London.
Julius.
Autograph, picture, autograph. Quite a few more autographs... another picture. And then comes along one of the Quirks that's managed to catch his interest.
Swirling Left Eye.
Or rather, the boy with one red and one blue eye, who's red eye tends to swirl quite a bit. His blue eye swirled once though!
The boy in question was accompanied by two women, a wolfgirl, and a... buggirl? And Julius can tell from their stances and posture that the women with the boy are wary— wary of him. That was unfortunate— he was a hero, one that should inspire safety... but Julius could tell that it wasn't out of a sense of fear, but protectiveness. And if you were to judge someone purely off of their physical prowess, well, Chronos was someone you should be wary of.
'They're either bodyguards, or maybe the boy's guardians— maybe his parents? Two women, adopting a boy. Or maybe the wolf woman's Quirk has aspects of a hyena... no, most likely adopted. He truly look nothing his moms. Or his bodyguards.' Julius gives them another onceover. 'Probably guards. They're missing a certain romantic tension that couples tend to have, but! They care for him like a son... like a friend? I'm not the best at reading people...'
The boy, on the other hand, looks genuinely excited to see him. And Julius still can't help but wonder what the boy's Quirk is... not that he will say anything. Stupid PR team, not wanting him to hound every interesting individual he sees.
Going through the motions, they line up for a picture. Wolfgirl and buggirl on his left, Julius himself on the boy's right. The buggirl's hand firmly holding the boy's forearm... which is a little odd, but he doesn't comment on it—
"Would you kill me, if my Quirk made me an uncontainable threat?" the boy asked, still looking ahead at the camera.
"It would depend on the person, the Quirk, and the situation. But if I felt like I had to, then yes," Julius answered. Honestly. Instantly spawning a bubble—
LOAD2.
Just over 12 meters away, time and space clash with reality... and then things play out more or less the same. Over and over again.
And Julius Novachrono doesn't divert from his path, unaware that he's already treaded it.
Once again taking a picture with wolfgirl, buggirl, and Swirling Left Eye.
"I'd tell you how my Quirk works, but you'd have to slow our time," the boy muttered, and Julius felt his heart skip a beat. The boy was baiting him. He had to be. 'Was it Intuitive Sight? Or was it Mind Reading, his left eye a literal red herring?' It hurt, it truly hurt, to not simply pelt the boy with questions— "And you have absolutely no idea what the blue eye does, either..."
'Gaaaaaah!'
DILATE 0.001! A bubble encompasses Julius, the boy, and his guards. Everything else slowed to the point they might as well not be moving at all.
Giving him, them, ample time.
His face became resolute. Serious.
"As Chronos, as the United Kingdom's number 1 hero..." his bodyguards stiffened, almost as if they were preparing for a fight. Cute. Not to mention the two other guards, one of them hidden on the boy's body— the other hidden amongst... all of them, in hundreds of pieces. His bubbles sensing the time of everything within them, living or not.
"You must tell me your Quirk."
The boy turned around, raising an eyebrow. "Eh... do I though?"
"Yes."
"I dunno, it's like, super secret stuff..." the boy muttered, clearly hesitant. "I can't just tell anyone..."
"...Please?"
"Could you promise me something first?"
"Hmmmmmmmmmm... hmmmmMMMMMMMM..." Julius hummed loudly, pacing back and forth with his hands behind his back. The boy's left eye swirling yet again. Debating whether or not he should— wait. "Let me hear it first. There are things I Iegally can't promise you."
"That you won't kill me, once I tell you what my Quirk does."
Julius almost laughed at that, but...
"You're serious."
"Yes."
Well now he had to know.
"What's your name, young man?"
"Seiki. Seiki Yamazaki."
"I promise, Seiki, that I will not kill you. Not for simply revealing your Quirk. And even then, I promise to subdue you non-lethally, if it comes to that. You have my word."
Seiki took a deep breath, before letting out a small chuckle. "In all honesty, I'm not even sure if you can kill me— the only Quirks that feasibly can are reality warpers and meta Quirks. And even then, that might not be enough..."
Julius just raised an eyebrow, leaning in a little closer. His eyes sparkling.
Julius [img]
'C'mon, tell me! Tell me tell me tell me tell me!'
And then he said it. "I call it Save & Load. It lets me save a point in time, and then load it. Sending my consciousness back into a previous version of myself."
Julius leaned back a bit, letting out a hum.
"Ah... I understand your worries. On a technical level, you use your Quirk on everyone and everything, every single time you activate it. You've used it on the Queen, on the Prime Minister, on me— all without us noticing. An international security breach of the highest order," Julius trailed off, staring down at... not the boy, but at his fellow Titan. To think that one would show up to one of his meet'n'greets of all things.
"But at the same time, it's so darn fascinating! Tell me more!"
Seiki chuckled a bit at his outburst, most of his tension leaving him. Not all of it, though.
"Well, as you know, my eyes swirl when I activate it. Red is for saves— something that you can't sense— and blue is for Loads. Something that you can sense," he explained, and now Julius had to know just what his Quirk did in context to the world.
"Promise not to freak out?"
"...Did I freak out?" Julius asked in turn. Already thinking of reasons he could've freaked out. His mind instantly going to the obvious— that Seiki was quite literally killing all of them every time he activated his Quirk.
"No idea, I loaded away before you could do anything."
"Understood. I promise not to freak out," he said... "Unless you are killing all of us over and over again, every time you activate your Quirk. ...Then I might freak out a little."
"...Fair."
SAVE1.
The boy's red eye swirled. And now Julius had to ask, "so when you load, it's the same instant as a save, right?" Seiki nodded. "So when you load— do both of your eyes swirl, or just the blue one? Since you're technically saving and loading at the same time?"
"No, just blue. No one remembers my left eye swirling unless I leave a save unloaded."
"How incredibly interesting," Julius muttered. 'Then his Quirk affects more then just his mind. Unless he's a high-functioning simulation precog... but if I can actually sense when he loads through time, that probably isn't the case—'
LOAD1.
Julius's breath hitched. His Quirk tasting as time and space clashed with reality, as the world shuddered and rippled before him.
All of it originating from his fellow Titan.
"You're not a time-traveler."
*
Seiki.
He watched as Julius Novachrono, as Chronos, stared down at him. His face once again serious and resolute, but this time... it wasn't for show.
"You're not a time-traveler."
Seiki felt his throat dry, his chest tighten. Hearing the words that he's dreaded, worried, and feared for so long.
A question that's dangled over his head from the moment he awakened his Quirk.
A question that his uncle, Sir Nighteye, couldn't answer in false time, because Foresight simply cuts the tape at each Load— unable to view Seiki's leaps into the past.
Narumi Yamazaki, Quirk: Flashback. The ability to see into someone's past. Hiroshi Yamazaki, Quirk: Mine. The ability to 'save' a physical object, and 'load' it to his hand. Seiki's known for the longest time that his Quirk was a mutation of the two, taking their factors into one. And while the sciences pertaining to how his Quirk functions were all theoretical... Seiki knows that instead of his Quirk affecting all of reality, it's far more likely to only affect him.
"Y-You, you can sense space type Quirks too, can't you?"
"...I can."
Seiki closed his eyes. Trying not to think of his lovers, of his mom. Trying not to think about all the times he's activated his Quirk in front of them, how many times his mindless corpse must've collapsed in front of them.
Trying not to think about just how many times he's activated his Quirk—
"Your Quirk isn't doing that either."
Seiki slowly opened his eyes. Hope swelling in his chest. "...It's not?"
"Nope," Julius said, popping the 'P'.
"You're a reality warper."
Seiki stared, before his eyes furrowed. "...Wait, don't tell me—"
"Kyudai Garaki's Anti-Reality Theory? Yep, every Quirk warps reality. Even the most mundane ones pull more energy out of the human body then they put in, especially those with emitter Quirks that actually generate electricity. But you in particular, well... your Quirk does something funky."
"...Funky." Seiki repeated.
"Yep, funky. Something timey, something spacey, something... reality-y."
"...So I'm not shunting my mind into alternate versions of myself?"
"Oh god no," Julius assured him, shaking his head. "What a horrific thought. What a horrific side effect of your Quirk— not that it does that. God, I hope it doesn't do that! Why would you put such a horrific thought into my head! Oh god, what if it does? No using your Quirk! I can't have a kid die right in front of me— no dying right in front of me!" Julius yelped, before his brow furrowed. Then he whispered to himself, "...But on the other hand, it would finally confirm for me just how your Quirk functions—"
Cutting off his non-sense, Seiki said, "My mom has a time aspect Quirk. My dad's was space. Is mine more time or space?"
Julius shook his head. "Eh... it's technically neither. Something... more?"
Seiki frowned, taking a moment to process that.
"Fuck."
"Fuck?" Chronos repeated, headed tilted.
"I can use my Quirk to loop the last few seconds tens of thousands of times, and it only takes a few hours for the exhaustion to wear off. And it's been that way from almost day one," Seiki explained. "I've gotten more and more saves over time, but that's about it."
"Ah. You're using it wrong."
"I'm using it wrong," Seiki affirmed, annoyed.
"He's using... his Quirk... wrong?" Rinka asked— the first time she's actually spoken since Julius bubbled them. D'Vorah also just standing off to the side warily.
Julius started to explain it before he could. "It's a common thing when it comes to higher aspect Quirks. Fire, Ice, Electricity? Quirks that use those are relatively straightforward in activation. But Time and Space? Or even worse, something higher that you can't exactly pinpoint? Quirks activate young, so if you don't understand it, you can activate it... not wrong, but not the intended way. And with how much stamina Seiki's Quirk has, and how it hasn't grown all that much, well, it paints a picture," Julius said. "On the other hand, his Quirk might never do anything more. It's already pretty freaking broken as it is."
"Ugh... this is going to drive me crazy," Seiki groaned. "It only has two functions. Saving and Loading." And while he knew it had other applications in the realm of Quirks... not only was One For All special in that regard, none of that applied here.
This was about his base Quirk, and only his base Quirk.
"You'll have to figure out what it's doing first."
"And how do I do that?" Seiki asked, hoping to get some insight from—
"I have no idea!"
'Of course.'
"...Well, this was nice and all, but is there anything else you wanted to ask? Before you load away?"
Seiki blinked. "...You're fine with that?"
"Not really. But at the same time— get it, time?" Seiki held back a groan. "But seriously, I know that you don't trust me, not to the point you're willing to draw attention to yourself like this to meet me. But I also cannot bring myself to act against you to trap you here, since the only way for me to do that is to either kill you— if that's even possible— or to trap you in stasis, something that I cannot do forever... something that's too cruel for me to even try. Too cruel to use on you."
"...I guess that makes sense. Well, I was going to see what you thought of me recruiting... your cousin."
"Which cousin—?" He blinked. "No."
"No?"
"'No' as in, please tell me you don't mean—"
"Yeah, it's her."
"...Why?"
"I need a deterrent, in case I have to go public. The Killer Frost was my first choice—" Seiki didn't miss the way Julius grimaced— "but she'll have to do."
"Well... good luck, I guess. She probably can't kill you, but... good luck."
"You don't have a problem with it?"
"No, go ahead and take her to Japan for all I care. She's tried to kill me a dozen times now, forcing me to gently put a stop to her antics every time. And now that she's an adult, she only tries to kill me when it's socially acceptable— can you believe that? Socially acceptable? And my family wonders why I hate politics. No, don't arrest your cousin Julius, it'll make the Novachronos look bad, blah blah blah... ugh, so much hassle. Her Quirk is really cool though—" he stopped himself mid sentence, grinning.
"Get it, cool?"
"Ugh..." Seiki groaned, very much getting it. "Well, nice meeting you."
"I'd say the same, but as you know, I won't remember this—"
LOADS.
*
*
*
Meanwhile.
"Achoo!" She sneezed. Sneezed. Allergies never bothered her, and the cold was incapable of bothering her, so...
'Someone must be talking about me... Julius, probably,' she concluded. 'We are meeting in person in a few weeks time. Should I try to kill him again? If I succeed, I'd start a civil war... but the conflict would remain internal. Star & Stripe would care, but wouldn't be able to move. The US wouldn't let her. And I'm fairly certain none of the other players would move unless the government collapsed. Not that I think I'm capable of killing him,' she thought.
Something that grated on her.
She didn't hate that her cousin was strong— that, she respected. But she despised the way he always defeated her so peacefully. No bloodshed, not even a single scratch on her or him, after all this time. That pissed her off to no end.
She knew that he wasn't doing it to antagonize her— knowing Julius, he probably doesn't want to interact with her at all. But it grated on her.
And while the fallout of Julius's death would be disastrous... it would be thrilling all the same. A level of bloodshed she hasn't experienced since her father last let her go bounty hunting... which was a few years now, her father not exactly happy with her 'accidentally' slaughtering a bounty. Again.
Which left her stuck in the UK, unable to do anything actually fun...
Besides kill Julius.
'I'm going to try to kill him again.'
Esdeath [img]
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