“NO!”

The girl shouts as her body instinctively rises from her seat.

A confused expression adorning her face, while cold sweat is running down her back.

After bracing herself for a few seconds, she realises whatever she was anticipating never came.

Analysing the room she finds herself in, she notices some peculiarities. 

There are a lot of students. Students? That’s weird, she thought.

Taking a closer look she notices something, something that makes a certain part of her brain tug at a memory, but what memory is it?

“Ariana?”

The girl turns around at the call of her name. Standing there, just a few meters away is a middle aged man dressed in a particular attire she hasn’t seen since…

“Professor Rignold?”

No, that can’t be. 

If he is there then that means.

“Are you alright?”

Ariana looks at the man, then the rest of the students in the classroom, before nausea hits her and she has to place a palm on her desk to steady herself.

“No, sorry professor. I don’t think I am. I apologise but I think it’s best if I left early.”

The man gives her a nod, and she scrambles for her bag, leaving the room.

##

“Haaaah.” Letting out something between a deep breath and a sigh, Ariana slides down the wall, using it for support as her back fluidly follows the smooth white surface.

Pulling out her phone she looks at the date, before mumbling to herself. “7th of March, 2050…”

As she contemplates this massive revelation, an influx of information is being forced into her brain, and the pressure, the headache, it’s all too much.

On the verge of collapsing, she realises what this familiar sensation is. The muddled memories become clearer, and she realises her own peril.

‘System. Buy multi-thought processing.’

[Denied. I’m sorry Ariana, you don’t have enough points.]

“Not enough points…” Ariana mumbles to herself, before realising the problem.

‘System, take out a 3 month loan for enough points to buy multi-thought processing. Quickly please, I can already feel my body deteriorating.’

The only reason she could communicate at the moment, is due to the conversation taking place in her mind. If she would have been forced to speak, she would probably fail miserably, as the current pain of having her body forcefully decomposing itself is not pleasant.

[Purchase successfull. Multi-Thought Processing installed. Loan of 100.000 points obtained. Payment due in 3 months. Collateral; Life.]

‘Thank you’. Ariana let out a breath of relief as the information started sorting itself.

The human body is only made to last a certain amount of years, and the same goes for their brains.

While in 2050, mankind isn’t advanced enough to have fully unveiled the complexity of the human brain, most scientists would probably agree that having 3 million years of experiences, memories, emotions and everything that comes with living, forcefully crammed into your brain, is not a good thing.

‘System, what happened? I remember the fight against the Overseer. Being betrayed by our friends, and..Oh by the Chaos. Miralis…’

[At the moment of your death, a certain one time use ability was granted by the Overseer of Fate; Phoenix Restart.]

‘Oh by the Chaos. If she interfered, it was worse than we thought.’

[If by ‘worse than we thought’ you mean the annihilation of all life in the past, present and the future, forever? Then yes.]

‘Wait but then…’

[Yes. Note that the ability is called Restart, not Rebirth. Fate managed to grab one timeline and forcefully insert you, and one other entity into it. While I don’t think you’ll have 3 million years this time, you will at the minimum have a few centuries.]

‘Centuries..that’s not enough to- WAIT! One other entity?’

Before the system could respond to her inquiry, Ariana’s phone lit up with a number she doesn’t recognise, but that can only mean one of two things. One, it’s spam. Two, it’s her.

Picking up the phone, Ariana places the phone with a shaking hand close to her ear.

“Ariana?”

As she heard the familiar voice she let out the sob she held back. In a certain corridor in a certain university in a certain city, sat a girl crying her heart out, crouched down besides a wall.

That one voice. The fact that the girl even knows who she is is proof that her theory is correct.

Letting out between whimpers, all she manages to respond is a single word. “Sweetie…”

Ariana hears the gasp through the phone, and all her thoughts about not having enough time, not wanting to go through it all again, everything is blown away.

She now has one single goal.

Make sure there is at least one world left where she can live for eternity, with her wife.