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'Time' went on, and moving between both the waning consciousness of her waking body and the maddening focus of her dreaming mind was going to truly be Yuina's end if there wasn't an end in sight...[break]
The dreaming was the only escape, falling asleep and waking again to a form that wasn't injured, starving, empty save for the toxins that the chain fueled... At first it was pleasant, if not daunting knowing that they would be forced to wake eventually... But the ticking only became more and more vexing. It wouldn't stop...[break][break]
But she didn't dismiss it... It was both John Sullivan knowing from experience that anything that seemed amiss or out of the ordinary shouldn't be dismissed, and perhaps her own insistence to find things out for herself that kept Yuina occupied as she tried to discern what it meant. Over the 'days', it was more a concept of talking at Doug rather than talking with him, volleying different thoughts and ideas of what it was she was feeling, what focusing on the 'time' passing could mean.[break][break]
It was all as if there was a clock somewhere, with a clock hand that would tick, but with every tick there was no tock, it was stuck... Not even ticking back and forth, just ticking over and over again in the same spot, ticking for nothing...[break]
That was exactly it, a clock ticking over and over again, it was still maintaining 'time', but the 'time' wasn't linear. It felt like 'time' was stuck, because it was... Stuck in a never ending loop that would cycle back to where the clock hand began, only to tick and tick and tick, and return, repeat...[break][break]
Coming to understand what it meant though did not bring any relief, in fact, it truly only raised more concerns... For even as a message was spreading that their one chance might be heeding their dwindling hopes, if this time loop couldn't be broken, would they not just be trapped back in this endless cycle?[break]
Yuina tried to discern anything else that she could any way she could, perhaps even before it might be too late. How did they become trapped in a time loop? What had caused it or formed it, and what was maintaining it? Did the megalopolans figure out how to utilize tera crystals to manipulate time barriers? Yuina remembered how much power, how much energy was being transferred between both the Tera Crystals and the Space-Time Distortion beneath the swamps on Route 119, surely there had to be a connection between the two...[break][break]

---

[break]
Returning to the waking world is jarring. What had become routine, finding emptiness in being lost to the chain, longing and an insatiable need to give in to the wills of the chain, The Mask, to feel fulfilled... Something felt different? Even as her distant eyes found John Sullivan again, where she had been loosing the idea of him more and more with each passing 'day', the tears that he was collecting from them both... Something was happening... Her lost mind remembered the message being passed through the dreamscape, it was real? Was this chance real? The feeling of Willpower coming to her as they were removed from their cells...[break][break]
Their chance was real, and they couldn't waste it.[break][break]
The chaos was immediate, the message, the mission, had resonated with everyone. The toxic chains began to change, forming with each of them, donning a power just as the wardens had flaunted... Yuina found herself revitalized by a show of force that Doug gave, his chain dispersing like the scales he was capable of utilizing. It was far from everything that her body needed, but it was enough... She could feel herself coming back to some state of being as the mask fell from her face, her own toxic chain feeding into the will and desires that flooded her.[break][break]
Yuina glanced at a Megalopolan coming towards her, even though the rest of them were momentarily separated from the true will of the toxic chains, the Megalopolans were not, and they attacked without cause in spite of knowing that they too were trapped here... She panicked, she didn't have her seamitar, she was maybe only just strong enough to fend them off, but in a moment of focus as she honed in on the figure rushing towards her, she watched them flicker and set back in a stance and distance they had been in just seconds before... resetting like they had been caught in a time loop...[break][break]
With the open opportunity, knowing now where they were going to step, how they were going to lunge forward to strike, Yuina was able to meet their movements and catch their feet with hers, rendering them unstable and knocking them to the ground.[break][break]
Yuina could feel it, in this however brief moment of clarity, that interference of time, and she was awake... And she could feel the chain fueling her desires in a way, her desires for a time before she was lost, a time when she knew all of who she was, time... Was the great leveler for everything, nothing could escape from time. Time was what took her away, but time could also give her everything she truly desired if she allowed it... Time was ever lasting, and in due time... Allowing herself time... She would be okay...[break][break]
Fighting together with John Sullivan, and any other of their ward who looked to take advantage of their foes being caught in a time loop that set them back and made them vulnerable to prediction, Yuina too rushed through the ward to make their way to the elevator. But still, she couldn't stop worrying... How were they going to break the time loop?

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