Alma 158 Secrets Best Forgotten

It all happened so quickly that neither tenant had been able to comprehend what had just happened. All of a sudden the wall connecting their apartments had come down instant and an odd, highly destructive pair appeared in front of them, covered in drywall dust.

Who was going to pay for the broken wall? Were they going to pay? Who was going to contact the landlord? Why had they— 

When Lu'um sneezed, the final remnants of the broken wall came crumbling down and Reed shrugged his shoulders helplessly. He stared at the dumbfounded young lad in front of him and then turned around. An equally astonished girl had a stupid expression on her face as she tried her best to comprehend what had happened. 

This situation isn't that bad, all things considered. It's certainly better than the last time. I'll take this over some hellhole of a battlefield any goddamned day. 

Hell, if anything I've done this guy a service. Well, that is if he doesn't fuck it all up for himself... Why am I never this lucky? This is some bullshit. 

Reed walked up to the bewildered poor mortal, put his arm around his shoulder and said, "You know what, I think you owe ME. Don't you think it'd be unfair that I go unpaid for my services?" 

"....W-What?" The young man stared at Reed with a foolish expression as he tried his hardest to make sense of the situation. 

"Yeah, yeah. I think that I deserve a little something for my troubles, given everything I've done for you," said Reed as he eyed the young man's residence. He continued to inspect the poor fool's room for something to take until his gaze fell upon a black leather jacket on a coat hanger. 

The moment Reed laid eyes on it, he knew that was what he wanted. He snapped his fingers and the jacket flew off of the coat hanger and landed in his hands. Reed whistled and said, "Nice leather jacket, man. You wouldn't mind if I tried it out, right?" 

Unbeknownst to either the young man or the girl, Lu'um had raided the girl's fridge in silence. They had been too focused on Reed's antics that they had seemingly forgotten about her. She had already found the exit shard anyway, so they had a bit of time to kill before it would close. 

Reed put it on, walked over to the girl's side of the apartment, and stared at his reflection with her mirror. 

"...Yeah, this is a pretty nice leather jacket. I can see why you bought it. Really makes you feel like you're some sort of tough-looking, cool dude. I can vibe with that sort of aesthetic." 

He stupidly posed in front of the mirror in an exaggerated manner, as if he trying to emulate some generic holo-film action hero. 

Lu'um laughed and said, "Hey, tough guy, we're out of time. It's time to go." She grabbed Reed by the scruff of the leather jacket and then, they disappeared in a wink of light. 

They were gone. The mysterious guy, the sneezing girl, and the leather jacket vanished in a flash. Where they had gone off to, neither tenant knew. It was such a surreal experience that both of them would have doubted their own sanity had they not witnessed the same events together...

This entire event was just one of the many misadventures that Reed and Lu'um had gotten into in their journey through the temporal maze. To them though, it was a just way of keeping themselves entertained. 

They had returned back into the fissure, only a hundred meters away from the edge of the temporal maze. The finish line was in sight, much to Reed's relief. 

"...Still, this is a pretty nice jacket. Shame I won't be able to keep it after we reset the node," said Reed. 

Every alteration that Reed and Lu'um had made over the course of their journey would end up being erased after they reset the node. History would be rebooted from the last stable record kept within the node as Lu'um had explained to Reed after the events that occurred on the battlefield. 

Reed had been justifiably upset over what Lu'um had done back in the battlefield, as much as it had contributed to their escape. The destruction of the Human warship and its crew had left him horrified of the possible repercussions it would have on the timeline. 

Were it not for Lu'um's reassurance that everything would be wiped clean afterward, Reed would have had an ethical and moral meltdown for the ages. The last thing he wanted to do was fuck up the timeline even further than it already was. 

Nevertheless, Reed had not spared Lu'um for what she had done to the Human warship, even if it would all be negated in the end. Although he understood her reasoning and the circumstances of the situation at the time, he did not approve of the wholesale destruction of the Human warship and her crew. 

Though he comprehended her argument — that she had acted only in efficiency's sake, responding to the severity of their foe's strength in such a way that would end the fight as soon as possible, it still irked him a bit. 

How fluidly and quickly she had responded, without the slightest bit of hesitation. Lu'um attributed this to her warrior conditioning, which allowed her to act in defense before she could even recognize a threat, a reflexive skill honed into her body over the years. 

She's a real handful, Reed thought. 

They continued forward, passing through a variety of shards in pursuit of the finish line. One of them led to a vast mountain range in East, covered in white snow as far as they could see. Another shard spat them out into a bustling city in some underground city, full of strange folk with heavy cloaks covering the majority of their bodies.

Reed and Lu'um pushed forward. Through chaotic ages of brimstone and fire, order and peace, and everything in between. They passed through absurd conjunction of spliced history that spanned five entire millenniums until they finally made through. 

By the time they came out of the temporal maze, neither of them looked even remotely like their former selves. 

For the lack of better words, they both looked like idiots. 

Reed and Lu'um walked out of the final spatiotemporal shard confidently, despite how they looked. He looked like a clown as he wore an extremely tall, pointed black hat on his head. His exquisite robe was studded with a myriad glimmering jewels and diamonds, to the point that he looked more like walking treasure chest than a living being. 

Lu'um, on the other hand, had somehow come across a strange helmet that had been made in the shape of a ferocious bear. She donned a beautiful set of heavy, antique armor that looked like it belonged in a museum. It was no Animpowered exoskeleton or power-suit, but rather something a primitive species would have created in a rudimentary time of swords, arrows, and simple warcraft. Where she had acquired such an ancient thing, not even Reed knew...

Had Velvund seen both of them as they were right now, he would have fainted. They would have ruined the heroic and stately public image Velvund had cultivated for them in a single instant. 

The surreal, unsightly couple descended together into the superheated depths of the fissure all the way to the bottom...

Reed was speechless. It baffled him, despite having seen what laid below in the fissure at Centlani Deep. 

This time it was... a foot. 

"Goddamn, that is a big-ass foot," said Reed as he observed the enormous heel in front of him. 

A couple of cities could probably fit on the heel of the foot alone, Reed thought. It was the foot of real-life titan, a being who could probably lift the world on its shoulders. 

"An astute observation, darling. I fear that your deductive skills may be even greater than my own these days," said Lu'um as she pulled Reed along. 

"Hey! That wasn't very nice of you." 

"Said the one who chucked me into the fissure." 

They continued to childishly bicker with one another as they descended onto the heel of the foot. Suffice to say, their exploits were not the heroic stuff of legends, not that it would stop Velvund from refashioning it to suit his narrative.

If no one knew the truth — that the world was being saved by a bickering bear-woman and a walking treasure chest — it was akin to having not existed in the first place. Velvund could rest easy.

The two of them finally arrived at the destination, after many a setback and misadventure. The colossal, alien spire of machinery lay before them — the reset node. 

Reed and Lu'um had made it. Surprisingly, against all odds. 

Chapter end