Recollections of a Time Traveler

Coward... Traitor... Immoral bastard... I've been called that... And more. Much, much more, in dozens of languages... I've earned it... I've earned it all and much, much more. I ran when everybody needed me... I betrayed them with a smile when the time came... I slaughtered the innocents because of what I was... I did all that... And much, much more...

"Open wide the Gates of Time..."

My Fate was sealed the first time I said those words... I knew that I was toying with powers beyond my understanding... But it wasn't the first time I did such things. No, the first time was when I built that blasted Time Machine so long ago... I can't even remember how long go it was... A hundred years? A thousand? I don't know... And I doubt I want to. It's enough to know that it has been quite a while and leave it like that... 

It's funny how you create something for one purpose and then forces beyond your control twist that purpose, making the end result so much different... I made the Time Machine just to observe the past for my History classes... Then it turned out that there was a flaw in it, which in the end scattered my particles across the whole of Time and Space... Painfully, if I may add. It should've been the end of me...

But it wasn't.

There is a force in the Megaverse... A source of power, aptly called the Well... It is one of the many forces that keep things balanced... And it had chosen me as its agent. Of course, when I was reform before it (or inside it, to be more precise) I told it to shove it's proposal in it's ass,if it had such. And then it showed me... It showed me what would happen if I didn'taccept... Not only was I going to cease existing, since at the time it was the only thing keeping my atoms in the same time and space, but everyone I knew, everyone I met would die... The whole Megaverse would die...

I may've lived without my father's influence... I may've thought the great Shadowstorm a bastard that deserved to be thrown in the deepest pit of Hell for abandoning me, my sister and my mother shortly after our birth, his heroics be damned... But it seemed I had enough of his blood not to abandon everything at the time. So I reluctantly agreed and spoke those words...

Many years passed since then... I traveled through most of the recent timelines, changing them subtly to suit my needs. I became friends with many beings... Beings that I ended using, discarding and betraying when it was convenient... 

"I am the Darkness..."

Those words... Those words changed things drastically. I had slain the one that would've destroyed all life... But his Mantle had to be taken... Somebody had to be the King of Darkness, to be the darker side of Balance... To be Death. As I watched his corpse, impaled onto the Immortal Throne, I could feel the power being siphoned away, into the one that He had chosen as his Successor... I couldn't allow that at the time... I couldn't allow whoever it was to become power-hungry and continue His work... So I spoke the words that the Well supplied to me... I took His power... But not all of it. Half of it went to me, half of it bled away to someone else...

At that point I understood... I understood that my hatred for the King of Darkness was just a petty thing, just a desire for revenge... I saw how inconsequential I was in the grand scheme of things... If I wasn't Chosen by the Well then I would've been swatted away like a fly.

And so another period of my life started... I made more and mores schemes, fighting to keep the Balance as I now served both sides... That's when I started using my friends as tools, discarding them when I was over and done with them...Many times killing them in the process.Some of them didn't realize it before they died... Some of them found out and confronted me about it. They were the ones that tried to escape my plots... unsuccessfully. Many times I traded blows with them... I still bear the scars that my closest friend, John Simmons inflicted upon me. It was one of the few times I came close to dying too...

I remember them all... My sister, which I abandoned for safety before it all began... Natsuki, the one I fell in love with and then sacrificed to come closer to the King of Darkness... Sai'Len and John Simmons, two Projects, like me... My best friends who I threw against the hordes of undead to buy me time to reach His throne... Chris Stone, my father's right hand man and one of those that taught me when I was young, and who died protecting me in my youth...

All of them dead now.

Now I stand here... On a field of black, dead soil... Alone, with no friends to support me... Only an army of soulless beings behind my back... I can see my adversary walking towards me and my lines, no fear in her posture, nothing... I steel myself and walk forward as well.

We meet in the middle of the field... My brown eyes meet her red ones... My sun-tanned skin contrasts with her pale one... Her bright red lips smile... Mine curl into a snarl... We are so different... Only the colors of our clothes are the same - black... And even then it's different... Mine is the smooth, polished black of leather... Hers is the black of a Gothic-style dress, with frills and everything, and exposing a lot of pale skin... So unnatural on someone like her, someone who used to dress provocatively, but practically as well... 

For a while we stare at each other, waiting for someone to make the first move. Then her smile widens, becoming predatory. Her lips part, and I hear the words I've been dreading for so long...

"Hello brother..."