five

Five

Nope.

Cat ears. On a teenaged girl with her school uniform on, and maybe with the long hair.

The elements are full now.

"Shiroko?"

She blinked.

"Do I look the slightest like her to you?"

No. Defenately not.

I reached for her ears, she slapped away my hand.

"Try again and you'll be the hound."

Wow, fierce.

The rain continued. Not even making the attempt to stop.

Everything I've dreamt about anime turning into real life...

My brain was now on overload mode times two as it generated heat enough to fry a stake.

"Wow."

She looked up at me like I'd gone nuts, which I might really have been."No. What are you wowing at, stop gawking. Give me the towel."

The lass snatched the towel out of my hand and started rubbing off the silt tinting her shirt, leaving me in the same state of the one I've already been through when gawking at the hound.

I started to reach for those ears again, but the girl glared me down. My hand retreated.

The cloud grew thicker as it dropped curtains of rain on the parched, fire-blackened street. I came out of my shock and gazed out the shop window again, just to spot a boy sprawled in the middle of the crater, limp and unmoving.

Yup Tim's back alright.

"Don't. His condition is stable enough." The girl stopped me again as I tried to make a dash towards Tim.

"I can't afford to leave him in the middle of nowhere..."

"And I cannot afford to risk more timeline bondings." She retorter, still grabbing my shirt. "His otherworldly bondings are loosening. Those auras will keep him out of danger. Hopefully."

Why is she so obsessed in adding 'Hopefully?'

"Don't go, unless you wanna be a dog. Let's first answer your talkative expression. Sit. Chatting is also crucial in fantasy stories."

As far as my knowledge goes, things aren't right. And that's all beside my repulsing stomache. The only thing I could do at the moment was to trust her. My brainn's actually processing well.

"Let's start with your career. The weapon you'll wield, that is." She fished out a coin from her pocket, and it lengthened into a three-foot-long spear with an elegant shink as bronze scraped against bronze." Except for this one, i suppose."

Then why would you toss it in battle if it's self lengthable?

"For what?"

"Fighting, of course." She said, trying to manage a flat tone." You're not going to tell me that you'll fight muscle against muscle, right?"

She hesitated." Wait I've actually got one."

I backed up a little, sticking my entire back to the white stucco wall, now charred black by the priveous impact "No, I'm not coming with you. Can you just leave me alone?"

"And what? go one-on-one with street thugs and cause more timeline inflection?"

"Wait why'd you eve know that I'm ingaged in thug business?"

"Checked your data. Only the interesting ones."

I felt punctured, like the hound.

"What the hell you check me out for?"

She ignored my compliments.

Her hands did a gesture that reminded me of the zoom-in on phone cameras, and there, in the centre, appeared something. A dark void of nothingness, but only a few inches wide.

I was shocked that I knew it's name.

"Grand crevasse. Built on the base of multi-verse theories itself."I blurted out."Something about the MML..."

"Not bad, Johnson. Seems like it's doing its job."

"What is?"

"Talk later, now do your job."

I wanted to argue that I've got no actual jobs to do at the moment, but again things aren't supposed to be even the slightest normal today. Then I finally noticed the hideous lump in my pocket, I drew it out. It was shining alright, but in a darker tonality than before as a dark fissure snaked along its side, making it appearance a dragon's pupil.

"This is the telepathy one?"

"Told you, got you covered in the first place."

She didn't sound convincing enough.

"Keep it. Try keep it safe or I will die."

"Did you mean DIE die or..."

"That's what I said. It's my lifestring."

Her sense of humour was becoming pretty hard to distinguish.

Peronally I don't trust that. But still I slid the lifestring back into my pocket and made a note to parcel it up in thick layers of plastic airbags once I reach home

"Why not others? After all, Why would trust me in the first place?"

"Our fate works like this. Whether you want it or not. It's intertwined in the first place." She fumbled around in the void and produced something the size of a switch ( Not nintendo, a button)." Turn around."

She placed the button on my cerivical vertebra and switched it on. It started expanding, cold iron wrapping around my biceps and lengthening onto my fingertips until I my upper limbs, feeling more like a foil-wrapped steamed chicken than Iron man.

It didn't actually weight much, that I appreciated.

"Log-in account/Register" A hologram shimmered into existace, blocking my front view.

"Umm, shall I..."

"Don't." She warned as she contemplated my new iron arms, and finally made up her mind." Nope, exoskeleton armour won't do, too buff." She waved her hand and the arms shrank, retracting into a button again and flew into her hands.

She reached her hand again into the void, muttered something under her breath, and seemed to give up.

"Give me a moment." She ordered and got to her feet, expand the void until it could fit a limousine, and tilted it sideways, letting all kinds of weapons to slid to the ground, clanging and clattering against each other until it gathered into a pile of shimmering massif.

"Go ahead." She gestured for me to come." make a decision. It's all yours."

Blade moutains aren't usually seen, not even in animes.

So why not?

Careful of the sharp blades, I started ploughing through the metal mountain. Digging into it was the main part, avoiding pointy objects just wasn't my kind of thing. But the urge to actually dig into a pool of swords and bows is more irresistable than it might sound. Every single weapon was delicately polished, some carved with ancient Greek, or Egyptian, whatever. I could tell by their looks that they're forged by the world's finest blacksmiths.

"All of them linked with other multiverses, just choose one, whatever." The girl started fiddling with her coin again, tossing it and catching mid-air. She spoke with her eyes fixed on the coin." Don't count on replica's base damages, never good enough."

I lifted a weapon that showed a remarkable resemblance to a sickle in RWBY." You serious?"

"That's your final choice?"

"No, give me a few more minutes."

"Better hurry then." She let

out a distinct exhale.

I was more than a few more minutes. I should admit it was great fun digging into a pile of mythologic metal. The satisfaction was beyond calculation. Then something caught my eye as I chisel deeper into the mountain. Double-edged twin blades, shimmering with a hue of greenish blue. They were not exactly twin blades, one of them was clumzy looking, with a main structure like a double handed blade, it's a one-handed blade otherwise. On its side lay a short-knife-lengthed sword sharp enough to slice through cement, handy enough to parry fast strikes. I should've met these blade before, somewhere ...

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Cojuring it up was a hard thing. Conjuring something up was always the hard thing.

Nevertheless, I lifted the double blades. They hummed mildly as if responding to my grasp, adjusting the glow on its periphery to a joyful lite blue. There were words carved on its side I couldn't quite make out. I glanced at the girl.

"High tension carboate fiber coped with celestial bronze. Good taste, Johnson. That's it?"

I nodded in response.

"Johnson. F. Lanyll, registration, huh. That's Excalibur you're holding."

I examined my blades. "which one?"

"Both."

"There can't be two king-like blades existing, right?"

She gestured around."Did any of these seem reasonable to you?"

No.

"That's it. Me neither. Multiverses works like this, all messed up and stuff."

And stuff.

"Just try not to freak out when you hear that there's a dualsword playing Arthur in otherworldly myths."

I would rather not like to see that.

After all, how did that Arthur pull out both swords anyway, Like applicating his strength diversely one on each blade?

"Career: Gladiator." The hologram shimmered to life just in front of my eyes.

Why Rome? Isn't it supposed to be Saber? For its excalibur and all?

"Access confirmed. Welcome, Johnson F. Lanyll." The screen narrator read aloud." Applicatios will be downloading into your hippocampus section B in about 30 minutes."

"Elon Musk engaged in this program?"

"Relax, it's only the basic cobat skills."

Which will defenately include high tension acrobats like doing somersaults. That's often the basics in animes.

Since the downloading process's going to take a while, and the time reached null point, We decided to walk our whole way down town back to my house. I was very not pleased for letting Tim lie in the middle of nowhere, but the girl insisted on something about timeline fusion and I had to give up to avoid further brain collision.

"Better put your cap back on." I said as she sprinted forward, then I realized that I didn't even knew her name."And what's your name again?"

"Hmm... Can't remember." She raised her voice a notch as the night wind blew in her direction.

"Great, Ms. Can't remember."

"Hey that's not my name."

"Then what is?"

"Hmm..."

The night breeze was soothing as the street lights shimmered, illuminating the pedestrian street with circles of light, stretching our shadows longer, then shorter again as we hiked alog the empty street. Unlike usual, the road that buzzed with cars and pedestrians now only posessed lights from a few shops interspersing the street.

"Eliana?"The girl cried over the night breeze as she trotted down a steady path.

"What?"

"Eliana Trace!" She cried again and reered back to see my reaction." Nice name, right?

I might have heard it somewhere, a place that my memory intentioally held firm and denied my access." Why? It isn't yours?"

"Dunno. Just feel like it."

A name I've heard a long time ago.

"I will find her one day, no matter who she is." She again joyfully bounced forward.

Whatever.

"Eliana."

"Nice name, right?" She turned and asked

again, slightly tilting her head aside, making her hair sway in the night wind.

" Yeah." I managed a smile. I found it even more tiring to smile after strange things happen.

She smiled back. It was cute alright, with her lite blue pupils looking up at me. Then I felt something at the back of my mind being hooked up. There's something familiar about that particular smile. The angle of that tilt of her head, The way how her eyes glinted with a sense of joy that nobody could relate instead of herself...

Things had happened before.

Way before the first collision.

Johnson...

......

" Johson!"

I jolted back to reality.

"You were just standing there like caught in a trance." Her tone was had a hint of worriedness in it. Her eyebrows, apparently not used to being furrowed up, wasn't doing a great job in showing her anxiety." I was thinking about calling 110."

"That's the police my dear."

"Oh right, it's 120."

Education it is.

"My turn." I turned towards the girl.

"Sure. Ask whatever. Just try avoiding personal info plz."

Things were a lot relaxing afterwards, at least physically without intense exercising. There were several things I was clear about. I'll try representing it in an easier way, not with all the speciallized vocabs that is.

1.The girl's not going to remember anything about herself no matter how much I stress her. There are also certain things I should give up.

2.Multiverse theories. Just too common among sci-fis.

3.Links between universes.

"Think the multiverse people. Imagine they're currently forming a matrix. When they're told to go into a less compacted position, they did it, but the formula's still perfectly arrayed. And memory's the link."

Some of the scintists may say this theory a bull's excreta, but my ability to adapt seemed to be working just fine.

4.Timeline fluctuation and soul combination.

Things started to get a little tricky onwards.

---There's a singularity and the whole multiverse is revolving around it like circling a magnetic field. The more its displacement to another certain otherworld, the less possibility it combines.

"Multiverse worked like repeating parabolas. Imagine every digit a universe, and it slowly spread wider, going in both directions on the Y-axis, and expanding on the X-axis. The closer the digits are, the easier they blend."

Huh that she knew well. Thought it was the education's fault.

"And here comes bondings, the difficulties we're gonna face."

"We?"

"You and I. No back-up comrads."

"Thought there would be."

"What? You wand them to preserve your body? Or maybe mummificate it?"

That'll be thankful. Not.

"Parallel universes fuse and seperates all the time. You flip a coin, the upper side and the backward side divide into two different universes. Multiverse basics."

"Get the point."

"And they fuse all the time and make distinctions much tinier than possible on an observable schale. Would you notice when a fleck of dust disappears right in front you?"

"Then what about Tim back there?"

Eliana's expression darkened a little, but that faded cheerfulness was again quickly picked-up."That 's something associatd with timeline travelling."

"What's the matter?"

"No. Just some personal..." She weighed her words as if deciding how much to share."Something personal back at MML."

"You said you coldn't remember a thing didn't you?"

"I... I can't. Just feel like it."

How can a person posibilly feel like picking up fights with major companies?

I decided not to stress her. I can't afford to make stuff more complicated." Yeah I get that. About timeline travelling?"

she did not retrace that topic. Her concentration Had already been transferred onto something else my wallet never forebode.

"Wait is that a buffet?" Her eyesight was obviously better than a hound as she spotted a 24-hour shop on the street corner.

"Ehem... Where are we again?"

Eliana fed cheerfully on her fifth cupped ice-cream, her mood a lot better than before, giving me a wide berth on the opposite sofa to melt down with my pathetic wallet. Eliana had her hood pulled down, just in case she scared any waiters or waitresses to death. Just in case.

"Johnson you look groggy."

"I feel groggy."I managed a bitter smile.

It tured out that it's also a mightmarish day for my wallet.

"Is this expensive?" She glanced at the piled-up Hagengaz ice-cream cups and added one more to the top, and more load to my wallet.

Her stomach might as well been carved out of steel. So is her brain.

" SUPER expensive."

She made one of those 'IDK but IDC' faces.

"These are supposed to be my protection fees."

"For who?"

"Street thugs."

"Every month?"

"Every month."

She pointed her fork at me "That's what hound cowarsd do."

" Right, right. Back to the topic. This chapter's stretching too long."

"Sometimes timeline fusion works like that. There's something wrong with the origin."

"So it isn't normal for multiverse system, whatever, to function like this?"

"Do your friends look like dogs?"

"You could just say no."

She hurrumphed.

"So that's supposed to be our destination? The origin?"

"The MML in the Origin, to be precise."

"What is it with you and that thing up town?"

"You mentioned that you experience memory loss once and a while?"

I nodded.

"This might get a little grudging." She made a sharp inhale. "Right. The building back there in construction is a paradox. Its existance itself was a paradox."

"Like dual-existing? That kind of stuff?"

"You're getting smart, Johnson."

Got me right.

"The pace of its construction are identical. It broke the multiverse's ultimate rule: Distinction."

"unless it's set somewhere in the origin to better influence every single expanding possibilities "

"And listen up here, very carefully. Have you ever been there before?"

"You know me, I'm just an ordiary..."

"I know. We've just met for a few hours and now I'm talking to you as if you were the world's madest criminal enlarge."

She's speaking like a alien again.

"There's errors on your record." She stopped flipping her coin and slapped it on the table, her hands rapidly interacting with the hologram dials."You've got no records on your behaviors before today, that' what your section A Sub-hippo said."

"Wait what's a sub-hippo? I've got all my memories intact with out any gaps these days and I'm pretty sure I'm not engaged in any sorts of timeline jumps."

"A sub-hippo's a sub-hippo. Don't care about it much." She waved my question away. "It's all about your memory gaps. It's activated by an unstable physical form."

"Yeah I do experience an increasing amounts of headaches recently, but I'm still pretty sure I'm not an alien."

"Are there anything like paradoxes you remember? Hints maybe?"

"I remembered myself saving NFS Unbound on my PS5 but the data's gone the following day."

She ignored me.

"And I forgot to bring my homework this morning and found it eaten by a dog after returning."

"Can you please be helpful? Even a little? Guess I'll justorder my sixth Hagen-Daz." She started waving at the waitress.

I tried numerous ways to pin her down to her seats after that.

"You've got any supernatural powers besides that coin? Where'd you even get that?"

"Long story."

"Long story short."

"Don't remember."

It's a short one after all.

"So what is it with that question? People don't normally ask about skills with nothing on mind."

"Thought you'd have some skills more powerful, like invisible forcefields, mental controll or things like that."

She burst out laughing, and I could feel the fever on my face.

"You know Johnson,"She spoke through giggles."Those are the skills of high priests."

"High priests?"

She stopped choking on her laughter. So abruptly I thought she'd been switched of like a machine. I could sense her cheerful aura shrinking like she was onto something.

"Where‘d that memory fraction came from Johnson?"

"I'm just joking. Don't get so..."

"Where'd it came from?"

Her irises darted form side to side frantically as she opened her hologram tablet and did some quick dials.

"Heck there's something on our tail."

"What is? it 's been ling since we entred here."

"There's always something on our tale."

A single clock clicked on the buffet's yellowish walls, ticking louder by the minute.

"No. Can't be."She's no the verge of panic now."Pack up, Johnon, we're leaving."

Then all of a sudden, the buffet's lights went out, startling us both. The waitress was nowhere to be seen.

And out side the buffet, through the transparent windows, there came beam of red light. Then another.

"To the MML, There's nowhere safe right now. Talk later."

Laying her eyes on the million pairs of savage gleaming red eyes out on the midnight streets, once again, Eliana summoned her spear.