No one is perfect, even gods are known to make mistakes. The important thing is that when you make a mistake, you either fix it, or do what you can to make up for it.

That is why the god of time created us, so that we can serve and help bring closure or change to a life when a mistake is made on the god’s behalf.

In a certain mortal’s case, compensation from the gods was given in the form of a second chance. 

Now, a second chance to live your life is a rare opportunity that many wish they had, yet very few get, you would think most people would be ecstatic to get such a gift, especially if their life was less than ideal.

This mortal this very special gift was given to… did not receive it well, and what’s more the life it resulted in became the centre point of a story that none of the gods could have even fathomed would happen, one that traversed realms, uncovered a hidden enemy that had been biding its time, and changed the order of the gods themselves.

No Future – “Fate”

 There’s a flash as the bright lights of a stage turn on, the audience that has gathered around it starts to scream in a frenzy, small lights illuminate the excited crowds, the lights a combination of glow sticks and lights from phones that were already recording the concert that was about to take place.

Much to the delight of the crowd, a figure steps onto the stage, the screaming grows louder, every pose, every gesture, exciting them more and more, as if every breath, blink or tiny move he made was a moment they had been waiting for.

A boy at the age of fifteen stands on the stage, his clothes glamorous and full of details, certainly not something that you would catch the average person wearing in the middle of the street, his hair dyed a vivid blue and styled up. On his head he wore a headset with a microphone, this boy was a star, a singer adored by millions, his voice loved and played on speakers all over the world.

He holds his hands out, greeting all his fans that have come to see him, and despite having a microphone his voice is drowned out by their excited screams. Not bothered by this, he instead accepts their adoration, loving every moment of it.

Then, the sound of the crowds slowly start to fade, a strange silence hangs in the air, a single voice rises above the now muffled crowds, the tone playful, curious, and childlike. “If there was one decision you could make to change your life, what do you think it would be?”

The crowd the singer stares at seems to move in slow motion, as if in a separate world from him, the sounds they make hardly higher than a whisper now. He looks away from them, turning around to find another figure on stage behind him. A young boy with a peculiar appearance that just doesn’t… feel right, as if there was something off about him, and this isn’t even taking into account that the boy is floating in the air, sitting on what looks like an iron plank like a witch would sit on a broom.

Despite how odd the situation and the boy are, the flashily dressed singer doesn’t seem to take into account any of that visual information. Instead he responds to the question that the boy asked him, his voice holding a faint English accent to it. “Decision…? What do you mean?”

The child smiles at him, and so the singer pries further. “Who are you?”

Chapter 01: A Chance to Change

A shrill and annoyed scream fills the air as a fourteen year old girl struggles to get her older brother, who is still fast asleep, out of bed. She gets more and more frustrated as he remains unresponsive to her attempts and continues to sleep. She has a light English accent to her voice, not usual for people living around this area, but also faint from being displaced for so long. “Get your butt out of bed Andrew! You’re going to be late again!”

Her brother, Andrew, mumbles in his sleep shifts to the side and pulls himself deeper into his blankets smiling as he continues his dream, quietly mumbling the words. “Thank you, thank you, you’ve all been a wonderful audience…”

His little sister snaps and starts snapping her fingers next to his ear repeatedly in hopes that it would wake him up. “Come back to reality! I know dreaming is fun and all but it’s not going to get you anywhere in life on its own! You need to go to school, and if you sleep in any longer—”

She doesn’t get to finish her sentence as her brother sleepily pushes her hand away from him. “Just five more minutes.”

His sister glares at him while puffing up her cheeks. “I don’t have time for this! There’s no reason for us both to be late.” She storms off, heading out the door of the room, glancing back inside and yelling at him one final time before slamming the door shut. “Don’t say I didn’t warn ya!”

The slamming door doesn’t seem to faze Andrew as he continues sleeping, still in his dream. “You want my autograph?” He chuckles in his sleep. “Wait I remember you, you were at my last concert too, are you following me?”

Time passes and Andrew continues sleeping, still dreaming his fantastic dreams of fame and not just any fame, fame that he earned from his singing, a music career that had flourished and brought his name to every household in the world. A goal he had when he was awake as well, though, not with results as grand as this.

The door to his room once again opens and his father finds Andrew still in bed, sleeping. He looks young for the parent of a boy Andrew’s age, his glasses resting in front of his tired eyes as if he had just woken up.

He calls out to his son to get his attention, his accent much more distinct. “What are you still doing home? I thought you had sc—”

Andrew quickly sits up, unlike his sister’s voice, somehow his father’s has managed to weave its way into his dream and snap him out of it. He quickly crawls across the bed to a desk that was at its foot, crammed into the corner of the small room, with just enough room between the bed and the desk to pull the chair out for him to sit.

He rummages through last night's homework, opening up a laptop, and reading the time displayed in the lower corner of the screen: 8:47. 

Quickly, he rushes out of bed falling out and hitting the floor, Andrew tries to undress, get dressed and gather up his homework into his bookbag all at the same time, screaming curse after curse the whole while.

His father silently turns away heading towards the apartment’s kitchen. His son pushes past him through the hall and almost knocks him over as he runs to the front door. He screams and stumbles as he tries to put his shoes on while also running through the apartment’s hallway.

He stomps his feet into his shoes, having not bothered to untie them before putting them on, opens the door to the stairs and runs down them, and soon he is out the front door and running down the sidewalk that leads to school.

Eventually his running starts to slow so he can catch his breath, adjusting the backpack he carries over his shoulder while still walking at a quick pace. He begins mumbling to himself in frustration, already able to hear the lectures he is going to get once he reaches the school. “Of all the crap I have to go through listening to whining adults is the worst!”

He mimics the voice of his principal, a man with a deep voice that always sounds sharp and bitter. “Late again Perkasin?”

Now he mimics his science teacher, whose voice has a confident and bouncy tone with a very nice flow to it. “What’s your excuse this time Perkasin?”

He mimics his gym teacher, who he gives a loud and twangy voice, Andrew struggling to mimic his dialect. It is far too American for him to mimic well. “Why can’t you be on time for once?”

Lastly he mimics his homeroom teacher, the one he receives these complaints from the most out of all of the staff. “You forgot to gel your hair Perkasin.”

He groans at the thought, never once have they even questioned him about why he was late with concern, they only lecture him about it and how he should do better.

He stops walking, pausing his thoughts for a moment and going back to what he has made the last impersonation of his teachers say. “Hang on, gel my hair? What?”

He walks to the side approaching the window of a coffee shop and looks into it focusing on his reflection. A horrified look fills his face when he sees his hair, boring, flat, and resting dully around the shape of his head. “I DID FORGET!!!”

He turns around running back home even faster than he had been when running from it. “Damn it!! I look like a freak!!!”

A young boy dressed in strange clothes with what looks to be dyed purple hair that has been spiked up in an oddly unique way, watches as Andrew races back to his apartment. He is perched high in the air and seated upon a thin, flat metal bar that is attached to nothing, it and the boy floating in the air effortlessly.

He lets out a hum of interest, taking his eyes off of the boy and looking around him as if he were expecting someone to show up. “They sure are taking their time to get here. What’s holding them up?”

He lifts his legs up under him getting to a crouching position and balancing on the oddly shaped metal bar he has been sitting on, leaping off of it while gripping it tightly in his right hand so he can keep it with him as he lands on the flat roof of the coffeeshop where Andrew had been staring at his reflection.

He taps his foot impatiently on the ground as he slings what looks to be a giant steel clock hand over his shoulder which loses its physical form and attaches itself to his back in the form of what looked like but couldn’t be a tattoo. “This is just what I need, a partner that’s just as flighty as dad is, I mean, sure my brother kind of took after him too but at least he was on time for these things!”

An older man responds to him. “You shouldn’t talk about people like that out loud when you’re waiting for them to show up. They’re liable to hear all those negative things you’re saying about them.”

The boy turns toward the old man, he seems to be in what looked like his late sixties, early seventies. His face is clean shaven, his long hair combed neatly and tied back out of the way. His clothes are comfortable but dressy, as if he were there for important business.

The child lets out a sigh of relief. “Finally.” His relief is short lived as he begins searching the rooftop around them, the older man there alone. “Why is it only you? Where’s the other one?”

The elder man shrugs his shoulders. “Eh, I dunno.” 

“Don’t give me that! You should know where he is! It’s your job to know.”

“And why is that?”

“You’re omniscient!!”

He is about to argue further with the old man but stops, something else catches his attention. His gaze turns towards a car that had pulled into a lot of the strip mall the coffee shop was located in. “Your meeting is here, you need to get in place.” He looks back only to find that the older man he had been talking to had disappeared.

The boy gives another quick glance around him still not finding the other person he had been expecting to show up there, a bitter tone in his voice. “My brother would have never kept me waiting like this… I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this new guy.”

He walks to the side of the roof looking toward the now parked car, the door opening as Andrew’s father walks out of it taking a moment to double check an address he had been given before walking toward the coffee shop the odd child was on the roof of.