Volume 1: Windows of the Past

-.-

→ Time is too slow if you waste it waiting.
It is too fleeting for anyone who fears change.
Some find it too long because they do nothing but repent.
Yet it is too short because they overthink everything.
For a few, however, time is endless.
For everyone who loves, learns to love or has loved.
Because in the end, there is always more than one chance.

-.-

The note in her hands was more worn than it should be. Presumably, they hadn't been able to agree on whether she should follow the order or not. Yet she did nothing else all day. Because it was her power. Her position. Everything she could do to make the world a better place.

Even if not every mistake in life could be fixed.

The words written on the snippet revealed nothing more than where she was expected to be. A house at the end of the city, which consisted of homely buildings. The rock lined up tightly, with little space for alleys leading away from the busy main part. The people on this island had adapted to the little space they had been given; and while it seemed masterful to live this way, Naoe couldn't help but find all the buildings and people confining. Children had no place to play in this place, animals were few between. Everything was made of dull stone, except for the muddy sand surrounding the island.

With a sigh, Naoe pushed her way through the crowd, trying to make her way forward as the bodies of others pressed against her petite frame, robbing her of her orientation. All that remained was stuffy air that burned in her throat.

Only with difficulty could she reach one of the narrow alleys that led away from all this chaos – trapped between two walls that offered as little oxygen as the air spaces between the bodies of strangers.

Barely able to move more freely, Naoe fell into a steady trot. Standing still wouldn't improve the situation, and keeping the customer waiting showed poor work. Or poor planning. Or maybe both; and as far as she knew her fellow helpers, they had probably already been announced.

Half in thought, she followed the alleys, turning off a few times and following the boring grey walls that always seem the same at every turn. Wherever one fixed one's gaze, there was no difference. If she hadn't been on the island for a few days, she would have been hopelessly lost. Much like the first few times she had struggled to find her way back into the crowd – usually half-starved and on the verge of tears.

Passing poorly placed windows that would never see the sunlight, she eventually slipped onto a wider pathway where doors lined up close together. Narrow houses that barely offered any space served as shelters. It was a place for those who had even less than everyone else. Less money, less prestige and, above all, less influence.

Still holding the note tightly in her hand, Naoe examined the house numbers, which were dirty and crookedly hammered against the rock. Her target was the number thirteen, which stood closely packed next to seven and twenty. Of all things, between two numbers that could hardly have had less to do with each other. It made her raise a brow, animated her to let her gaze wander to be absolutely sure. But the numbers on the surrounding houses had as little system as the buildings in front of her.

It was frightening how little attention was paid to the slums of a city that was already far too small – when in the end they all lived together. Next to the poor wooden constructions and the tilted stone stacked on top of each other, the rich buildings of the winners rose. They were neighbours – acquaintances in different galaxies.

The sight merely made Naoe shake her head, pulling the hood of her dark blue poncho over in a fluid motion; solely so as not to attract more attention than necessary. If he found her, the mission would be lost.

He had been following her for far too long. From island to island, with watchful eyes, always with the same request on his lips, which she refused. Always with the same dangerous force in his body that couldn't be contained. Force that she was no match for.

Running away was all he would let her do.

Without further ado, Naoe shook her head once more. She couldn't let herself be distracted, had to dedicate herself to the job that made the slight throbbing in her chest a little stronger.

With tentative knocks against the damp wood, she made her presence known and waited. It took a while before a plump woman opened for her. With her blonde hair pulled up tightly and her voluminous body wrapped in a blue dress, the stranger raised her eyebrows and examined Naoe from top to bottom. A little dismissive, but no less infused with mild interest.

Judging by her appearance, she didn't belong in this place. Her posture, her slightly crinkled nose, betrayed that she saw herself in a better position – far from the poor lunatics who wasted their existence in stinking alleys.

"I have come to change what once passed." As always, Naoe spoke the one phrase that would identify her. A small precaution of the revolutionaries. Whenever an order rolled in, the client was entrusted with a phrase she would say when she arrived. To avoid charlatans. And to test the opposition.

The woman opposite her merely snorted, folded her arms in front of her chest and took a deep breath once or twice before taking a step to the side. Naoe took it with a nod, slipping past her only to stop a few steps later. They had built the house lengthwise so that a narrow living room and an equally narrow kitchen fit inside. Two rooms that had to suffice for everyday life – no bathroom, no doors.

"How can I help you?" Hands clasped behind her back, Naoe let her gaze slide from the sparse furnishings to a man sitting at a table opposite her, staring stubbornly at the ceiling. Next to him, a small boy dangled his legs and eyed her insistently.

Neither of them cared for conversation.

"As you can probably see, we have to change something past. One of those wretched card games." It was the woman who answered her question. She unceremoniously pushed past Naoe, bumping her shoulder and ignoring the revolutionary's hissing sound. "My good-for-nothing idiot of a husband lost a lot of money in a simple poker game a few days ago. As you can probably well see, it ruined our entire existence."

Naoe couldn't help but roll her eyes inwardly. The rude tone, the stifling behaviour, none of it was something she enjoyed serving. This woman was the epitome of a depraved society found apart from normal people. Her pointed, exuberant voice pricked the ears, throbbed in the head, and simultaneously brought nothing but petty platitudes.

"I see. Well, then ... in that case, I can probably help you." With a quick flick of her wrist, Naoe pulled out a small, handy hourglass from an inside pocket of her poncho. "This little watch will give you two hours to clear up the problem. Therefore, it is important that you remember the right moment as we travel back. We have to return here before the time runs out. In addition, you must not recognise yourself, so I must ask you to choose a time when your past self can be removed. Also, keep in mind that the present moment will change along with the past. Your memories will be overwritten, and yet this life will remain with you like a dream. As a kind of ... lesson for things to come."

As Naoe rattled off the usual information, it didn't escape her notice how the man, who had been staring at the ceiling earlier, slowly shifted his gaze to her.

"Is that all?" His voice scratched tiredly and harshly against the unadorned walls as if he had spent many nights in a row venting about his failed success.

"If you have understood everything, then we can move on. I am paid before I perform my services. I accept berry, gold, sterling silver, broken hearts and secrets. How would you like to pay?"

"Silver." Almost casually, he signalled to the boy at the table, causing him to jump up and hand Naoe a necklace, which she accepted appraisingly. The engraved number revealed that it was high-quality silver for which she would get a decent price – provided she found the time to visit a jeweller in the next few months.

"I have taken note of the payment. Let's get down to business ..." It took only a few steps to stand at the table. "I need a drop of blood."

Her customer didn't hesitate, didn't even care why. Mindlessly, he bit the skin on one side of his finger and reached out to her as the red liquid slowly seeped from the wound. Gently, Naoe collected the blood to rub it between her fingers.

As if she had soaked a brush, she lifted her hand immediately afterwards and turned away. A tingling sensation loosened in her fingertips, numbing the tips and making them frighteningly sensitive at the same time. All at once, her Devil Fruit clearly demanded to be used. It wanted to serve a purpose. To change the world. And Naoe surrendered to the desire.

Like magic, she traced the shape of a square in the air so that red, thick lines appeared. They found a foothold in nothingness, became wider, darker, more stable. Simultaneously, the crackling of wood filled the room. The frame formed, offering support for glass that crystallised out of the air – until a window appeared in the middle of the room. It was an act of seconds and yet it felt to Naoe as if minutes were passing. Perhaps it was because the past was on the other side of that window. A period of life already lived that she was now about to change.

Demonstratively, she opened the window, which swung open inwards. The horrible squeak of the hinges made her customer wince. Such a human reaction that Naoe couldn't help but give him a smile. He deserved someone else's kindness.

But he quickly composed himself, rose from his seat and walked as upright as somehow possible towards the passage. He didn't even turn back to his family, instead giving Naoe a determined look, a hint of connection, before he climbed through the opening and disappeared.

"The whole thing will take maybe five minutes for you. Be patient," Naoe ultimately threw into the room before following the man. The breath in her throat faded, her feet stepping into the nothingness that held her gently in the darkness. Then she stumbled two steps ahead, feeling the tugging at her shoulders and the cracking inside.

Someone yanked at her hair. Throbbing spread to the back of her head. Her legs continued to stagger, a hand feeling for her skull. The gasp on Naoe's lips remained silent, fading into endless emptiness where not a single scream could reach the outside.

Then came a push. A kick forward as something detached itself from her, as her skin tore backwards and seemed to peel from her body, drowning the soundless screech of her throat in pitiful whimpers.

It was always the same.

If she went into a past, she had to leave something behind. An original. Herself, while she was allowed to progress as a cheap copy of herself.

Staggering, Naoe followed the deep blackness, feeling the torment fade with each further step. Nothing about her was damaged. No pain. No injury. Just herself and yet not fully together.

Once more, the revolutionary took a breath before turning over the hourglass in her hand. Simultaneously, a second window showed in the distance. A bright frame that lit her way – took her from the present to the past.

Only when she stepped over the wood of the other side did she dare to look around. Her client stood a few steps in front of her, eyeing the dark green walls, the old wooden hallway, the ceiling. Disbelief chased a meaningless breath across his lips.

Naoe, however, simply noted the hallway before turning her attention to the man. "Where are you?"

"I-I am in the playroom at the moment. But I am about to leave it for a quick moment." Concentrating, the man stared at the nearest door, waiting for the moment the handle slowly pressed down. Then, all at once, he jumped behind Naoe, desperate to hide.

At least he had listened to her explanation.

A little too calmly, she strolled ahead, only to watch his old self leave the room. The mocking laugh on his thin lips didn't match the lean body in the designer suit. Yet it was exactly the image he embodied, and it remained even as the door slammed shut. Presumably, the first rounds of card playing had gone well.

Her presence brushed him barely a blink later, rolling over him so suddenly that he turned to face her with a jerk. Eyes widening, he noted her, only briefly, before she drew out and hit. With a powerful blow to the temple, he lost consciousness, collapsing like a house of cards that had been puffed on.

A moment later, she looked over her shoulder, gesturing for her client to come closer to receive the next lesson.

"You should change clothes, unless you want to stand out." With a throwing away hand gesture, she turned around. She was going to leave him that bit of privacy to change. As she could hear the fabric rubbing behind her, she let her gaze slide over the walls – adorned with overpriced paintings. "What are you planning to do?"

"I'm going to go in there and not discard one of my cards. I remember what everyone else has in their hand. I'll do better this time."

"Don't forget the time. Make your move, come back out and leave with me. If what you say is true, we will be in different places when you return. Your wife and son will feel they have never lived in the state they are now. Even if you know better," Naoe explained, leaving him with the hope everything would be all right again. Maybe it really would.

But in the end, no matter how many times she went back to the past, it didn't matter. Not to her.

He closed his eyes briefly to take in her words before courage came. Pushing his back through, he opened the door to the playroom with a wide, fake smile. The matching facial expression to a matching game he could no longer escape as he entered, and the barrier slammed shut behind him.

Naoe herself settled on the floor, where she also placed the small hourglass. It was in moments like these that she passed the time, watching the tiny grains fall and decide a fate. No matter what was to come, eventually the two hours would pass and no one would stop them. Even if someone turned the clock over again, the sand would continue to trickle in the same direction; from the bottom to the top. Once inside a time window, there was no turning back. Not even if one failed.

Each past point could only be entered once. Knowledge she had gained with her Devil Fruit. Someone else's knowledge that was simply passed on as if the fruit itself was nothing more than a large storehouse of lives lived.

According to the memories that weren't hers, there had only been two users before her. People who had lost their lives because they had made a mistake. Foolish things that had led to self-destruction.

Carefully, Naoe bent one of her knees and propped her head on it. The black jeans rubbed against her chin. Her index finger gently stroked the dark wood that held the small glass containers of the hourglass. A few strands of her red hair, combined with the pitch black front she had swept to the left, slipped out from under the hood. The front strands were longer than the rest, reaching a little past her chin and framing her face.

Without aim, she reached for the tips, wrapped the hair around her knuckles and freed herself from the strands barely a moment later. An act that served no purpose, just as her presence in the corridor didn't. She couldn't watch. Only wait.

The groan on her lips faded as Naoe put her head back and stared at the ceiling. Dim light seemed to bathe her in glaring sparks, engulfing her, letting her go and tossing her aside until the door to the game room opened again. Her client stepped back into the corridor, scratched the back of his head sheepishly, apologised for having to disappear for a moment, and closed the barrier one last time. The very next minute, he hurried towards her. "I have done everything. I left after that round then, not only because I had no more money, but also because I was bored with the game. We can go."

"You need to change first." She waved it off, buried her face in her hands and waited. Eternities until he had changed – until everything looked the same as it had before she arrived. Only his unconscious self represented a change.

The desire to improve was established, ate away at the time still trickling through the hourglass, so Naoe pulled to her feet and snapped her fingers. As if it had been waiting for a mission, the window they had come through manifested again – but this time invited them to go home.

Once more, she let her client go first and shortly after followed him through the blackness to the other side. But before Naoe reached the light of the present, something pressed against her body. Hair blew, ribs seemed to press inwards, her voice chased somewhere in the distance through time, conveying pain and unity.

That which she had left behind found its way back to her.

And it stayed with her when she arrived in the present. Her soles found grip on the worn wooden floor, her surroundings shrouded in silence.

The mission collapsed.

Nothing had changed. The client's family still lingered in the narrow dining room, trapped in this shabby old house where this downturn had started in the first place.

Her client stood with his back turned to her in the middle of his playful existence, his eyes fixed indecisively on his wife. Simultaneously, the window shattered.

Wood splintered across the room, dissolving in the same breaths as the glass became one with its atmosphere. The past receded into the background, once again becoming a page in a story that had long since ended, which Naoe said goodbye to with a lowered gaze.

"Why hasn't anything changed?" It was the boy who interrupted the tense silence. His memories had lingered, contained only a tiny change that spread slowly through the room. So startlingly unhurried that Naoe's client turned almost too frantically in her direction to grab her by the shoulders.

His gaze met pleadingly with her blue eyes, which knew how to ignore his fear. What he had done wasn't her responsibility. It wasn't her life. It wasn't even her position to give him a smile or speak well to him. She could only watch, only observe him as his breath swept faster across his lips and his fingernails dug into the fabric of her poncho.

"We have to go back again. To this very place!" His voice was like a breath, bitterly permeated by the shaking of his own shoulders. "I'll do better than that! I'll get it right this time!"

"We can't go back," Naoe returned gently. "Once, that's what I said. If you make the same mistake twice, you wouldn't get it right the third time. I could give you a hundred tries, they would all end the same. Maybe this life isn't sobering enough yet."

"I paid you!"

"Strictly speaking, your son paid me. For my services, which hereby come to an end."

"Then I'll pay you more!"

"Stop it already, you pathetic idiot!" his wife interrupted him loudly. Her words were like a scream, a bottomless box with nothing but remorse left as she shook her head. "That's enough. You ... that woman ... she changed things for you once before, didn't she? And you miserable fool just played on because you don't care about anything else! And now look at us! No matter how many times you won your stupid game, in the end you lost everything!"

Hastily, he turned to his spouse. A careless gesture that Naoe took advantage of to scurry past him and make her escape. Her task was finished, the confinement had to become no part of her. The restlessness inside, the obvious feeling of tense muscles, none of it needed to come forth in this place between this argument.

Her hurried footsteps clattered on the wood, whose creaking accompanied her to the door. No sooner had she set her first foot back into the alley than she headed for the narrow side paths that would lead her back into the crowd.

The stale air in her lungs kept pressing over her lips until a few steps only rumbled haltingly across the floor and Naoe slowed.

She had run away. Like a cowardly chicken.

But it was the best option she had left.

Only when she was out of sight of the poor quarter and surrounded by badly walled windows did she come to a stop. With pointed fingers, she plucked the poncho into place, patted the frilly old pink blouse underneath, pulled the hood a little way down her face, and still ultimately decided not to wear it. Among the crowd, the fabric would probably be pulled off her head, anyway.

Another sigh rolled across her lips as she ran a hand through her short hair and rolled her eyes. Distance from this self-absorbed family brought certainty. She had wasted her power. She had established another change, only to prove that few could handle the consequences. As if no one was capable of change. As if they were all slaves to their own addictions.

Without further ado, Naoe glanced between the bodies that were stuck together almost without a gap. Somewhere between them, she had to find an air pocket to leave this island. She couldn't stay any longer, had to keep moving, had to get away from him.

And maybe one of her two assistants would have a new mission at hand on the next island.

All she needed for that was a ship.

Slowly, Naoe started moving again, squeezing between two women who carried her straight to the nearest newsstand where she found a little space to break free. Heat clung to her body, surging to her core and only making it harder to breathe.

Half in thought, the revolutionary reached into one of her pockets to place some change on the narrow wooden bar before taking one newspaper. Immediately after, she pressed herself against the wall, pushing her way to the next alley, where life seemed to have died out. It was one of the strangest aspects of this island: everyone lingered on the main path, accepting the narrowness, but no one voluntarily set foot in the alleys.

Leaning back against the wall, she took the time to open the newspaper and skim a few of the most important lines. Pirates had taken the headline and although few were probably pleased, Naoe couldn't help but curl her lips into a smirk.

Big Mom had fallen. Monkey D. Luffy and a few members of his crew had taken it upon themselves to reduce the four emperors to three – with Charlotte Linlin still alive. It was amazing how the newspaper journalists tried to blame what had happened on the alliance the Straw Hat had made. They provided no facts and yet blamed "the rude Trafalgar D. Water Law" for all the turmoil.

Yet he hadn't even been there – the revolutionaries had spotted him on another island while chaos had broken out on Whole Cake Island.

The coverage was a joke. The predictions for what would happen were utter nonsense. Most of the disasters predicted in the newspapers never happened, while the madness outside went unrecognised.

No one had seen the battle at Marineford coming. Trafalgar's efforts to become one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea had also surprised most. Naoe had read the article about it a full two times.

Once as news and once as a fragment of the past.