| Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Omni Flash 1.1 |
The lab that Elise was in with Miracle and Reagan disappears, and is
replaced with Elise’s own apartment in Abodome. The first thing she sees is
the front door closing. Someone seemingly just left, so she needs to find
out who. She sprints over to it and opens it back up. She looks down the
hallway and sees herself. Well, she sees the back of her own head. She
recognizes the outfit too. This is it. This is the day that she and her
friends officially began their hunt under Treasure Hunting Dome. She has
gone back in time, just as Rae and Mir said she would. The question is,
though, what now?
They didn’t actually give her any instructions. They didn’t say what she was
supposed to change. She doesn’t have any experience in this, and they know
that. Or they will know that, because at this point in time, she
hasn’t met either of them yet. What they did to her was isolate her from
everyone she cares about. There is no one she can trust without risking the
timeline, and even if there were, they wouldn’t be able to help her anyway.
She’s going to have to figure this out on her own. First things first, treat
this like any other challenge on the hunt. According to Rage’s explanation
of how they typically go, the last challenge often involves memory. You have
to keep track of where you went and what you did, and regurgitate that in
some way.
Elise tries to sit down at her computer, but her chair isn’t designed with
wings in mind. She has to use the kitchen stool, which isn’t comfortable
either because she still can’t lean back, but at least she’s not leaning
forward. She opens a new file and starts to retrace her steps. She starts
more general, and becomes more specific, adding the minutest of details to
get a full picture of what happened once the hunt began. She color-codes it
by actions she took, actions others took, and actions done to them by
the game. She then goes in and adds even more information, about things that
she wasn’t there for. She lists things that other hunters did, and tries to
guess what Hrockas and Azad were doing in the meantime. She makes it a full,
comprehensive bible of the whole ordeal, from start to finish. She even goes
back to include events leading up to minute one, even though some of it is
already in the past from her current perspective.
There is one interesting development; a mystery which they never solved.
When the hunters were circling the desert, looking for their next clue,
Minotaur went missing. They said someone in robes grabbed them and they
tried to get away and lost their jacket, but the attacker quickly caught up
to them. Elise looks over at her bed where she laid the robe that Reagan
hung over her at the very last second. She goes over to it and picks it up.
“Could this be it? Was it me the whole time?” But if so, she’s not come back
to change the past. She can’t; it’s inevitable. She’s merely following in
her own footsteps. Nothing will go better this time, because this isn’t a
different time. Unless there’s a third Elise around here somewhere.
She suddenly starts to feel like she’s being watched.
Elise paces the room. “What was it Miracle said once about time travel?
If you don’t have proof that something didn’t happen, there’s a chance it
happened.” She stands there and ponders that for a moment. Then she goes right back
to her timeline document and reads the part about the desert again. “If you
don’t have proof it didn’t happen, it might have happened,” she whispers.
She nods, a little excited and more determined. “Right there. That’s my
shot. I don’t have to change it if I assume it’s already happened.” She
grabs the robe, drapes it over her body again, and disappears.
Elise has spent weeks practicing teleportation and flying. She has worked
out every day to build up her strength. She went to a biotailor to improve
her substrate even more. They reinforced her wings and increased the density
of her muscles while lowering the density of her bones. It’s a trade-off,
but she needs to be both strong and light. Her mission doesn’t necessarily
involve being better than she already was, but why waste this opportunity?
She has to do something while the timeline catches up.
She learned a few things about her temporal abilities. She can teleport from
the real world to the Facsimile at will. It takes an extra boost of energy,
but not as much as she figured at first. She also learns how many jumps she
can do before she runs out, and she learns that she can actually increase
her numbers by being more efficient, and even processing more temporal
energy from wherever it comes from. The time for training is now over,
though. This is the show. She packs the essentials, some of which she had
to...borrow from a secure location, throws her robe back on, and
heads off to work.
She is in the desert now, and has been for a couple of days. She
intentionally came a little early in case something went wrong, but she also
isn’t entirely sure when her past self and her friends will show up. They
didn’t have timepieces with them at the time. She knows where they’ll end
up, however, so she’s on her belly, watching that spot with binoculars. The
robe can shift colors, as most clothing can in the modern world, so she just
looks like a crest in the sand dune. She has learned to be still and patient
too. She didn’t set out to do that, but it came naturally with all of her
other training.
They’re here. Elise watches Azad transport them all before leaving with
Hrockas and Telman. Now it’s just the hunters. She can’t hear, but she knows
what they’re talking about. She waits until they spread out, triggering her
window. She teleports directly to Minotaur, and after a brief struggle,
relocates them to the rocket maze. Then she returns to her perch to wait for
her next move. She sees them reunite and argue about what to do, and she
sees Miracle teach her how to take control of her body. She watches as her
past self gets trapped on the surface with Colley, where they both surrender
to their budding romance, only to be caught by the others after they
complete the underground maze. They all then go back down there to learn the
truth about Rage.
This is it; it’s happening. Elise knew that she would be successful with
Mino, because it already happened to her, but this is the real change. This
is what she’s been actually training for. The ship blares as it begins to
ascend. The ground shakes and gives way. Future!Elise has to start hovering
to keep from slipping down the dune like an ant in an antlion’s pit. She
slowly gets closer to get a better look, still worried about being spotted
by someone. Past!Elise is now trying to hang on to both Colley and Zelda,
but she’s not strong enough yet. Colley volunteers to let go, but Zelda
beats him to it.
Future!Elise uses her friend-finding ability to teleport to exactly where
Zelda is. She grabs her by the waist, and jumps them both back to the inside
of the rising rocket.
“Whoa! How did you do that?” Zelda asks, trying to orient herself. “How did
you do that? What are you wearing? How is your hair green now? Where’s
Colley?”
“He’s fine.” Elise replies. She takes out two vacuum suit cartridges,
placing one on Zelda’s chest, and the other on her own. The nanites emerge
from the cartridge and wrap themselves around them to protect them from
space exposure. She did it, they won. Didn’t they?
No comments :
Post a Comment