Partas Estate.
Julius.
Julius already knew that something was up, of course. Just a couple of seconds ago, he got a phone call from his great-aunt, or Esdeath's... second-cousin-twice-removed? Christ, they both have way too many still living relatives— and she was whining and blabbering about how Esdeath was throwing a tantrum or something or other.
So, something was obviously happening over in Esdeath land.
And then he felt her Ultimatum. Even if he was halfway across the country, he'd recognize that explosive expanse of stopped time anywhere.
0.6 seconds later, he's hovering above her manor, which is completely incased in... "ice."
Can't really melt it with heat, but with a bubble of sped up time, small bubbled sections of ice almost immediately start to "evaporate." Such an interesting Quirk his cousin has. If only she wasn't... her.
And then he's at the scene of the crime.
Esdeath and unnamed girl at opposite ends of the hall, unnamed boy leaping backwards from Esdeath's touch.
And Julius has already noticed a few interesting things with his Quirk.
Unnamed girl was a fire type, but her fire... he couldn't stop it.
Oh, Julius could easily slow it down to the point that it might as well be stopped, or speed himself up to the point that she might as well not be moving— which he was currently doing— or even just stop the girl herself. But when it came to her Quirk, there was something about the flames it made that needed to move. There was potential there, certainly.
Which explained why Esdeath didn't immediately just ice her.
The boy, on the other hand, had some sort of energy projection Quirk. Like most Quirks like that, it'd cost Julius more energy than usual to stop it.
Stopping Quirks, or Quirk effects, was almost always more costly in general. Himself included.
But not enough for it to be an actual problem.
And then he let time continue... well, for their minds. Everything else came to a stop.
"Now now, just what do we have here?"
Esdeath almost immediately glares at him, even more hateful then usual. Julius raised an eyebrow, forming a new bubble around her body, head excluded. Letting her talk— "IMGOING TO FUCKINGKILL YOUSTUPIDFUCKINGGODDAMNBITCHFUCKING—!" Annnnnd that's enough of that.
Then he does the same for unnamed girl. Her golden eyes blinking, widening as she realizes just who's floating in front of her.
"Hello there. Mind telling me why you're here?"
...No answer.
"Mind telling me what your Quirk is? How come I can't stop your flames?" he asks, a bit more eager this time. He's really curious, after all.
No answer again. Pity.
"You entered the manor with that boy over there, yes?" Julius asked. No answer again. Drat. Hard way it is, then. "If I were to kill him, would you start answering my questions?"
She tensed, before snarling. "Fuck you. You can't kill him," she said instead.
To which Julius just raised an eyebrow.
"Really? I mean, seeing that you're terrorists, and I'm the UK's beloved number #1 hero, and we aren't in public, and this is a personal attack on my relatives..." he listed off, raising a finger for each reason. He gave her a light shrug. "I mean, you guys new the risks, right?"
Oh, he definitely wasn't going to kill any of them— no one in the manor has even suffered a permanent injury, after all— but... he might as well push for whatever info he can.
And they did pull a frontal assault on his cousin, at her home. That was a big no-no, especially when it came to Hero families.
...So what if he's a little intimidating?
"Talk to Seiki-sama. He'll answer your questions," she said begrudgingly... but also smugly? Like she was winning, somehow?
"...Who?" Julius asked, looking around. "Do you mean unnamed boy?"
"He is not unnamed boy. He is Seiki-sama, you cur—" Annnnnnnd that's enough of that. "Who pissed in her cereal," Julius muttered to himself, appearing in front of the boy.
"Alright, let's have ourselves a chat."
*
1.3 Seconds Later.
Sitting in a foyer at the far end of the estate, Julius poured himself a glass of tea. Seiki-sama and unnamed girl sitting across from him, Esdeath standing in the corner, still frozen from head to toe in one of his bubbles.
She could still listen in, her mind unaffected, but she was effectively in timeout. She'd be out of timeout when she decided to stop screeching profanities.
So, never, probably.
"Tea?" Julius offered. "I'd normally have the maids do it, put it's only been two seconds since I've stopped your little skirmish, so they're still hiding with their heads between their legs. Not to mention the guards you took out with those bees, nasty work there," he muttered.
Unnamed girl floundered for a bit, completely put off by the sudden relocation.
But Seiki-sama, however, didn't even look rattled. "You can sense internalized time effects at short range... and you can sense external time effects at long range. The bigger they are, the further you can sense them."
"...Yes," Julius said, honestly impressed by the deduction. "Tea?"
"No thanks. I'd like to cut you a deal."
"...A deal." Julius repeated, looking down to Seiki's lower waist, which is currently locked to the couch by time itself. "You do realize the situation, don't you, Seiki Yamazaki?" The boy didn't even blink at the drop of his name, but unnamed girl certainly did.
"Your girlfriend was really happy to tell me that, made it a lot easier to find you—"
"That's low, Julius. Don't try to drive a wedge between us. Even if she said my name, I know you used facial recognition software on me."
To which Julius pouted. "You're no fun. But! You're right, I did use FRS," he said, looking back to— not unnamed girl, but to Azula Onozaki. "Ignition, huh? Converting kinetic energy, converting motion into heat... and then back into motion. Fascinating! It makes sense that you'd counter dear Esdeath, and even me— to a very small degree. Not enough to matter, though," he said idly, Azula unable to move anything but her face.
Unable to even start the movement needed to get her Quirk going.
"And you, Seiki... not energy projection, but Trickshot," he said, eyes gleaming. "I am dying to know how you pulled that off. Did your energy projection start as making trickshots, and you slowly discovered it to be something more? C'mon! What's the story there?"
"Before I reveal anything, I need to use one Quirk."
Julius narrowed his eyes. "'Use one Quirk,' he says, like that doesn't just raise a million more questions. But I'll humor you. What's the Quirk?"
"Radio Waves."
A burst of energy left Seiki Yamazaki's body, destroying all electronics in a 2 kilometer radius. Destroying every electronic device built into the Partas Estate. Destroying all the cameras and sensors built into Julius's costume.
And even though Julius can sense everything, living or not, in areas under his control... his passive scanning can only be so detailed. It cannot spot the bugs burrowed beneath Seiki's skin, injecting stored blood into Seiki at Seiki's verbal command.
D'Vorah, Locust's, range now improved enough thanks to Queen Bee, that she can use it to listen in to Julius's conversation from afar, to help Seiki pull one over on the Titan of Time.
Julius has already froze the boy and sped up himself, but even if his reaction time is inhuman, and his Quirk multiplies his combat speed a thousand times over... he still needs to react.
By the time Julius had stopped the attack, the wave's only spread a few meters, but the scanners in his suit were already ruined.
So Julius just sighed in defeat and let the "attack" continue spreading throughout the manor.
Refreezing Seiki Yamazaki to the same degree as Azula, only able to move his face. A dozen different bubbles now focused solely on Seiki, all of them on a hair trigger to stop him from doing anything "weird" entirely. And now the bugs buried into his shoulder, stomach, arms and legs were no longer able to assist him... not that Julius knows that.
"Use another Quirk, and you'll be in a holding cell before you can blink. You'd be looking at 10 to 20 years, kid." ...if the kid in question wasn't 11, but Julius didn't say that part. The brat in front of him acted far too old for his age.
"True. But now that no one can listen in, and everyone that knows that I've been here won't speak up, we can talk," Seiki said, completely calm.
"...Right. Your deal. What, is it something that I can't refuse?" Julius asked pointedly.
"I'll tell you everything you want to know about my Quirk. In return, you let me leave the country with Esdeath and my crew, untouched."
"No deal. Esdeath isn't something up for sale," he said, a bit colder this time. "But if you wanted to explain your Quirk to me, I wouldn't stop you."
"Ah. Let me rephrase," Seiki backstepped. "Let Esdeath leave with me if she wants, because she almost certainly wants to."
Julius blinked at that, looking over at Esdeath with a raised eyebrow. He unfroze her.
"...I fucking hate it here. Seiki at least knows what I want," she growled, her eyes roaming over Seiki's body with unrepentant lust.
To which Julius just sighed. "For fuck's sake, Esdeath... I know we're old money, and I know you aren't a saint, but he's 11 goddamn years old."
"He's 11?!" Esdeath spluttered.
"Don't worry, sugar, I'm an adult in all the ways that matter," Seiki clapped back.
"Oh my god, stop," Julius said, freezing both Esdeath and Seiki. "No. None of that. Ew. Just," he let out a shudder, his mind going places he didn't want it to. "Just tell me why I shouldn't just immediately arrest you and be done with it."
And then he let Seiki move again. Not Esdeath, though, because... 'ew, ew. I don't even, why? Why, God? What did I do to deserve this?'
"My Quirk— my original Quirk, is called Save & Load. It lets me save a point in time, and then load back to it, with just a thought. Sending my consciousness back into a previous version of myself. And the best part, Julius? Save & Load auto-activates on death, on Quirk nullification, on... everything, really."
'What about mind control?' Julius thought, but didn't say. His own mind already racing at the implications of such a Quirk can do. Just now realizing that any verbal taunt or threat that he makes— could become one that he simply could have made.
Taunting Seiki with mind control would make Seiki expect mind control from him, or from an ally of him. And Julius... might not even remember this meeting.
'No— this meeting might not even happen,' he thinks. 'This isn't even the first time we've met, is it?'
Esdeath might not even be attacked, not in reality. This might just be a test for her, or maybe even a test for him. Or maybe... she will be attacked, and then recruited, in a way that he doesn't learn about it, not until she's left the country.
And if his Quirk activates on death...
'There's nothing I can do but delay the inevitable. I can't freeze things for ever. My Quirk, every Quirk, has its limits.'
And that's when it clicks. When the "deal" finally makes sense.
"You're letting me choose," Julius muttered in disbelief. "Do I let you leave the country with Esdeath, or do I simply forget?"
A sword of Damocles that Seiki Yamazaki can hold over every first encounter.
Because if you don't know Seiki exists... and you are not 100%, genuinely unkillable... he has you. Because he'll know about you, and you won't know about him.
'The deal isn't just knowing Seiki's Quirk. The deal is whether or not I know about Japan's hidden Titan, in exchange for Esdeath's recruitment. I can't even begin to imprison him if I don't even know he exists. At most, I can try to instantly age him to death, or hold him here as long as possible, and try to find a Quirk that CAN defeat him... but neither of those options are really feasible. Not on such short notice,' Julius thinks.
'But that's only if he isn't bullshitting me.'
"Prove it," he says. Mostly in jest, because he's fairly certain the effect would be unnoticeable—
"Load."
"Holyfuckitsreal," Julius whispered.
And even though Seiki Yamazaki was completely trapped, unable to escape from Julius's bubbles of time— completely and utterly helpless against him, the fastest Titan— it was still Seiki Yamazaki's win.
*
*
*
Later That Night.
Seiki.
"Just a single suitcase? That's it?" Seiki asked her, just to be sure. Because he was pretty sure that she had, like... a lot more stuff than that.
"I'll have a few maids arriving in a few days with the rest of my belongings. Let's leave for Japan now. You have a flight booked, yes?" she asked in turn, quickly scrolling through her phone.
"Yeah, in 5 hours—"
"I bought out a flight leaving for Japan in 30 minutes. It will wait for us at the airport," Esdeath said, already leaving his hotel room.
Seiki rolled his eyes... only for Esdeath to strut back into the hotel room, grab him by the collar, and stare into his eyes with an intensity that made him shiver. Only in false time, though. No reason to look like a bitch in front of miss "strength is power".
"When we get to Japan, we fight to the death," her eyes practically glazed over with lust. "We'll kill each other over... and over... again..." she trailed off hungrily.
'Christ, ever since she found out what my Quirk was, she's been fucking crazy.' Seiki didn't know how, but she was somehow even worse than Azula. And knowing that they've both killed each other, even if it was only in false time, was making her... honestly, it was making Esdeath actually batshit insane. It was incredible hot, since she was obsessed with him, but she was still batshit insane.
But hot.
"We can do quite a bit more than fight," he said slyly.
"We fight to the death, first. Then we can fuck," she told him. "We are going to be married, after all. It's only natural that we copulate."
To which Seiki blinked.
As someone who's had sex with literally every woman that's caught his eye, and all of them already knowing he was fucking other women... he still somehow ended up two-timing.
"...Fuck."
"...After we fight to the death."
Seiki's lips thinned. "Uh, about that marriage thing..."
"What? You have a better prospect than me?"
Seiki bit his lip. "Honestly, no. But there's a girl that gave me something invaluable, even if she didn't remember it. And I owe her for that."
"So? Simply marry us both. Let us leave for Japan. We can worry about this there," she said, shaking her head. "I don't care how many women you're fucking on the side. Only peasants care about shit like that," she muttered, leaving the room. Again.
"...Huh."
And while he knew that Esdeath honestly hated it here— that being one of the reasons she ended up applying for Yuuei, as an excuse to leave the country— Seiki said nothing.
Smart enough to just be happy that this didn't blow up in his face.
"She's a feisty one. You gonna break her in like you did Azula?" Inque whispered, making herself known as she slithered around his cock.
"I wanna watch..." Konan whispered as well, pressed up against his back.
Seiki sighed.
'This is my life now, I guess.'
SAVE4. And then, for the hundredth time tonight, Seiki moved up one of his security saves.
Oh, he knew that this was all sorts of risky. And maybe, if he played at it for years... decades... he could figure out a way to impress Esdeath enough, without her resorting to her Ultimatum. Maybe. And maybe he could accomplish everything while Julius wasn't in the country, something that maybe happens a few seconds a year at most.
But the pros outweighed the cons.
Yes, Julius knows of his Quirk. Yes, he's finally used a beeQuirk, in what might very well be "real time." 1 use of 8.
But now he has two deterrents, Esdeath and Azula. Quite the delightful surprise that was, simply stumbling upon Quirk resonance in the wild like that. And not only are they both deterrents for the HPSC, for All For One, and for all the other players he might find himself up against...
Seiki can't help but grin at what might be the best part yet. An ice Quirk that slows molecules, and a fire Quirk that speeds them up.
Because after acquiring Queenbee, and realizing just how trivial information gathering was, at least in false time... he saw no reason to stop at Japan.
Simply visiting the other countries via plane, on a perfectly innocent vacation... showing up at each and every one of their hero-cons... and then asking all the questions he could ever want to ask, and simply loading away. Knowing Serafall, Julius, and Zhang far better than he should. Quirks included.
Khepri and Oathbreaker not quite as public friendly, unfortunately. Not that he ever plans to encounter them.
And then there was Cathleen Bate, Star & Stripe, the supposedly strongest woman... who can only use two rules at the same time. Rules that can bend and break reality, and she doesn't even need to understand what she's doing to use it. 'So if she's up against Frozen Heavens and Ignition? Sure, she can use a rule to stop molecules. She can use a rule to lock them. She can use a rule to prevent them from getting slower, or faster... but only one. The other rule keeping her at All Might's level of strength, or something close to it.'
Not that he had an answer to the "all air in and around you stops existing, lol die" rule that she had. 'Which is such a broken fucking trump card— not that I can complain. But still.' Something that not even a space suit would work against... but he was working on it.
And at the end of the day, Seiki still wasn't sure what he actually wanted to do with his life. Not yet.
But going public?
Julius, the Titan of Time, was forced to take his hard-sell. He didn't even hear the soft sell. And while Seiki knew that simply going public with his Quirk would be a fucking nightmare to deal with... if he were to set it up just right? To go public in the way that benefited him the most?
Well, the cons were starting to get less and less...
'Something else I should test, when I can.' And if it doesn't work? Then he'll just go back.
*
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