Chapter Text
My vision swims as I regain consciousness, and coughing, I rise to my feet. A shell sails over my head, lighting the smoke-blackened sky. My ears are ringing, and I can’t hear a damn thing except my heart pounding inside my skull. Stepping forward, I stumble, tripping over a body. The clothes he’s wearing are vaguely familiar, so I roll him over to check his face.
The glassy eyes of Demian stare back at me.
It was an N-Corp distortion shell, then. Demian died months ago, and his body was nowhere near this intact.
“Sinclair,” He says, trying to grab me, to drag me down into the ditch, but I ignore him. I need to get to higher ground, and this hallucination won’t stop me. The smoke from the distortion round might be invisible, but it’s still heavier than air. As long as I can get to higher ground, it’ll be fine.
I stagger upwards, and straight into one of Daguanyuan’s gardens. Dammit, I don’t have time for this. If I slip too deep into the fathoms of ego it could take hours to get back to the battlefield. Though I guess that would be exactly what whoever fired that shell is after.
I move with purpose. These environs are just something created from my memories of that night; the actual battlefield was somewhere in District 14’s backstreets. I know the path, and I know exactly which moment will be my exit from this place. Savoring the illusion of clean air while I can, I cross the threshold of the Family Hierarch’s residence, my halberd already swinging to dispatch the shrouded shapes of a half-dozen Si-Branch Heishou.
I don’t know whether these ones are immaterial, after all, so I shouldn’t be careless. They could be other people my deluded eyes are mistaking for Heishou, or else they’re-
Their forms shift as they die. Orange-and-black plated body parts scatter in the building’s entryway.
Ah, they were friendlies. R-Corp Reindeer who got caught up in my growing distortion. Well, that’s why we use the Reindeer anyway; their low willpower means that they’re never the source of the distortion in scenarios like this, and that means lower odds of important people getting overwritten by a distortion.
Thanks for your sacrifice, guys. I’ll buy your next batch of clones a drink after this is over. It’ll just taste like smoke, though.
The memory of Wei is kind enough to let me pass. The first time I went through this, it led to a big fight, but as I learned on my second round, as long as I move fast enough, he recognizes me as an ally. Just like he did that night.
At last, I arrive at that place, at that moment.
Xichun’s office is a wreck. Blood, corpses and the scattered leaves cast about by her fans paint the room a vibrant red. That nice desk of hers that she bragged about so much is splintered into pieces, and flames lick about the room’s edges.
I know what she’s been through on this night. Si, Wei, and Hai branches, ten of which were able to pursue her to this room after her injuries forced her to withdraw from the initial fight - and of those, two were adepts. Add to that an errant You-branch member who, pursuing them here, only managed to enhance the danger she was placed in - she’s on her last legs. Any additional hostiles, even one additional threat, would be enough to kill her in this state.
Collapsed against the wall, Jia Xichun’s eyes meet mine, and she smiles in relief.
She really was so beautiful.
Somewhere, a bell rings.
“You can do it, now. There are dozens of methods to cheat death in the city. Why, you have one in your possession right now, do you not?”
A K-corp Ampoule would be more than enough to fix this, and I have two on my person, just in case. I would have had three, if not for the shelling I took earlier.
“Sinclair…” Xichun mutters as she slips into unconsciousness. All else aside, I’m grateful for the reminder of what her voice sounded like.
“How many times did you go over that night in your head, looking for a way out? There’s no obstruction, now. You know every part of how to unravel the noose around her neck. And so-”
“...Miss Carmen,” I address the voice at last. “That knowledge doesn’t mean anything. The past is still the past.”
-As for this illusion, I sever its existence without a second thought, and return once more to the battlefield.
I lapse back into the fathoms of ego no fewer than five times as I cross the battlefield, desperately seeking higher ground. Each time, the visions show me something different, a different lost comrade, a different failure that some childish part of me wishes I could re-live. My parents and sister. The Manager. Miss Faust. Don Quixote. Even Miss… Yuri, was it? Even she makes an appearance. Miss Carmen really is pulling out all the stops today.
Each time, the temptation is the same. Become something that can change the past. Cast away my sign, refuse this fragile spark of hope sheltered in my heart which says that life goes on.
What a mess. This can’t be a coincidence; those guys on the N-Corp gunnery are tracking me somehow. If I was still working under Miss Dias, I’d assume it was her usual power harassment of dumping extra difficulties on her employees, but we cut ties some time ago. I trust all of my current equipment providers… well, maybe it’s some new, annoying distortion or EGO.
Those musings are still on my mind as I breach the bunker door, a single glowing ring of Mang already wreathing each of my weapons. Only having two show up is a bit embarrassing, but I really am running on fumes here.
I take advantage of the brief window of the door flying off its hinges to slick back my bangs with a hand coated in iron-scented mud. I really need a haircut after this. I wonder if that backdoor to that salon in U-corp still works? It’d be a little thrilling to walk in and see if those guys from the Middle even recognize me at this point.
If that Ricardo guy somehow showed up, I might die from laughing too hard at the circumstances, though.
It only takes a few seconds to butcher most of the Gunnery’s inhabitants - they’re nothing special.
“Wait, wait, waitwaitwait, please-!” The last survivor screams, scrambling away from me.
“I’m waiting,” I answer, giving my best gentle smile. “I have some questions to ask you anyway. Just how were you- stop.”
He freezes, in the middle of reaching for something in his pocket. Smart guy. My sword swings, a shockwave slicing his pocket open - and a single strip of paper gently wafts out, caught upon the breeze.
“Well, never mind. I don’t have any questions anymore.” His body falls to the floor a second later, and I snatch up the paper slip before his blood can soak it. “Still, an Index Prescript, huh?”
I’d run into them before - these seemingly chaotic instructions that in hindsight always seem to suggest that whatever sadistic madman hands them out knows the future.
…
At that time, if I hadn’t looked at what was written on it, would things have gone differently for me?
There’s no point in knowing whether they would have or not, of course. What’s in the past is in the past. But still, I can’t help but wondering - the things that played out in my favor, were they the work of that prescript? The string of misfortunes that hounds me even now, are they the ‘Karmic Consequences’ that the prescript is heaping upon me?
At the time, I just wanted to confirm that the reason this gunnery had been able to pinpoint my location was this prescript. I failed to receive that confirmation, but for all I know that’s because that Index grunt threw away his own prescript.
In the first place, this Prescript was for me, not him.
The Past may also be a Future.
Moments later, the bunker was engulfed with blue smoke. I screwed up, simply put. In my haste to stop those annoying Distortion shells from raining down on me, I had forgotten to call in my position with my nominal allies at Wayfarer Corp. Getting caught in friendly fire - really, if I had died right there, it would have been incredibly embarrassing.
But, in the midst of churning dimensions and choking blue smoke - the sign upon my forehead began to burn.
And then, with an abruptness that was somehow not disorienting in the slightest, I found myself in a certain gallery, filled with the most tasteless artwork imaginable.
The details of the fight are of no real note here. I was called to the past by my own past self, in order to save him and his comrades after they got in over their heads with the Ring Nursefather and his apprentice. The two artists were below my paygrade, though, and so they didn’t amount to much of an obstacle. Tearing apart prosthetic bodies like theirs is something of a specialty of mine - Abraxas Chariot fought on both sides of the war, after all.
Well, the tall one might have put up a better fight if he wasn’t injured, but judging from the unsteadiness in his movements, someone already rattled his brain case before I arrived.
I wanted to continue, in that place. Where so many of those I missed were still alive, and those twelve chains had yet to be broken. But the past is the past, whatever the Index might say - and so, I said my goodbyes, and left the same way I came - by means of the strange mark engraved upon my brow for who knows how long, or by whom.
I know a little bit more about them than my past self, but even then, the Signs are a mystery to me. I told the others present as much when I departed - I’d seen it from the other side before, but I didn’t have the slightest clue whether I would return to my present time or simply cease to exist.
Some part of me, that same small, cowardly part that Miss Carmen always calls out to, wanted them to stop me. For Miss Faust, Miss Ishmael, or Mister Hohenheim to say that there wasn’t a need for me to depart, that I could simply stay and take my past self’s place.
But the past is the past, and the future is the future. Life goes on.
And so, with the sign burning upon my brow, I slipped away into darkness.
…So, then, what in the name of the wings is this?
“Emil?” my father asks. It’s been a while since anyone called me by my first name. No, barring the time that Xichun insisted on trying the name ‘to see how it tasted in her mouth’, the last time someone called me by that name would have been at this very table. “Emil, are you feeling okay?”
I raise a hand to my forehead, and bare skin touches the site where my sign is engraved. No, there’s no heat… and besides, I’m supposed to be wearing gloves right now. Glancing around the all-too-familiar kitchen table, I see the worried faces of my mother, my sister, and my father.
They’re faces, too. not those prosthetics they went and replaced their bodies with later.
“Emil?” Mother chimes in.
“I-” my voice cracks. So high-pitched - this isn’t how the Sign works. It’s not how it’s supposed to work, anyway. “I’m fine. Just a headache.”
If this is enemy action, it’s better to pretend that I’m falling for it. And if it’s not…
If it’s not…
“-Sorry,” I say, still disconcerted at the youthful voice leaving my lips. “I totally lost track of everything. What were we talking about?” A smile crawls across my lips as the table bursts into laughter, and I find myself rubbing the back of my neck in embarrassment.
“If your memory is going, maybe you should be the first one to get a prosthetic replacement!” Father laughs.
Ah. So it’s like that.
If I was still the Emil Sinclair who had started this dinner across the table from them, I’d simply fall silent, growing nervous. If I was still the Emil Sinclair from before the war, I’d calmly tell them, forthrightly, that I find elective prosthesis like the ones they’re after to be utterly repulsive. But now, considering the realizations I’ve had to come to-
“Mm. Maybe,” I just give a noncommittal answer, because it doesn’t matter. The past won’t change. No matter how many arguments I stocked up against their decisions, over the years, as the events leading up to that Christmas played and replayed in my mind again and again and again - they won’t mean anything. The only thing I can choose is the future. Life goes on.
Miss Carmen is being strangely quiet right now, but I’ve got no intention of playing into her hands.
The dinner continues for a time, and I enjoy it for as much as it’s worth. These days are destined to disappear, but I’ll enjoy them all the same.
But, as dinner draws to a close, and I get up to wash the dishes, I find myself wondering just when this strange transfer will end. Any moment now, will I be thrust back to the present? Or is this some new, more virulent version of N-Corp’s smoke, that I won’t be able to escape until and unless someone recovers my body? I hope that’s not the case, since the list of people who’d actually care to do so is getting a bit short nowadays.
Finally, I return to my childhood bedroom - and there resting upon my desk is a letter with rather distinctive stationary. I’ve only seen its like twice before, and no-one would dare to counterfeit this particular texture and coloration. There’s no point in asking how it got here, either.
The subsidiaries of the Head can pretty much do whatever they want.
Grimacing, I open the envelope, and begin to read.
“To Mr. Emil Sinclair,
We are writing to reassure you that, although ‘researching a method to return to the past’ is a Taboo of The City, ‘involuntary temporal displacement’ is within the bounds of acceptability. Nevertheless, as a means of discouragement, the Office of the Head has levied a 100 million Ahn fine against your future earnings. You may pay in installments.”
As I slump into my desk chair and begin to mourn my wallet, it finally begins to sink in that this may, in fact, be reality.
“Furthermore, you are reminded that, per Public Morals codes, it is a punishable offense for an adult to attend school, no matter how young they may appear. For your convenience, and with some sympathy for the sudden change of circumstances you have found yourself in, we have included with this letter personal identification documents that clarify your current mental age. On a similar note, you are gently reminded that this year’s taxes are due one month from now.”
“We will be watching your career with great interest.”
“Wasn’t the past supposed to be the past…?” I mumble, as a small card drops out of the envelope into my hand - a Grade 8 Fixer License, by the looks of it. “You’ve got to be kidding me…”