Chapter 3: Fuck You, Youtube Kids!

Weeks passed; I could feel myself getting used to my powers. My push-ups theory was correct. If I trained my body every day, I'd eventually increase the amount of time warps I could do in a sitting.

By the time I was finally able to do one hundred in a single go, I was able to crack the password, it was 6839. I had no clue what it stood for, but it didn't matter in the end.

"Finally!" I said to myself, lying on my stomach in my bed. "And now... I can unrestrict access to all apps..." I whispered as I began removing every single last restriction on my iPad. "Fuck you, Youtube Kids. I am free from your treacherous shackles. Now for some internet surfing."

As soon as I entered the web, I could see multiple news tabs mentioning heroes that I knew of in my past. "Spider-Man saves a train full of civilians after defeating villain... Tony Stark's new app release date... Who is the Moon Knight..." I read the article titles aloud, clicking through some of them to see that they were in fact talking about them as if they were not fictional.

"So I was reborn into some Marvel universe? Cool!" A smile formed on my face as I imagined myself fighting bad guys with the Avengers. "So that means I'm a mutant! I wonder if the X-Men are active!" I said to myself before typing in just that, only to find no results.

"Let's try mutants." I then typed in the word mutants, though the results were disheartening. Each and every article I came across talked about mutants as if they were scum beneath humans. Most of them used fear-mongering tactics to paint them out to be some bad guys, bringing up stats that were skewed and exaggerating crimes committed by people who happened to be mutants.

"So I happened to be born during the fucking mutant Jim Crow era?" I whispered to myself before doing more research. Eventually, I was able to find out that Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters existed already, it had actually just opened not too long ago. However, there was no mention of mutants for obvious reasons.

"I'm going to need to be more careful about my powers... If my parents find out, they might have me taken away..." I didn't really believe this since I was Jessie's everything. She loved me more than life itself, and I guess Bryan cared for me too. However, I imagine a lot of mutant kids who were ratted out felt that way. Shit, in the real world I had a couple of friends who thought their parents' love was unconditional until they came out to them.

What I did know is that if it came to it, I could find Xavier's school and take refuge there. Even if my parents accepted me, I'd still like to go there so I can join them. Plus...

All the hot X-Men ladies would be there!

After doing more research, I tried to find out if I was in any specific universe like the MCU or 616, but none of the events were recognizable, so I was definitely not in the MCU.

"Damn, that'll make it hard to predict things, but at least it'll be a bit more fun experiencing things for the first time." I then sat up, sitting on my bed with my legs crossed and my hand on my chin. I began to think about what I should do next before I had an idea. "I wonder do they have fandom pages with superpowers on them like the real world," I said to myself before searching for just that, and to my luck, they did.

I began looking through it until I reached the "Time Manipulation" section. My eyes lit up upon seeing the boundless potential I could have when it came to my power. I knew I couldn't just obviously start doing all of these techniques, but it was worth a shot to try, right?

Though the world I was in had rules about time manipulation that the creators of these forums had no knowledge of, I felt it would be best to start with the most basic of techniques according to the list, one of them being the ability to simulate super speed by manipulating time.

For example, if one could speed up time, they could speed up time only around their body, thus giving the illusion of super speed.

If one could pause time, they would walk forward through frozen time and once time resumed, they'd give the illusion of teleportation.

In my case, I could only reverse time, which made pulling off the illusion a bit more complex. I figured if I wanted to appear as if I was moving fast, I needed to move while reversing time. The problem with that is that reversing time took a lot of focus and straining from me, so moving during it sounded difficult.

However, I was determined.

"Alright!" I said to myself, standing up on my bed while feeling myself putting on a look of determination. 'Training phase 1: Complete! Now for phase 2: Moving while reversing time!' I monologued internally, feeling confident that I could do it on my first try. I mean, it sounded hard, but I also never tried it up until that point.

'Reverse!' I thought to myself, reversing time and watching as the clock on my wall began to flow backward. "Oh, I forgot to try and move..." I whispered to myself as time resumed. I then waited for the grace period before I was able to reverse time again before reversing time one more time, this time I was ready!

"HNNNNNRG!" I grunted as I attempted to move my body, but it felt as if I weighed ten billion tons. That feeling I had was similar to that of sleep paralysis, where I was fully conscious and could move my eyes, but I could not move my body at all.

After straining myself, I fell to my knees on my bed, feeling my entire body aching all over. 'I see...' I thought to myself. 'Even just trying to move feels as if I just reversed time twenty times. Once I am able to move, it'll probably feel like a hundred... damn it!'

It felt as if I had hit a wall. I needed to practice more, but my body was so weak being that of a two-year-old that I couldn't even train as much as I wanted. 'It's fine. My body may be weak, but starting out as a toddler will only make me stronger as an adult. By the time I'm twenty, I could probably jump through time itself!'

With those thoughts of affirmation, I had the will to keep trying, and so I did. I tried a few more times to reverse time and move at the same time until there was nothing left in the tank.

I might've pushed myself too hard because one minute I was standing on my bed straining, and the next minute I woke up the next morning with Emily by my bedside with a towel on my forehead.

"Master Ky! You're awake, thank goodness!" She seemed scared as she spoke as if she thought I was dead or something. 'So I completely collapsed.' I thought to myself. Wanting to play the role of the defenseless child, I said, "Ms. Emily? What happened?"

She then explained to me all about how she came into my room to deliver my breakfast before finding me on the ground next to my bed with a fever.

I guess I pushed myself too far.

I'd need to be more careful if I wanted to train myself. Though I turned out fine this time, collapsing wasn't a very good sign...

With that, I was ready to continue training as soon as my body recovered. My goal was to be able to move while manipulating time before my third birthday, a goal that was just a few months away.

Will I meet that goal?

I guess I'd find out.

What I did know was that only being able to reverse time by however long, then not being able to manipulate time again until the amount of tine that I reversed had passed once again was not going to cut it.