever ongoing shenanigans happened at shounen schools when they weren't occupied with a tournament arc. (Eh, sue me. Shounen anime with important romantical entanglements weren't really my thing. It was much better when they just walloped things.)

Long story short, I needed to get my shit together. I couldn't keep coasting by on the assumption everything would be fine even if I didn't pay attention to it, just because that had somehow worked out before. Honestly, that had probably been more dumb luck than anything else.

Well, no longer. First thing tomorrow, after our daily dose of schooling was over with, I was gonna return my witchery books with Rex and stock up on astrophysics.

***Time Skip***

The psyche test was honestly a lot less…intrusive, than I had expected it to be. I'd been vaguely worried about probing psychoanalysis and pointed questions that struck at the very heart of my notions of who I was and whatnot, and it was almost entirely kinda-dumb-stuff that should've gone without saying but didn't because medically, we needed to double-check all our boxes. These boxes were, in fact, yes/no/maybe/somtimes scales for symptoms of what I presumed to be various psychological disorders and a limitus of Normal Average Psychology symptoms.

No, I was not feeling any symptoms of depression. No, I was not feeling anxious. No, I was not feeling suicidal, had weird gaps in my memory where things got done around the house, felt overly reliant on the approval of others, had mood swings, or had intrusive thoughts of violent deeds.

I did pause a little at what I assumed to be the criterion for PTSD, since I had to check yes on: Exposure to one or more events that involved or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violation, Strong physical reactions upon exposure to a reminder of said traumatic event(s), such as increased heart rate, Strong and persistent distress upon internal or external cues connected to traumatic event(s), Avoidance of thoughts, feelings, sensations, people, places, conversations, activities, objects, or situations that bring up memories of the traumatic event, Feeling detached from others, Feeling constantly "on guard" (hypervigilant), as though danger is lurking around every corner.

Hmm. Concerning. Did I have some kind of mild PTSD? I mean, I'd always understood it as a lot more traumatic for someone than what was honestly just justified paranoia on my part.

Eh, that was a worry for future me. The DWMA would step in if they felt I had concerning issues that needed therapy and/or medication –for once, it was nice to know someone would be looking out for me.

Anyways, after the paperwork Rex and I had gone to lunch together, with me again unable to catch the exact words of the whispers that still rippled around us, from the same people –concerning, that– a whole day after the Rex-has-a-partner-now event had occurred. It wasn't news anymore, so why were they whispering?

I pegged that down on my growing future to-do list. Investigate interdimensional physics, find out what the fuck is going on with Rex's partnership status, locate my exact location in the Soul Eater timeline, and possibly get therapy. It'd be a busy week.

The afternoon part of our erstwhile orientation class took place in a largely empty classroom, which students being called out one by one for a personal 15-minute session with the school counselor and therapist. The rest of us read or drew or talked with our near neighbors: I spent the time subtly bonding with Rex by encouraging him to tell me about the more exact plot of Rigoletto, the opera he'd been listening to yesterday. It was interesting, and very, well, operatic, and I strolled out to meet the therapist in a state of surprisingly pleasant anticipation, wanting to get back so Rex could tell me more about Gilda's doomed love and the fascinating, tragic hypocrisy of her father Rigoletto.

There had been a passing mention of weekly therapist appointments for Kid in the manga, but never, to my knowledge, had anyone said anything about the actual therapist, so I regarded said therapist with interest as I took my seat in the comfy office. In a multicultural school, the whole Freudian sofa and desk probably wouldn't cut it with some students, so this enterprising gentleman had decked out his office in neutral, calming soft browns, with strangely lopsided furniture that reminded me of most of the background scenery in the Soul Eater anime. It looked like cartoonish cabinets and nightstands had been half-melted like wax, then solidified and smoothed over in that slumped shape: every line of furniture was wavy, asymmetrical, curved and gentle. The effect, combined with the striped faun walls and black-and-white tiled floor, was oddly childish, which I supposed made sense. Students could come to this school at a very young age indeed, and some, like the twins Fire and Thunder, were actively on the front lines before they even hit puberty. A slightly childish room was likely to inspire confidence and comfort in equal turn, and as for older students like me, well…the effect was just charmingly quaint.

The therapist himself was a tall man, probably over six feet in his socks, and muscular with it, though the tousled cut of his brown hair and the mildness in his eyes gave lie to the implicit threat of his bulky form. An odd mixture of comfort and strength, this guy, and well-balanced to deal with what were essentially militarized schoolchildren because of it. The young ones could latch onto the comfort radiating from his pleasant expression, the older kids could take reassurance in his athletic physique and the strength of his brief handshake before we both sat down on the rounded chairs.

Also, on the off chance that someone evil tried to infiltrate the academy and gave themselves away during their personal psyche screening, this guy could probably defend himself quite well.

"So, Miss Thompson," he began, taking up a clipboard and pen. "You don't mind if I take notes, do you?"

"Nope." I said, relaxing back into the wooden chair as much as I could. I didn't know how psychologists worked outside of Hollywood, and I wasn't keen to give this guy any sudden and inconvenient insights by my posture or tone.

"Alright." His voice was low and calming –encouraging, even. "I've read over your test, and if its alright with you, I'd like to talk about some of your answers."

My heart pounded a double-beat against my ribs: I tried to keep my posture relaxed, at ease, but not too much so, because then he would see that I was trying and he obviously knew about my (justified!) paranoia.

"Yeah. I mean, yeah, sure, that's what you're here for." I said, fumbling over my words a little. He nodded and scratched something down on his clipboard.

"You said you experienced a very traumatic event. Do you feel comfortable discussing it with me?"

Aw, shoot, which one?! In Black Butler alone I'd had like sixteen separate brushes with death: the zombies-in-everything-but-name on board the sinking ocean liner, the zombies at the boarding school, the fight with a Grim Reaper, the mustard gas attack in the German forest, the flying through the woods while the German army attacked me and my friends, the enforcer in the alley, the necromancer, the black ghost dog…

I shivered. "Uh, yeah."

"If you're comfortable with it, can you tell me what led up to this event?"

My mind flailed in all directions, and instinctively, I grabbed at what was nearest. "I was imprisoned by an evil m- Sorcerer for a few weeks."

The scratching pen jerked to a stop. After a moment, it resumed, before he gravely came to a halt and looked up at me again.

"That sounds horrible. Can you describe more?"

"Uh, yeah, sure." I shifted anxiously in my seat, raising my hand before realizing that I was copying Rex's antsy fiddle-with-earrings move when my ears weren't even pierced and lowering it into my lap again. "My…my mentor and I, the guy that was taking care of me after I ran away from home, we lived kinda isolated, and this Sorcerer…um, took him over. Like possessed his body. No one else knew about it, so I was at his mercy for a few weeks."

"And when was this?" The therapist's voice was as soft and gentle as down, like he was afraid of startling me.

"Um, 'b-bout a year ago." I said, thinking it over. "Yeah, just about a year."

"What happened to the Sorcerer?"

I had to smirk a little at that one. "My mentor managed to regain control of his body and, uh, k-killed the Sorcerer." Oh, how I wished that was the case, but Oliver was stubbornly immortal as long as Britain was alive, so we'd had to make do. "But he's like a Sorcerer, you know? He could still come back and stuff, and I wouldn't know until his hands were around my neck. So I've always been…like ever since then, I've been kinda paranoid about getting caught flat-footed."

Scribble, scribble went the pen. "What do you mean, getting caught flat-footed?"

"Well," I leaned back in my chair, crossing one leg over the other. "I guess, I mean like I'm always just a little antsy about being out somewhere alone? Heck, being alone-alone at all, period. At least if there's other people there, like even if they can't do shit, at least there'll be someone who can witness what happened to me and like…ah, spread the word."

Scribble, scribble.

"And like," I continued, rocking back and forth a little on the creaky chair. "Its not really a bad thing, but I'm way more concerned about what I eat and how I exercise, you know? Like I've always gotta be in tip-top fighting form, or else he's gonna get me. I mean, he's not, and I-I'd definitely be fucked if it came to a straight-up fight between the two of us, but at least if I'm fit I've got a chance, you know?"

"So your source of ongoing fear and worry is centered on the fact that you believe this Sorcerer may come back to harm you, is that correct?" the therapist asked. The problem with me was, there was no "may" about it. Oliver wasn't dead, first off, he had been booted to a nebulous far-flung dimension and there was every chance in the world that he could somehow tangle time and space with his magic and find a way back. He would definitely try: Oliver was a lot of things –cannibal, psychopath, magician– but what scared me the most about him was his vindictiveness and his utterly driven mentality. He didn't forgive and forget even the smallest of grudges, he resented and remembered, and more than that, he took an eye and a nose and everything attached in revenge.

Given as I had thoroughly thwarted a plan of his that was decades in the making and involved huge amounts of time, effort, and magic –not to mention mocked him to his face as I did so– Oliver's vengeance, should he ever get his hands on me again, was going to be absolutely bloodcurdling.

"Yeah, sure." I answered, my eyes sliding aimlessly away from the large man sitting in his chair.

"May I ask what the nature of your trauma under this Sorcerer was?"

I winced, instinctively rubbing my thumb over one of my opposite nails –smooth, shiny, and whole, it was still a novel sensation to me after months of cotton-wrapped, stinging, and nail-less fingers, courtesy of a casually malicious Oliver.

"Uh, torture, mostly."

"Mostly?"

"He poisoned me with arsenic once. Nonfatal dose."

"I see." the therapist's expression was drawn with sympathy as he looked up from his notes. "Do you feel comfortable describing the nature of that torture?"

I shrugged soundlessly. Truth be told, it was all a lot less traumatizing for me than I would've expected, a result that was perhaps brought about by the fact that I can and had wreaked horrific retribution of my own upon my abuser. (Torturer? Eh, whatever.) Also maybe the fact I had friendly support the whole way through afterwards.

"He, uh, sliced me with knives a lot." I said. "Never deep, just…just enough to hurt. Punched me a few times too. He couldn't do a super lot, see, 'cause then our visitors would've figured something hinky was going on. Didn't stop him from pulling out my fingernails, though."

Again I rubbed my clean, short nails, enjoying the enamel-like feel of my unpainted keratin, rather than the spongy pain of the exposed bed underneath. The therapist lowered his head to write.

"You seem to have adjusted to the aftereffects rather well." he noted. "Did you seek or receive any counseling?"

"Ah, no." I mumbled. I shifted in my seat. "I guess I haven't really thought about it that much."

That was true. After Oliver and his allies had been defeated and sent to an alternate dimension, I was too caught up in the high of finally being free of him/them, then the slog of recovering in a hospital, to really dwell on what he had actually done to me, in those weeks under his power. And after that, I was rushing frantically from one thing to another in the world of Black Butler, constantly moving, moving, always thinking and doing and working, never really having a moment to settle and breathe, because if I wasn't working on something, then Ciel had me working on something for him. I was too busy playing catch-up with everything: with the plot of that world, with the skill sets of my opponents therein, with my own magical potential, to really pay attention to my own mental state.

But now? Here? Here I finally had a moment to think and stop and pause and breathe, because the plot didn't need me and there were no immediate or impending threats to my wellbeing or anyone else's. In theory, I could fuck off on vacation for a couple months, spend the time lounging on a beach somewhere, and only come back after the Kishin was resurrected, and everything on my end would still be absolutely fine. I finally had leisure time to look back on my own mental state right now, and I wasn't quite sure I was liking what I found.

Hmm. Maybe I did need some therapy, if only to wrestle with all of these looming traumatic memories that I wasn't quite sure how to effectively handle on my own.

We talked a bit more on that general theme, with the therapist gently picking out details of my time under Oliver and my mental state because of it. This obviously wasn't his first rodeo in terms of trauma counseling, and I found my immediate reaction of fear easing. It wasn't healthy to bottle things up, but as he told me, I hadn't technically done that. I'd just been too preoccupied to really think on it, which would have eventually been a problem, but now I had realized and acknowledged my trauma before I had hit that breaking point. It was how I dealt with things now that would truly shape my psychological outlook on those events: and, of course, he was absolutely here to help me, as was any other staff member of the DWMA.

Well, minus two on my meta-knowledge part: I wasn't talking with Spirit Albarn, the school's resident Death Scythe and Maka's father, because he was an unmitigated perv, and I wasn't acknowledging any kind of weakness to Justin Law, who while only a traitor in the manga, was still a traitor in the manga and therefore undeserving of trust until I ascertained just which adaption I was in. Good fucking luck with that last one on my part: unlike in Black Butler, the Soul Eater anime and manga only truly diverged at about the halfway point, and even then, both adaptions still had strong overlap. Another reason my meta-traveling checklist wasn't really urgent at this point: really, all I had to do right now was pinpoint when I was in the plot, and even then, if it was already past a certain point, that wouldn't matter much.

Anyways, according to the therapist, it was important that I monitor my emotional reactions to things around me, especially if they pertained to my trauma, and to let him or someone else know if I found myself developing adverse or increasingly adverse reactions to them. If I was comfortable with it, he'd tell Rex to look out for the relevant signs –I gave my consent for this, since the more people watching out the better, in my book. It was important that I acknowledged the fact I was absolutely safe now, and would remain so, and had the tools to defend myself and alert others if evil came knocking. I was not alone. I was not damaged, broken, or worse off for being those things even if I was. I was still a strong human being worthy of trust, respect, and affection.

Nice words nicely said, and all the better for being sincere, I still trotted on out of the therapist's office in a mood of concerned contemplation. Was I stupid for not considering my own mental state before, or just unobservant? Or was I unconsciously smart instead, since the attending confusion, concern, and yes, trauma, would have been very badly handled indeed in the world and time period I had just vacated?

Eh. Another problem added to future me's pile. She was really going to hate me for all this.

To partially alleviate the woes and wrath of future me, Rex and I swung by the girls' dorm to pick up my stack of library books and then hopped on the Deathbus once again to return them and pick up some more…scientific volumes, afterwards. En route, I managed to sidestep any curiosity on just what the heck I was doing with these, and even to a certain extent what I was looking for, by peppering Rex with questions about the kind of books he liked. This was a tactic I had ample practice in, thanks to my friend Snake back in Black Butler, who was truly the boomwormiest bookworm to ever bookworm.

Since we weren't in a tearing rush to go anywhere else and agreed to order pizza and eat in a park for dinner, Rex and I were able to lounge around the library, and I was able to boot up the huge, boxy old computer and look up the necessary information.

Filler bar blinking in and out, I stared blankly at the search database. I didn't have a fucking clue of what to search –interdimensional physics?

Taking a stab, I typed out "parallel universe theory" and hit search. A few articles popped up alongside the book search, and in my technology-trusting state, I clicked on one. Immediately, a wall of text popped up, and I winced backwards, squinting. Words like "Wilkinson Microwave Anisotrophy Probe," "cosmic inflation," "M-theory," and "black-hole cosmology" bounced off the insides of my skull, each theory less comprehensible than the last, and I slumped, groaning, in my seat.

Shit. Now I remembered why I hadn't tried looking into this in Hetalia –the one time I'd tried, my brain had nearly melted from incoherent confusion.

Still, I was older and smarter now, and more importantly, way more used to wrestling with uselessly obscure text and wrenching a concrete understanding out of it piece by screaming piece. If I could pry useful information out of dusty magic books in languages I barely even knew, I could definitely pick apart highly scientific and technically articles in English. Probably. Maybe.

Opening up a separate tab to search words I didn't know –and thus neatly answering my question of whether or not this world had internet– I began to parse through the first article.

First off, as I read and reread the first few paragraphs, it seemed as though the very possibility of parallel universes –that is, universes outside one's own– was a matter of contention in the scientific community. Arguments against included something about a "cosmological horizon," which sounded important. I flipped over to the second tab and searched that term, and found out that it basically meant how far we could observe things. Hence, going back to the first article, some scientists argued that being able to find parallel universes (even if they did exist) would be impossible because they were by definition beyond the point where we could actually retrieve information.

Interesting, but not viable. The very fact I was sitting here in front of this computer meant that parallel universes (or one of their many linguistic synonyms) were a thing. I scrolled down a little further, and found some meatier information.

It seemed some dude named Max Tegmark had developed a taxonomy (quick search said that basically meant "classification list") of various theoretical types of multiverses. The first sentence had me stumped with a slew of unfamiliar words –the kind that had you clicking through three different wiki pages to understand– but I slogged through them, eventually disentangling what the sentence actually meant. Apparently, the first level of multiverse was basically just an extension of the normal universe, since by the logic of the infinitely expanding universe, eventually every probability would happen. The second level banked off the first, but said that space/the multiverse as a whole was stretching and would stretch and expand forever, with some regions stopping and forming distinct bubbles or pockets, which would theoretically result in different properties and physical laws.

The third one was actually a theory I was familiar with thanks to science class, which stated that certain actions couldn't be predicted with absolute certainty, and had a range of possible outcomes: in theory, each of these possible outcomes corresponded to a different universe. In other words, if you threw a die, each of the six sides it could fall on represented a different possibility, and six different worlds in which that specific possibility was fulfilled.

The last theory was some jibber-jabber about external reality being a mathematical structure, and I skipped that over once I figured it wasn't going to give me anything useful.

Another guy, Brian Greene, had nine types of multiverse, some of which overlapped with the first scientist's. The first new one was the theory of a quilted multiverse, which would only work in an infinite universe. With an infinite amount of space, every possible event would occur an infinite number of times: however, the speed of light would prevent people from being aware of the other identical areas. Another, the brane multiverse theory, postulated that the entire universe existed on a membrane which floated in a higher dimension: in this dimension, there were other membranes with their own universes, and every trillion years or so, some would collide and thus create cyclic big bangs. This was in turn linked to the cyclic multiverse, wherein the universes bounced back and passed through time with every big-bag collision, pulling themselves together again and then colliding, destroying their old contents and creating them anew.

Another, and this one drew my attention, was the landscape multiverse, which said that quantum fluctuations change a certain space's energy levels, creating a pocket with a set of laws different from the surrounding space. The one after it was worthy of being marked out as well, the simple quantum multiverse, which said a new universe was created when a diversion in events occurred.

The name "Occam's razor" came up as I scrolled through the various theories, which after a headache-inducing series of searches told me was basically a snooty way of saying "the simplest explanation is probably the right one."

I was about ready to take an ax to the nearest physicist or cosmologist. Were simple terms that hard to use!?

Muttering salty insults under my breath, I continued reading and scrolling and searching. Apparently, I had been wrong all this time in saying I was a dimension-hopper: the term "dimension" as it applied to parallel universes was not used in the scientific community. Most multidimensional –er, multiple universe theories postulated identical or nearly-identical planes of reality: basically, the only thing in an alternate universe that would be different was everything happening slightly to the right. Like me choosing strawberry instead of banana for my ice cream or something. There was something called the many-worlds interpretation, but that was what essentially amounted to infinite worlds of fulfilled separate possibilities branching off from a prior choice, much like my ice cream example.

Most importantly, as I came up for air with sore eyeballs and a ferocious headache, all of this quantum and multiverse and wormhole jibjab blatantly ignored or invalidated the possibility that I currently fulfilled, i.e. sitting in an alternate universe completely against my laws of physics.

Well, okay, maybe the alternativeness of this universe had happened because some deific figure back before the dawn of time had made a different choice than they had back home, but how the heck could I prove a theory like that?! It was beyond the so-called cosmological horizon of even my magic!

Erk. Anyways.

As I flipped through more articles and occasionally got up to parse through some books, the trend continued. Science didn't acknowledge the possibility of such drastically different worlds as I found myself in, or if it did, it was in terms I barely understood. I was still on Earth in all three of the alternate universes that I had inhabited, but at different times and with slightly different laws of physics and magic. In Hetalia, countries/nations could become personified and have sentient avatars: this included separate avatars of the criminal aspects as well, which was what Oliver and all his ghastly crew had been. In Black Butler, the year had been 1889, and while nation avatars hadn't been in evidence, demons, Grim Reapers, and other such things certainly had. And here, of course: the sun and moon had sentient faces and were much, much closer to the Earth than in any other world I had been to. The moon had been reached by a freaking blimp in the manga, after all, and people had walked, fought, and died on it without the benefit of spacesuits or even altitude adjustments.

But throughout all three of these worlds, I was still inarguably on the same planet, in the same galaxy, with the same continents, landmasses, and oceans, as well as the same basic presence of humans and generally-identical laws of magic and science. In theory, it wasn't implausible that what I considered very large deviations –the souls and species here, the magic in Black Butler– were, on a cosmic scale, relatively minor. Even a lot of the history between all three of the worlds was largely identical, or at least as far as Black Butler had advanced compared to the two others.

This was no good. I needed more information.

Bracing myself for another slew of incomprehensible words, I returned to the boxy old computer and typed in "time travel," since I was moving through time, technically, as well as space with all these adventures. As expected, a significant percentage of the scientific articles I pulled up were a complex tangle of technical quantum vocabulary words, but again, with slow, dogged, and hollow-eyed persistence, I managed to disentangle some of it.

Apparently, the biggest stumbling block for time travel even as a theory was something that could be condensed down into the grandfather paradox. Because events had already happened, attempting to change these events would create a contradiction, which obviously the universe and laws of physics as a whole would not allow. Therefore, traveling back in time was technically impossible, as merely being present might have effects, which would be disallowed by the universe. It was all very reminiscent of a short story from my high school literature class, A Sound of Thunder, in which a time-travel company took bigshots back to the age of dinosaurs to hunt a T-rex. Everything was precisely calculated: the T-rex would've died anyway within seconds of their arrival due to a falling branch, and a levitating path kept them clear of the ground so that they wouldn't interfere in any way with the environment. One of the hunters panicked, however, and ran off the path, crushing a butterfly underfoot, and when they got back, English as a language had changed and a fascist dictator had been elected instead of the president they had left with.

According to my teacher, this was the origin of the term "butterfly effect" as it applied to science fiction, and it served as a good example of one of the arguments for why time travel probably couldn't work. The story was told in a linear fashion, of course, but time was linear as well, and therefore, as far as theories went, it was hypothetically impossible for someone to show up in the past, because the past had already happened. Things couldn't happen before they happened, that wasn't how physics worked.

Countering this (I think), was a theory done by some Russian scientist named Novikov. He proposed closed timelike curves, frequently abbreviated in the articles to CTC. His principle apparently asserted that in these CTCs, if there was an event that might cause a paradox or any change to the past in any way, then the probability of that event would be zero. Therefore, it would be impossible to create such an event to begin with. You could time travel and throw a rock at your past self to try and kill them, and a bird would miraculously fly in the way of it or something. This theory also eliminated the possibility of other worlds or timelines, though, making me frown.

Another article was about cosmic strings, but looking through those articles only told me how time travel might theoretically be possible, not the various laws tied around it. Essentially, since these apparent cosmic strings were under such stress or pressure or whatever, if you could bring them together or twang them or something, you could get the immense energy necessary to loop yourself back in time.

No matter how I scratched and pried at this implacable wall of text, I couldn't manage to claw out a concrete explanation, never mind a thorough understanding of it all. In plain bitter facts, much like how I had been unable to do much of anything noteworthy in Black Butler due to my lack of magical experience, I just didn't have the PhD(s) to actually wrangle together all of these complex theories and theorems and cosmic principles into a single unified comprehensible force, especially as how it applied to me. This was string theory and quantum physics and a bucketload of other theoretical physicist bullshit in fields I didn't even know about, never mind areas of study or topics. This was what it was, basically, and it was a teenager with two years of high school trying to tackle theories mooted about by professionals with at least a decade of secondary schooling. I could pry apart the general meaning of some of their articles, but when it came to understanding or, god forbid, using their theories and equations, I was operating blind, deaf, and dumb.

Most especially dumb. I felt very dumb right now, even though there was no way in fresh hell that I could've had a prayer of understanding this stuff. Where would I have learned it? I hadn't even learned that much about basic introductory physics, for crying out loud!

Nonetheless, when I had spun out every last bit of research this library had and emerged groggy and blinking from the little computer nook to find my partner, I was in a mood.

"Hey. How'd your book search go?" he asked, glancing at me and standing up from where he had been tucked in a cushy armchair, reading a serious-looking book. "Did you find…um, whatever it was you were looking for?"

I gave him a smile that was mostly teeth.

"Rex, buddy, pal," I said genially as I patted my hand down on his shoulder, then gave an abrupt, tense squeeze. "I need to vent."

"…yes…?" he asked slowly, eyeing the hand gripping his shoulder with a wary but nonthreatened expression. Good to know I hadn't accidentally spooked him.

"You." I pointed to him with my free hand, then reversed it to jab a thumb at my chest. "Me. You are gonna transform and we are gonna go to a park or a practice range or something and absolutely murder some inanimate objects."

"Okay…?"

I decided to prompt more independent thought and movement out of Rex by not grabbing his collar or something and dragging him with me, but rather beckoning him after me as I tromped out of the library with an aggrieved expression. Rex followed me placidly enough, which was good, though I slowed to an uncertain stop on the stairs. He stopped beside me on the same step, giving me an inquisitive look.

"Uh, so I kinda forgot about dinner." I said, rubbing the back of my head. "Go out for food and then vent?"

Rex grinned. "You don't know where the practice ranges are, either?"

"It may be a factor."

My partner patted me on the back, tentatively at the first hit, then more normally when I didn't give an adverse reaction.

"I can show you." he said brightly, and we began down the stairs again, this time with him pulling ahead a little as he removed his wallet from his suit jacket and unfolded it. I noted with interest that his wallet broke from his monochrome theme and was red, just like the barrettes that clipped his right bangs to the side. "Since you had to do the medical examination fees and whatnot, I can pay for dinner."

"Sounds cool." I said. "We still on for pizza, or something else?"

"Pizza sounds good." Rex said as he pulled out a ten and then put both it, his wallet, and his hands back in his pockets.

I side-eyed him as we walked down the sidewalk. "Does it actually sound good, or are you placating me?"

"It actually sounds good." Rex said with a half-smile which soon widened at my lack of retaliation. "We can get some breadsticks too, try to be healthy. Plus you probably deserve a treat after…um, whatever it was you were looking up."

I groaned and folded my arms behind my head as we kept walking down the street. "A bunch of highly technical, highly headache-inducing jibjab, and all of it summarily useless. Hence, me having a frustration-headache and wanting to alleviate that with hitting things, and since we're gonna aim for the EAT class anyways, I figure the sooner we start practicing our combat skills, the better."

Rex perked up. A golden retriever puppy that had just been offered a meat-covered bone would probably have been less chipper than he was at that moment: I could practically see his tail wagging, and he didn't even have one.

"R-really? Uh, yeah- yeah!" Rex blurted excitedly, straightening up in a bit of a hurry. "We can totally start after dinner! Um, how are you at baseball?"

I blinked several times.

"…say what?"

9.04 PM, USA Central Time