Froufrou had but one scenario left to view, one timeline to experience before she could get out of this [checkpoint] and on with her life. Of course, she had to play her cards right - if she died in this scenario, she'd be stuck with the first one. The first scenario wasn't necessarily bad, however, it was extremely messy, what with including a nested [checkpoint] and the whole business with the original Supreme Time Protector getting killed by a version of the Supreme Time Protector from an alternate reality. All that said, there was a large part of Froufrou that hoped the third scenario would be the charm. And it was time to find out.
[Now viewing scenario 3]
Froufrou plummeted through the air, but this much was part and parcel at this point. With a laser focus, Froufrou glanced down at Omar as he zoomed up to capture her. She was going to do what she'd been saving for this scenario. Froufrou let loose a squelch akin to a war cry as she released a huge, powered up ball of [Putrefy] goo towards Omar. Sure, this attack was relatively slow, but quite quickly it connected with her foe, fully encasing him in the encumbrance of icky slime.
[Critical hit]
[Omar's flames have been temporarily snuffed]
"AGH! What the fuck?!" spat Omar as his flaming arm and posterior both went out like lantern lights running low on oil.
Froufrou squelched with glee to see Omar stuck there, suspended in the air by her ball of goop, suffering under the worst effects of [Putrefy].
"Froufrou!" cried Kahli with glee as she reached her [paired] companion and snatched her handbag out of midair. Kahli continued to kick off her big rock as she slung the purse over her shoulder and looked down at Omar. "What do you think we should do with him while he's incapacitated, Froufrou? Obviously he won't be held up forever."
Before Froufrou could so much as squelch out a response, a terrible roar battered their senses. With a glance above Kahli and Froufrou both were in awe as they saw G'athoong and the bone dragon dueling it out, blast torrents of water and lightning breath at one another again and again in a wretched cacophony.
"Oh wow," said Kahli. "I hope G'athoong doesn't take too much damage up there."
Froufrou wasn't as worried for G'athoong - the water dragon could always reconstitute herself into many droplets of water and slowly recreate her form - as she was for Sahdi. She was still up there riding G'athoong, as far as Froufrou was aware, and that was a troubling thought to Froufrou. She wondered if the thought had even occurred to Kahli that Sahdi might be in danger. It certainly didn't seem like it - and yet, Sahdi had been a bit of a steadfast companion to Kahli ever since the initial outbreak of New Curr. Froufrou didn't like the idea of Kahli losing someone who'd made sure she was safe and kept healing her despite how badly she treated her - it seemed like a massive risk to Kahli's wellbeing, and of course seeing as they were [paired] and thusly shared a system, Froufrou's wellbeing was of course intrinsically tied to Kahli's.
Froufrou tried to communicate all these thoughts to Kahli, but of course, all that came out was a barrage of squelches that were surely near indecipherable to her. Froufrou often likened Kahli's understanding of her squelches to a dog's understanding of tauman speech - that is to say, she could understand a few of the simpler squelchings, such as happy or angry, but if Froufrou tried to communicate anything of depth it was truly lost on her [paired] companion.
But, apparently, that wasn't fully necessary, due to some unforeseen circumstances that threw Froufrou completely for a loop.
"Froufrou!" cried Kahli. "It's Sahdi! She just fell off G'athoong's back!"
Froufrou was thrilled that Kahli was coming to the same conclusions she'd worried about on her own, without any prompting. It was a huge relief. Only, it didn't seem that Kahli was immediately sold on saving Froufrou. Indeed, she kept just hovering in the air there, kicking lightly off her big rock and staring up as Sahdi fell further away from the fighting dragons.
"What do you think, Froufrou? Should I do anything? Or is it too much of a liability?"
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Froufrou was disgusting. Well, of course she was disgusting, but she was also disgusted, too. Kahli seemed completely blind of the utility, no, the necessity of saving Sahdi. It almost seemed like a kind of willful ignorance, which filled Froufrou with putrid bile to behold. After all, as she was limited in her communication, Froufrou often found herself privy to submission to other peoples' thoughts and decisions. So, the dismissal of something that ought be done with ones' own agency - such as saving a doubtlessly valuable party member - invalidated her to point off almost feeling like a betrayal. It was a huge insult to Froufrou that Kahli would even consider not saving Sahdi, almost like Kahli was afraid of something. Which was patently absurd - why, Kahli had shown Froufrou time and time again that she was the closest to fearless a person could be. So why was this so different? Froufrou wasn't certain, but she also didn't have the time to rack her mucus membranes about it. With that in consideration, Froufrou did the only thing she rightly could do and started squelching up an angry storm at Kahli that quickly threw her [paired] companion totally off-guard.
"Woah! Froufrou, what's wrong?"
Froufrou released squelch after furious squelch, hoping with all her might that it would be enough to get through to Kahli.
"Wow, Froufrou, that really was a stinky one. What have you been eating?" Kahli cleared her throat and did a double take. "Er, Froufrou, I just realized something. I feel like I've barely seen you eat at all. How do you-"
Froufrou interrupted her [paired] companion's interrogation with a mighty bout of squelching that made it more than abundantly clear just exactly what it was that she expected Kahli to do.
"Theseosus' pincers, fine!!" said Kahli with enthusiasm as she held Froufrou tightly to her side and with a few might kicks propelled herself towards her falling party member. As the wind gushed out of her way, Kahli soon found herself right in the path of Sahdi's fall and snatched her out of midair.
"Kahli!" blurted Sahdi in a huff. "You saved me!" She looked like she was blushing, from what parts of her face Kahli could see under her living wood.
"Oh, uh, yea. Of course," said Kahli. She was unsure of how to proceed, but Froufrou's gleeful squelches certainly inspired a good bit of confidence.
[End scenario]
And so it was that Froufrou was greeted once again by the cold, gloomy stillness of the endless void.
Well, it definitely could've been stillness, had it not been totally cramped by the younger Supreme Time Protector and their disappointingly off-white robes.
"So, that sure was something else, wasn't it?" they said with a chuckle. "I mean, you've really run the gamut here. You could go to that first scenario, where you end up in a nested timeline and I end up getting murdered by my alternative self, you could go to the second scenario and die, or you could go to the timeline where... Kahli saves Sahdi? As if that were worthy of being its own timeline. I'm only joking, of course - if it is a scenario of yours then it is doubtlessly worthy of being a timeline, otherwise it wouldn't have constituted. But I digress... the important thing to grasp here is that you've got three choices, one of which you die, one of which I die, and one wherein seemingly nobody dies. Now, I don't want to backseat scenario select or anything over here, but as you've got me here I'm more than happy to provide my own input, and-"
The younger Supreme Time Protector kept blathering on, saying less and less of substance with each sentence. On realizing this and thusly deciding to ignore them, Froufrou shifted to considering each timeline. Clearly scenario two was a total bust, as Froufrou wanted to stay alive. And with that, it was really just between the two timelines. Both seemed to have a path forward, however, Froufrou was leaning towards scenario three. This is because scenario one felt just... messy. The Supreme Time Protector died, and it was Froufrou's fault in the first scenario. That did not an ideal timeline make, she figured. Now of course, there was the whole business with the bone dragon offering up to Froufrou clandestine information, however, was there not still an opportunity to gleam such information from the third scenario? After all, it wasn't like the bone dragon died in any of the scenarios. So whatever information it held was Froufrou's for the eventual taking regardless. Really what it came down to, was which timeline Froufrou felt was putting her best tendril forward. Ideally, she would've liked to make the decision with Kahli, but she'd been pushed to action and given the power to decide.
And with that, Froufrou found herself leaning towards the third scenario decidedly. After all, there would still be a chance for her to learn what it was the bone dragon had to say, Froufrou felt fairly certain in this, although she wasn't sure how she'd get to that point. What Froufrou did know, however, was that she wasn't going to live her life as part of a timeline wherein she accidentally summoned up the Supreme Time Protector's evil alternative self. That would've truly been too embarrassing to immortalize in her timeline's canon.
With that, Froufrou looked under her endlessly writhing scenarios and focused on scenario three. It was time to take the plunge and finally leave the [checkpoint] to write new histories in the present.
Only, Froufrou suddenly had a thought. Was it worth it to consider twisting timelines, first?