Determining Destiny (Book 3 of the Enchanted DVD Player tetralogy)

19 - Meeting Future Me

Y/n's POV

"Time twins?" Jay repeats. "Why haven't I heard about them before?"

"Because Sensei never tells us about something until it becomes a problem," I reply, a hint of annoyance in my voice; he'd save us a lot of trouble if he just told us everything beforehand. "And also because I didn't think we'd have to deal with them right now."

"Y/n, prepare to see us get our revenge!" One of the twins say. I don't know if it was Acronix or Krux; I can't tell which one is which.

"How do you know her name?" Lloyd asks, stepping in front of me protectively.

"B*tch, calm down," I say, shoving him over. I can handle myself. 

"That's for us to know, and for you to find out," the other twin says mockingly. "Acronix, now!"

I barely have time to process what's happening as Acronix winds up for a time punch. He aims straight for me, and I get hit right in the chest. A weird sensation runs through me, and makes my legs weak. I claw at my heart as I sink to my knees. 

"You should have let me stay in front of you," Lloyd scolds, but there was more concern in his voice than frustration. Before he can help me off the ground, the machine the time twins are controlling—the Iron Doom, as I remember it—grabs me and brings me up to face Acronix and Krux.

"You can say goodbye to your loved ones, y/n," one of them say. My vision is so dark that I can't tell which one said it.

"No," I respond. "My family will always be there for me."

"Not when they're all dead, and you're all alone," he replies. "It may take a few decades for them to die off, but it will happen, I promise you."

And after saying those words, I'm greeted with a flash of a blinding white light, and my surroundings change.

"What the..." I mutter, looking around me. "How did I get on Destiney's Bounty?"

My vision is back to normal, but I feel like something isn't right. I take a step down the hall, and hear a strange noise behind me, so I turn in that direction.

"Ah!" I shriek as I see Kai and Skylor making love in their bedroom. I turn around and cover my face. And since when did Skylor live with us?

"Y/n!" Kai yells, throwing a pillow at me. 

"You should have closed the door, idiot!" I said, reaching for the handle with my eyes closed. 

"What's going on?" someone says. I turn to see who had spoken, but all I see is my reflection.

"Huh," I mutter. "I don't remember that mirror being there."

I squint at the image, and when the person in the frame doesn't repeat the action, I realize that the mirror isn't a mirror at all; it's a doorway.

I gasp and jump backwards, crashing into the wall behind me. I hit my head on a picture hanging up, causing it to fall with a clatter. 

"What was that?" Nya asks, stepping out of her room. "You okay, y/n?" 

"Yeah, I'm fine," I say, then side step into the doorway, pushing the other me out of the way. Before disappearing into the other room, I notice that Nya looks... older. That's odd, I think to myself.

"What are you—" the other me says, but I clamp a hand over her mouth.

"Go back to doing whatever it was you were doing," I tell Nya, popping my head out of the doorway. She shrugs and returns to her bedroom. She must not have seen the other y/n; she would have asked if she did. 

"Who are you and why do you look like me?" both of us say in unison.

We just stare at each other for a few moments in silence, trying to figure out what is going on.

"Oh my gosh..." I finally realize. "They sent me to the future."

"Who's they?"

"Acronix and Krux, the time twins."

"How is that possible? If you're from the past, why would you be dealing with the time twins if we're dealing with them now?"

"That would explain how they already have the time blades and the Iron Doom," I say. "Wait a second, how far in the future are we?"

"Um... what was the last thing you remember?" future me asks.

"We were trying to prevent Clouse, Chen and Aspheera from creating an army of Anacondrai and awakening Garmadon," I reply.

"That was three years ago," future me says.

"Three years?!? Then why do we look exactly the same?"

Future me looks at herself. "Uh..." she says, as if extremely confused.

"Nya looks older, so why haven't you aged?"

"I don't understand."

A random scene from an episode of Ninjago floats into my mind, something that Cole and Jay were discussing at the beginning of season 8:

"Cole, you're my friend, but right now, you're my worst enemy," Jay says as he and Cole burst through a set of doors. "You have no idea how time travel works."

"If someone goes back in time and alters the past, the reality as we know it would change," Cole replies. "We could look totally different but not even know it!"

I think about that for a brief second, and then I figure it out.

"Something happened in the past that changed something here," I say. Then, I tell future me everything that happened since I came across the time twins.

"The time punch..." future me says after I finish explaining. "When you got hit, it didn't forward or reverse your aging, it stopped it. Which means me, you of the future, still looks the same ."

"Ohhh... that's what they meant when they said I'd end up all alone. They meant that eventually, everyone would grow older and..." I couldn't finish my sentence; I really didn't want to think about outliving my chosen family. I shake my head to clear my thoughts, then turn to my duplicate.

"You are older, and therefore all-knowing," I deem future me. "What are we going to do now?"

"We have to get you back to the past," future me says. "Acronix and Krux have hated me since the day we met, because I've foiled their plans again and again. After our last encounter, they claimed they would have their revenge, but we haven't seen them since."

"They must have gone back to the past to alter the outcome in the future," I say. "Geez, they just had to pick the most hectic time to visit, didn't they?"