The water around us rises slowly, enveloping us, submerging us deeper, yet deeper. I hold my breath the best I can, but the pressure building around me squeezes my thorax. My rock-hard abs work as a detriment, giving me no wiggle room against the atmospheric pressure. It doesn't take long until my lungs give in, and I take a mouthful of weird magic ocean water.

But I don't drown. Far from it, I can breathe just fine. I shat myself for nothing. Honestly, by the deadpanned faces of everyone, I could've guessed this was some Evangelion LCL-type of liquid you can breathe in.

While everything has a dull blue tint to it, I can see the water solidify into clumps and shapes of all sizes, starting with a huge statue of Jesus, bench-pressing a cross? Somehow, that's the weirdest thing I've seen all day.

A room soon forms around me, with a weight-bench, running machines, one of those escalator machines that feel like a Sysiphus Simulator, and other weight-based machinery one would find in a typical gym. Except for the Jesus statue. That's odd.

Another odd sight is the half-dozen semi-transparent people inside said room, people I've come to know and mildly tolerate. There is Brayden, standing on a weight-bench, looking at his cellphone; there's Hayden, wearing a white tuxedo, and me, wearing a half-burnts leather jacket and my underwear; there's Jungkook and Harry, watching over Lee/Farfallah/Fortuna, who is tied to a machine press; lastly, there is Okayden, fully transformed, holding the entrance of the gym, which bulges inwards every few seconds.

"Okay, you had my curiosity," I say to the Goddess, still fending Aiden's groping hand, "and now you have my attention. Explain, wench."

Fortuna steps in front of shade-me and shade-Hayden, looking at the pair with disdain. "In this loop, we went ahead with the battle royale. A simple game of paintball, really. But numbnuts over here," she says, pointing at shade-Brayden, "burned the school down the second you were going to lose. This kid's answer to everything seems to resort to petty arson."

Yeah, that tracks. From make-up factories to schools. That's Brayden for you. Glad to hear he's a menace no matter what universe he is from.

"No matter," says Aiden, that smug bitch, "we use that opportunity to fake my death, as I was also involved in this loop, but in the end, it got pinned on you. On us. Which is fine. It was a nice way to separate you two. Jayden decided to go on the run rather than face the consequences of his actions."

"Separate my asscheeks, you toothpaste-smelling fuck! Of course, because it's not your life, you can get to play God with me, huh?!" I yell.

"All our lives have been ruined, old chap," says a british-looking Aiden, with crooked teeth and pale skin.

"Just as Alxxiiden says," says Aiden. "We all have our lives ruined. Join the club."

"By you!" I point out. "Your life got ruined, and you decided to ruin everyone else's life!"

"Potato, tomato, same difference," says the goddess. "The problem is that, without a school to attend, Hayden's father decided to put him to work with his mechanic friend. A car falls on him on the eve of turning twenty-three during a botched oil change incident. So, we had to re-start."

"Of course, we really weren't going to let another Aiden suffer," says a Girl-Aiden, with big bazonkas. Huge bandokadonkadoos. A big pair of Hikorikonkodobongos. Huge mamamerikorondarinos. "We offered him to join us. He declined, blaming us for his misfortunes, which, in reality, he's kind of right."

"Now now, Axixden," says Aiden, wagging his finger playfully, "we are doing this for Hayden, not for us."

"That seems like a thinly-veiled justification to mess with somebody else's life," I say.

"Exactly what Jayden said," says the Goddess. "He said he was the master of his own fate, the captain of his own ship, even when confronted by the fact that his Hayden was going to suffer."

Fortuna points and the shades, holding hands, looking into each other's eyes. "He believed he could change fate, and so, he demanded to be let go. But I declined. His timeline was doomed. I was going to reset it, whether he liked it or not. That's when he decided to join us... or so we thought."

Aiden grabs the bottle from the goddess' hand, now empty, and dangles it in front of him. "As I told you before, our contract with Fortuna states that we give her our bad boy essence. And this is it: pure, distillate bad boy essence, in a bottle. The power to change fate itself!"

Wait, that's what that swirling liquid thing was? Eu de Bad Boy? No wonder everything smells like teen spirit and bad fanfics written on Tumblr circa 2011. Wait, are we swimming in bad boy essence right now? Ew! I don't wanna breathe bad boy!

"I made him fill the bottle with his essence to add to my sea of fate," says Fortuna. "And he did, but instead of giving me the bottle to fulfill our contract, he drank from it. The little shit drank my bad boy essence!"

"Hey, what's the big deal?" I say. "I drank Hayden's essence one night after school in his truck, and-"

"Not that kind of essence, brah," says Aiden. "Although, nice. Bad boys store their essence in our eyes. Tears of bad boys are one of the most powerful things in existence. We bad boys use our fate-defying essence sparingly throughout our life. After all, only the tears of a bad boy can wake that TAB/G from a comma at the most opportune moment, right? I believe it is some kind of evolutionary trait. And Jayden took a concentrated swig of it. A whole ten years of fate-defying power, in one sip. He went mad with power, able to change fate at will. He used his powers to break away from this place between dimensions, back to his own timeline."

"We tried to burn his timeline," says Fortuna, "but every time I tried to do so, he would take a swig of bad boy essence and oppose me. He was in control of the plot, and all we could do is try to fight back."

A scottish-looking Aiden with a kilt and bagpipes steps forward. "Na jimmy or wifie shuid hae that kind o' power. Enough tae mak' fate his boot."

"Whatever Aciiiden says," says Aiden. "The point is, he had this notion that love was the biggest power in the world, and that marrying Hayden could solve everything, and once married, they would be together forever. Of course, it would not. By our projections, it would make Hayden die 3.6 years earlier. We could not stand for that. So, we didn't. He holed up in a gym, made Brayden officiate the wedding, and used Okayden as security. Which leads us to..."

The doors to the gym break open, and a torrent of Aidens, led by the Furry-Aiden, burst in. Okayden is immediately pinned down by the furry, while the rest of the Aidens storm Jayden.

But he wouldn't go down without a fight.

An Aiden in a Hufflepuff robe, which I'm gonna guess comes from some Harry Potter fanfic, throws a spell at Jayden. God, I wish there was sound to know which. Jayden takes a swig of bad boy essence, and the spell swerves off-course at the last second, hitting an Aiden dressed as a Spanish matador.

Jayden runs towards the magic Aiden and shoves a thumb into his left eye. To my surprise, the eye pops out of his socket, which Jayden yanks away. To my further surprise, the eye disappears, and Jayden's own eye seems to split into two, gaining a new color.

"A bad boy's essence is stored in the eyes," says the magic Aiden, now in an eyepatch. "And that half-wit just figured out a way to add more power to his arsenal."

He didn't stop there. Next was pirate-Aiden, asian-Aiden, clown-Aiden... one by one, Aidens fell, and Jayden was more powerful than ever. And his mind was consumed with madness. All that plot power coursing through his veins made him look deranged. Not to me, nor the Aidens, but to Hayden.

To see your significant other go from "Let's marry" to "I'm cutting bitches left and right" must have been jarring, since he walks towards Jayden, tells him a few words, and walks away from the church.

I don't need sound to know what he said. I had the same look in Jayden's eye when Hayden broke up with me. The pain and loss of losing someone close to me.

"I think that broke him," says Aiden. "He had the power to change fate, and the plot, however he wanted, and even that wasn't enough to make Hayden stay with him."

Jayden, without skipping a beat, takes three huge gulps of the bottle before disappearing into a puff of smoke.

"He left that timeline right there and then," says the Goddess. The water recedes once again, and I can feel the pressure leave my body as light pours from the surface. "I don't know where he went next, maybe to another world, but he eventually reached your timeline, his mind scrambled with godly powers, and no memory of what happened."

Soon, the water reaches past my ankles, and we're back again in front of the throne.

You know, I pity Jayden. I would go mad too if I'm framed for murder by my other selves. I don't blame him one bit. This is not his fault. Or it is, depending on how you see it. This is quite literally been iterations of trauma that have been passed from generation to generation over and over again. He got the short end of the stick, is all.

"And now that you have seen what would happen if you oppose us," says Aiden, sitting nonchalantly on the stairs leading up to the throne, "I'll ask you again, Ayden: will you join us? I told you once, back in the classroom, that you can't escape being a bad boy. When I told you about the myth of Sisyphus, I wasn't being facetious. You will only be happy if you accept the inevitable. Hayden will die. The world will reset. We are lifting the boulder up the hill once again. We might fail, but at least we are together. We are here for you. Join us, to make Hayden happy."

Ha! You can't say this story doesn't have foreshadowing all over. This little shit had been taunting me since season one, always dangling that smugness in front of me, and I've been dancing to his tune like a trained monkey.

On one hand, there's no denying it: Hayden will be miserable if I stay in this timeline. He's the main character of this story, if you think about it. He's the one with the most to prove, the most to change. I'm only the lovable love interest that derails his plans. There's a multi-universal cabal trying to make his dreams come true, for fuck's sake! If that doesn't scream "protagonist," what will?

And yet... Working with vile people who try to play God and control the fate of billions, destroying worlds over and over again, makes me sick. It makes me sick that I'm part of this.

This is truly a modern Sisyphean task. Are we really fated to try this song and dance over and over again until it comes out right? This is not an opportunity, but a punishment. A punishment to relive our worst moments for eternity. We are the modern king Sysiphus.

For those of you who are not knowledgeable of Greek mythology--in which case, how does it feel to be straight?--King Sysiphus was an evil king that fooled Hades, god of the dead, twice, and escaped death, but only for a moment. As a punishment for fooling the gods, he was sentenced to roll a boulder up a hill in the depths of Hades--the place, not the god--for all eternity. The moment before reaching the top, the rock would fall down all the way to the bottom, making the king roll it up once again, ad infinitum.

It's supposed to be an exercise in futility. And there is nothing more futile than this. I prefer to disappear with this reality than join these weirdos.

However, there's something fishing going on here. Something nagging at the back of my mind for a while, and I can't help but wonder...

"Let me get this straight," I say, "each and every one of you was recruited by previous Aidens once your timeline was about to be erased, correct?"

"Eso es correcto," says Argentinian-Aiden, sipping on a yerba mate. Wonder how we got there.

"And Aiden, the blue-haired fuck over there, is the first one, yes?" I ask.

"As established," says Aiden.

"And who recruited you?"

"That would be Fortuna, right, babe?" asks Aiden, smirking at the goddess.

The goddess, however, doesn't move a muscle. All she does is stare at me.

"Of course, of course," I say. "And why did she do that?"

Aiden doesn't skip a beat, blabbering on with that shit-eating smirk of his'. "Why, as a quid pro quo! We as Aidens need her to reset the timeline, and she can use us as her pawns to change fate. She can't interfere with reality, we already established that."

Bingo.

"Except, she can, as Lee Vazquez," I say. "She fucked over my life a lot these past few months. You can't deny that."

For once, Aiden's smug smile wavers a bit. Is it a scowl I see for 1/10th of a second there? "Ha-h, yes. Yes she can, but while in human form, she can't change fate. She's as powerless as we are. Right?"

Again, the goddess remains silent.

"Oh, really? She's powerless? A bystander? Can't change fate?"

Aiden, my friend, you just activated my trap card. A card I keep in my pocket since that moment in the maze where a reverse-medusa tried to remove my head via halberd.

A trap card in the shape of a bus ticket.