Time… Time is many things, a wonderful thing, a horrifying thing, a gift given upon us by reality… And a shackle that ties us down, mages and wizards will give you the whole spiel about how its mana and the soulscape that gives us the wonders that we have.

Heroes and Villains will speak about skills and the power that courses through their body as if it were the seventh wonder of the planet, and don't get me wrong. There are some wonderful, impressive skills to be found.

Across the time I haven't seen a skill more powerful than the one that Jackson Brighton wields, I walked to the end of time and the man was still standing there, fresh as if nothing had gone wrong, the man even still had his wits about and we drank coffee like I wasn't ten billion years into the future.

He even apologized to me, for what? He never told me.

Not that it would matter, time is less like a rule and more like a science, you need to understand that to achieve a particular result you need all the variables to line up. The future I arrived ten billion years into the future will be forever barred for me, for I would need to travel from the same exact spot at the same exact time.

And in case you aren't paying attention, that is impossible. For even I, Arthur Saintsworths [The Traveler] can't be in two places at the same exact time.

Or well, yes, I can. But it will not be the same for me. For you see, the me that traveled to the future will always be there thinking about something probably profound, and coming to the realization that going ten billion years into the future is the best way to achieve it. So yes, I can go to that exact point in time, exactly one.

Should I arrive a second after he travels, the landing point would be different, for my starting point would match in all the numbers except one. Time.

Now, if I had a way to phase myself out, I could perhaps attempt to do it… And I had a few mages try to sell me that idea, but really. All it achieved was to send me to another place, for the starting point wasn't exactly the same. So yes, that brilliant idea? It doesn't work.

Now, not all is lost, there are easy ways to make sure you land where you want to. And I have taken great strides into ensuring that. Traveling to the past…Is easy enough, altering the past? That is harder to achieve, I do have some…leeway.

My skill let's me know what changes I can do easily, some things are cheap for me to alter. Moving a pebble to the right so a child kicks it into the street and so it damages the wheel of a car that was passing by?

Almost negligible. This damage ensures that the car will need maintenance half a month earlier, ensuring that the owner doesn't arrive on time to a meeting where they would sell their new plan. Petty?

Perhaps. But what if I told you the plan they wanted to sell would start an arms race that would find half the population of the planet into a one-hundred war? Not so petty anymore is it?

That's all it is about, the small changes you can make to achieve the greatest success possible. Now, stopping a one-hundred-year war is a great achievement, but there are some things that can't be changed.

The creation of [The Twelve] for example? That one is fixed, can't stop it. I tried it. Multiple times.

The closest I got to achieving that was ensuring that Jackson Brighton wasn't recruited for the first generation, and that ended up creating [The Stygian Bane]... I regret that one. But if he had been the first generation instead of the second, he wouldn't have fallen in love with Catherine Starlight.

Should he not fall in love with her, then the Magical Girls would have ended up at odds with the Hero community; remember that one-hundred-year war? Yeah, now think about one where the generals of both sides are inmortal.

You do not want to wage a war against a Saintsworths, no matter how diluted and disgraced they are, and Catherine? She is a Saintsworths.

So yes, I engineered the creation of [The Stygian Bane]. Both Jack and Catherine know…or will know at some point, hard to tell when I told them. I did tell them, but it is in my past, and that doesn't mean it's in their past, too.

But that's enough about a presentation. Why am I rambling about time? Simple.

I am a Saintsworths, our blood is…special. Some think we were blessed by Fate…I know for a fact that there are some versions of us that were indeed blessed by Fate. Others think that we got cursed by Fate.

Again, I know of a few versions of us that, indeed, are like that. Versions of us that got sold as slaves, version of us that are tortured for our genes, always having blonde offspring with blue eyes? That can be a product.

And as [The Traveler], I can walk through both time and space. So yes, I know of the Fate of Terra Invicta, what Terra Nova is going through… I do not wish to walk anywhere near that if possible. But I know of them.

So when [The Advent] came, I already knew it would happen. I had seen its effects, but knowing the effects and knowing how it went about is different. I was aware that not all survived, but I…I didn't know how it would react to me, my skills and my blood.

When it came, it was as if the whole [World] was suddenly tearing at my seams, the mana was poison, the skills didn't want to activate and more importantly enough, I could feel all the temporal nodes set up around the planet as backups snuff one after the other.

I…I panicked.

You don't want a panicked Saintsworths. Ever. We…we don't deal with stress like normal people. And unlike what most of those at the top of the Saintsworths echelons tell you, we are very human. With very human reactions.

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So I panicked…And…I…Jumped.

My whole power is set up across walking through time, taking a step here, the next in a week, and the next one after that a hundred years into the future. I don't walk from here to there, I walk from then to now.

So when I jumped…I…was unmoored; half my skill set is built around creating temporal anchors that tie me to a set time period, ensuring I can't jump too far unless I really intend to, be it into the future or the past.

Because if one is unmoored, you can drift and never return home, learned that the hard way, when my skill first activated, I lived in a city, a nice city. It was called New York, it was a gem of a city filled with all kind of people from all over the world, the place one came when you wanted to be someone. To become someone.

And then…I took a step to tell Mother about how time had frozen, but while I could see Mother waving at me, each step made my surroundings change. The changes were subtle, her blouse changing color, the house becoming bigger, smaller…

But each step changed the world around me, when I arrived to where she stood…That was no longer my Mother, but someone else. To them I was the same, to me? The world was wrong.

So I ran, and I ran…When I got tired the world had changed irreversibly, nobody knew about New York, of my parents, of me…I was a face that they had never seen, the planet was the same, I checked. But the nations were wrong, the events were the same, but the actors had changed.

No matter what I did, I never managed to return home, I learned how to anchor myself and stuck to it. Swearing to never take a single step again if I couldn't keep myself anchored.

But now? Now I was screaming my lungs out, and I had jumped.

Soon I found myself out of time, not somethign I hadn't felt before, only Zaanam was rejecting me. Pushing me out, and I was no longer anchored, it took all the efforts I had to keep myself tied to Zaanam.

But I knew…I couldn't manage this for long, soon I would need to take a rest, and a second didn't meant the same for me that for everyone else. For me it could be a single instant in time, for Zaanam it could be from a year to a millenia.

And without my anchors…

There were backups, of course, technology that could track me, skills that could point at me, Magic that was designed to pull me, but would they work? Without the anchors tying me? I didn't know.

I knew logically that both [The Juggernaut] and [The Tinkerer] could track me, I was fairly certain [The Sniper] was able to find me if she wanted.

I had seen timelines where they all used their Skills and Magics at the fullest of their power, timelines where [The Juggernaut] stopped pulling her punches, timelines where the [Tinkerer] used her brain to humble all of us.

Timelines were [The Sniper] stopped using guns and actually used her Magic to fight. So hope? I had hope.

What I didn't think would happen was who would find me. The first signal of someone finding me came by a pair of purple star eyes locking at me, such a weird feeling, nothing out of the ordinary, there are plenty of eldritch entities and gods roaming the outer planes.

The issue came when that same presence came back, only observing, followed next by a group of small foxes. Nibling at the barrier that was keeping my body in one piece. Now, why didn't I shoo them away?

First, I was, am, will be and continue being, frozen in time.

The only thing keeping me stable is the fact that time as a thing no longer applies to me; I am a fixed object as a way to keep myself safe. So yeah, can't really talk or do anything while you are screaming at the void frozen in time (Really, embarrassing the fact that I forgot to stop screaming while I jumped).

Secondly, I didn't think they would, will be, or could even, move me. You need to be able to tamper with Time in order to achieve something when dealing with me.

And these foxes? They didn't smell like time, my theory was proven when they were unable to do anything.

No, the issue came from a different point.

You see, after these foxes strut all around they may have called something else, a group of serpents slithered around, and unlike the foxes, these reeked of [Time], so these thing started moving my prison.

I…do have some skills and ways to defend myself, each one would probably eject me farther away from the Zaanam I had come to love and live in, but they were an option, better in a strange place than at no place at all? Right?

Well, I had planned to do so, will plan to do so, did so…Till I noticed that these serpents were pulling me straight back to Zaanam.

Now…I had, will have, do have, some options…I could first stick my anchor as soon as I land and run away, the first step to survival is to run away from danger after all (Learned it from the best of them, Jonathan S. J. We miss you.)

But the issue was…these serpents seemed smarter than what one would think, they pulled me back to Zaanam, and ensured the structure of my prison was kept stable. Now, I was out of sync with Zaanam, so I couldn't quite see well where I landed, but it should be somewhat safe since none of my countermeasures auto-triggered.

The thing is…Why would they pull me back? I was thankful, of course; this would mean my prison would probably do its work, purify my mana into something more apt for Zaanam, and let me exit the time prison.

I was still wondering what had made the World want to purge me, but surely it wasn't something as bad as I had imagined, The last thing I saw before jumping out was [The American Crusader] and [The Stardust Explorer] doing something very stupid. But that was that, they did those kind of things on the daily.

You get used to those things.

No, this was something else. Someone with enough power to pull him? This early? At worst, it should have been about a hundred years, at best around 20 years. Who could grow this much power in such a short time? Perhaps if [The Juggernaut] started to channel her more esoteric powers?

Perhaps [The Sniper] had started wielding her Magic more openly? Hers was a strange case; she wasn't present in most of the timelines adjacent to this one he was living on, but in each that she was present, she was always a powerhouse.

As the time barrier was dismantled he started to get his bearings more and more, soon enough he could finally close his eyes and rest his sight, focusing in recovering as the time settled on his skin once again.

It was refreshing, and also…worrying, it had never been this accepting…It was then that he noticed it, the mana..it was…weird. It didn't felt as before, it was…purer? Each iteration it did on his body it returned more murky, but more in line with what he remembered, what had happened? Someone had purified his mana? That… shouldn't be possible.

There were very few entities that could even think about doing something like that, none currently on this timeline, he had checked.

"There you have it, Mistress!" A voice called, Arthur took his time nursing his headache away; it was always hard to settle his mind from a five-dimensional frame to a normal three-dimensional frame.

Time was like that.

"Yes, there it is Mistress. Will you require anything else?" A second voice asked, this one had a weird reverb, as if it was hidden a more powerfull entity behind it.

"That will be all," An angel-like voice sounded; it also sounded somehow imperial-like? Commanding? He couldn't figure out how to describe it.

It was then that he felt his body settle down into Zaanam once again.

"...He is…anchoring his mana?" The angel-like voice asked, confused, "Why?"

"He probably either has no control over his own skill, or his skill is too powerful for him to be able to control it. Less talented people do have those issues with powerful skills." The first voice said with what he assumed was a shrug, it sounded like a girl showing off.

That was worrying, the fact that a group of young people had these kind of powers, well, he could deal with that, honestly he was quite happy with the fact that he hadn't been rescued by [The Prophet] or [The Warlock], hell, even being rescued by [The Elementalist] or [The Monk] would have been an issue.

But he had more pressing matters, such as

"Arthur? Are you well?" Answering to that voice, it sounded…familiar? Had he been pulled to an alternated Zaanam already? Perhaps one where he was familiar with these people?

That would suck, pretending to know people was always an issue he didn't want to deal with.

"Ah yes," So he braced himself and started opening his eyes, "Sorry about that; you know how it is with realigning myself back with Zaanam; it always leaves me somewhat dizzy."

He joked as he prepared to snap the anchor and try to re-adjust it to the timeline he had been in before, the one closest to peace and success he had found.

He didn't get the chance to do so, because as soon as he opened his eyes, "[Time out], WHAT IN THE SEVEN PLANES OF HELL!?!?!?!?" He screamed as the scenery came into his view and a second after it, the time froze from the effect of his skill.

First was the face of the first voice, a young girl clad in time as if it was clothing, then a secondary girl clad in space as if it was a blanket. That was bizarre enough, the issues was with everyone else in the room, they weren't normal either.

[The Juggernaut], or someone who could be her older sister looking at him with worry, and worse. The only remaining face in the room, the one who should have been the angel-like voice?

It was…Elizabeth Starbright, the daughter of Jack and Catherine, the one girl he didn't want to be anywhere near, the girl who almost pierced his time defenses and peeked at his mana hours after her initial awakening?

A feeling he now knew was the feeling of someone using an Identify-like skill?

That same girl was standing there looking at him.

It was a jump scare so bad that he had frozen time for himself as a defense mechanism, what the hell was he supposed to do?

"What did you do?" Elizabeth asked, looking around as if nothing had happened.

"Gah!" He didn't scream like a girl surprised, no sir. "....How are you able to move?"

Instead, he asked a more pressing matter while keeping the facade of being in control, yes. He was Arthur Saintsworths, [The Traveler] and he was not out of his element.

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