Chrono X Angel, Book 8: The Sands of Time

Chapter 18

As she floated in midair, hands firmly locked around Melody's shoulders, Altsuko allowed herself a moment to think back on all that had transpired to bring her to this moment. At first she had simply been trying to find a way to save Kuroko from Ahrimanes. Time after time she would have to watch her sister die before her very eyes, no matter what plan she concocted to prevent that outcome she tried. It was as if the very narrative of the universe demanded that Kuroko must die. She would tell her what was going to happen, and Kuroko would flee only to return because she forgot an important book, or to save a friend, only to get caught up in the assault of Ahrimanes once more. Or other times, Altsuko would personally put Kuroko in an entirely different country, only for some other foul fate to befall her, be it murder, tragic accident, or worse. It had been during one of these tens of thousands of attempts that she had first discovered the Spark. It this attempt, she had sent Kuroko to live in America for a few months, only for the girl to be killed in car crash one day before Ahrimanes' return. In a fit of rage, she had started executing every last member of the other driver's family purely out of spite before rewinding and starting over. That was when she found him. A boy across the road watched in horror as his neighbor was turned inside out by Altsuko. When the girl went to eliminate him for being a witness, he vanished instantly, as if a light switch was flicked. Not understanding either how or why this happened, Altsuko rewound the clock and began to investigate him. Her findings would prove quite interesting...
He lived an oddly fortunate life, which while not exactly extravagant, had things still manage to almost always go right for the boy. He had all the toys he wanted. Bullies would leave him alone most of the time, and the few times he did stand up to them he would earn their respect. Whenever something truly potentially life-threatening did occur to him, he would always miraculously be fine, or just barely avoid disaster as if by luck.
Altsuko knew there was such thing as luck of course, but this was something very different to anything she had seen before. Through experimentation across time loops, she analyzed and experimented on him, processes that were not always pleasant, until one day he just... vanished for good. He did not simply just go missing, all traces of the boy simply ceased to be in the world. Family photos showed only the sister of the boy, as if she were the only child. Toys that had been his were replaced by more toys for the daughter, and no evidence of him existed in any database in the country. That was the day she first felt the mundanity begin. Before then, there would barely be a week going by in the present where some odd event would occur, often resulting in her guards being put to work solving the issue, or with her own personal intervention in rare cases. Now, months would pass where the world simply continued to turn, and life went on as normal. To most of the world there was nothing wrong, quite the opposite in fact. The peace and quiet resulted in a decade of swift advancement both scientifically and societally, with human-monster integration going about as well as it could given the circumstances. It was during one of her usual scrying sessions one day that Altsuko realized the truth. It was that day she saw it, the God-shaped hole in the universe itself. Their story, it seemed, had ended, and God's attention had thus left their world entirely. With the help of her trusted aids, she was able to recognize the exact moment God had left as the moment she witnessed the boy vanish. In desperation, she began a futile search of the time stream for the boy, going back further in his family's past, in order to drag God back with her to the present. Her actions were doomed to be in vain however, as no matter how far back she went, the boy simply did not exist anymore. Then came the day of the shattering, when she felt her tether to her time snap, slingshotting Altsuko from the year 2000 all the way to 2016.
Somehow, someway, her damned rebellious daughter had traveled back, for reasons Altsuko did not know or care. Her empire was gone. Everything she had worked to build, erased in a second by that idiot girl. As her rage boiled over though, Altsuko felt something she had not felt in a very long time. The veil of mundanity that had been cast over her and her world was gone. The Spark of Divinity had, somehow, returned to this world, which meant she could once again begin her plans anew. Now with all the time in the world to plot, she used the intervening years to regain a semblance of control over events. Initially, she had hoped to twist this timeline's version of herself into a being as twisted as she was, and perhaps the two could co-rule. That idea was swiftly shattered the day she saw how much of a goodie two-shoes she was here. Another angle would be needed, and so she hunted down the Circle of Meggido. Assuming the form of their least suspecting member, Karin, had been all too easy for her. A younger Usoko may have felt some pain in brutally murdering the young Inari in such cold blood, but Altsuko had already killed tens of thousands of children when she eliminated France, what was one more that no one would miss anyway?
And now, after all the pain and searching, she finally held the very Spark of Creation in her hands. Very soon now, she would contain it within her very essence. She would use this power to locate the so-called God of this universe and usurp them. She would take their place, sit upon their divine throne, and then she would rewrite the narrative in her own image! Events would transpire as she saw fit, not how some unknowable creator far too high above them to care about any of their lives.