Sasha

Ding Ding Ding

Sasha's alarm rang, indicating the end of her mandatory four-hour sleep. She rolled over and turned it off. She got up from her bed and walked over to her desk. Opening her journal by the bookmark, she found the page indicating how long she had been with the Preservers—four ticks for four hours. 447,066 Earth-32-1 hours exactly, time flowed differently depending on where in the multiverse you reside. In Sasha's home world, it would have been 51 years. Sasha's body doesn't look or feel like it has aged; her magic and the nature of the Preservers wouldn't allow her body to advance past twenty-five. 

Fifty-one years ago, their home government contacted Sasha and her best friend, Alex, to work on a teleportation project. Even though they hadn't met beforehand, being the only 18-year-olds on the staff and their love of nerdy games and TV shows sparked an instant connection. While reviewing some of the older theoretical designs for the teleportation device one night, they realized the project was targeting the wrong way to teleport.

There are two ways to teleport: travel extremely fast or compress the distance between where you are and where you want to go. Alex and Sasha designed a device targeting the latter method, which the military leaders loved. The other project members begrudgingly confirmed that the math and design were sound, and the prototype was created.

Unfortunately, something wasn't made right, or the program wasn't coded correctly, and a much larger and more dangerous wormhole was created. This wormhole sent Sasha, Alex, and seven other people nearby across the multiverse. Anyone closer to the wormhole was killed instantly, and anyone further back was ripped apart by the event horizon.

Sometimes, Sasha wonders if they were the lucky ones. She ended up at the Preservers' base; they took her in, but only on the condition that she join their ranks. The Preservers have a single goal: protect the multiverse from itself.

As explained to her, imagine a piece of paper; now imagine that paper had infinite lines representing all of the multiverse's timelines. Some lines naturally intersect, but others will never touch. If a timeline becomes unstable or branches in a direction it shouldn't, a chain reaction of destruction could result in the end of everything. The Preservers remove anyone or anything causing this anomaly and then restore the timeline.

Sasha puts on her home base uniform. While the uniform was very strict on base, the Preservers had some flexibility in what they could wear in the field. She checks her blood-red hair in the mirror and puts on her signature lipstick that matches in color. Sasha leaves her quarters and heads to the command room. She had received a message about the whereabouts of the final person who left her home world with her.

"Ah, Sasha, did you sleep well?" Commander Richards greeted her as she entered the room. He was an odd-looking man; he joined the Preservers at 50, so the Preserver magic couldn't help him look younger but could repair his body to its best possible condition. 

"As good as I can, you know I hate sleeping." Sasha had perfected her sustainability technique. She could live for almost six Earth-32-1 months without food or water, even longer if she had just one water bottle. Sleep was just as unimportant, but the Preservers required it. 

"We have been tracking a recent timeline diversion on Tyrallia-1. There was only one timeline, but a second one branched and stayed parallel to the original. We figured it would merge back, but look at this." Commander Richards pulls up the Tyrallia timelines on a hologram. The line labeled Tyrallia-1-1' was almost at a ninety-degree angle. The unusual part was the long aligned progress before a severe bend.

"How do we know this is Alex?"

"The original separation happened at the same time as the Earth-32-1 wormhole incident. Alex laid low for a year of Tyrallia-1 before getting involved with a coop. He successfully prevented it, and that caused a domino effect of major changes to the timeline. The timeline is fairly stable but will intersect incorrectly with other timelines."

Sasha took a deep breath. This was it: one last removal and restoration. Of course, Sasha knew those words were used to sugarcoat their mission. "Removal" requires killing the person or destroying the object causing the anomaly. "Restoration" was the destruction of the errant timeline, resulting in billions, trillions, or more living things being erased from time. A version of them will still exist, but it didn't change the ending of life.

Sasha had destroyed, or rather "restored," her home timeline and killed, "removed," the seven people who escaped through the wormhole with her. Alex was the only person left. She had fifty-one years to think of this moment; she wasn't the young girl who stayed up late watching anime with a boy she liked on a military base. Her feelings were gone, and she was mature now. Removing him was her job; she wouldn't become a commander until she completed it. 

"I shall head to Tyrallia immediately." 

"I have a removal team gearing up as we speak. You will be the temporary commander for this mission. Prove to us that you can lead your squad."

Sasha's heart skipped a beat. She hadn't been given this opportunity before. "Thank you, sir." She salutes and heads to the preparation room.

Sasha puts on her battle gear. A one-strap black tank top with a feathery look paired with a long feathery skirt that had a deep slit on the left side. She had a nice body, a full bosom, and gorgeous long legs. She liked showing up to missions looking like an angel; if angels wore black and carried a large scythe. She conjured her scythe; from a distance, it would look black, but if someone could get close enough to it and survive, they would see it was a deep bloody red, and a liquid inside flowed and beat like blood through veins. 

Sasha released her magic after double-checking that her chest was amply visible and her lips were red and seductive. Her body became covered in glowing purple symbols. Some mages carried tombs to use their spells, but Sasha preferred to have all her words of power written directly on her body.

Sasha left the changing room and met with four Preservers covered in black robes. She pulled the coordinates for Tyrallia from between her breasts. She lifted her hand and closed her eyes. The runes on her tattoos required for opening the portal glowed brighter. A portal opens, and Sasha exhales deeply. Her soldiers quickly pass through the opening, and Sasha follows close behind. 

She ensured her hips swayed perfectly, and her face showed confidence as she saw the boy before her. He was protecting a gorgeous elf. She took three more steps and stood in formation with the robed Preservers.

"Sa-sasha?"

"Hello, Alex"