"Are you going to buy pizzas?"

"I always do."

"Then of course I'll be there. I think I've got that night off anyway."

"Alright, I'll see you then." Drake hung up and called Nick. It rang three times before he answered, "h.e.l.lo?"

"Hey Nick. Listen, I was thinking about how long it's been since we all hung out, so I'm buying pizza, Jordan's stopping by, and you'd better be there or we'll drag you over."

It sounded as if Nick forced a slight laugh at Drake's joke. Drake wasn't sure but he thought he heard someone whisper in the background of the call before Nick agreed and asked what time he should be at Drake's house.

"Um...around eight's fine."

"Okay, I'll be there," Nick told him. "Did you want me to bring anything?"

"No I've got it. I'll see you then."

Drake hung up and looked around his house. It was still cold and empty, which bothered him. He got off his couch, walked over to the collapsed pile of cards, organized and returned all of the cards to their respective decks in less than a ten-thousandth of a second, and slowly made his way upstairs to find something else to occupy his time.

Chapter 21.

September 21st, 2029 10:05 AM.

London, England Ian hardly managed to get off the plane and into his apartment before his boxed belongings arrived from the States. He hadn't had the time or energy to unpack at that moment either, as the time difference was taking him much longer to adjust to than he had expected it to take him. Ian also spent what little time he had since arriving trying to secure a job before he ran out of funds to live off of. What he had managed to unpack consisted of a few books, a photo journal, his camera, bedding, and a few pairs of clothes. The rest of the boxes were stored in his room in a pile against a wall. His apartment came furnished with an old sofa the previous tenant left, a small sink, stove, refrigerator, but lacked an actual bed, any bookshelves, or a dresser. His closet did have dozens of bent wire hangers, but the only thing he actually hung up was his Voltage costume, which he'd used every night since he arrived.

The weary young man was curled up on his couch with the vain hope of getting a few hours of sleep when he heard someone rummaging through his closet. He shot up and dashed back to his room but found someone who could move as fast as he could tell him to calm down and relax.

Ian hardly believed his eyes. "Drake? What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to drop by and see your costume, y'know, since I didn't have a chance to see it back in Washington," he told him.

"How do you know where I live?"

Drake held up a slip of paper and handed it to him. "You mother gave me your address, as I said I wanted to mail you something, though I decided dropping in on you might be more fun."

"But how"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you I'm a time manipulator."

Ian looked at him blankly and repeated what he heard Drake say while Drake examined Ian's mask and costume. "You're a time what?"

"Time manipulator," he said as he took the cape off Ian's hanger and draped it around his shoulders. "You and I are in the same super powered boat," Drake said with a grin. He looked around the room and told Ian he really needed to furnish his place.

"I plan to...But you're a time manipulator?" he asked again. "What does that even mean?"

"It means what you think it means; I can manipulate time, meaning I can slow it down, stop it, speed it up, et cetera."

"Can you go back in time?"

Drake took a breath and told him that it was complicated. "It seems as though I can only go to random periods of time."

"What do you mean?"

"I always go back to j.a.pan and seem to follow this one couple's day-to-day lives."

"That's weird."

"You're telling me."

Drake took the mask and put it on before Ian asked, "Do they freak out when you pop into their life?"

"No, they can't see or hear me." Drake took the items of Ian's costume off and put them away while he told Ian he couldn't affect the past at all. "I can witness what happens, but I can't do anything to change it."

"Oh. That's kind of useless. Why can't you?"

Drake took a breath and tried to give a reasonable explanation, "The way I see it, if I could go back into the past and change something, I would inadvertently create a seemingly infinite amount of parallel worlds that would be similar to this one, but different in minor details...and possibly in significant events. It's also probable that I would never be able to return to the original earth and would be trapped in one of the numberless other worlds forever. And when I would go back in those worlds to change something, all of those events would sp.a.w.n even more alternate earths and the pattern could continue forever until either time itself would break, or the earth's would die from the constant strain of being duplicated so many millions and billions and trillions of times into parallel realities. And the only way that I could rectify it would be to find myself in the original world before I decided to go back and change something, and either convince myself not to go back in time and change something, or to kill myself. Yet it's also probable that in the event that I did stop or kill myself that I'd cease existing altogether and would create a time loop where I would go into the past, change something, then return to kill myself over and over and over again until, again, time or the earth would die, this time from stress of reliving the same events for eternity."

Ian just stared at him, as Drake lost him early into his explanation. He simply asked, "So...you just can't?"

"Pretty much," Drake said with a smirk. "So how does it feel running around London in a costume like that?"

"I fly, actually" Ian corrected his friend.

"Oh, but of course."

"But it's nice," he told him. "Liberating almost."

"Have you saved anyone yet?"

He nodded, "Three people."

"Really?" Drake asked, surprised. "You haven't been in town for a day and you've saved three people already?" He smiled and said, "I guess you're in the business alright...which reminds me, have you found a job?"

Ian rubbed his eyes and said he hadn't had the time. "As you said before, I've been here for less than a day. I haven't really had time to even move in."

"Just give it some time and something'll turn up." Drake looked around the room, let out a sigh, and muttered, "This is really bugging me; you need to furnish this place."

Ian looked at him and asked how it could bother him, "You've been here for less than five minutes, how can it bother you this much?"

"Trust me, when you can manipulate time a second seems like decades." Drake walked around the small room and nodded, "Yeah it's killing me how sad this place looks."

"Thanks, you wanna pay to furnish it?"

Drake shrugged, "Sure."

Ian's vision blurred and the room distorted itself. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head and the room became clear. Everything in his apartment changed. He had a queen-sized bed, a stereo, bookshelf, and a lamp in his bedroom. Drake told him to head into the other room and Ian found the room furnished with a rug, a forty inch LED television, a coffee table, a new couch, dishes stacked on his kitchen countertop, and some sort of plant Ian guessed was a type of bonsai.

Drake smiled, took a seat on the couch, and said, "That's better. By the way," he pointed at the dishes on the counter and told him they still needed to be washed, "I'll let you handle that."

"Um, thanks." Ian took a breath, scratched the back of his head, and asked what he owed Drake.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nope. Just show me what there is to do for fun in this town sometime."

"I could take you out to fight evil doers," he joked.

"Do I get to wear a cape?"

"Ha ha."

"Oh there's one last thing you'll need," Drake trailed off and moved so fast Ian couldn't follow his movements. Once Drake returned, he presented Ian with a thin laptop. "I know the tech's old, but I didn't think you'd mind."

"Not at all, thanks." Ian took the computer and set it next to the free dish set Drake produced. "Seriously, what do I owe you?"

Drake rolled his eyes, "What does a time traveling, billionaire, teenage boy need? Girls aside," he added at the end.

Ian only chuckled and thanked him.

Drake grabbed the remote for the television and turned the news on, (as it was the only channel Ian had until he managed to get a television provider set up). It was about some minor celebrity neither of the young men cared for or knew of.

"How's your company doing?" Ian asked Drake.

Drake chuckled and said it was hardly his company anymore. "All I'm doing is making money off of it. I don't have any say in what happens with the business, aside from holding a majority stake in it, but I trust Jonathan and I don't think he's going to drive it into the ground, so I put him in charge. I did manage to get my friend Sho a corporate job, though he isn't too high up in the ranks."

"That's nice of you."

Drake said it was, except for the fact that he used Sho to gather information. "I've heard something about a rather secretive project within the company that I want to know more about, so that's why I worked to promote him. Sho's kind of my little spy."

"So now you're delving into espionage?"

Drake nodded, "A bit."

"Well what do you do with all of your time if you're not working for your father's company?"

"Not much," Drake admitted. "I play a lot of videogames, watch television, and travel to foreign lands to kill time." He paused a moment before he told Ian that he'd learned thirteen languages since he found his ability.

"Really? How do you remember them all?"

Drake shook his head and told him that he wasn't sure. "It's nice being able to travel to places where I can practice speaking the languages whenever I fear I'm getting rusty or in need of a test run."

"Wow."

The story on the news changed and Drake perked up when he saw the hero on the news. "Check this guy out," Drake told him, "He's j.a.pan's coolest hero so far."

Jack Randles reported on the new story, "j.a.pan's widest known hero, Hanzo, managed to stop a small quarrel between two minor branches of the Yakuza in Kyoto today. We've even managed to access a short clip of the incident through one of our affiliates there."

The video played and showed a bright sunny afternoon in j.a.pan that anyone would have deemed a fine afternoon had sixteen heavily tattooed men not engaged one another in a firefight in the middle of a crowded street. Drake paid close attention to the excerpt as the men shot at one another and would occasionally hit a bystander by mistake.

However someone called out at the men.

A man emerged between the two parties and ordered them to stop fighting. He wore black armor fashioned after the late Edo Period, though without a mask or helmet. Hanzo stood (from what Drake could guess) nearly six feet tall, had long black hair he kept tied tightly behind him, and kept a trimmed goatee. He also carried two katanas with him, though neither one was removed from their protective scabbards.

Hanzo ordered the men to stand down, though most of the Yakuza simply stared in disbelief at the stranger who approached them in rather ancient looking armor. One young man swore and fired at the hero. In a movement that was so swift the camera hardly captured it, Hanzo dashed from where he stood directly toward the gunman and gently moved each round fired off out of his path and into the concrete street or a nearby vehicle so as to not injure any nearby pedestrians. A flash of light danced off one of the two katanas released from their holdings and once the camera caught up with the hero, the image revealed a terrified tattooed gunman with a blade pressed against his throat. After a moment all of the aggressors surrendered their weapons and agreed to heed Hanzo's command to end their conflict.

Hanzo thanked them, put his katana away, and vanished in a brief whirlwind.

Jack Randles returned onscreen and continued, "We've been told that Hanzo ordered these men to stand down and reminded them that they endangered their kinsmen. He threatened to use force to subdue them if they failed to cooperate. After his demand, as you saw, all sixteen of the members of the Yakuza peaceably conceded and although there were minor injuries, there were no fatalities." Randles briefly shuffled through some pages on his desk before he added, "We've learned through our affiliates in Osaka that the hero Hanzo has been identified as Osaka resident Takeo Fujishima; however the hero has refused any and all interviews beyond confirming his ident.i.ty."

The station announced that it would take a brief commercial break at which point Drake shut it off. He frowned and chewed at the end of his thumb while in thought. Ian saw his look and asked what was wrong.

"Nothing really," he admitted. "I just don't understand why he's using katanas."

"What do you mean?"

"The legendary hero of j.a.pan, Hattori Hanzo, used a spear...or at least that's what many scholarly sources claim. Yet this new hero, who clearly named himself after the former warrior, uses two katanas," Drake explained.

"Does it really matter?"

Drake looked at Ian and said it did if you wanted to remain historically accurate.

Ian changed the subject and asked how things were since his father's pa.s.sing.

"My father didn't pa.s.s on Ian, he was killed," Drake reminded him, "But I'm fine. I miss him, I really do, but I've mourned, believe me I have. And with my aunt smothering me constantly, I won't forget that I still have family and friends who are 'there for me.' But something good came out of his death, I guess, and that is only that I think the a.s.sa.s.sin who murdered my father is the same person who murdered Victor."

"Really? Who is it?"

Drake shrugged and said he wasn't sure. "Things are stacking up, that's all."

"What do you mean?"

"There have been three deaths all within my father's company, all of which were connected to something known as Regenesis."

"Your father..."

"My father, Victor, and a man named Mark Ross."