Chapter Text
Among the Myths
Amelia Watson had a Doctorate in Medical Science at the age of 26, graduating at the top of her class in some prestigious university, supposedly. Additionally, she was also a well-regarded detective, following in the footsteps of her great, great, great grandfather Charles Frederick Field, whose name was well known worldwide! Well, maybe he was, she wasn’t too sure of that to be honest. She’d have to look that up sometime later. All of that aside, she was pretty damn smart though, for real. Every single accomplishment she’d achieved through her own hard work!
Well, that and time travel, of course.
It was pretty easy to manipulate events into her favor with her trusty little watch. Her degree? A load of bullshit, she just needed it to be well respected by her peers. Her triple great grandfather? Simply a man she looked up online to travel back to and have him sign some official looking document. No one believed that it was really him at first, but his handwriting was indisputable, and she had TIME TRAVEL, she could collect whatever it was they wanted to prove it!
She lived a pretty great life to be honest. Using time travel, she was able to solve almost any case. With one simple lead, she could track down where the culprit had been, and typically was able to follow them prior to the committed crime and nail them shortly after. Granted, the annoying thing about this was that she’d have to lay low for a while until her present self went back in time, but afterwards, she’d set up and turn them right in.
Time travel was a bit complicated at times though, and she always had to make sure her deviation was always at zero. So, once she’d received her rewards and made sure everything was set up properly, she would then need to travel to the future down to the exact second she’d been in the past to reset the deviation to zero. For instance, if she were to travel to the past exactly twenty-four hours, then she’d have a negative twenty-four hour deviation. The only way to fix that would be, as stated before, to travel back to the future exactly twenty-four hours.
And now, here she was, her current deviation was at zero, allowing her watch to power down and recharge. She was sitting in her home office; at a mansion she’d purchased only a month before. The massive building was barely furnished, only her room, her office, and the staff’s own rooms had any real furniture in them. Even with furniture, the rooms were still not well lived in. Her office had her desk, sitting facing the door, a bookcase to her right, with only a handful of manga on it, and a large chair and lamp beside it. There was a large ugly carpet between her desk and the door, but it did very little to hide how incredibly empty the room felt. The only other real distinguishing feature of the room was the massive window behind her, showing off the immaculately detailed lawn, where several employees of hers were maintaining the lawn and bushes around the grounds. Her bedroom was little better, and she honestly wasn’t sure how the staff’s rooms looked.
She leaned back in her chair, and spun around a few times, letting out a breath of air. With that little performance out of the way, she leaned back forward on her desk, looking down at the paperwork. A case file was strewn on her desk. A series of jewel thefts on the East Coast of the United States over the course of several years, presumably by the same group of people, and the FBI wanted her help to find them. They knew she was the best at tracking down something like this. This would be simple for her. All she needed to do was camp out the most recently robbed store in the past, and then she’d follow them, just like she always did.
Before she could consider the how, when, and where of the case before her, the phone rang, and she glanced at it curiously. She had a secretary at her office she rarely visited anymore to answer all calls, so it was not exactly unusual for her to receive a home call, but it was unusual to receive one when she already had a case in progress. She shrugged, and picked it up, kicking her feet up onto the desk to get comfortable.
“Amelia Watson speaking.”
“Watson-san, hello!”
She blinked in confusion, noting the distinctly Japanese accent of the man’s tone. “Um, you’ve got me at a loss, who is this?”
There was a brief pause, and then a short intake of breath, “Ah, I see.”
“See what?”
The man on the other end of the phone seemed to snap out of whatever it was that had confused him, and resumed like nothing went wrong. “My name is Motoaki Tanigo, and you applied to Hololive three months ago, on the twenty-second of April. We’ve reviewed several hundred applications, and you’re one of the five we’ve chosen to represent our new international branch.”
“Um…Please give me a minute.” She set the phone down, and looked over to her computer to look up exactly what the hell ‘Hololive’ actually was. A few clicks later, and her jaw fell open in shock, “An idol group? The fuck?” Her shock and dismay increased tenfold when she looked up the streamers playing games – a streamer dressed up as a rabbit with an odd laugh, a girl dressed up as a dog, a cat, a fox, demons, angels… “What in the actual fuck?”
“Watson-san?”
Amelia glanced back at the phone she’d left alone for several minutes now, and she picked it back up, “I think there’s been a mistake here.”
“Is that so?” The voice sounded amused now, and Amelia felt her gaze narrowing at the tone, “I have a message here from your… sister… That I was told to read in case if you attempted to reject this offer.”
Amelia felt a headache coming. Her sister was a code she’d use for her future self. She did her best to hold in her annoyance and grounded out, “And what did she say?”
He coughed once to clear his throat and said, “Dear dumb little sister. You don’t have a choice. Do it.”
Amelia was speechless. Typically, when she left notes for herself, they at least gave her some idea of WHY she had to do what needed to be done. This though? What the fuck even was that?! And why was her future self always such a freaking bitch?! She breathed out through her nose and managed to say, “Ok… Fine… I guess I have no choice then.”
“Excellent, then if you’ll please just…”
Amelia followed along with the voice on the phone… apparently, she was going to have to get a streaming set up going, which involved getting a webcam, definitely a better computer, and a bunch of other things, and she was also directed to join the company’s discord server… The problem was that most of the chatter on that discord was in Japanese, and she wasn’t very well versed in any language except English.
After the rather lengthy phone call, where she’d been instructed in far too many things she was likely to forget, she just leaned back in her chair again, and let out a very loud sigh. How was joining an idol group going to help out in ANY investigation? Furthermore, why would her future self decide that was it necessary to do this? She didn’t typically mess around with herself in this kind of way, so it was a bit odd. She looked mournfully at the case file on her desk, and gathered up all of the documents and set them aside, before she got up and started to leave the room…
… She didn’t expect the door to slam open, and a small blue object to dart directly at her.
“WAH!!!!” She screamed seconds before being tackled to the ground, her head banging painfully against the carpet below her. She was seeing stars, and she tried to shake her head clear as she looked down at the… the girl? There was a girl dressed in a ridiculous shark costume hugging her, and even weirder was… A tail? There was a tail? What? How in the world did it look so lifelike? She let out a groan and allowed her head to fall back down, banging again against the floor.
“Ame!” The girl clutching her chest cheered.
“Um… Who are you?” Amelia asked, trying to sit up while having the slightly smaller girl clutching her so tightly.
The girl scoffed, “Yeah, very funny, Ame! It hasn’t been THAT long.” The girl mercifully let go of her chest, and sat up looking at Amelia with a wide smile of her own. Amelia noticed how captivating her blue eyes looked, but she shook the thought aside – there were more important things to think about.
“I think I’d remember some girl dressing up like a shark,” Amelia growled, “And how did you get in here? Why did the guards let you through?”
“Wha – what?” The girl sounded unsure now, “You gave me permission to come here… Look.” She dug through her sleeves, and pulled out a card, and Amelia had to hold in yet ANOTHER groan… This was her future self’s work again. The card gave clearance to people to pass through her gates unharmed, typically given to government officials, or other important figures. “And what was that about dressing up like a shark?” The girl questioned.
Amelia rubbed the back of her head, feeling a bump forming where she’d banged it against the ground, “Ok… When did we meet last?”
The girl across from her paused, looking genuinely confused now, and then her eyes widened, and her smile grew even more, “THIS IS OUR FIRST TIME MEETING?!” She screamed, and Amelia’s ears felt like they were going to bleed from how loud the girl was, “Oh my god!!!!”
“What?” Amelia let out in confusion.
“We’ve been running into each other for centuries!” She exclaimed, “And a few months ago you told me to join Hololive so we can finally work together!”
“Centuries?” Amelia felt her blood going cold. She’d never met another time traveler over the years, but considering she had the power, it was likely there were others capable of it too, “You can travel through time?”
The shark girl looked at her in consternation, her eyes narrowed in pure confusion, “What? How hard did you hit your head, Watson?”
“Stop talking to me like that! It’s the only thing that makes sense, you’re acting like we’re good friends, and talking about meeting up over the centuries!” She couldn’t quite hide her anger from the girl, and immediately felt bad when the girl shrunk back.
“Ah…” The girl’s shark tail, whatever the hell it was, fell to the ground, “I’m sorry…”
“No, no…” Amelia sighed, “Look… You’re clearly aware that I’m a time traveler, so… What exactly are you?”
“I can’t travel through time.” She explained, “Look…” She scratched her hair awkwardly, and shyly smiled, making Amelia’s heart skip a beat, “I’m Gura, I’m from Atlantis, and I’m over nine thousand years old. It’s nice to meet you.” She extended her hand out to Amelia, almost cautiously.
“Atlantis?” Amelia echoed, “Over nine thousand… What...?” She tentatively reached forward, and shook Gura’s hand, “Um… I’m Amelia, though you already appear to know that.”
Gura grinned happily, “Yep! Uh… I don’t know the rules of time travel very well, so I hope I didn’t mess anything up by revealing all of this to you…”
“It’s fine,” Amelia replied, “Time is predetermined, so what happens is what is supposed to happen.”
“Huh…” Gura shrugged, “Well, um, sorry for tackling you, is your head ok?”
“Yeah,” Amelia finally got off of the floor, and offered her hand to Gura, who gratefully accepted. She was shocked to see that the girl was shorter than even she was. Standing at just under five feet tall, Amelia would often hear people jeer about her height, so it was refreshing to see someone shorter, if even only a little bit more. “I’m fine, just… We’re friends, then?”
“Yeah,” Gura nodded.
“And you say you’re from Atlantis?” Amelia shook her head, “That… Doesn’t exist, right?”
“What…” Gura’s eyes widened comically large, “Are you serious?”
Amelia felt a flush creep up on her cheeks, “What? It IS ridiculous!”
“You can travel through time, but you can’t accept Atlantis?” She gaped at Amelia now, mouth opened wide in shock, and then a bit of mirth appeared in her eyes, and she shook with barely contained laughter, “Oh my god… You really are new to all of this, aren’t you?”
Amelia again felt a bit of anger rising, “Shut up!”
“Oh my god, I can’t wait until you meet everyone else we’re going to be working with! Let me guess, you thought all of the streamers in Hololive were just human girls dressing up as animals, right?” Gura let out a bark of laughter, and couldn’t suppress her smile, “Oh my god… This is going to be amazing!”
“I’m starting to wonder if you’re telling the truth about us being friends…” Amelia grumbled.
“Aw, don’t be like that. Let’s go grab something to eat, yeah? I’m starving!” Gura tossed her arm around Amelia’s shoulder, “Let’s go!”
“But…” Amelia looked back at the case she still had to solve.
“You can do that later!” Gura exclaimed, “You’re a time traveler, you’ve literally got all of the time in the world for that!”
Amelia sighed, that wasn’t quite true, but she didn’t really want to explain the mechanics of time travel to her right now. “Fine… Let’s head to the kitchen and see what my chef can cook up.”
“Aw yeah!” Gura cheered, practically dragging Amelia out the door.
Well… She wasn’t entirely sure what her future had in store, but it was definitely not going to be dull, if this was one of her new co-workers.