Oh hey new chapter I guess.

"Rubes. Hey, Ruby, wake up! It's time for dinner! Honestly! You just sleep whenever you want, don't you?"

I wake up to Yang shaking me. My sister has an annoyed look on her face, and she gives a big sigh as I sit up.

I guess she's kinda right to be upset with me. A normal person shouldn't sleep at random times throughout the day, with seemingly no rhyme or reason. But, a normal person doesn't have to deal with a few hours randomly being added to their day by time travel. It may not cause any physical exhaustion, but the obnoxious rewinding of time that I deal with still causes mental fatigue. In the end, I wound up deciding that sticking to a normal sleep schedule was pointless, so I've started taking random naps throughout the day. I would have been too embarrassed a few years ago to do something like sleep in class, but… well, I'm already kind of infamous for the seemingly random outbursts and spasms caused by the rewinds.

"It really isn't that big of a deal Yang. I just sleep when I feel like it. Anyways, what's for dinner?" I ask, climbing out of bed and stretching.

Yang grins at me. "It's a new recipe Dad's trying out. I got a taste earlier, and I'm pretty sure you're gonna lo-"

Time reverses.

How obnoxious, cutting her off in mid-sentence. Doesn't this strange cosmic torturer of mine have any manners?

I suddenly sneeze, allowing the boss to get another combo off on me. Weird. That sneeze didn't happen the first time. I have to wait another few seconds, and then-

Time reverses.

I pause the game before sneezing. There we go. I wipe my nose on my sleeve and unpause. Seriously though, who designed this boss? While an opponent who can teleport and do massive damage in an instant is cool on paper, even someone with my semblance has immense difficulty fighting it. What the heck is David Studios thinking? Stardust Huntsmen was a really well balanced and unique game up to this point, but this is just ridiculous!

My eyes snap open for the third time. What the heck? A second rewind to exactly the same point? Why? I can feel my left eye twitch a bit.

"WOAhkay, you're awake!" Yang says, stumbling backwards a bit in surprise. "Um… that's a real angry look you've got there sis! I'm not here to prank you or anything! I promise! Just here to let you know it's dinner time!"

I sit up, trying to smile. "Uh, yeah Yang. Sorry about that! I was just, uh, remembering something! Yeah… ehehe…"

"Somehow, that fake smile is more scary…"

I continue to avoid the boss's attacks. How am I supposed to defeat this guy!? Not only is he able to shrug off my attacks without difficulty, but his aura ghost seems able to teleport around and instantly attack! Letting him get close would only wipe me out in one blow…

But wait. David Studios is extremely fond of putting hidden solutions to bosses in their levels! Back in the second game, the way the final boss was best defeated was by luring him into a volcano and forcing him into the lava! Stardust Huntsmen doesn't boast the same open world of the second game, but it does have a day/night cycle. I thought that gimmick was just around to force the players to figure out the attack by the Sun Spirit on their own, but… if I remember from the first game, this guy was a vampire, so he's weak to sunlight!

Then… all I have to do is stall for time! I can do at least that much!

Time keeps rewinding kinda randomly for the next hour of normal non-rewindy time. Evenings just are the worst! There are almost always rewinds around this time of day. It sometimes happens throughout the day - most commonly school days during third period - but it's less common and only lasts for around fifteen minutes of real time at most. There can be any number of repeats during that period, but it stops for a while after that, usually. In the evenings however, I've seen the repeats last for up to eight hours of real time.

Speaking of patterns, I have noticed some limitations to the rewinds. Or, rather, there's one major limitation that causes other limitations. Whatever causes time to reverse seems to tend towards short spurts of time being rewound, rather than longer periods. I believe I know the reason for this: the force behind this cannot reverse time again until the point where it last reversed time has been reached. That is to say, a rewind cannot take place within a rewind.

It's just a guess, of course - I haven't experienced a double rewind yet, so unless it happens in the future it's likely impossible. Regardless of whether or not those limitations exist, a picture is taking form. There's a pattern. I just have to figure it out…

I avoid one more teleporting attack as the night cycle ends. As expected, the game fades into a cutscene.

"World Spirit! Stop time!"

Wait, what!?

The screen turns black and white as the villain steps forward, grinning.

"Fool! You thought you could escape me forever!? Useless! Useless, useless, useless!"

He grips the throat of the character I was playing.

"Now, show me your pitiful face! Time resumes!"

Laughter.

"Heh… you're the fool here! I figured out your semblance a while ago! You may be all powerful… but you forgot! Your semblance threw off your perception of time, so you didn't notice! You didn't realize you had run out of time! The Sun has risen! It's over!"

"What!? Impossible! I can't die like this! I … I WILL BE! NUMBER OOooone…"

The vampire crumbles to ashes.

Secret Ending: Joestar Secret Technique!

Secret ending!? Huh?

...Things make a lot more sense now. The first fight with the boss was supposed to be a scripted loss….

How was I supposed to know that!? I hate it when games do stuff like that. You blow a bunch of healing items and then discover that using them was pointless anyways.

Ugh.

Anyways, the main character's last minute power-up made the boss fight a lot easier… it felt kind of like a cop out though.

Oh well.

Still, a semblance that stops time, huh?

I sit down to take the final exam for literature class. Come on Ruby! You can do this! I write my name on the test booklet, ready to begin-

Time reverses.

I write my name again.

Time reverses.

...I hate everything.

"Yang! You're up! You got a choice for your opponent?"

The girl sitting next to me claps me on the shoulder. Of course she wants to fight me again. Why wouldn't she!?

Normally, I wouldn't mind the attention from someone as beautiful as Yang Xiao-Long. However...

"Come on then, superboy! I'll give you a run for your money this time!" she says with a grin, eyes turning red.

She's so obnoxious! Her fighting style is aggravating to deal with - even if I avoid one hit with my semblance, she follows up with another with ridiculous speed. Even with my semblance, it's impossible to avoid getting hit!

In addition to that, her semblance makes it so that if I'm not careful she'll bring down my aura in a single blow towards the end of the fight. She's honestly the only student in the school that I can't just brute force with my semblance - at least to my knowledge.

Fighting Yang requires ridiculously tight strategy and usually over a hundred rewinds with my semblance - and at that point I actually start to get a bit of a headache.

Of course, that's not the only bad part of fighting her…

"Alright Superboy..." she says, a grin on her face.

...there's also the nicknames…

"...Arc you ready for this!?" She finishes, smashing her fists together.

...and then there's the puns.

"...Professor Branwen, mark this fight up as a victory for Yang. That pun physically hurt me in such an extreme manner that it completely decimated my aura," I mutter.

"Come on! It wasn't that bad!" she yells in protest.

"It was pretty bad. So, same bets as usual? I finished Stardust Huntsmen last night, so I kinda want to borrow the sequel."

"Fine then! You already know what I'm going to ask!"

"Yeah, yeah. The secret of my semblance will be made known to you if you win."

"Hey, quit flirting and fight already!" someone yells.

We both shrug, and spring into action.

To anyone else, it looked like a graceful dance of weapons and martial arts. To me, it was a sloppy slugfest consisting primarily of me being punched and rewinding to avoid being punched.

I've watched video replays of me fighting in the past - but in reality I'm nowhere near that graceful. I duck and weave, dodging through Yang's endless flurry of blows, capitalizing on any openings I can find, through the majestic art that is trial and error.

Finally, I see my chance. I slash a small piece of hair off and duck back, waving it in front of her.

She freezes, eyes turning red and aura flaring.

"YOUUUU!" she would have said, had I not taken that small window of opportunity to act. I whip the sheath of Crocea Mors up from my side, morphing it into hand cannon form.

Yang's eyes widen as my weapon fires blasting her backwards and burying her in the wall of the classroom.

That was a ridiculously close fight. My head is killing me; I must have reversed time far more than a hundred times that fight.

I lower my weapon, just in time to see Yang flying at me, still ablaze.

Time reverses.

Rather than lowering my weapon, I shift it to shield form to take the impact. I see her surprised face just for the time it takes for my shield to return to cannon form and blast her into the ceiling.

"Two shots," I mutter, "definitely worth it."

Then I collapse from a splitting headache.

The temporal spasms continue for who knows how long. I finally manage to slam my eyes shut around the fiftieth rewind. I know it's still happening. Somehow I can still tell.

My head feels like it's about to split open, and I feel a pressure building behind my eyes. The rewinds stop, but the pressure is still there. Building and building and building until finally-

I scream and the world is engulfed in silver.

Well this one was longer than normal.

Sorry for delays. had writers block/exams.

Still, things are happening now, huh?

We see here some of the limitations of Jaune's semblance. Can't use it for too long without rest, and double loops are a no go. As for what happens next, now that Ruby's eyes have done the thing... who knooows~