"Anything to report?"

Yanking down on the chair that a young security guard was half-asleep in, a much-older security guard chuckled to himself as he queried his young companion. Their job wasn't exactly glamorous, as the only activity they were tasked with was watching for activations of the Gateway. It was one of the most important duties, but it certainly wasn't going to impress anybody. The technical description of what they were required to do was so dull that even they found themselves nearly falling asleep when talking about it. The systems that they used to track Gateways were so ancient, the symbols were almost indecipherable; it amazed the older guard that his companion had even bothered to learn what to look for.

"Nothing, really. It's the same thing day in and day out. Nothing is going to happen."

Another chuckle escaped from the older guard, triggering a rather annoyed look from his colleague. His response was to simply shrug his shoulders. The young man wasn't wrong; it was easy to believe that there wouldn't be any Gateways, but they had to look for them regardless.

"Well, sign off and head home. You're off for a few days, right? You heading anywhere nice for your vacation?" the older guard queried as they switched places. As he took over in the seat, he rolled his eyes as he realized he had to adjust how far it was reclining; the young guard had adjusted it so that he could lie back and relax while he effectively did nothing.

The young man perked up at being reminded that he was off the duty rotation until the following week. He was more than happy to share his plans with his workmate. "Yeah, I'm heading out to Crescent Lake. My family has a cottage out there and it sits just outside the town. Far enough away from civilization to not have to deal with constant interruptions, but close enough that we can run into town to get a few things if need be. We'll be leaving tomorrow…"

His voice trailed off as he realized that there was a very gentle color change in the monitor that they both had stopped paying full attention to. His colleague looked up upon realizing the thought was left incomplete. After looking at each other in disbelief, they both sat down and started to punch buttons and work as quickly as they could. Behind them, the symbols that were on the screen began to appear in greater quantities and rotate around the screen. They quickly pulled out a map, drawing lines with rulers in a rather ancient form of triangulation. Eventually, the older guard looked up.

"Did you figure out where it says the Gateway is?" asked the young guard, wondering what he needed to tell their bosses. He honestly hoped that it was going to be somewhere secluded, where they could easily deal with whoever or whatever came through the Gateway.

"You might want to change your vacation plans…"

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Crescent Lake sat on the extreme southeast continent of Gaia, neatly tucked away between the Guru Volcano to the west and the Ryukahn Desert to the south. Over the last twenty years, the lakeside town had become something of a tourist trap; being so far separated from the rest of the populated areas of the world gave the town a sort of allure that few could say existed elsewhere. As it had been nothing more than a small fishing town before expanding, it was quite the change when the townspeople found themselves with an influx of visitors. Many houses had been built as a vacation spot on the northern side of the lake, a ferry serving visitors back and forth to the town.

The morning ferry was starting to leave from the vacation area when a slight rumble was heard from the mountains to the north. The multitude of visitors on the ferry found themselves lightly jostled as a decent-sized wave crested at the edge of the boat, rocking it enough to be noticeable. Forming a small gathering, the visitors looked out over the water towards the mountains, attempting to ascertain what might have caused the wave to form. Unfortunately, they could not see beyond the ridge of the mountain; due to this, most of them thought Guru Volcano was just smoking, as it was prone to do from time to time.

However, if they could have seen a dozen miles beyond the mountains, they would have found a series of underground caverns, long since abandoned. The wood that held up the maze-like network of tunnels had rotted decades earlier, back when Crescent Lake was first founded. It was there that a Gateway had formed, lighting up the dark and musty walls of the area with its mix of purple and blue pulses. Along the southern wall lay the Protector, upside-down and barely conscious after having been thrown out of the Gateway. He should have remembered this was going to happen or, at least, expected it.

"For the love of..." he grumbled as he attempted to roll over without doing further damage to his now-pained body. After all the battles he'd just been through at the end of the War, he might have thought being thrown against a wall would have been nowhere near as painful as anything he had experienced. His age told him differently as he grimaced, completing his roll onto his stomach. Feeling a sharp shock go through his back, the Protector pulled back his top to look around the area. There was a bruise forming, probably resulting mostly from his impact with the wall rather than the ground. Raising his left hand slightly as he closed his eyes, the Protector pulled a wave of green energy from out of the ground. The energy surrounded his hand as he reached back to the pain, pressing as gently as possible to the damage. He felt the healing powers that he had become so used to over his earlier travels start to comfort the pain; it was no substitute for an actual doctor, but he found it a useful skill to practice.

The Gateway began to fluctuate, creating an intermittent, not to mention disturbing, static sound. The Protector threw his hands against his ears as the screech began to resonate off the walls of the cavern. He squinted purely out of reaction to the sound, but that was almost perfectly timed as the Gateway started to fluctuate randomly. The Protector tried to open his eyes, but he could feel a rush of energy escaping through the Gateway towards him that prevented him from opening them too. After his attempt to see what the problem was, he realized what was happening: the Gateway hadn't closed in the future when the shockwave from the core reached it, and it was traveling back into the past along the Gateway. He rolled as much out of the way along the floor, flicking his wrist up into the air and snapping, trying to close the Gateway before the shockwave came through. It began to respond, closing rapidly, as the screech got higher in pitch and louder. Just as he stood up to watch it close completely, he was met with a powerful blast as the Gateway was forced back open and the last shockwave from the future came through, knocking him into a backflip before depositing him onto the ground. He looked up a few seconds later, as dirt and debris-covered him, watching the last Gateway from a now-destroyed Gaia close for the last time. As he stood up and looked around, he realized for the first time that he was, without a doubt, in the past.

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As he finished dusting off the debris, the Protector looked around before he started to move towards what he remembered was the sole remaining exit of the caverns. He had to move quickly, just in case some of the citizens in Crescent Lake showed initiative to figure out what had happened. He pushed off the ground, hovering a few inches above the topsoil, before leaning forward and propelling himself down the cavern just like he had only minutes ago.

'Or was it thousand of years in the future? Or millions?' he questioned himself. It didn't matter; he needed to avoid changing the past until an appropriate time. Events needed to continue as they originally did until he figured out exactly when he was. He tried to sense how many of the Four Fiends were awake, as that would give him some idea of when he was. As long as only one was awake and not in a deep slumber, he was fine. If he sensed two, he was a little later than he had planned, but that would be okay – he would be able to avoid interacting with his past self who was already there.

He tried to sense.

And then tried again…and came to a stop.

Something was amiss; he had sensed two Fiends awake. That wouldn't be a problem on its own, but when he realized he couldn't sense his past self, he knew there was something wrong. He could still sense all of the Elements, so the Fiends hadn't done enough damage to Gaia yet. He pressed on to get a good look at the stars to figure out as much as he could about when he was.

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Finally reaching the outside and breathing air that didn't feel as stale and old as he did, the Protector pushed off into the sky. He had powers that would allow him to remain unseen by most of the population, but certain people would be able to sense his presence. He could have flown west, risking being seen by the citizen of Elfland or simply head to the south, towards Crescent Lake. He could easily pass as a traveler who was just visiting; most people wouldn't think anything of another visitor. They wouldn't know what was real.

He had no clue what was real anymore as he passed through the sky. This was a world before events that he remembered could even begin to take shape, a world that could prevent many of those events from ever taking place. It felt so different to be in a world full of fresh air, with life all around him sprouting up from the ground instead of continually being buried in it. He was determined to see his plan through; if anybody had been close enough to see his face, they would have seen such determination that would cause even some of the best warriors in the world to keep their distance.

That level of focus, however, could easily give people the impression that he was on the warpath, a view that he desperately wanted to avoid. It did give him a reason to pause and think about what he had done. Could he truly say that he had not gone that far, pushing the boundaries of what it meant to be the Protector? After losing his friends, family, and his loved one, the Protector had grown accustomed to hating who he had become. However, now that the Celestial Order couldn't follow him into the past, there was a new freedom to try again, and this time from the very beginning.

It wasn't until the Protector landed, standing on the greenest grass that he had seen in decades, that it truly stuck him he was standing on a different world. He breathed in the air, feeling how cool it was as it passed through his lungs. There was no smell of destruction. While it was the same Gaia, the nuclear wasteland version was what for so many years of his life what the Protector had been forced to live in. The elements seemed so pure at this point in Gaia's history compared to the contaminated energies left over from the first few years of the Magi making a mess of things.

"This is the world worth saving. Not the future," stated the Protector out loud, either not knowing or caring that no one was in earshot. It was from here that he could survey the entire south-eastern continent. It was peaceful and quiet, both in the landscape laid out before his eyes and the general feeling the Protector could sense from the citizens of Crescent Lake. For one brief moment, he let himself remember what this area of the world looked like: the lakes and rivers that flowed with such serene grace now would turn acidic, while the town that had stood for decades would be replaced with smoldering embers covering the landscape. Nobody lived there anymore, leaving the only unchanged element being the peaks and valleys of Gaia itself. It was a destiny that the Protector was desperate to avoid.

"Perhaps I have changed, after all these years," he murmured, an act he hoped would convince himself that he was on the right path. He knelt, laying a gentle hand on the ground. The ground responded with a slight green tint as if the Planet was reaching back. "I've fought so long to protect you, Gaia, from whatever the current enemy happened to be and change a potential future. I've always justified preventing each particular evil's choice simply by explaining it away as returning the freedom for everyone else to choose." He stood back up to look over Crescent Lake once more as his next destination; the Planet continued to glow gently under his feet even though the Protector was no longer reaching out. "This is the point where I am allowing everyone to have a new chance at life…even if it means destroying my own in the process."