Cassian Vey had exactly two seconds to decide whether he wanted to get vaporized, thrown into a collapsing timeline, or—his personal favorite—punch a time-warping bounty hunter in the face.
Naturally, he chose the last option.
The punch connected with a satisfying crack, sending the bounty hunter—an armored enforcer from the Chrono Syndicate—stumbling backward into a swirling breach of unstable reality. The air around them shimmered, flickering between neon-lit skyscrapers and a barren wasteland littered with the skeletal remains of… dinosaurs?
"Yeah, okay, not going that way," Cassian muttered, dodging a plasma bolt as he sprinted down the alley. The bounty hunter recovered fast, growling through his helmet.
"You can't run forever, Vey!"
"Wasn't planning to!" Cassian shot back, leaping over a pile of discarded tech from about three different timelines. "Just pacing myself!"
His boots skidded across the fractured pavement as he turned a corner and nearly collided with a glowing time rift. Through it, he saw another version of the city—this one mid-apocalypse, with burning buildings and a sky that looked like someone had punched a hole straight into the cosmos.
"Well, that's comforting," he said, ducking as another plasma shot whizzed past his ear.
The bounty hunter was gaining. Cassian needed an out—fast. Then, just ahead, he spotted salvation: a rusted-out hovercycle, abandoned in a junk heap. It looked barely functional, but "barely functional" was kind of his thing.
With a running leap, he landed on the seat, flipped a few switches, and prayed to whatever time-god was listening. The engine sputtered, coughed, and—
Nothing.
"Seriously?" Cassian smacked the console.
The bounty hunter was almost on him now, a wicked-looking chrono-scythe humming in his hand.
"Alright, alright—work, you pile of junk!" Cassian gave the controls one last desperate hit. The hovercycle roared to life—just as the ground beneath them glitched, sending a ripple through reality.
The entire alley flickered, shifting into a completely different timeline. Suddenly, Cassian found himself speeding through what looked like a medieval kingdom—except the knights were wielding laser swords, and a flying drone was barking out orders in Latin.
"Yeah, okay, I'm gonna need a drink after this."
The bounty hunter, to his credit, was still in pursuit, his chrono-scythe crackling as he leapt onto a galloping robo-horse. Cassian sighed.
"Of course he has a robo-horse."
Twisting the throttle, Cassian pushed the hovercycle to its limits, weaving between armored soldiers who barely had time to process his existence before he was gone. Up ahead, another rift flickered open—a way out.
Problem: it was unstable. The kind of unstable that would either take him somewhere safe or turn him into cosmic spaghetti.
Cassian grinned. "Eh, I like my odds."
He gunned it, diving straight into the rift just as the bounty hunter swung his scythe—
—And the world snapped.
Cassian tumbled through the void, time and space bending around him in a chaotic swirl of past, present, and future. For a brief moment, he saw everything—an infinite number of realities overlapping like shattered glass.
Then, with a gut-wrenching thud, he landed hard on a cold metal floor. The air smelled of ozone and burnt circuits. Distant alarms blared.
Cassian groaned, rolling onto his back. A pair of boots stepped into his vision.
"Well, well," a familiar voice said. "Look what the time-rift dragged in."
Cassian squinted up at the smirking face of Aurora "Rory" Quinn, time hacker extraordinaire.
"Rory," he coughed. "Remind me… never to time-jump without a seatbelt."
Rory crossed her arms. "Remind me never to bet against you actually dying."
Cassian chuckled. "Missed you too."
From somewhere outside, the sound of approaching Syndicate forces echoed through the station. Rory sighed.
"Yeah, yeah, happy reunion and all that," she said, tossing him a plasma pistol. "Now get up. We've got bad guys to shoot."
Cassian groaned, but grabbed the gun. "See, this is why I hang out with you."
"Because I save your sorry ass?"
"That," Cassian said, rising to his feet. "And because you always have the best plans."
Rory smirked. "Oh, you're gonna love this one."
And with that, the alarms grew louder, and the fight for survival began again.