Kahli knew she had to enter a meditative state in order to twist her chosen timeline, yet, it felt like she had absolutely no idea what she was really doing. Still, she did her best to hear Unit 5a23's words in her mind's ear and just be in the extremely near future. A step in front of the present moment.
Kahli finally activated her meditative state and was in a bit of a void within the void, which of course itself was within yet another void. All these nested timelines, nested voids... it was truly disorienting. But Kahli couldn't just keep focusing on that and that alone. No, she needed to focus on much, much more.
Kahli needed to figure out just exactly how she would twist this timeline. It had to be a small change, right? Well, a better way to think of it was that it ought to be a small change. After all, Kahli knew well enough by now the immediate reach and impact of this [skill], wherein choosing a twisted timeline could affect the past as much as it could the future.
With all that in mind, she had to be very intentional about what it was that she was changing. Considering things like this made Kahli really wonder what it was that people like the Supreme Time Protector got up to. They had to have committed all sorts of heinous, unknown atrocities just by the very nature of their systemic powers.
No, Kahli decided - she couldn’t dwell on this with such a veracity. In order to succeed in her task she'd have to laser focus on what it was that she needed to change. In order to do that, she needed to know with absolute certainty what it was she needed to focus on.
Without Froufrou to bounce ideas off of, it was all up to her. That... wasn't super fun, but it was the truth and it was a necessity. Kahli took a deep breath - this was in order to off-center herself, as the great meditative gurus of Nomachiato called it.
Now that Kahli was off-centered, she ran through the scenario she was twisting in her mind. What had really... happened? For whatever reason, the Supreme Time Protector seemed very keen in this scenario to summon up copies of themself and allow them to dance around one another with voracious, angry wordplay. Yes, they'd come out of that rift in time and gotten in a big argument, and then one had decided to stab the other one, because... Why, exactly?
Kahli couldn't be certain. She didn't recall there being an express reason other than sheer wrath that prompted the Supreme Time Protector to stab their past self to death. And with that, it also seemed that they were quite surprised when they, well, died. That leant credence to Kahli's thought that perhaps the Supreme Time Protector was not planning or intending for the stab wound to actually end their life preemptively. With that, Kahli thought about the knife. Could changing the knife be the twist she needed?
Kahli pictured how she would change the knife. What could she do? She pictured swapping the knife out with something innocuous, such as a baguette. That was a funny visual, and it truly made Kahli chortle, but it didn't grip her or make her feel like it solved any problems. Plus, how on Nomachiato would she justify such a timeline change?
The only thing she could readily think of involved either making the baguette a genuine weapon somehow, in which case it still would've killed the Supreme Time Protector, being a weapon and all. Additionally, if Kahli changed time so that baguettes were a weapon, what else would that do to time? What would Nomachiato look like if wars could be fought and won at the end of a long stick of bread?
It was too grim a fate to imagine, truly. With that, Kahli decided to instead just shift her focus and see what else she could change about the timeline. She needed something that would do a great job of diverting the trouble of the Supreme Time Protector dying, while also allowing her the ability to prevent something even worse from happening. In short, Kahli felt that the best way forward was to find some way to affect the local time at a micro level without affecting the macro timeline of, well, the whole world. And perhaps there was a way to do that with a baguette - after all, perhaps Kahli could change time so that the Supreme Time Protector had mistakenly grabbed a baguette instead of a knife that day, and somehow managed not to notice until the very moment wherein it was time to stab a younger version of themself. However, that was a risky and altogether unrealistic timeline option. Kahli needed to decide on a twist that made sense to her so that she wouldn't struggle with mentall implementing it.
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So she thought more. What was something easy? Something realistic? Something that just had to work? Normally, Kahli would've been eager tio hop in already and give it a spin - however, this was a weighty decision indeed that laid before her. If Kahli messed this up, she figured she'd be fresh out of opportunities to get the [Time Manipulator] [class].
Then she remembered something that the Supreme Time Protector had said in another scenario, her second scenario. The Supreme Time Protector had said that they would escape certain destruction by shifting timelines altogether when their younger self started to keel over and die. With that, Kahli realized that, too, was a viable option. But how exactly would she implement it? She wasn’t a Supreme Time anything, she didn't know anything about shifting timelines!
Maybe, Kahli was looking at this the wrong way. She needed something simple, something elegant that would prevent the Supreme Time Protector from getting in an argument with themselves. But what?
Finally, she had an idea. It was, on all accounts, an absolutely awful idea. Possibly one of the worst ideas one could have about twisting a timeline, ever. It was an idea that would be as great an inconvenience to her as it would be to the Supreme Time Protector.
However, it was so crazy, that it almost had to work. Kahli felt more than a renewed confidence. She felt a sense of foreboding as she exited her meditation and she looked down at her big left foot.
[Now viewing scenario 1 (twisted)]
Kahli was trying her best to convince Froufrou to accept the [class]. It was just as much of a struggle in this twisted timeline, until Kahli remembered something from Froufrou's character sheet that she'd scarcely taken advantage of in moments prior.
"Froufrou, let me tell you what to... do." Kahli tried to keep a serious face as she paused unnaturally in the middle of a sentence.
Froufrou immediately squelched with interest, perking up and not grumbling with anger and frustration as she had been. So it was working.
"Froufrou, let me talk to you. I want to say the words I say, words that I say to... you."
Froufrou squleched with glee.
Kahli cracked her knuckles. It was time to slam out some poetry. Or, at least, some semi-poetry.
"Froufrou, I respect YOU. I want TO. Get this [class] without being... an ASS." Kahli cringed a little at the language, but she had to do this for Froufrou. And it was obviously working, too. "I know YOU don’t trust this TIME PROTECTOR. And I get it, I... DO. But I want to tell you Froufrou that the words they are speaking I believe that they are... TRUE. I've gone to nested time... LINES. Do you know what I've been through? I've been time traveling just so I can impress. YOU?"
Froufrou squelched and squelched some more, each happier than the next. Kahli was starting to feel like a sort of circus performer.
"So I'm hoping that you'll say okay and that we'll take up the [class] today. Even if we can't always trust... hooded strangers in a void, I do think there are things here that we both can... ENJOY. I do believe they've got the power, I've seen it in timelines. Now if you don't mind I'd like to go ahead and try to say yes to this mess of an opportuni... tie?" The failed rhyme caused so much psychological pain for Kahli, but indeed from Froufrou's perspective it was as if the strange little tentacle creature had had gold coins raining down upon its figurative head.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Time Protector was arguing with themself as usual. Things were getting heated, and the knife was soon to be drawn - that much was absolutely certain.
"Hey! You guys! Stop it, stop!" called out Kahli, running through the void towards the cluster of Supreme Time Protectors. One of them pulled out their blade, prepared to stab their younger self. "Don't do it! Don't stab him! You'll all cease to exist, I've seen it on multiple timelines!!"
"Huh?" said all of the different versions of the Supreme Time Protector in unison. They seemed completely confused by the fact that Kahli was even aware of them enough to interject, much less that she'd indeed be trying to prevent them from stabbing one another!
But even that could not last very long, and by very long it is meant that it could not last more than an instant before the loud blaring of sirens and flashing blue torches changed the entire mood of the scene.
"Oh fuck. The fucking Time Cops," groaned the Supreme Time Protector.
"The what now?" said Kahli with confusion.
"The Time Cops!" said another version of the Supreme Time Protector.
Froufrou squelched in confusion.
A huge rift in time tore open like a ripped mouth of venus fly trap and out zoomed a horse and buggy with two figures in blue cloaks.
"Alright, everybody put your hands up! Hands up, everyone, before you commit a Time Crime!"
Kahli put her hands up, unsure of what was happening. A Time Crime? Time Cops?
To think, all she'd intended to do was use a little bit of slam poetry to win Froufrou over to her side, and now it had come to this of all things.