Angel peered down the stairs of the cellar for the tenth time now, and for the eighth time, she would engage in a fight with Arthur.

As she neared the bottom, the two people in the small room stopped talking, signaling her sprint across the rest of the stairs and through the room. Arthur swiftly turned and sent a punch to Angel’s head, but she dodged just in time, and his hand only traveled through her hair. In turn, she sent her own fist at Arthur’s stomach, which was dodged as well. But Angel quickly reacted as she threw her body onto Arthur, causing him to tip over.

Before the large man fell, he caught himself by putting a foot back, and sent a straight punch in Angel’s blind spot towards her jaw. Before the hit landed, Angel leaned back, and the fist brushed past her nose. Arthur had a backup plan, though. He sent his leg in a kick to Angel’s feet, aiming to trip her. That plan backfired again as she dodged it as well, without even looking. In turn, Arthur sent his elbow down on the short girl’s head. She twisted around and his arm missed her shoulder by a hair.

It seemed all of Arthur’s simple kicks and punches were seen through before they made any contact. Just who was this girl? Given this new mystery, Arthur decided on a change in tactics. He made a wide turn—something Angel wouldn’t be able to dodge—and prepared to push her away from his body. However, the girl suddenly twisted around with him and crouched down, still hugging his torso firmly.

That was where Arthur made his mistake. Just a small move by the girl would be enough to tip him off balance, making it easy to throw him onto the ground. So he relaxed his muscles and raised his hands up in defeat. Angel paused her movements. “Okay, okay! I lost. I really don’t know why you just attacked me out of nowhere. So please, let me go.”

Angel dropped her arms to her sides and stepped back. Arthur dropped to his knee, breathing heavily. He had used a lot of energy there to speed his time up to keep up with Angel’s movements.

“So, you’ve recovered,” Arthur managed to fit in between his short breaths.

“Yes. Though my muscles are still a bit sore.”

Arthur put leaned a hand on his knee. “Well, either way, that’s not how you should treat someone that saved your life!”

Immediately after he finished his sentence, he flung himself around and stood up, sending a foot straight towards Angel’s head in a perfect roundhouse kick. Wrong move. Again.

Angel ducked and grabbed Arthur’s foot, using his momentum to push him back to the ground. Arthur landed hard on his back, knocking the breath out of him. He wouldn’t be standing up any time soon.

Walking up to the man, Angel bent down and took out a ring of keys from his pocket. She walked up to Damien, who was standing with his back to the wall, clearly in shock at what had just happened. She started testing each of the keys on the keychain again. On the eighth one, the handcuff’s lock clicked, and Damien’s wrists were released.

Behind Angel, Arthur had stood up, still out of breath. “Huh, so you two really are together.”

Angel ignored him and started walking to the stairwell, motioning for Damien to follow her.

Arthur also picked himself up and went after Angel. “Wait. Seriously, who are you? Normally somebody would only be able to see about half a second away in the timeline. I’m already above average, at an entire second. But you… you predicted all my moves.”

Angel stopped and turned around, smiling at Arthur. “Me? I guess I can see up to around an hour? More importantly, why you should learn a bit more combat skills? Then you might have a chance of beating me.” She didn’t reveal how she had been through this fight seven whole times already. She didn’t want to be labeled as a criminal right after getting Arthur to realize she was with Damien.

Finally, Angel led Damien out of the cellar and up the stairs. She finally finished her first objective: freeing Damien from captivity. As she came out into the open, the sunshine felt different now that Damien was with her. The grass was greener, the autumn leaves were oranger, and the sky was bluer. Angel raised her arms up in a yawn. All that time looping had taken its toll on her mental state, and she briefly forgot about her next objective until she snapped back and became serious.

Stopping in her tracks, Angel turned to call back to Arthur. “Our pursuers are coming. Could we borrow your wagon? We need to head out quickly.”

Arthur had just come out of the trapdoor. He put his hands on his hips in suspicion. “Pursuers? What, are you some sort of criminal too?”

Angel’s heart skipped a beat at that. Yes, she was a criminal, but she didn’t want to get on Arthur’s bad side. She would need him to escape the shooters. “Aren’t you getting this mixed up, old man? They are the criminals, okay? And what about you? You haven’t even introduced yourself, and you’re assuming who we are?”

Arthur was taken aback by that, but he thought for a moment and quickly introduced himself. “Well, my name is Arthur. I’m basically a supervisor of this temporal region. Very nice to meet you.” He said that last bit sarcastically. “And you are…?” His voice trailed off as he suddenly came to a realization. “Wait, don’t tell me you’re…nobility?”

He paused, thinking, and Angel stood there waiting for him, but also curious as to why he thought that. “That…explains your supernatural sight…and your combat skills…” Either this girl was a very important figure, or a skilled criminal. But if their pursuers actually were criminals, then the former would be more likely. “Well, what can you say to make me believe that your pursuers are criminals?”

“Two words. Timeline cherrypicking.”

“Time—those techniques?!” That had undoubtedly taken Arthur by surprise, but he quickly composed himself, and his expression became dead serious.

“Now then, shall I introduce myself?”

After Arthur said nothing, she lifted her dress in a slight curtsy and spoke. “My name is Angel. I come from Centrar, and I am daughter of the queen of the Kronoan Empire. Nice to meet you.”

Lie. In truth, of the 44 years Angel had been jumping through worlds and timelines, she had never once been to Centrar, the capital timeline of the Kronoan Empire. There were way too many law enforcers there, and she would be caught for sure.

However, only half of that was a lie. Although Angel had never lived in the royal palace, she was directly related to the family. And that blood relationship was all she needed to convince the man in front of her.

Arthur took out his biometric scanning device, gave it a pinch, and looked back at Angel. A wave of embarrassment swept over his face.

“I… I’m so sorry…I didn’t know you were—” Arthur suddenly bowed and continued, “Sorry, I’ll introduce myself properly now. I am Arthur, currently serving as an observer, overseer, and supervisor of chronal sector 78434 world A002. Please forgive my rudeness, Milady. I did not realize you were a figure of such high importance.”

Angel crossed her arms. “Now that we have cleared things up, how about you go get that wagon of yours?” She was relieved the device didn’t have her marked as a criminal.

Arthur promptly stood back up and ran to the side of the cabin where the horse stables were and retrieved two horses. Angel walked up to the wagon, with Damien following her, and climbed in while Arthur hooked the horses up.

“Quickly. We have around a thirty-minute head start, but they will catch up to us.”

Arthur sped up his work at Angel’s orders, and the three set to leave the town. The wagon rocked heavily as the wooden wheels hit pebbles and imperfections on the unpaved road.

“Wh-where are we going?” Damien managed to say as they left the town and took a left on an intersection. With only a pair of shorts on, he was hugging himself and shivering in the cool autumn air. Angel dug through the wagon and found a pair of pants and a shirt, and handed them to Damien for him to put on.

Arthur called from the front of the wagon. “I have a time machine in the forest, so I’ll be taking us there so we can escape this place.”

Angel interrupted him. “No, we should not go there. Go to your backup time machine instead.”

Arthur turned his head. “Why not? That one’s closer.” Then he turned back and continued, “and how do you know I have a backup time machine?” There was a hint of suspicion in his voice.

“Just trust my precognition,” Angel replied. She’d have to be careful of which pieces of information she could say. Arthur still hadn’t fully trusted her yet.

The man hesitated, but eventually turned the wagon around and headed back to the intersection. “Your orders, Milady,” he said as the wagon turned left, this time driving directly away from the town.

An entire hour passed before the wagon slowed to a stop at the edge of a nondescript place of the forest. The whole journey was silent, with everybody sitting in place, lost in thought. The shooters were still nowhere in sight, but they could appear any time now.

Arthur stepped off the wagon, followed by Angel and Damien. But before they walked into the forest, Angel stopped them as she remembered how long it took to get to the time machine last time. “We should go on the horses. It will be faster that way.”

Arthur unhooked the two horses from the wagon, and the three jumped on, with Damien riding behind Angel. Angel had experience riding horses in the past, but it had been a long time since she’d been on one, let alone on one without a saddle. However, if it meant escaping their pursuers, then horses would be the way to go. So with a kick and a neigh, the group set off into the forest.

It didn’t take long for them to reach the backup time machine, but they did go through enough turns in the forest to make Damien feel lost. Angel, on the other hand, kept track of the entire route, noting some possible shortcuts along the way.

This machine was just as well hidden as the other one. The location it resided in was just like the rest of the forest, and you could walk over the hiding spot without noticing anything.

Arthur hopped off his horse at the destination and looked around, raking away fallen leaves. When he found what he was looking for, he bent down and lifted off a large covering, revealing a large capsule that looked more like the ground than an actual time machine. Angel sighed in relief. They would be escaping smoothly on her first attempt.

Feeling around the capsule, Arthur found a hatch and opened it, revealing an entrance. “This is only the backup one,” he said as he bent into the machine, “so it isn’t as capable, but it should work well—”

He cut himself off, and after a moment of fiddling around in the capsule, he pulled himself out. “Well, ain’t that interesting… It isn’t turning on.”

That was when a figure dropped down from the trees above and landed on Arthur’s back. He turned just in time for the knife to miss his head, but that didn’t prevent it from tearing into his shoulder. Ignoring the fact that he just got stabbed, he swiftly swung his arm around to hit the short man behind him, but the attacker jumped off onto the ground.

Angel took a quick look at the new person. He was definitely one of the shooters from before—the one that had given Damien the shoulder wounds she had healed. But before she could think of what to do next, the man lunged at her, slicing through the flesh of her horse’s leg. She and Damien fell off, and before Angel hit the ground, she was back at square one.

Sunlight filtered through the window into the cabin room, where Angel woke yet again on the straw-padded bed.