Old Friend (Ordinary Heroes x Final Rose)
Lightning watched Diana and Averia run around the yard with Claire. Her daughters and their cousin were certainly having a lot of fun. She could still remember days like that with Serah before everything had gone wrong. Thankfully, she and Serah had rebuilt their relationship. True, it had taken the world almost ending, but they’d managed to get it done.
The familiar voice had Lightning turning. “Oh. It’s you.”
The koala was sipping on some cola. “I thought I’d drop by. It’s been a while.” The koala paused. “Has Vanille married Hope yet?”
“Married Hope?” Lightning raised one eyebrow. “They’re dating?”
“Ah. Right.” The koala shrugged. “All of this dimensional travel can really mess with my sense of time. I must have jumped back a little further than I intended.” The koala laughed. “I’m just glad Lumina isn’t here to see this timeline. I think she’d stab me.”
“Oh, yeah. You don’t have her here.” The koala shrugged. “She’s your other sister, Serah’s twin.”
“Serah doesn’t have a twin.”
“Not in this world.” The koala pulled out a picture. “Here she is with you and Serah.”
Lightning stared at the picture. “Identical twins?”
“Yeah. I got kind of lazy about that.” The koala chuckled. “She’s with Vanille in that world while Hope is with someone called Alyssa.”
Lightning’s eyes narrowed. “How many worlds are you involved with?”
“A whole bunch. I mean... somebody has to keep things from getting too boring or getting too depressing.” The koala grinned. “But, hey, you’re with Fang in that world too.” The koala pulled out another picture. “Here’s your family in the harem world.”
“...” Lightning’s eye twitched. “I have a harem in that world?”
“In at least one of the other worlds, yeah.” The koala chugged down more cola. “You know... it’s really nostalgic coming back here. You could say this is where it all began.”
“Hmm... I’ll try to explain it in terms you can understand. Think of the multiverse as a sphere. The closer to the centre of the sphere a world is, the more ‘central’ that world is. In other words, that world can be thought of as a ‘default’ world that other worlds are variations of. This world, right here, is right in the middle of a whole bunch of worlds. The others, including the ones I’ve shown you, are variations of a theme, so to speak.” The koala patted the table. “It’s not the flashiest world, but it’s got a lot of heart, and it’s solid as a rock.”
“Anyway,” the koala said. “I thought I’d just drop by and see how things were going over here.” The koala snickered. “Keep an eye on the kids, okay? Your versions aren’t quite as indestructible as some of the others out there.”
It’s become an inside joke that I (the author) sometimes visit these worlds as a nigh-omnipotent koala. I’d like to think that koala still checks in on the older worlds, the ones that haven’t gotten a story for a while. After all, that’s where everything began.
