Here's the seventh chapter. I was planning to publish this at June last year, but it's quite hard adjusting to my new school since there's a new environment and all that. Plus, all the school works they're giving us are tiring as hELL, but now with the school year finished I can again start working on my stories.

Anyway, enough on my personal life, enjoy!

"Ah, well you see."

SARU fixes his posture, only to end up in a more relaxed position than he was in before, causing a small, yet silent chuckle to escape from Meia's mouth.

"By some form of miracle, as I'd like to call it. The flow of Tenma's timeline has already shifted from its original course after Holy Road. "He pauses and pulls out his handy hologram viewer and places it on the table in front of them, it suddenly shows one original path—Tenma's timeline—progressing through and then, as SARU said, diverges from its original course and forms a new timeline. Shortly after that timeline was formed, it once again diverges and forms another timeline. "The second disruption to the timeline was us, proptly forming the timeline we are currently in right now—the third timeline."

Before Meia was able to voice out her thoughts, SARU had already beaten her

"You must be wondering about the first disruption. Well, according to the intelligence division, a third-party organization was responsible for it, so far we only have one lead, and it's quite credible."

He motions his hands into the hologram itself and made some indescribable gestures to pull out another screen from wherever, showing a player from Raimon, very much pale and has short spiky navy blue hair with an awkward curled ponytail in the back, and curled spiral-shaped ringlets at the side.

"This is Tsurugi Kyousuke, the forward of Raimon, we have compelling evidence that he is the one that's behind the timeline shift."

"But how did you come up to this conclusion? Even with the evidence we ca-." Meia asks

"Ah, but you have yet to see the evidence, Meia." As he says that, he, again, motions his hands into the hologram and pulls out another screen from nowhere, showing the mentioned player walking down a street, Meia fails to see the relevance of this as the kid was just walking until someone—no, she didn't see any hands—something pulled him into the alley she failed to see at the start of the video.

"The guy wearing the cap, with that light blue-haired kind." Meia mumbles absent-mindedly as she continues to watch the video.

Everything went quiet for a few seconds until a bright flash of violet light was emitted inside the alley, showing the silhouette of two figures, the first being thrown into the portal by the second. As it disappears, Tsurugi walks away from the alley, with no signs of fighting present on his expression.

"You think, no, know, that someone messed with this Tsurugi kid." Meia says "Then why not send someone after him already? We know that the Tsurugi that timeline has is a fake."

"Ah, Meia." SARU starts "We simply can't, as that would only disrupt the timeline more." He closes the windows he opened earlier and enlarges the window with the timeline shifts displayed on.

"What we can do, however." He points to a part of the second timeline "is return Tenma to this point in time."

"But that appears to be two months from now? How will we be able to save their former captain if we don't act immediately?" Meia asks

"That is the reason why I sent for Delta. He will be serving as our sort-of guard to the second timeline, until Tenma completes his two months here."

"What I still don't understand, is that how are we able to change this especially since we are technically in the future." Meia asks, to which SARU only closes his eyes and starts to speak again.

"The future is never set in stone, the decisions made in the past changes the outcomes of the future, for all we know, we may have another timeline where this Tsurugi kid wasn't switched with an impostor and Matsukaze not activating his powers, but all I am sure of." He points to the second timeline "is that this isn't supposed to exist at all, but since we cannot make any more timelines, we'll have to work with that we have."

Meia was about to ask another question when someone inside the room speaks out aloud.

"Sir, Delta has arrived."

As if on cue, the sliding doors open up to reveal someone who Meia was very familiar with.

"Giris?!" Meia yells out in confusion "You're Delta now?"

"Mhm, got promoted yesterday." He walks to where SARU and Meia were situated

"So SARU, what's the mission?" he asks

"If you weren't good with what you're doing, I would've reprimanded you already for your disrespectful tone." SARU warns Giris—who appears to have flushed quite a bit. "Luckily, you are, so I'll let this slide." He continues.

'That was close' Giris thought.

"Anyway, the reason I called you is that…" SARU quickly gave Giris a rundown on what has happened, the explanation of the timelines included, as well as showed him what he showed Meia before he arrived, and what he is asked to do.

"So, we need to save this Shindou from an impostor who's pretending to be their teammate, look-up possible accomplices, give enough time for the kid to escape, and ensure that the impostor doesn't see me interfering with his plan." Giris summarizes, to which SARU only gave a slight nod "and you want all this done within two minutes?"

SARU only smirks.

"I accept, when will the mission be executed?"

"In ten minutes, prepare for the worst possible scenarios that you can think of as even I don't know who're exactly we're dealing with."

"But I thought you said it was that Kyou-" SARU then decides to interrupt Delta.

"Yes, but as you did see earlier. We have, while we cannot say substantial, evidence that leads us to the conclusion that something might've happened to Tsurugi Kyousuke." SARU changes expression, to that of amusement "Besides, I'm actually intrigued as to who or what has caused the sudden change."

Delta appears to ponder about what his superior said for a bit, before nodding.

"Understood."

And that's it! Before I end this I'd just like to hear your side if I'm adding too much twists that form side-stories of their own to this story, other than that I only hope that you guys are still there even though I update like, no, slower than that of a snail.

I apologize for the short chapter, it's just that I need a sort-of refresher on the exact happenings of the anime. I do remember the important plot points that happened but I do find details important in a way.

That's all. Till next time!