#groundhog day plot

One more time. Again. Samejima sat back in his chair and observed the monitor that showed the practical exams. The exams that he’d seen so many times and could practically recite how they would go from memory. Faces that were familiar to him – but they would not have recognized him - showed, along with the varied fates they’d endured.

So, so many of them fallen to the Light, far too many times. Should they survive that, then other fates awaited them. Dead of starvation and thirsts in a world of sand. Captured by spirits and worked to death or worse – and he knew very well how much worse it could get.

He’d seen it all, so many times. He’d lost count of how many times he’d watched the world burn or fall to darkness – that hideous wrong darkness, not the one that he knew could save them all, if only matter turned out right this time.

Where was he? Was he going to show up this time?

Samejima hadn’t forgotten the thousand or so timelines where Yuuki Juudai never came to Duel Academia and they’d never managed to get through the Seven Stars. In a tiny handful of those, someone managed to face Kagemaru – he could not forget the one timeline he’d thought would work out when Johan Andersen came to his school instead. That had been amazing but for all of his skills, Johan couldn’t manage what needed to be done on his own.

He’d truly hoped then. Johan had a way of sparking that in people. But that timeline convinced him of one thing – that Yuuki Juudai was who they needed.

So he’d done his best. Everything always cycled back to when he was a young man, before Duel Monsters itself ever exited. He fought timeline after timeline to make certain that Yuuki Juudai came to Duel Academia and he tried so very hard to make certain that Marufuji Ryou learned the right things about respect. He’d managed to get good at the first one, connecting to the boy’s parents and suggesting that he attend the school.

Sometimes he wondered if they knew what was going on as well. It was easier sometimes than others to convince them. One time they’d practically packed up and left Japan, making certain that Juudai went with them. Samejima hadn’t heard about them after that, and in that timeline, everything fell to light so much sooner.

When he thought about it, he wondered if he had heard about Juudai. Because the harbinger of the Light in that timeline hadn’t been Saiou Takuma.

Making sure Ryou knew about respect had differing results. It seemed that being Hell Kaiser was integral to Marufuji Ryou’s proper timeline, for reasons that Samejima couldn’t properly understand. So he stopped trying to stop that.

As the timelines ticked by, he got very used to pretending that he didn’t know what was going to happen. He had more than enough experience to be able to fake it all, and sometimes he got surprised anyway. He couldn’t control every outcome – he really only had influence on events that happened at Duel Academia and a little at the Cyber Dojo – and often things happened that were outside of his sphere of influence.

Such as the time when the plane bringing the new students over had suffered engine failure and fell into the ocean, resulting in the death of everyone on it. That had not been a fun timeline. In fact, most of them weren’t. Something always went wrong along the way. Something always failed and he searched over and over for what he could do to stop it.

He’d made a list of everything he could remember. He kept the list where only he could access it – he’d never seen any solid proof that anyone else remembered the way time looped back on itself. It started when he was a young man and always, always ended the night of graduation – if they even survived that long.

He was always one of the last to die. He didn’t know why. He’d learned a great deal but not who started him on this loop or why. He suspected that he would have several words for them if he ever learned.

For now he watched as the students went through their exams. Marufuji Shou just managed to squeak through – Samejima hopped matters would work out better for him than in the last timeline, when he’d been converted to the Society of Light and ended up – well, he wasn’t going to think about that.

It would hurt to see Marufuji Ryou become Hell Kaiser once again. Perhaps this time he would survive the heart surgeries and go on to a life of some sort. So far no timeline had gone on long enough for him to have an idea of what might happen to him after his brother’s graduation.

He also wondered what fate had in store for Misawa Daichi. He’d tried a few time to get the boy upgraded to Obelisk Blue, but those timelines always failed for reasons unknown. The most successful ones he’d seen were where he stayed in the other world to be with Taniya. Perhaps that would be best for him.

Samejima tried very hard not to get nervous as the time clicked closer to the end, and there still wasn’t a sign of Yuuki Juudai. He didn’t want to see another one of those timelines where something interrupted him before he arrived – there had also been too many of those. Once he’d seen a timeline where the treatments to block his memory of Yubel ended up being fatal…

Then Juudai raced inside, a bit unkempt, but there. Samejima forced himself not to sigh in relief. No one would hear him here in his office but he preferred not to take chances. Not now.

He’d seen Juudai defeat Chronos so many times. A tiny part of him anticipated it again – Chronos needed this loss.

Here they started, one more time.

The End

Space Dandy's day repeated on July 8th, a Tuesday.

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