Kira examines her blade before looking back at Aoi, her expression cold and calculating, like she's done this before. "Anyone who can operate outside of time can't be affected when someone time travels. Therefore, no matter how many times you go back in the past to stop this, it'll happen again as many times as needed." With a sharp exhale, Kira darted towards Aoi to pierce his chest with extreme precision. Aoi dodged, barely, before Kira instantly follows up with a kick to Aoi's ribs, sending him onto the ground with a thud.
Hiro tries to intervene, grabbing both of Kira's arms as a way to restrain her, but it's futile. Kira strikes Hiro in the chest, pushing him back as he crashes against a nearby vase.
Aoi can barely get up, but seeing that his father, and the promise he made to Chrono-Savior is on the verge of failure, gives him energy to keep fighting. "I can't let you…hurt him!" Aoi yelled, more to himself than to Kira as he forced himself upright, before Kira can turn around fully, Aoi landed a clean blow to her jaw.
Kira's neck snaps back, her expression visibly irritated before swinging her fractured sword in a circular arc, aiming to slice Aoi's arm completely off. The blade's edge gets stuck in Aoi's tricep, when Kira pulls her blade back it reveals a deep gash on Aoi's tricep as it bleeds, painting the sleeve of his white light jacket red.
"I'm sorry Aoi.." Kira says with sympathy before thrusting her blade into Aoi's chest, a spray of blood coming from the fresh wound.
Blood instantly starts to overflow in Aoi's lungs as it spills out his mouth, he collapses. Unable to do anything but watch Kira stare down him down before attempting to finish the job by stabbing Aoi once again with her sword.
The Kira from this timeline hid upstairs along with Aoi's mother, Akira. The constant noise coming from downstairs haunting them knowing they can't do anything to stop whatever's going on down there.
"I can't just sit here….I have to help them!" Kira stands up before denying whatever Akira was about to say as she heads downstairs.
Kira finds Aoi's barely moving body, a pool of blood, what seems like another version of herself, and Hiro unconscious. She tries to help but the other version of herself grabs her neck and pins her against the wall with a intimidating glare.
"Why would you expose yourself, you could've just stayed in whatever hiding spot you were in, instead you just walked right into your death." Kira, obviously from a different timeline, readies her blade to slash through her alternate self. Before she can do it, a black and blue blade comes flying through the front door, nearly striking Kira in the head.
Kira turns around, not before knocking her alternate self unconscious. The front door is broken, only to reveal Jason with a serious expression, and Chrono-Savior, still in his hospital gown, but he has his Chrono-Arm.
Aoi, he can't keep himself alive for any longer as the world around him begins to dim.
"I got it! Jason! Just keep her at bay!" Chrono-Savior's outburst triggered Jason to move, dashing forward as fast as lightning towards Kira.
Kira can barely react to Jason's new demeanor and speed as she narrowly dodges the attack. Jason, already reacting, grabs his blade off the wall and clashes with Kira, creating an invisible shockwave that pushes everyone back.
The last thing Aoi sees is Chrono-Savior rushing in to help, but he also sees something else, he sees through Chrono-Savior, on the brink of death he sees a fractured version of himself which contains his true nature, something that he himself didn't experience, narcissism, in its pure form. This revelation leaves Aoi, in what seems like his last moments, to lose trust for his variant, seeing that he only cares for himself. "I don't want to send him to that timeline, but I have to, they have the best medical help in all the timelines besides this one's.." Chrono-Savior opens up a portal with his cybernetic Chrono-Arm and tosses Aoi through there while he's on the brink of death.
While Aoi flew through timelines to arrive at an unknown location, Jason fought and clashed weapons with Kira.
Kira sighs, clearing getting overwhelmed by Jason's onslaught. She blocks one hit while simultaneously kicking Jason's knee, making him fall. "I've fought you before, you're just gonna die over and over again until your master gets what he wants?" Kira sticks her fractured sword into the floor and grabs Jason's neck before hitting him with a clean right hook to his jaw, drawing blood from Jason's lip.
Jason doesn't respond, instead he ducks under one of Kira's swings as he lets Chrono-Savior strike the left side of Kira's face with the power generated from his cybernetic arm, sending Kira skidding to the right, leaving a visible bruise.
Chrono-Savior looks visibly angry, and with this, shows his true colors. "You ruined everything, you and that other Aoi variant, he's the weakest one, and you're nothing but a lap dog for any and every Aoi variation.." The hero bursts towards Kira, grabbing her neck as he drags her to the dining room and slams her onto the dinner table, making her fall through the table.
"Jason! I imbedded some of the energy from my Chrono-Watch in your suit when I made it, travel to timeline to 70700! NOW!" Chrono-Savior's raging outburst travels throughout the room. Jason hears the anger in his voice and immediately acts, but he has no way on how to travel through timelines. He rushed out the house, clearly stressed, he starts to hyperventilate as he clutched onto his blade.
Chrono-Savior, still holding off Kira in his own house, knocks Kira into a wall, he sees Jason, clearly lost. "JASON! WAKE UP! We don't have time for this! Pour all of the power that's in your bodysuit and slash through this timeline!" Though the instructions were unclear, they forced Jason to concertrate and act.
Jason uses all of the Chrono-Watch infused energy that flows through his bodysuit, and pours the energy into his blade and slices horizontally. The blade essentially, cuts through the timeline, leaving a portal the size of a shed. He takes slow, hesitant steps towards the portal, his first time traveling without his master. He already thought of the timeline he wanted to go to before making the portal, Timeline: 70700.
He steps through the portal arriving in the large space between timelines, a cosmic realm with large universal tubes leading to every timeline. Jason looks up to see a giant cosmic statue behind the portal, who seems to be operating the portal, even though it seems like it's staying still. Before he can observe more, he's sucked through another portal.
Meanwhile, Prime Aoi was tracking Kira's location the entire time, though she left unexpectedly, what's she's doing interests him. He stopped his TRA agents from hunting Kira down.
He looked at Kira's battle with Chrono-Savior, his eyes glued on the screen as he flashed a satisfied smile. One TRA agent stepped into the room, with a Chrono-Watch in hand.
"Sir, we've gathered 32 more Chrono-Watches from the hands of other Aoi variants in the past 12 hours." Their voice was sharp and controlled, like they did this on the regular. Prime Aoi spins around in his chair, now facing the agent.
"Keep monitoring Kira and Aoi #214. Make sure to implant the Watch's power into my Chrono-Gauntlet."
While Prime Aoi monitored Kira and her fight with Chrono-Savior, Jason just arrived in Timeline 70700, a white, futuristic city. He already found Aoi in his unconscious state, and already found a hospital, everything looks so clean and put together. For a moment, Jason forgot all of what happened before. He waited and waited, for 2 whole hours, he finally saw him, and he was alive and well, his chest wrapped in bandages along with his left tricep.
Jason clears his throat, finding the words that were stuck in his throat.
"Hey. Glad you're back, honestly I'm surprised that you're even alive."
Jason's words cut through the silence, Aoi just stared at him with an unreadable expression.
After a couple of seconds that felt longer than hours, Aoi speaks up.
"I failed, I failed to protect my father because I wasn't strong enough. You guys had to save me, I couldn't even hold off Kira for a couple minutes."
Aoi sighed as he balled up his fists, the feeling of only being a burden or bait for a bigger ally, ate away at his confidence. Jason, takes a nearby seat next to Aoi's hospital bed. His expression understanding and stern.
"But I don't care if that's all true,"
Aoi paused, the room filling with silence as he sits up in the bed.
"Because I know that I can always, rely on you and other Aoi variants to support my twisted, impossible goals."
Aoi's switch from self doubt, to overwhelming assurance, unsettled Jason. He's never heard Aoi, or at least, this version, say something as self-centered as that. Only for a moment, Jason saw a purple flame in Aoi's eyes, as if his eyes were fractured.
Jason's face explained a thousand words before he spoke. "You're serious..?" He blurted out, the room was heavy with tension. At least to Jason. "You sound just like…" Jason couldn't finish his sentence before Aoi cut him off.
"Everyone has at least one selfish goal..mine is to be able to safely control all of the timelines. It's human nature to have a selfish goal." Aoi said all of this with a calm, neutral expression as he placed his good hand on Jason's shoulder.
"If you fulfill my desires, I'll fulfill yours. I know Chrono-Savior's true nature, we leave the narcissist behind, together."
Right before Jason could give a response, the nurse walks in, accompanied by two men in white, thick armor with a glowing blue outline.
"Sir," She turned to Jason with a stern look, "Is this man, right here, one of the Aoi Takamura variations? If so, you should notify us at once, so we can send him home." The nurses's words were rushed, hurried, like she was trying to warn Aoi.
"You guys can do that..?" Were the first thoughts on Aoi's mind as he rushed to get up from the hospital bed. When he made that sudden movement, the armored men aimed their guns at him. They were extremely high tech, they shot bullets of energy that fried through any target.
"Stand down, variant." One of the soldiers snarled, their firearm aimed precisely at Aoi's cranium.
"Take him to 'The Architect'." Another one suddenly grabbed Aoi, when Jason unsheathed his blade, the men rushed in and restrained him with ease.
That seals it, Aoi and Jason have already been captured and sent to the leader of this timeline.