Nao's Secondary Training Thread

Day 1 (Saturday 11 am)

The tower that reached up to the Heavens was definitely a sight to behold, and by sight the author meant Nao could see the whole of it from the very bottom. His eye abilities allowed him to reach up to the skies and beyond with his vision, and with it he could guess how tall it was. Reaching beyond the clouds, and miles above the earth meant that climbing up was going to be such a chore. But the Ocular Mage had to find somewhere that was peaceful… somewhere that he could get away from everything for a little while. Not even the S.S Myrmidon (Aka George) could reach this place with ease. No, it would take a huge amount of tenacity to reach the top.

Or so he thought. Turned out it was a pretty popular tourist destination, despite it being this incredibly tall building. He didn’t actually expect people to climb it, but here he was with a bunch of other people who were using it for sight seeing. Nao didn’t need a tall building to sight see, he could already see for miles, and miles.

It seemed like a chore, but he would just have to deal with people, until he could get up there and hide somewhere so that people would not be able to find him, and he worked out the perfect timing. All he had to do was this one simple action, and hide, and no one would know he had gone.

As they reached the top of the large tower, which towered miles above the surface of the earth, Nao would quickly use his blinding flash ability to quickly blind everyone in the room for a moment, as he would use this time to find some place to hide. It’s not like this was the greatest plan in the world… but it was.

WC:315

Day 1 (Saturday 5pm)

It would only take the rest of the day of temporarily blinding people in a room, and hiding in spots to make sure that they closed the tower an hour early for “maintenance.” This would at least give him a week where he was free to do what he wanted in the tower. And he could use Charlie to go fetch food, water and many other supplies so that he didn’t have to worry about the issue of not having any sort of problems such as starvation, dehydration or worse things… like having to wait to go to the bathroom. For being such an ancient tower for the wise and powerful, there really weren’t any toilets besides the world.

Now it was to begin what his real work was here for. Being able to manipulate times seemed to be interesting to him, and being at the tallest building in all of Earthland made it interesting. He had heard that time actually moved faster, and you aged quicker being at the top of a mountain, so why not a building that was as tall, if not taller than all the mountains.

With that knowledge, Nao decided to watch the earth move in motion, by sending a clock to the ground, and a clock up in the tower to watch the motion of the two. This would begin the basis of his training, that if he could slow down the clock that was up here in the tower to the speed of the clock at the bottom, then he would have achieved the ability to control time… slightly.

Nao would have Charlie fly the clock down to the bottom of the tower, and begin the test there, as he set his clock here at the top, and would begin to wait.

WC:303

Day 1 (Saturday 6:30pm)

About an hour and a bit had passed from the time he started to set up his plan, and when he sat to try and control the clocks movement. He had tried for about an hour in trying to move the clock to slow down a little bit (seeing as it was an atomic clock it was proving to be difficult), but he was sure that he had gotten to the point where he had controlled it to slow it down. They would have to be at the same time, right?

He flew down to the bottom of the tower, and looked at the atomic clock at the bottom of the tower. Between the two readings there was a huge difference in the time delay (by between five and ten minutes), and it would look like Nao would have to just try again. Well when they say “at first you don’t succeed” Nao knew it meant that he shouldn’t go ahead and try skydiving.

Flying back up to the top, he would begin his test once again, and he would have to just try harder to see if he could actually make the clocks match their times together. This was going to be the first test to see how easy it would be for a mage to manipulate time. If he could manipulate light, heat, and emotions with his eyes, why not manipulate time too?

As he reached back to the top of the tower, the Ocular Mage had wondered if this was all going to be worth it, if being able to bend and control time was all worth the time and effort… Yes, yes it was. In fact it would be so worth being able to go back, change things, and essentially predict what would happen next.

He would just have to sit here, and keep focusing on what he was trying to do… All in good time.

WC:324

Day 1 (Saturday 8:30pm)

Bah! Every single time he would try and manipulate time to slow down it would not work at all, and this was his third or fourth attempt! The Ocular Mage began to feel defeated as the sun had now set, and the cold was beginning to get to him at the top of the tower. Who knew that despite heat rising, the land on the ground was a lot warmer than the land closer to the sky. But he didn’t want to give up, and especially now that he was starting to understand that slowing time was not his strong point.

The mage would sit in the tower, and have a think about what to do, as he looked out towards the moon moving across the sky. Something about this felt right, but there was a huge step in trying to be able to bend time, and it wasn’t as simple as just willing time to stop. There had to be some kind of actual method in the madness that he was going for.

I need to find some way of being able to slow down time right? Or speed it up? Or just something to do with time…

He would just fall over backwards and throw his hands up in the air in frustration. Nao wasn’t certainly going to be able to change the way that time flowed by just trying to stop a clock from going backwards in time. That would be clock manipulation, not time manipulation at all! So what was he trying to achieve here?

Nao would nod to Charlie, and climb on his back to head home for the moment. He was going to have to get some books out on time, and time travel before he tried attempting this again. Maybe it would be best to try again tomorrow.

WC:309

Day 2 (Sunday 8 am)

The morning was just beginning to arrive (or had been for the last two hours), and Nao woke up to the memory of his failed attempts at trying to move the power of a clock. He would just let his head slump as he found the failure not very empowering when he let it sink in his head. But maybe it would bet better to start reading up on time travel. Nao would just simply sigh, but he knew it would be the best to go get some reading materials.

Nao would begin to set up his plan for the day, but he wasn’t sure if the library would have been open on a Sunday. It was things like this that made him wish that he had the ability to travel through time right now. But it was at least a good idea to check if he would be able to grab some books today.

The Ocular mage would begin to walk over through the town that he was staying in near the Sky Tower, and would find himself getting a little bit lost along the way. But with eventual help with his eyes, Nao finally made his way over to the library.

His eyes gazed at the sign saying that the library was only open from Monday through to Saturday. Darn it all. Out of all 7 days of the week, Nao just happened to get to the library on the day where there wasn’t going to be anyone there.

He would just sit there, and take out his clock, and beging to try and stare it down.

Turn back time, damn you! The mage wasn’t having a good time at trying to learn how to control time at all. It would take a miracle to get this to work…

WC: 306

Day 2 (Sunday 11pm)

The day had gone by so incredibly so, but Nao had spend all of it just trying to move time back. And in doing so, he had moved forward in time as quicker than the clock had gone backwards (since you know… the clock only went forwards in time). Losing all his ability to think about what he was trying to do, Nao quickly ended up giving up, collapsing on the floor near the library. The cold didn’t really matter to him at the time, despite the potential worry of getting pneumonia. At long as he could take a small break from trying to move that clock hand backwards.

Nao would just lie down on his back, and contemplate where to go with this magic. Was he going to keep trying to pursue this goal of his. How many times was he going to keep trying to move a really stupid atomic clock? What was he going to actually do with this to make it actually work? Moving a clock wasn’t time travel it was just pure stupidity!

The Mage would sigh, and just lie there outside the library until the next day arrived. Hopefully by then he would find himself with the chance to go grab the books he needed on the physics of time.

Oh Nao, how are you going to be able to move time at all if you can’t even comprehend how it was meant to go? he thought to himself, looking up into space as far as he could. His eyes were like telescopes in a way, being able to magnify anything he could see. Heck he probably could even see other galaxies if he tried hard enough with his abilities. But moving time? It was more likely to move the Sky Tower itself than to move time in any direction…

WC:310

Day 3 (Monday 11 am)

Morning came pretty quickly, as quickly as the day went yesterday. It seemed so exciting to be able to finally learn how to time travel, and finally find out how it all works. No more just staring at clocks for every passing minute, and no more trying to compare the speed of time from the tallest tower to the bottom of the tower. Nope! From now on, Nao was going to be able to go forwards and backwards in time as he pleased, and be able to see the future, and change everything.

Nao would notice that he must have slept through the library being unlocked, despite only being metres away from the building. It must have been assumed that he was either a homeless man, or that he was just really excited to be there at the library. Whatever it was, Nao was ready to go and sit down with some books and maybe some coffee. He would just have to find the books first.

As he entered the library, he realised why didn’t go to libraries all that often. He was reminded of the time the children that messed around with him when he was trying to find a book in the library. He just hoped that they hadn’t followed him, and were going to mess around to make him waste his time. That would be a pretty annoying revenge move from them. It would certainly be a pain for Nao to find the books in a mess.

Instead what he found was a nice library, full of information and books upon books on all kinds of subjects. He was able to find books on all sorts of different subjects, and low and behold! There were a bunch of books on the theories of time, and time travel. This was definitely was Nao needed!

WC:311

Day 3 (Monday 11:30 am)

It was the perfect opportunity to be able to find these books in the library, as if they weren’t’ going to be in your local bookshop. It seemed someone was just so kind enough to donate these books to the library, and they didn’t have all that much wear and tear either! This meant that he wouldn’t have to be very careful when it came to turning pages, and reading these books wouldn’t require too much straight due to tea stained pages. This was just something that seemed to be too good to be true.

Nao would put his books down on one of the tables by the windows of the library, go grab himself a mug of herbal tea (because that would be something libraries would have in them right?), and sit down to set himself to work. Although he made it seem like it was going to be a tough thing to do. All Nao really had to do was one simple trick, that a lot of librarians would hate for him to actually do.

The process was simple: All Nao had to do, was just take the corners of the book, and flip through it like some kind of flipbook, and he would be able to read through it with relative speed and memory. His recorded memory would help him remember the pages, and what they said, but he would have to sit there and ponder on the subject. Maybe if he was a little smarter, or if he found another book to help him break it down a little more, maybe that would work?

Either way, Nao would begin to carry on going through the four or five books that he had on his desk. It would take a while to get through this.

WC:303

Day 3 (Monday 12 pm)

Five different books on different subjects such as quantum theory, chaos theory, time and space, and so many more topics. This was just the basis of what he was going to be looking at to see how he could cast his magic to be able to do something with time. At this point he just hoped he could even move a clock back in time with his magic, and hope that he just didn’t control the mechanism and actually moved time backwards. If he could only manage to move time a little bit in any direction. That would surely help him.

But he didn’t realise what he was getting himself into. Quantum theory was telling him about being in more than one states, chaos theory was all over the place in terms of knowledge, and the book he had on time travel seemed to be about some kind of doctor that had a police box, and would fight all kinds of aliens. Hunting aliens sounded really cool, but he wasn’t going to magically find a police box outside.

Turning his head, he noticed that there was a police box outside the window. Maybe he could try it out some ti-

No! Focus Nao! he would think to himself, as he continued to skim through books on time travel. Maybe the fictional books held as much truth as the non-fiction ones. He would just assume that he could spend the time testing each and every one of them. But he would be able to try them once he had some kind of bearing of what time travel really was.

Nao would close the last book that he had read, and looked up in thought. His lips would make a sound as he continue to wonder how he was going to do this.

WC: 306

Day 3 (Monday 12:15 pm)

The final time that Nao had to read through his books, and look through the topics that he was trying to comprehend. All the equations, and the possibility of using event horizons to manipulate time, or at least it would manipulate the perception of time. Maybe he would just mess around with the perception of time, by sending spells into pocket dimensions, only to pop up at another point. By delaying attacks, or speeding them up to confuse people, could he really turn the tides of battle? He didn’t really know for sure, but maybe that was what he would have to practice at.

Through studying all kinds of potential theories (both fictional and non-fictional), Nao came to the conclusion that all he would have to do is just use some kind of magical abilities, and actually use magic instead of some kind of ancestry traits. Being able to manipulate another element other than his eye was going to be tough. Maybe he would be able to find some kind of way of making it easier, but he knew that it would be really difficult to be able to finally be able to control time.

Nao would return the books to their rightful positions, all the while returning all his rubbish, and his mug of cold herbal tea because he was too busy with the reading. But it seemed like he kind of knew what he was going to be doing with his work. As long as he continued to focus, and remember on the different potential ideas, then he was going to be all fine.

He would just get out of the library, and get onto Charlie, before flying away back to the Sky Tower, with the knowledge that he would have to work on his time magic.

WC: 304

Day 3 (Monday 3pm)

Nao flew back to the Sky Tower with Charlie, carrying off with them the police box that was sat outside the library. They wouldn’t really have missed it, right? He would take it all the way to the bottom of the tower, before flying up to the top with some of the books that he borrowed for a little while. This way, he could use them as a reference if he was going somewhere wrong with his abilities. Heck, this would help him in all manners due to having the books to look over if he couldn’t find what he was looking for when it came to equations. This is where he needed someone who was a clever physicist. But for now he would just have to internalise it a little bit, and for now just continue working on all the plans he had in his mind. For instance, he would definitely have to try the police box, and hope it actually was a Tardis.

Nao would begin placing books all over the Sky tower. He still had about 4 more days before he needed to vacate the area, and vacating the premises as soon as possible was what he wanted to do. But if he couldn’t find a way to make his magic anytime sooner, then he would just have to keep scaring off groups of people until he was sure that he was able to bend time a little.

Nao would slowly walk down the steps of the tower, finding that even though he could have flown down on Charlie it would be much nicer to ponder a little bit. He would keep thinking about what he could do once he got his magic all sorted, and could be able to bend time a bit.

WC:301

Day 3 (Monday 3:30pm)

Nao finally reached the bottom of the tower, and had to give himself a few moments to catch his breath. When you’re going from the highest point in the world, to just above sea level… It was going to take you some time to go grab some breath in between each step. Maybe after a few minutes Nao would begin to feel a little better, and better enough to be able to work on training his magic once more. After all, how would he be able to work out what he was going to do, if he was going to be passing out from exhaustion?

The Ocular mage would begin to study the police box very carefully. He would continue to eye it up and down very slowly, trying to work out how the magic would work before even stepping inside this thing. The workmanship, the materials, the colour. Was everything really important when it came to building one of his own so that he could time travel? Would this be able to be turned into something so small and minute, that he could make it part of his magic, or a magical item?

He figured this was finally the time to open the police box, and maybe then he would uncover the secrets of time travel, and maybe even learn to travel through space. Nao gulped, before slowly, and surely opening the police box to look inside. Much to the not so much of a surprise, it turned out that this was definitely not a Tardis. This was just a normal police box, probably used for calling the Rune Knights.

Nao looked down in disappointment, closing the door of the police box, before sending Charlie to go and take this back to the library. A shame too, because this would have been useful.

WC:308 words

The climb back up to the top of the tower was long, and it was painful… and it was full of bitter disappointment. He got that he wouldn’t have found the easy way of making a time machine by just going into a police box run by the Rune Knights (and finding that it was ran by the Rune Knights made this slightly illegal), but for all of this kind of fictional writing they had to have made some kind of scientific ideas to base them on right? Well no matter because there were surely more ideas to use when it came to time travel. And the next one would require his faithful companion Charlie.

Now Charlie had been with Nao for such a long long time, and had been through all sorts of things with him. From different fights, to playing so many games of chess that he was starting to get bored of Nao’s constant attempts to beat him. But he was constantly faithful to the Ocular mage, no matter what the situation was. Even if it meant carrying the police box back to the library very quickly without anyone noticing it was missing.

Nao would wait for his pet to return to the top of the tower, which just so happened that Nao had also got to the top of the tower too. The gryphon would look at him in confusion, as Nao began to plan and plot the next idea in his head.

”Charlie we’re going to do some flying, and we’re going to try and do some time travel by doing a very similar thing to some of the science-fiction books that I have read. Are you ready for this?” The Gryphon would look at him some more, biding his time to answer before slowly nodding.

WC:301

Nao would simply smile at the gryphon, before walking to the balcony of the tower, and pointing towards the sky. Charlie would follow over, and look, and after that he would look towards the man that he called his companion and master. The gryphon would wait for Nao to decide what he was going to do, but for now all the mage was doing was just making calculations, and murmuring ideas to make sure that it worked. But this was potentially an idea into travelling through time.

”Hey Charlie, we’re going to try and go back in time, or even forward in time I don’t really care. But we have to work out how to go so fast against the planet’s rotation that we start going backwards in time.” This was a completely stupid, and downright crazy idea, but he wanted to try it to t least see if it would work. If it didn’t then he would just have to move on and think of something else instead. If it did work then he was a genius, and he would have found a way to change some of his mistakes. Maybe he would replace the past Nao with a stronger form of himself, and have a magic that wasn’t so cruddy as the one he had at the moment. In all seriousness, being able to go back in time and stop things from happening was a pretty good strategy, despite the obvious paradoxes it would cause.

”So I have been thinking about how this will work” remarked Nao to Charlie, pacing back and forth along the balcony like some crazed scientist. ”If we go against the planet’s rotation as fast as possible, we will end up going back in time, thus being able to save people from perils in the future.” Genius.

WC:303

Nao would just get onto the gryphon slowly and carefully, hitching his legs onto the harnesses on the armour that Charlie wore. He really needed to get that armour remade into something much stronger for Charlie. But until then, at least it protected his back and flanks from some of the attacks made. Even if Charlie was going to feel a little restrained by the armour, as long as he could fly, and he was safe from arrows, as well as wind attacks it didn’t matter to Nao.

”Ok then Charlie here’s what we’re going to do. We fly as high as we can, and then start going against the Earth’s rotation as fast as we can. That way we start traveling back in time, going further and further back until we know we will have time to practice a lot. Or we end up in the future, where we find some kind of magical lacrima, and bring it back to the past to use it then. Who knows what will happen when we start this.”

Charlie would nod, before flying off into the air, higher than the Sky Tower, before looking around to see which way they needed to go to fly in the opposite direction of the planet’s rotation. Nao would also look around, murmuring some more calculations, before working out that this was the way to go.

He would point in a distance, making sure that it was the right way, before he would look down to Charlie. Good thing he wasn’t afraid of heights, because being higher than the highest tower in Fiore was pretty daunting.

”That’s the way to go Charlie, and I need you to go as fast as you can. We’ll need to keep going super quick against the rotation if we are to make any impact!

WC:304 words

Day 3 (Monday 4pm)



They faced the way against the planet’s rotation, looking towards the horizon before psyching themselves up some more. If they were to go back in time how would they even prove it? Through some nuclear clocks that were slightly out of sync with each other? Would they just turn back to the current setting or not? He wasn’t quite entirely sure since he didn’t really know anyone who was able to mess with the fabrics of space. Nao certainly wasn’t going to hold all these answers, but he just knew he wanted to try and do this.

”Alright Charlie, whenever you are ready I want you to fly into the horizon, and keep flying as fast as you can, even if we see the Sky Tower again I just want you to continue flying.” The creature would nod, before waiting for a few minutes to get his own will ready.

When Charlie was finally able to make some movement, he would take off towards the sunset as quickly as possible. He would carry Nao into the distance, and start flying against the Earth’s rotation. But there was just one small, tiny, insignificant problem.

Charlie could only fly at the speed of 45 miles per hour…

Indeed the creature could only run a little bit faster than most mages of Nao’s rank, and as fast as mages two ranks above him (whatever that meant). Would this speed even be able to get anywhere around the world to travel through time.

”You can do this Charlie! We’re almost at the speed needed to go back in time!” Though who was he kidding… they weren’t going anywhere near enough, and after about 30 minutes of flying they were not going to get any faster.

”How about we try this other idea…”

WC:302

Day 3 (Monday 4:35pm)

”So what we are going to do, Charlie, is that we are going to fly and fly backwards against the planet’s rotation. Maybe this at the fastest speed would allow for us to go back in time. This will be the last time that we try this science fiction style kind of approach to all our tactics.” He would get Charlie to turn around, and begin to start flying backwards as quickly as possible.

If the world was moving one way, and they were travelling the opposite way, this would surely give them a boost to the speed they were traveling at, right? Well there were a few complications when it came to this theory. For one, the planet was also rotating at a fast speed already, so maybe going 80 miles per hour was just the part that pushed it over the limit. So if that was the case then it was all for naught.

Eventually Nao would find that going backwards didn’t help at all, and instead just made it all more confusing to his pet in the flying. It looked like trying any kind of flying was just not really working in any way, shape or form.

”Alright that’s enough,” he said, holding on tight as the gryphon stopped at an abrupt halt. ”Lets head back to the tower, and think about what we’re going to do next.” And with that, they were back to flying towards the Sky Tower. Nao felt a little disappointed in that they hadn’t accomplished what he wanted to do, but he felt it was necessary to keep trying. He knew that sometime soon he would have found the right way to time-travel.

He reached back to the Sky Tower, and began to plan his strategy once more. Only a matter of time now.

WC:306

Day 3 (Monday 5:30pm)

So the fact that not only did finding a tardis not really work at all (and how could it? It didn’t make sense in any way, shape or form), but trying to move fast enough in either direction of the planet’s rotation didn’t seem to help Nao get anywhere in the ability to travel through time. It seemed Charlie was a little too tired now to even think about going out and trying again. Despite him being a powerful griffon, it wasn’t going to get either of them anywhere if he was too tired to fly, and they end up crash landing somewhere in Fiore.

Nao would instead begin to ponder about how to actually put this into a scientific theory. If the science fiction theories were wrong, they must have based them off of osme real world theory right? And by manipulating that, Nao should have been able to then manipulate time. Especially as a mage, where he can manipulate his own eyes to do all sorts of special things, but time and space travel were not abilities that Nao was actually capable of.

But he had to get this ability right, for otherwise he wasn’t going to be able to do what he wanted to do, and save who he wanted to save from dying. That was the whole point of this wasn’t it? To be able to go back in time and stop someone from dying? To prevent someone from dying, but to cause a paradox so great that it would actually cause her to die all over again? Was he really willing to pull her soul back from the dead for all this? Would she suffer even more so?

There were the thoughts that pestered him constantly, but Nao knew he needed to carry on trying to work on this ability.

WC: 309

Day 3 (Monday 5:35pm)

After five minutes of fumbling through some books, the Ocular mage had come across a theory about relativity. The fact his idea of going around the earth didn’t work was because he wasn’t travelling at the speed of light. That showed that there was a problem with the theory for him. He wasn’t able to travel at the speed of light, but instead could only travel as fast as Charlie could take him. So going as fast as the speed of light wasn’t going to be possible when it came to time travel.

The next idea he saw was there were potentially geometries in space, notably wormholes, which could allow the bending of time. Had Nao got the capability to travel through time he would have experimented with it, but for now it seemed like that was going to be an impossible task unless he learned to breath in the vacuums of space. Not only that, but he read that only some wormholes actually allowed to traverse through time, and he would need to probably accelerate to the speed of light. Once again, there was an issue with that kind of ability, seeing as he couldn’t actually do that.

The next idea would be to somehow stay in an event horizon of a black hole long enough for time to pass by so very quickly, that he could go into the future and find the ability to go back into the past. Not only was that dangerous, impossible, and nearly the dumbest idea ever? It was another one that would require a lot of space travel. He didn’t have the time or ability to travel into space, so once again that wasn’t going to work either.

It seemed Nao was going to have to give up, until he realised something about the tower. The Gem.

WC: 304 words

The gem that was sitting on top of the tower in the Sky Tower. That was going to be the way that Nao harnesses the power of time travel. He had heard that people had used the gem to fight former masters in jobs, but he had never done it himself. If he could cut off just a little bit of the gem, then maybe he would be able to work out a way to time travel once more. This was going to be the last attempt at finding a way to go back in time. Despite Shu not being his mentor in anyway, she did teach him a lot… maybe this would help at least find her so he could see one last time.

He didn’t expect Charlie to come help him, so instead he would climb up the last bits of the tower, to the roof where two griffons held the gem. He found it somewhat funny that it would be griffons that held up the gem of time, and Nao had a griffon and he wanted to harness this power of time. A certain humour of coincidence would have to be met as the Ocular Mage finally reached the roof.

He would study the gem for a little bit, before taking out a chisel, and a hammer. He would only want to chisel off a tiny bit to harness for himself. He would only begin to start chiselling away at the gem, and with a clink he thought he finally got in.

He would realise that this was actually a very bad idea. For as soon as he chipped the gem, it would radiate energy, and begin to suck Nao into it. He wasn’t sure if it was intended to defend it, or trap a perpetrator, but it was working. Nao was immediately sucked into the gem of time.

WC:312

The gem’s force was so strong, that it absorbed Nao inside of it, trapping him into a new realm. And as he fell through it, he found he was falling through time, and was actually going backwards. There he could relive some of his memories, and even the memories of people he knew. He could see how they faced the Hunter in the ancient ruins, and how they fought against him. He saw how he and Ana fought against the creepy doll twins in that one town, and were turned into toys.

He would keep descending through this bright white world, seeing everything he had done and everyone he had met. His eyes would flicker in between active and not active. He would remember some of the clips he could see, and instantly forget some of them too. But he eventually found himself falling to the bottom of the world. This is where he would find himself.

As he reached the floor, he found himself in a park, and he was familiar with the park because it’s the one where he met Sora. But this wasn’t the day that he wa meeting Sora. No… he wasn’t actually in that memory. It looked like he was going to be visiting someone else’s time fragment.

He would notice how someone was on the floor near Sora, but it was someone he once knew… It was Shu. Maybe this was his chance to save her, and change the fabrics of time. But it looked like he was too late she seemed to fade from life.

He would try and run to her, but instead he would end up back where he was, moments away from Shu passing away from this world. He would just keep on running, and find himself back where he once was. This seemed to never end.

WC: 307

The journey to try and save Shu never seemed to end. He wouldn’t ever be able to get to her, no matter how many times he uses his magic, no matter how many times he screamed at Sora to stop it. No matter what he could do, he was never able to actually save Shu from the fate she would get to. It was as if the gem was taunting him over, and over again. Maybe the gem was taunting him with that his goal of being able to try and reverse time was all for nought. Maybe it just hated him for trying to break a bit off to harness its power.

The Ocular Mage teared up as he kept trying to run towards her, and he would constantly watch her die on Sora constantly. Something about this was cruel, and unusual punishment even for a magical gem. He didn’t know what to do with such a horrific scene.

In the end, Nao just sat there, and he would continue to sit there as he would hear Shu make her wish to Sora each, and every time. Each time he heard it, he could feel his heart break inside of him. Hearing that one of the people he cared about was dying near him, and he couldn’t do anything was humiliating and crushing.

”I-I’m sorry Gem… please just stop this… I only wanted to learn how to go back in time, and save her!” He cried out to the void, as the world around him disappeared. Only to be replaced with the park once more for him to watch the scene one final time, only this time he would see what would happen if Shu survived. It didn’t mean that they were gonna continue being friends, and in fact they’d have drifted apart. A fate worse that death: To have your friendship in stone via death, or to eventually lose them to the abyss.

WC: 325

Nao rocked back and forth as he heard his departed friend, realising that no matter what was going to happen. If he was going to bring her back, or leave her for good that he was going to never have the perfect ending with her. They weren’t going to be friends forever no matter how he tried to bring her back, and otherwise he would have to wait until he died until he was reunited with her. Would she even want him to wait until he died to find happiness? Did he honestly believe that he l-loved her?

He would just lie back and look up to the sky, funnily enough with clocks going backwards in time, and slowly and surely reversing time by the second. He could feel the time particles around him trying to make him younger. He could feel that time itself had particles that would change what was happening, and by enveloping things, it can change how they become. Forwards or backwards in time, these time particles could really change everything.

Maybe that was it. Maybe Nao wouldn’t be able to change time in a large scale, but actually change time in small bits, thus causing all sorts of effects on people. This way he could actually bend the future by using the past or future to his strength.

He would try and focus on the particles, zooming in to try and harness them a little bit. If he could just move them a little bit, then maybe it would be something he could work with. Just being able to move a few particles would do.

He would slowly force the particles into the palm of his hand, and then push them towards the projection of Sora. It would freeze in place, before going backwards slowly but surely. This was it! He knew what to do.

WC:310

It seemed that by focusing on these time particles that were near him, he could harness the gem of time’s power to send things back, or potentially stop time or even throw the body further into time. HE assumed that it wouldn’t work on the mind, seeing as throwing the mind ahead into the future by decades, and yet still be in the same time zone would throw the whole body and mind into some kind of jetlag. He didn’t really want to risk this on his own body, but at least with this he would be able to find some way of using it to his advantage.

He would try it again, moving these particles at Shu, freezing her in time before she would pass from this planet again and again. At least this way he was able to stop her from dying just for a moment so he could come and say goodbye to her.

The mage would finally reach where both Sora and Shu were stuck in time, as he felt the tears well up in his eyes. He knew that he wasn’t going to be able to come back in time to try and save her. It would be all for nought, and he knew that the future would be just as grim for him and her.

Instead, Nao would just watch her as he would release the time freeze on her, and watch as she would slowly slip from this world. He would hear her wish to Sora, before the floods of tears came through.

He would back away slowly, but surely, feeling the particles on him removing the tears on his cheeks, while trying his best not to feel like he was losing his mind. He just had to say goodbye to someone he didn’t want to say goodbye to. But at least she’d be free.

WC:312 words

So what now? He was stuck inside this damn gem still. He wasn’t getting anywhere with trying to get out, and surely the gem would just keep him here to relive his memories that he already could experience every single day. But at least he knew that inside the gem was some kind of magic to do with these strange particles that were a greenish colour. He wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to capture them and make them his own, but he figured he would try his best to capture them now.

He would watch them constantly wash over him, trying to send him back in time some more, but it seemed that they were only a weak form, only being able to go back two or so seconds while he was going forward one. So he was slowly going backwards in time with his body. Eventually after years he would become a teenager again if it persisted. But maybe if he was able to harness the power that he was looking at, it could go off if he was hit, and remove some of the damage done to him each time he was hit. Something like that would surely help him heal off some of the damage he was going to take from people hitting him with spells.

But first he would have to work out what these particles were, and could he store them in him? Could he inject himself with particles, and cause them to reproduce in his body? Trying to capture them didn’t seen to be a problem at all, and he knew that he could probably just lick them off his hand or something. But he wasn’t entirely sure if it would work, and just look dumb in the process. Maybe another plan was needed…

WC: 302