risingwinds | Twenty-Eighth Shooting Star

[Late at night, those who dare venture the woods may hear a sharp snap. The rustling of leaves, and... a cough? Seems someone's in the neighborhood, though from a distance, it looks like nothing more than a disembodied flame.

Should one venture closer, they'll find Ven with his clothes smudged with dirt, twigs poking outta his hair, and big, baggy circles under his eyes. Quite a departure from his normal, tidier appearance.

He continues on his way towards the village, eventually stopping at the plaza and plopping down at the edge of the fountain. Briefly, he catches glimpses of familiar faces walking by. Fuuko. Terra. Aqua. Vanitas.

Minako...

And each time, he shouts out their names. Tries to get up, but his legs are about as sturdy as rubber, and he finds himself back where he started.

After a while, he finally opens his journal and speaks.]

So, uh... I guess I've been missing a lot, huh? [Cue some sheepish laughter.]

Guess that's what happens when you go to the beach before a big Shift! I couldn't even use the teleporters to get back, so I kinda had to... walk. A lot, and then I got kidnapped.

[Tsk. What a pain.]

I'd ask what was up with that Shift, but I'm honestly just glad it's over. Couldn't even summon my Keyblade while that was going on.

[After a long pause, he heaves a soft sigh.]

Anyway, all these weird ghosts showing up got me thinking... A lot of my friends are gone now. Some have been gone for years. So I guess what I'm trying to say is... well, does anyone wanna be friends? My name's Ventus, and I've been here for a really long time. So if any of you guys are still new, I'm more than happy to give pointers. Or talk about some of my adventures in other worlds, maybe. Just uh... I think I could use some company right now.

[Anything to keep his mind off of those images.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm not sure. There have been all kinds of weird things going on lately with Shifts and stuff. It kind of makes you wonder if they're all related some how, or if this is another experiment that they haven't told us about yet.

Hrmm... Well, it is pretty weird. I've noticed buildings changing, disappearing, and sometimes it's felt like the barrier got a whole lot smaller. It's been going on for so long that there's no way it's just a coincidence.

If it is an experiment, I wonder what they're trying to test. I can understand some of the things they do, but this one doesn't seem to make any sense at all.

Hmm... Maybe they wanna build a time machine! One of 'em could've done something really embarrassing, and now they're trying to fix it.

Or maybe they already built a time machine and broke it, and all of this is happening because they're trying to fix it.

Y'know, that makes me wanna go look around and see if there's some kinda wreckage out there.

You mean like wreckage of a time machine?

[That's an interesting thing to think about.]

Yup! That's exactly what I was thinking. Who knows? Maybe you were onto something.

I'm not sure what a time machine would look like, though. The ones in stories I've read were all things that were big enough for a person to step inside, so I guess it would be kind of like the teleporters we have here...

Hmm... Or maybe it's like a space ship with a bunch of clocks all over it! And it could have a bunch of flashy flashy lights and rockets for extra speed.

That's right, rockets make a spaceship go really fast. Maybe it could even go back in time if it went fast enough.

Or into the future! Wouldn't that be cool?

[Well, assuming it's a good future. He'd rather not think of the alternative.]

I dunno, that might be a little scary. At least with the past, we already know what kind of things we're going to see there. But we have no idea what the future is going to be like. It could be almost anything.

But couldn't you find out if the future is bad and then head back in time to fix it? Then you could make sure that future never happens!

[It's something he's thought about quite a bit, for better or worse.]

But what if you ended up accidentally changing something else that also changed the future? Then you'd just have to keep going back and forth over and over again.

[Oof... That's a good point, and one he didn't totally consider.]

But aren't some things worth fighting for? Especially if you could make things better.

Well, yeah. I just don't want to make things worse in the process.

[That could always happen too.]

Yeah, I hear ya. That's the one thing that's worried me about time travel stuff.

It's just so unpredictable, and you have know way of knowing if everything's gonna work out.

Exactly. It sounds great and all, but who knows what could happen if you start messing around with the past. Maybe there's some truth to the saying that all things happen for a reason.

Maybe, but it still sucks. I know you can't have a perfect world without any problems, but it'd be nice if those problems weren't so huge, y'know?

Yeah. I wish there weren't any reasons for people to want to change the past in the first place.

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