#i legit just pulled this out on a whim ahahahhaha

[nem0-nee]

HANDS... of TIME will wring my neck.

It is 9:15 according to the watch. It was this late in the story, yet she was still in the shackles placed upon her by STYX.

How on earth did the Ramshackle prefect end up in such a predicament?

[The pages beckon you to take a peek]

Usually, she would've been back in NRC at this hour, just in time to prepare for what was to come with the Diasomnia chapter. Yet, somehow she's still shackled down in Tartarus. Why is that the case?

Guess it's because of those stones she ate, the ones Grim would gobble down in the previous timelines. This time, she was the one throwing these down the hatch.

Kyuu told her that it was necessary to swallow these blotted magestones in order to develop her UM. Each stone swallowed meant that she would get stronger and stronger.

You could say that she saw this as necessary. The ends justify the means, and it's utterly justifiable that she must get stronger to save everyone. Plus, if it meant that Grim would be saved, then she'd gladly take the fall.

And so, stone after stone did she get strong. The hour hand struck harder, and the minute hand moved faster. Each battle from each dorm got easier and easier the more she consumed a stone from the fallen phantoms.

Yet...

Of course, nothing in this world comes for free.

The night after the VDC competition, the Ramshackle prefect went rogue.

At first, Grim went missing from the dorm's premises. This greatly worried Mayuu, thinking that her efforts were futile and that he was bound to go ballistic and get captured by STYX all over again. However, this was proven to not be the case, as he eventually returned from his trip from Sam's shop with a wagon of tuna.

However, later that night, Grim woke to his tail getting stepped on by this stupid human. This would be a normal occurrence, but something about her this time seemed off.

Mayuu's motion was akin to a robot's; stiff and mechanical. The prefect definitely did a lot of strange things, but even this was an outlier for her peculiarities. What was even more strange was that she decided to take a trip outside without her weapons. Presumably, if she were to be awake at this hour, she'd go out to train.

Something was definitely up, Grim just knew it.

Thus, he decided to follow her. Better safe than to be sorry, and he didn't want to feel sorry if his human ended up disappearing just because of his ignorance.

Trailing behind the prefect, they both eventually reached the VDC stage. Everything else that happened went by so fast.

She was hungry, hungry for the magestone buried in the depths of the stage. She was desperate to get that crunch that the murky stone gave, and she was going to do anything in order to get that bite.

Grim witnessed the prefect unearthing the stage with her bare hands, causing them to wear and tear to a degree.

"M-Myaaah human!!? S-Stop it! I command you to stop! You're gonna get yourself hur-"

"H O U R H A N D"

The response Mayuu gave him for his rare concern was a punch to the face. What makes matters worse was that she used her UM against him, dealing a painful blow to the poor thing.

With this incident, Mayuu ended up being taken by STYX. There they discovered a concerning amount of blot building up in the prefect's system. Thus, she is to stay on the premises until it's deemed safe for her to return to the outside world.

To her, this is all worth it. The narrative deviated from the story she knew. Now, there was hope that she could finally change the ending of this tale.

Yet, who's to say that the route she's on would yield better results than the one she already knew?

[ - END OF CHAPTER -]