Chapter 4: Trimy

Somewhere, within the subspace between Tanglamar and Earth, Trimy, the two faced hound lied on its back within the sphere shaped inclosure it called home, stargazing with long spectacles over its eyes. With a clipboard in its right paw, and two different colored pens in its left, one red and one blue, he wrote down the names of certain individuals with the potential it was seeking. One column on the paper was titled: The Kinzoku Terminators (Working Title), while the other read: The Sora no Kishi (Working Title).

Trimy had already jotted down five names for each group, five being from Earth, and five from Tanglamar. Trimy stretched and set the pens and clipboard down, deciding that was enough scouting for one day and figured it deserved a break. Its bed was one gigantic red pillow on the floor, filling the center of its circular living space. And just above the bed was an open window with a view of Tanglamar and Earth side by side. The two planets that Trimy was in charge of.

“Another decade safe guarded by the forces of causality,” it said to itself. Trimy got up from its bed and walked over to a set of curtains on the right of its large room. The curtains were gold, and they sat nicely against the pure white marble stone that Trimy’s home was made of.

Behind the curtains, as Trimy threw them aside, was a large crystal ball. The orb emitted no glow and was pitch black from center to edge. Extending a single claw from its paw it tapped it. A ripple spread across the orb’s glass until it settled again into its perfect shape. Now it lit up, and showed an overhead image of Momo Kanna in her bedroom, picking up dresses from her bed and holding them up in front of her and her mirror.

“Oh, what’s this?” Trimy leaned in closer to the crystal ball as Trimy morphed fully into its golden retriever form. “Is Kanna-Chan preparing for a date?” Golden Trimy questioned if it was reading this room right. Kanna continued going back and forth from a matching set of dark blue corduroys and a black sweater, and the tan trench coat and black hat from a few days ago.

“Not the coat, not the coat!” Trimy pleaded from across space and time, and cheered when Kanna put the coat and hat away, and settled on the pants and sweater to wear, going straight to change by lifting up her shirt. Trimy turned away, and tapped the orb again to turn it off.

“I guess she’s going on a date today?” Trimy asked itself. It turned to a table left of the crystal ball and found the pink colored phone that the members of the Hanabi Buso had gotten for it. Trimy reached for the phone, curious beyond curious about Kanna’s current plans, eager to call up Ayako or Hana for the details, but withheld the urge.

“I need to give Kanna some room,” it said. “Besides, she’s just another human moving her life forward. I give her a month tops before she’s completely done with being a magical girl and ready to become some man’s wife.” Golden Trimy froze in place, realizing what it had just said, and shifted into its wolf form.

“Although…” It began. “It couldn’t hurt to check and see who she’s going out with. I’m her friend after all, and I’m just worried about her.” Wolf Trimy reached for the crystal ball, with the express intent of commanding it to show it Kanna’s date. But its claw stopped short, thinking better of prying too much into its friend’s life and changed its train of thought.

“What’s Goro up to?” Trimy asked the crystal ball. With a slash of its nail across the orb’s surface, the crystal ball illuminated and showed Tsukishima Goro at the Edamame Cafe. He was sweeping up a terrible mess outside the front door with a beaming smile on his face. Wolf Trimy left and Golden Trimy reappeared, tilting its head at the sight of an overly cheerful Goro.

“Hmm…” It scratched its chin. “The other Osoroshi Kaidame are just a phone call away too,” Trimy eyed the black phone that Goro and the others had bought for him, right next to the pink one, but shook its head and entire body until it was back to its proper two faced self.

“Space!” Trimy told itself. “Give them space!”

Two faced Trimy slumped as he watched Goro finish up his work and hung up his apron. It shut the curtains over the crystal ball and walked away from that side of the room. Trimy started to pace in a circle, and unintentionally found itself at the wall opposite to the crystal ball. And all along it were momentos from the past. Pictures, drawings and stone tablets covered it from top to bottom, starting from left to right and going down, oldest to newest. And at the bottom left corner of each picture was dated, reminding Trimy of the time and place of each group of “heroes” and “villains” that he mentored and aided over the past few millennia.

Trimy squinted at the first two pictures dated 66,000,000 BC. Stone tablets depicting simple cave drawings of people and monsters. It smiled because it remembered what those individuals actually looked like. They were both teams of three. They had to be even in numbers otherwise the balance in power wouldn’t keep this universe in check. The first heroes of Earth were men, and the villains were women back then. Trimy shook its head, smiling, recalling what an uphill battle it was for the heroes at that time. They were smarter than average cavemen, trying to protect their measly little settlement from three highly intelligent dinosaurs.

“They were the first ones to use armaments,” Trimy mused. “ But I still had to convince the dinosaur women that killing the human race wasn’t worth the effort. But feeding their egos was literally what did the trick. And before long, I had taught the dinosaurs how to shape shift, and fed the humans ideas for technology. And for the finishing touch, I teleported all of the dinosaurs to Tanglamar, and the humans thought that they were killed by a meteor strike!” Reliving that memory brought a tear to Trimy’s eye as it chuckled to itself.

And further still down the line of memories, Trimy had other pictures drawn of all the teams of heroes and villains up to the invention of photography, starting with black and white photos of all the defenders of earth and the necessary evils throughout time. Each generation having its own set of challenges for Trimy. During the middle ages, Trimy had accidentally given certain warlords too much power, and in order to balance out the scales of causality, had to create several teams of heroes to counteract them. Trimy looked at one of the last group paintings it drew halfway through the collection and pinched its nose with its two paws.

“Right, King Aurther…” Trimy felt its teeth scrap as he remembered the embarrassment of granting a commoner boy the power to rule all of England. But it wasn’t just the pure magic and strength that the sword gave the boy, it was the luck that came with it, and the people he inspired. The knights of the round table and that damnable wizard that mentored him were way too powerful to keep the balance of their universe. And with all that power already in place, no monster dared challenge the “one true king” as they called him. So, Trimy gave a human the excess negative power needed to kill King Aurther and his kingdom, which also canceled out that human’s power. King Aurther was no longer a superpower for mankind, and Morgana wasn’t strong enough to survive their final battle.

“I had to cut back on the amount of power allotted from then on,” Trimy remembered. “I had to outlaw the ability for monsters to grow into kaiju, and I had to take away humanity’s understanding of advanced tech for giant robots to combat the monsters in the fifteen-hundreds.” Trimy kept looking down the line of photographs. Each group posed its own share of universe ending problems, but that was exactly the point of keeping causality in check. These needed heroes and necessary villains were all orchestrated by Trimy, and other creatures like it were employed to keep the balance of yin and yang satisfied on not just Earth and Tanglamar, but on every planet with life and consequence hanging over their heads. It was the perfect system to maintain order and continual progression of life in every universe. And towards the end of the wall, Trimy took a good long look at the last two teams of heroes and villains and smiled. Pictures of the Hanabi Buso and the Osoroshi Kaidame.

“2008 AD,” Trimy read, looking over the members of Hanabi Buso. “Ayako was the first one I approached, then it was Hana and Yui. And finally to round out their team was Sakura and Kanna, a whole year younger than the other three.” The picture of the five and Trimy was taken after their first big battle together with the Osoroshi Kaidame. Their magical girl uniforms, short skirted kimonos, were all different colors, corresponding with their personalities and armament. Ayako’s was gold and red, with a pattern of three golden suns of varying sizes amidst red flames along its sleeves. It was also the first time Trimy had to sew a dress together. Hana’s was of orange shooting stars against a blue sky. Yui, the one girl with glasses, was the one with the green kimono and open books in the pattern with silver pages. It had been some time since Trimy had seen that one, but it always received the occasional text from her with a book recommendation. The kimono with the explosions expertly sewn over a night sky was Sakura’s. And the black kimono with silver lightning bolts and a roaring dragon was Kanna’s. They all had posed around Golden Trimy, holding up peace signs in front of their old middle school that they all used to attend.

“It feels like yesterday that we took this,” Trimy said, looking at the last photo. Goro, of course, was at the center of the photo, hooded in his cloak of the Ocean Lord behind Wolf Trimy. Tentacles fanned out around him as he held up a fist with the rest of his comrades. Katsuo was on the right to him, his golden head of hair contrasted perfectly with the scarlet lion armor Trimy had forged for him. And the others had sets of armor that depicted each of the members true monster form in shining, near indestructible metal. Denki in his gray wolf armor, Shingo in his green and red monkey armor, and Rin in his silver hawk armor. Their picture was taken on Tanglamar, in front of the guardian tower, on the same day as Hanabi Buso’s picture.

“They’ve grown up so much,” Trimy said, before frowning. It knew that its time with them was coming to an end, and despite promising itself not to get too attached, Wolf Trimy took control and turned its head to the curtain on the other side of the room. “I’m just too curious,” it said in an excuse. Walking slowly to it, Wolf Trimy flashed a wicked grin as it reached for the curtain, only to be stopped short as golden light streamed in behind it and a voice reached Trimy’s ears.

“Trimy!” boomed a demanding and beautiful woman’s voice. Trimy shifted from Golden to Wolf four times before resting at two faced again. Trimy turned around to see the angelic and demonic visage of Annalia, the queen of its race, and its boss in all things related to causality.

“L- lady Annalia,” Trimy stammered. “What do I owe the pleasure of your visit to my pocket dimension?”

“Save your excuses for someone else, you split-faced beast!” Annalia barked. Trimy stopped its nervous act and looked up to her from its bow.

Radiant and noisey as ever… Trimy thought, looking over the goddess-like figure of hers. Every strand of hair was in place under her golden halo and tall horns. She wore the same old white robe as if she were some sort of greek goddess, and her pearl white skin shone so brightly that it hurt Trimy’s eyes just to squint at her.

“What can I help you with, Annalia?” Trimy finally asked, unconcerned.

In the millenniums that I’ve been overseeing the causality of Earth and Tanglamar, Trimy thought, blinking twice at Annalia. I’ve never let the balance of good and evil outweigh each other. And I don’t plan on having Kanna and Goro fight each other for another week. So this better be good, or I’m going to have a word with-

“Help me? Izanami has escaped the Underworld and took the Tengu with her to Earth!”

Trimy paused for a moment, unsure if it had heard her correctly.

“I’m sorry, I must have misheard you. I thought you said that Izanami and the Tengu escaped the Underworld,” Trimy laughed, but Annalia wasn’t laughing.

“You think this is a joke?” Annalia shouted. She fell down slowly from her levitating position and walked towards Trimy. “Your world is so horribly out of sync with the rest of the cosmos that causality in its entirety is granting power back to some of the worst individuals in existence! So far we’ve managed to nip everything that we know of in the bud, but your world seems to have missed a few stragglers. Do I need to call in my heroes to fix your mess?”

“N- no, of course not!” Trimy panicked, running over his bed and putting on his spectacles again. He checked all of Tanglamar and found no sign of them. Then Trimy checked Earth, and found Izanami and three Tengu following her, being discrete, but not so much that he couldn’t spot their growing power. “Oh gods, they are loose…”

“Yeah!” Annalia said, her arms folded. “Recapture them by the end of the day or my heroes will clean it up for you!” Annalia vanished with a snap of her fingers and a flash of light. Trimy put down his spectacles down and started rubbing its head.

“What went wrong?” Trimy asked itself. “What threw everything out of whack? My perfect record…” Trimy shed a single tear for its pride, and stood up as Wolf Trimy. “I need to get Goro and Kanna on this ASAP!” Trimy said, facing the portal behind its bed, sprinted and jumped right through it.

However, with the portal closing, and with Trimy in such haste, it failed to notice that its crystal ball was still showing Tsukishima Goro waiting by a bridge and meeting with Momo Kanna for a date. The cause for causality’s failure just behind the curtain.