Light fell on my face.
"Mr nobita nobi. We'll now start our questions"
Okay. This place smells way too bad for the advance technology it's been built upon.
And this investigator's gaze is killing me. Like, seriously dude.
Hm? Oh yeah. I forgot to ask.
Why am I here?
-THUMP-
He slammed his hand on the table in front of me.
"Um... No need to hurt your hands. I'll answer any way."
"Nobita nobi."
"Yes, Nobita here."
"This is not a joke situation. You're under investigation for unauthorized use of time tunnel. My name is Satori. I'm an officer of the time patrol."
"..... "
Fuck. Ah, damn it!
I skipped over that part didn't I? Guess I'll have to go with a flashback.
___________________________________
[FLASHBACK - 36 HOURS AGO]
It was Gian's fault. Obviously.
If he hadn't been chasing me for "endurance training" (his words for "I'm bored and you're here"), I wouldn't have ducked into that suspiciously clean alleyway to hide.
If I hadn't ducked into that alleyway, I wouldn't have tripped over the perfectly invisible, humming, don't-touch-me-looking metal orb.
And if I hadn't tripped over it, I definitely wouldn't have accidentally activated it by flailing my arms and screaming like a little girl, causing a shimmering, unauthorized time tunnel to rip open right in front of my face and suck me in.
See? All Gian's fault.
My brilliant plan to just... step through for a second to get away from him suddenly seemed a lot less brilliant when I was staring down a pack of very confused, very large dinosaurs who definitely did not belong in my timeline.
Whoops.
_______________________________
[END FLASHBACK]
"...So," I said, giving Officer Satori my most convincing 'I'm-just-a-harmless-idiot' smile. "It was basically a public service. I was... containing a temporal anomaly?"
"STOP KIDDING AROUND! AND-.." He paused, muttering something in his microphone.
"Holy cow.... You actually did that?" He looked at me with an frustrated and yet bizzarely respectful gaze.
"Yeah, It's one of my specialities. I'm good at accidentally fucking around."
"Ok. This is serious... But the more serious one is the thing you did 3 days ago according to the mother timeline"
".... Okay, sir." I leaned in closer, looking at him seriously. "Be honest, do you actually know what happened there?"
"Umm... Yes?"
"So tell me." I leaned forward even more, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "If you see some demon lord that you have probably gotten PTSD about since childhood, then see a war going on in front of you with hundreds dying every minute..."
I was standing now, one hand planted on the table for emphasis.
"And to stop it, you 'heroically' sacrifice yourself in front of the crowd, making a distraction so your friend, who was killing you, actually uses an enlarged legendary sword from your dream you used during your childhood to previously kill that demon lord, to kill the demon lord in the same blow and destroys his castle at the same time, leading you to a painful victory."
I was on the table now, leaning right into his face. The light from the single lamp created dramatic shadows across my furious expression.
"But you realize after getting patched up by the blessing of another guy, a dragon guy, from childhood, that the path to return home is now closed so you need to utilize the broken gadget's copy from the copy world, where no one uses it by the way, to get back to your house."
I took a deep, shuddering breath, my performance reaching its crescendo.
"Are. You. Wrong. For. That."
"..."
The silence in the room was absolute. Officer Satori stared at me, his mouth slightly agape. He slowly leaned back in his chair, the initial fury in his eyes completely replaced by a look of profound, bureaucratic confusion. He looked less like a time cop and more like a man who'd just been read the entire terms and conditions of reality by a feral teenager.
"Ahem."
I got back down on my seat, smoothing my shirt with a sense of finality.
Satori blinked several times. He picked up his data-slate, stared at it, then looked back at me as if seeing me for the first time.
"That..." he began, his voice considerably quieter. "That is... a very specific set of circumstances."
"I get that a lot."
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "The report just said 'catastrophic causality violation; unauthorized cross-dimensional egress.' It... left out the context about the... dream sword."
"See?" I said, spreading my hands. "It's all about context. So, am I free to go? I've got a retest for that algebra quiz I failed because of all this."
Satori looked from me to the slate, then back to me. A slow, terrifying smile spread across his face. It wasn't a friendly smile. It was the smile of a government agent who has just found a fascinating, deeply problematic new asset.
"Mr. Nobi," he said, his voice now smooth as oil. "I think we need to talk about your future. And a potential... employment opportunity."
"I decline" I said with a smiling face.