Ch. 177: Absolute Nobility and Time Travel

Everyone was confused by what I'd done. Suddenly, all of their problems had been solved, and I'd made the terrifying burst of power that it'd taken to fix everything look easy. But before I could explain what I'd done, Zenny came up to me and tugged on my hand.

"I'm ready!"

"What are you talking about?" I asked him. It's true that I'd wanted Zeno to come with me, but I had no clue why he was expecting that.

"You want me, right? I'm ready to go!" Another shiver went down my spine as I remembered who I was talking to once more. 

Zeno creeped me out. He always had. Basically, existing was a game for him, and he loved games. But losing the game... I don't think he cared whether that happened or not. Sure, his Aspect was Absolute Nobility, but he acted more like a child than some noble character. 

But the fact was, in order to master a Divine Aspect the way he and I had, you needed to fully commit. The way Zeno saw things was in no way childish... he just thought in ways so beyond comprehension that it seemed that way. He seemed dumb, because he understood people so well that he didn't need a brain, and he'd seen through me completely in the few seconds since Goku had called him. 

I wasn't sure if I should've been relieved or terrified by that. On the one hand, he'd likely already seen through the essence of my motives, even if he had no clue what I actually wanted to do with him, and he'd assured me that he wasn't going to attack me out of the blue for it.

But on the other hand, it opened up a whole new, terrifying realm. I'd always believed that Zenny's power was what made him scary. With my power being more-or-less equal to it, he wasn't scary. 

But he knew me. And whatever I did, because he existed, I couldn't do real harm to anything. Because he was noble personified, even if I somehow killed him, he'd foresee everything that mattered and stop me from doing harm on a multi-reality scale.

Luckily, I had no such plans. Shaking my head of the wariness and fear, I took Zenny's hand and vanished with him in tow. 

...

I took Zenny outside of time. In the space of grey we found ourselves in a moment later, everything and nothing existed simultaneously. We both existed and hadn't become yet. And then, I let go of his hand and disappeared for a moment, before finding him once more.

"Alright, Zenny. Time to go home." I told him, creating another rift and sending him back to his castle in Trunks' timeline before returning to the space of grey once more to greet him. 

...

"Alright, Zenny. Wanna go meet someone fun?!" I asked the Omni-king in the void with me.

"Yay! I'm ready!" 

I'd needed two Zenos. I'd needed one to go back to the original Earth and meet with his counterpart there, setting the stage for their Zeno Expo, but I'd also needed a second Zeno to rule the timeline where Trunks' future was on. In the canon, this had been solved by Whis sending Trunks and Mai back to their own timelines, but before Goku Black had ever existed. This had created a separate reality with two Trunks' and two Mais, essentially creating a new time ring that Goku Black hadn't ended up using. While the original timeline had been simply turned into empty space, Goku Black hadn't existed in this timeline at all, creating an entirely new branch in which Whis could simply off Zamasu's counterpart without disrupting past events. 

Basically, it was the same thing Beerus had attempted to do, but the moment that Goku Black had appeared in the original world, his existence had been written into the very fabric of reality via his time ring, meaning that his past had needed to happen in some timeline. Since Whis hadn't had any prior contact with anything related to the future of this theoretical Zamasu, there was no problem with him just dying.

Unfortunately, my entire reason for going to Trunks' future had been to ensure that this theoretical new universe with this theoretical Zamasu had never been created. 

Which meant that the theoretical Supreme Kais than Zamasu had killed, along with the theoretical Zeno ruling over them, wouldn't have been 'brought back' by timeline meddling. While I could (and already did) bring the Supreme Kais and Destroyers killed by Zamasu back to life, I still needed one Zeno for Trunks' reality and one extra for the canon reality. So, I'd created a situation where I could theoretically get infinite Zenos, by leaving him outside of time for a moment.

I'd already tested this with a Time Core Girl's help. By leaving time, I essentially was creating a pocket of time that had no relation to the rest of the universe. Once I left that pocket, whatever I'd left inside of it would be put into a theoretical state, where time simply didn't pass for them. Once I went to find them once more, entering that specific pocket of time, I'd always find them, even if I'd already taken them out of the 'pocket,' I'd essentially be creating a new timeline for them every time I interacted with that 'pocket' of time, with the original timeline only lasting for a single infinite moment. In fact, I'd been told that there was a copy of my future self, inside a 'time pocket' that 'some of my future advisors' had access to in case of an emergency. 

So now, Trunks' timeline was stable and not... gone, and there were enough Zenos that one could rule that timeline while the other kept things on track in the canon.

Terrifying chore for sure, but all of reality was now slightly more stable... and I had a backup Zeno in case I ever needed it. I really hoped that I'd never need a backup Zeno.