I Can Assimilate Everything

What is expected versus what is desired…this fundamental tension shapes the architecture of every conscious life.

Society builds its expectations like walls, each brick a "should" or "must" that defines the acceptable pathways through existence.

One should follow the rules. One must respect the natural order. One is expected to accept limitations as immutable facts rather than temporary inconveniences.

This struggle between expectation and desire doesn't merely shape individual lives…it defines the very nature of existence itself.

In Existence, beings are expected to play their assigned roles, follow their predetermined scripts, accept the stage directions written by forces beyond their comprehension.

Time flows forward, this is expected. The dead remain dead, this is accepted. The past is immutable, this is law.

One does not really think of making alterations in time itself. Even those who dream of such possibilities, who theorize about temporal mechanics in academic abstraction, cannot actually do it.

Existence has expectations of its inhabitants, and chief among them is acceptance of temporal linearity.

Yesterday happened. Today is happening. Tomorrow will happen. This is the contract every being signs by existing!

But what of those who refuse to sign? What of those who look at Existence's expectations and simply... choose otherwise?

Achilles knew what was expected of him from existence!

He was supposed to accept loss as permanent. He was supposed to carry grief like a badge of honor. He was supposed to channel his pain into acceptable forms of vengeance against those responsible, playing out the same tired drama that had been performed countless times before across the Star Seas!

He chose to look at those expectations and do his own fucking thing!

---

The emotions that flooded through Achilles as he looked at his father and mother were too complex for simple categorization.

Joy and grief intertwined, each feeding the other in an endless double helix of feeling.

He was seeing them again…truly seeing them, not in dreams or memories but in flesh that breathed and hearts that beat. Yet he was also seeing them through eyes that had witnessed their absence, that knew the weight of years without them.

Adras Maxwell, Lilian Maxwell…names that had become myth in his mind, now standing before him in humble flesh.

His hand moved with deliberate grace, fingers tracing patterns that reality recognized as commands rather than requests.

A shield of light erupted around them, a barrier that didn't just block sight but convinced space itself that nothing existed within its boundaries.

Privacy made manifest through manipulation of spatial tension and quantum uncertainty combined.

In the face of all others…they were gone!

As he descended from the sky, his stellar appearance began its transformation. The skin that had shone like condensed starlight dimmed to human tones. The purple-gold hair that moved with cosmic winds settled into something that merely caught light rather than generating it.

His form, which had existed partially in multiple dimensions, collapsed into singular presence. By the time his feet touched the cracked street, he looked almost normal…if normal could contain eyes that had seen the things he had!

His mother gasped, the sound sharp with recognition that shouldn't have been possible.

Her hand flew to her mouth as tears began flowing freely.

His father, the Eighth Adrastia Emperor King hiding in the flesh of a wounded man, dropped his walking stick with a clatter that seemed too loud in the sudden silence.

His eyes, which had maintained their disguise of weariness, now blazed with the sharpness of someone who had commanded cosmic forces. He shook his head slowly, processing what couldn't be processed.

"You look like my son," Adras said, his voice carrying waves that revealed his true nature despite his diminished state. "If much older. Seeing you with this much weight in your existence appearing here... do we truly die? Is this... a memory?"

…!

Was this death's dream? Memory's reconstruction? Some elaborate illusion crafted by a dying mind seeking comfort?

Achilles walked toward them, his movements careful, as if too much haste might shatter this impossible moment.

He didn't know what to fully do…how did one greet parents pulled from their own timeline? What protocol existed for a reunion that violated causality itself?

His mother answered the question by pulling him into an embrace that transcended temporal paradox.

The warmth of her arms around him sent shockwaves through his existence!

This wasn't the remembered warmth of childhood hugs or the imagined comfort of dreams.

This was real, present, immediate…his mother holding him with all the desperate love of someone who had just realized the depth of loss that hadn't yet occurred.

"Did I really leave you all alone here?" she whispered against his shoulder, her tears soaking into fabric that had been woven from stellar matter. "I'm sorry. You grew so much! My baby boy became... this."

The 'this' encompassed everything…the power that radiated from him, the weight in his eyes.

But mostly, it acknowledged the loneliness, the years of absence that had shaped him into someone who would break time itself for a moment of reunion.

Achilles felt the warmth of his mother's love for the first time in years, and it was immediate and overwhelming. For a few seconds, he was lost in it, allowing himself to be just a son in his mother's arms, letting the weight of responsibility slide away.

Then his eyes opened firmly, purple-gold fire rekindling with purpose.

This was what he needed to protect. Not abstractions like justice or vengeance, but this…the warmth of embrace, the reality of love.

He pulled back slightly, enough to look at both of them, his voice steady despite the emotions threatening to overwhelm him.

"No, this is not a memory. I traversed across the distance of time itself to be here, at this point in time, and I now plan to take you two with me... to another point in time."

His words landed like hammers, each one reshaping their understanding of what was possible.

His mother could barely process them, her mind struggling to accommodate concepts that shouldn't exist. But his father's experienced eyes grew murky with concern, the strategic mind of an Emperor King immediately jumping to implications.

"Is this with the Regulation of Time?" Adras asked, his frown deepening. "Things with that can be murky... you can create time paradoxes. In my case, when I thought of it, there were warnings of even destabilizing the current reality with temporal distortions..."

The worry in his father's voice was palpable…not fear for himself but for the cosmic consequences of temporal manipulation. He had clearly considered similar actions and been warned away by the catastrophic possibilities.

Achilles shook his head, a smile playing at his lips.

"No, not something done with the Regulation of Time, but something even grander."

…!