I explained my plan to Acasiana. She instantly pointed out the biggest problem–problems, actually–with it. If Moricla accepted Keratily as the new Acasiana for the hazard, we lost our ability to hopefully heal the braindead Staura. I already knew that was the case, and that wasn’t what I’d been banking on. It was plan B, yes, and a few people would really end up hating me, but it was better than letting Keratily loose on Rainbow Basin.

Unfortunately, there was also a huge hole in plan A. Moricla. I’d hoped she would hate Keratily just as much as me, but as Acasiana pointed out, we didn’t know how she would react. She was being quiet–dangerously quiet–and Acasiana couldn’t tell what kind of obsession was fueling that silence.

“Fuck. Alright.” I muttered and crossed my arms. “Unfortunately, I don’t really see any other way to get out of this. Inopsy won’t be strong enough to kill her, even with my help, and the second another Keratily finds this place she’s going to leave for Rainbow Basin. You have any other ideas?”

Acasiana shook her head. “Inopsy and Keratily are fighting at an early point, but not the very beginning. If you want to intervene you’ll have to go back to the beginning and clear a few fights before you can help Inopsy.”

“Well that’s just wonderful. Making this even worse for us.” I grumbled. “I can send Inopsy a message to lure Keratily into the safe room, then tell him how to break into the mountain. As long as she’s too preoccupied with him to take a closer look at her surroundings we should be able to summon another monster and they’ll kill it as collateral damage. Once that happens, can you force them into the clear condition?”

“Not quite, but close enough for our purposes. Are you sure you want to go down this path?” Acasiana put an armored hand on my shoulder and used me to lower herself onto the step next to me. “It’s probably safe to say that if we get Keratily in here, you’re throwing away the lives of all the braindead people you’re trying to save. Can you live with that? Will their families and loved ones forgive you for that sacrifice?”

I grit my teeth and clenched my fists. If there was any other option, I would’ve taken it. But there were too many variables–each of which could fuck everything over in a heartbeat and put us all in danger. The literal only other option was to kill Keratily on our own. And that still involved luring her here so I could help Inopsy.

“Guess we’ll just have to hope fake Moricla wants Keratily dead.”

“Putting all your faith in hate is usually not a good idea. I can keep Inopsy and Keratily occupied for a little while without them realizing what’s going on, but if you’re more worried about what’s going on outside of the hazard, then that might not be a good idea.”

“Problem is that I’m worried about everything.” I sighed in frustration. “The Keratilys, Endra, Scalovera, and even a group of humans that are a complete wildcard. If one of them gets completely out of control we don’t stand a chance. If two of them get out of control, we’ll have to abandon Rainbow Basin.”

I glanced over at Acasiana. “You had to make a hard choice. Killing everyone you knew to stop Endra from getting a foothold in the all-world. What led up to that? How many times did you try to find a better way before it was the only option?”

“Far, far too many. More than I can remember, actually.” Acasiana admitted with a hint of shame. “But the only thing that I remember like a blazing beacon is that one last decision I made. To save the city, its people, and maybe even the all-world in general at the cost of my own freedom. Do you remember when I told you I was happy living here with Moricla?”

I nodded.

“Well, it was a bold-faced lie. I despise that frail, egotistical facade of a god. She’s a manifestation of all the worst traits Moricla and her alter ego have to offer, and she carries grudges and hatred like they’re her most treasured possessions.” Acasiana said casually. She snapped her fingers, and a glowing infinity manifested on her chest. “I want out of here. But that involves giving someone else power over a hazard, and if that’s Keratily, you’ll have to quarantine this place for the rest of time. And you’ll lose the only way you can think of to cure those brain-dead people of yours.”

She methodically moved her hand over her chest and crushed the symbol in her fist. It shattered in a spray of colours and sensations that mirrored the ones I’d felt before the facility’s waters gave me those visions. That very same symbol had flashed at the start of the vision, and then again when time had rewound after Endra got her parasites in Acasiana.

“You can turn back time. I assumed that was the case after the vision in the facility, but there’s got to be some huge drawback to an absurd function like that.” I reasoned. “Or else you would’ve offered to heal everyone, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Does it only work when that symbol lights up?”

Acasiana opened her hand and released a puff of prismatic dust without saying a word. She stared straight into my visor, her own eyes completely blocked off by the barrier between us. Something had changed. She slumped a little, and her armor was dirtier than it had been a second ago. Almost like she’d just come back from a battle.

…Had she just come back from a battle?

“Did… you just do a time thing?” I so eloquently phrased my question.

She snickered and sat up straight while pushing on her lower back. “Not the way I would’ve put it, but yes. Unfortunately for us, it looks like all my functions get undone when anyone else comes into the mountain. So all we did in that timeline was brainstorm for three hours while Keratily and Inopsy duked it out.”

“Three hours.” I stated in disbelief. “Inopsy held out for that long?”

“That long and maybe longer. The hazard fed me battery to keep the function working, which is why it shut down, but that was still my limit. ‘Time stuff’ is extremely battery hungry.”

I nodded in agreement. I’d never had anything like that of my own, but I’d known someone who had the ability to look two seconds into the future. They could leave it on for a whole fifteen seconds before their entire battery reserves were used up. But to actually live through everything, and for a variable amount of time… Acasiana’s function had to be absurdly strong.

And it had to have more drawbacks than just chugging battery.

“If you went back in time, then why do you look so haggard?”

“What, this?” Acasiana gestured at herself. “This was from sparring with you to get a better sense of your abilities.”

“That’s… not the answer I was looking for. I mean, why do you have any damage on you at all? Shouldn’t it all rewind the second you activate your function? And… huh. Wouldn’t that mean you could effectively stay at one moment in time for however long you wanted, since you’d get the battery back too?”

Acasiana didn’t say anything for a moment. It was long enough for me to understand exactly why that wasn’t the case, but I still wanted to hear it from her.

“Some things don’t rewind.” She eventually said with a shrug. “My armor’s integrity and battery levels don’t go back to what they were. Do you remember how I rewound the damage you and Juniper took the last time we met?”

I leaned back a little and stared at the twin orbs hovering behind Acasiana’s shoulders. “Yeah, I remember.”

“That’s another application of my core. Pulling the past into the present, instead of pulling the future back to the past. It’s a little easier, but it doesn’t work on battery levels. Those always stay at whatever their lowest point was.” She explained, then held out a palm.

One of the orbs floated over to her, and her armor blinked back to perfect shape. It did lose a little bit of its luster, though, which must have been it extracting its cost. Something about that fucking terrified me, and I was beyond glad that Acasiana wasn’t the Morical fangirl I’d initially thought she was.

“I have to ask… what was with all that ‘partner’ stuff last time?”

“Appeasing Moricla.” Acasiana said without hesitation. “And as for being tricked into taking over the hazard… well, you know that was partly a lie. I went in there to isolate myself in the hazard forever, but out of my own volition. Having someone lie to me and trap me here even though it was what I wanted in the first place wasn’t a good experience.”

I was taken aback by how easily Acasiana had just explained all that to me. It was a level of honesty I wasn’t expecting, and one that I really appreciated. Didn’t change that fact that I’d just had a three hour conversation with her that I didn’t remember at all, which had probably brought on that willingness to be honest.

Plus, she wasn’t saying anything about those plans. I took that to mean we hadn’t gotten anywhere with them, or that she hadn’t thought any of them were good enough to put into motion. There’s no way I didn’t suggest using her function to turn back time once we got Keratily to clear the hazard. And that meant it wasn’t a good idea. Probably because the outcome was set in stone once that happened.

Leaving me at pretty much exactly the same spot as I’d been a few minutes ago, except with a little more trust and fear in Acasiana. A damn healthy fear, might I add. She’d only been let out a few times over a thousand years, so she couldn’t be well-adjusted to living with real people.

I narrowed my eyes and glanced over my shoulder. As if I’d be able to see Moricla through the rest of the mountain, which was obviously impossible.

“I obviously asked you this during that three-hour brainstorming I don’t remember, but you can’t just get a day-pass from Moricla to help us out with this?”

Acasiana shook her head. “I explained it in detail to you before, but the short-hand version is that there’s a lot of hoops I have to jump through to get out. The two major ones are: there can’t be anyone else in the hazard, and Moricla has to be in a good mood. Obviously neither of those are going to happen any time soon.”

“Obviously.” I sighed in agreement. “Did we really have a three-hour planning session just to solidify that the best course of action relies on a coin flip of Moricla’s hatred?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Acasiana brushed off her lap, then sprung to her feet. “And since we finally settled on something, we might as well get started. How do you feel about being used as bait?”