Chapter Fourty: How to Fix Time
"How can we fix something like this?" I asked. "If the Dark Lord controls everything... like it seems he does... how can we possibly fix it?"
"Simple," Sora said. "Send you back through time."
I looked at him dumbfounded.
"WHAT?!?" I shouted.
"Well... sending you back through time isn't the simple part," he said. "If we can do it, though, time should be fixed."
"How's it broken?" I asked, pushing a couple of buttons.
"Dont touch that," he said. I left it alone. "We can fix time by sending you back to the moment you disappeared... because it seems you're out of your time. A temporal anomaly, you could say. Therefore, if we send you back to the past, your actions will influence what happens, and the future we're in could never come to be."
I looked at him dumbfounded.
"HUH?!" I shouted.
"Sir White Knight, please bring me a piece of chalk and a chalkboard," Sora said into a comm. The White Knight appeared soon, handed Sora the chalk, and dragged a chalkboard behind him into the room. He then bowed, without uttering a single word, and left.
"Okay, here's a line of time," Sora said, drawing a line across the chalkboard. "It's constant and doesn't alter in flow."
"Yeah," I muttered.
"Here's the point where you got sent here," he said, placing a dot about halfway through the line. He then smudged the line just in front of the dot.
"Hey, wait. What happened?" I asked.
"Time was messed up," he said. He then drew a line diagonally from the point down, then kept going forward until he stopped and hit the chalk on the end of the second line. "Here's where we are now."
"We're in an alternate timeline?" I asked.
"No... not quite. We're in a timeline that exists as the main timeline because the main timeline never came into existence," he said. Sora then drew a line from the current time to where I disappeared, fixing the smudge.
"So... if I get sent back to when Luxord sent me to this time, time will fix itself," I muttered. "This is... complicated. You've thought a lot about this, huh?"
"Not really," he said, tossing the chalk into the air and catching it. "You just have to think fast when you're a guerrilla."
"Okay. So... I get sent back to the past. What then?" I asked.
"Just do what you would have done," he said. "Once you're back in the past, all of this will come undone because you were still there. I'm not sure, but with your strength we may have been able to defeat the Dark Lord."
"Man... this is complicated..." I muttered, rubbing my head. "What happened to just pushing buttons?"
"Things change," Sora said, staring out into the starless realm.
No... things weren't supposed to change... not... like this...
"Well, that's a load on my mind," I muttered. "So... how do I get sent back in time?"
"That's the question," Sora said. "You can't hang out here much longer, because if you do, this war will mess with your heart. You shouldn't even be here... now."
"I need to get back to the past... but how?" I asked again.
"If we could find Luxord... if he's still alive, even," Sora said, "we could send you back. Someone as powerful as Luxord... no doubt he's in the Dark Lord's dungeon."
"We'd have to assault the Dark Lord's castle?!" I shouted. "If he's as strong as you say, there's no way we could take him on, much less get me sent back to the past!"
"The Dark Lord... is not strong," Sora said. "He's only powerful..."
The White Knight walked in, then bowed.
"Oh, Sir Knight. Please tell me everything's going all right," Sora said.
The White Knight nodded his head. He pointed into the corridor.
"Ah... wonder what's up..." Sora muttered, walking out into the train. I followed, thrown off-balance slightly by the rocking of the train. We went out to see many Heartless attempting to dismantle the train engine, then promptly slew them.
"Ah, it'll take a couple of days to fix this," Sora muttered as the train slowed down a bit. A couple of technicians came in and began repairs while we went back to the front of the train, where the White Knight was still standing.
"Why didn't you do something, Sir Knight?" Sora asked him on the way in. The White Knight shrugged, then went back out.
I noticed something scratched onto the White Knight's left gauntlet...
"Well... I better start mobilizing the Photon Battalion if we have any hope of getting into the Dark Lord's fortress, if only for a moment," Sora said, hitting a few buttons.
"Photon Battalion?" I asked.
"Our organization's name," Sora explained. "We have agents all over the place, all of them ready for battle in a moment's notice. To gather all of them though... will take a day or so."
"So what's the Dark Lord like?" I asked.
"Harsh, unforgiving, cruel... darkness personified, I guess," Sora muttered, hitting a small, hidden button.
I thought... the Heartless were darkness personified?
"In the meantime, Sir White Knight!" Sora shouted. The White Knight came in, his armor clanking loudly.
"Spar with this man until we reach the drop-off point, then hide him. After that, resume sparring with him," Sora said. The White Knight dragged me off...