#I won’t tag anyone else becasue they aren’t super prevalent

[avirxy]

So, I have like an..idea okay. I’m not usually one to touch upon the garbage fire, but just this once.

Jim goes back in time, he’s impulsive and rash and his decision was not thought out at all, he was acting purely on the rush of emotional weight that was brought forth by his best friend dying.

The amulet calls for Toby.

That’s something he wasn’t expecting, Jim doesn’t understand why it didn’t call to him, did he do something wrong? Had his failure to save his best friend deemed him unworthy?

He tries to focus his attention elsewhere, working under the guise of unknowing, he can fix this. He even has time to work on the play, despite Claire’s oddly silent indifference toward him, like she knows something, but if she’s suspicious she never voices such.

It’s..weird.

The battle at the museum doesn’t happen because Jim manages to sway Strickler to their side, even if he’s a tad standoffish, everything is great, Draal has two arms, no ones died that hasn’t absolutely had too. Jim can do this, he can keep everyone safe.

He’s not folding under the pressure, he’s Atlas, he can hold the world up and still make time to finish his Spanish homework.

But something’s following them, someone, he should say. Toby’s the one who brings it up, after training one day in the forge, he blunders and bumbles through his explanation but gets his point across fairly clear.

There’s some shady figure in armor, and it’s not the Daylight armor, Toby has the amulet, no this looks, futuristic in a sense, a mixed combination of outer worldly tech and wizardry.

Jim doesn’t understand at first, he could have forgotten some minuet details but he absolutely does not recall a figure in armor stalking his best friend, let alone him this early into the timeline.

Unless Angor rot has been awoken but Strickler wouldn’t do that, would he? Angor rot doesn’t wear armor.

Weeks fly by with no answer.

Jim hopelessly continues through the motions, he mourns the fact his surrogate father no longer recognizes him, doesn’t see him as a son. Everything feels the same but different at the same time. He just wants to make things right.

Then, he sees them, this mysterious watcher, as he’s walking his bike home from Trollmarket, contemplating his next step.

Standing at the end of the street, motionless, the lamplight illuminating their dark armor. Appearing like an omen of death.

They have Excalibur, held loosely, too loosely for someone that should know how to wield a sword. His first constricting, paralyzing thought is the Green Knight, but no, this is someone else, they have his amulet, the one Douxie and Krel built.

Sitting in place over their heart. It ticks, time endlessly stretching out.

Excalibur is lifted up, pointed straight at his chest. And their voice comes loathing, enraged and betrayed through the helmet they wear.

“No more running, you coward.”

Someone followed Jim back in time, after he abandoned everyone and everything he’s ever known, and they want revenge.