It was only in light of her most recent accomplishment of sealing away the Demon God that she had been offered the position in question, she knew this well.
Yet in that moment, when she was given the chance of the millennium, her answer at that time would greatly surprise even herself.
When Ace would begin to travel down the length of the steps overlooking the Time Vault, he found his long-time partner Trunks there at the center of the building.
There was always an otherworldly aura about the Time Vault that he felt whenever he entered, one that he potently sensed regardless of the number of times he reentered the room.
He descended the steps with a sense of foreboding he was unsure had been caused by the years he'd spent working this job or not, Trunks' tense expression doing little to ease him as he came to his partner's side.
"Another change in the timeline?" Ace asked as he looked down over the Scroll of Eternity, his question being rhetorical, yet lacking any sense of humor.
"Yes. Something's definitely wrong with it," Trunks said, "but it's a bit hard to fully understand."
Ace looked down at the image the Scroll showed, and he quickly understood what the problem was.
Time: 75,000,000 Before Age
Standing aloft was a young girl with hot pink skin and pale red hair, her expression exhausted yet determined as she gave a final yell as she held open the portal that sucked her nemesis in, him giving a pained snarl as he continued to try resisting.
In a moment's time, his efforts proved futile as he was sucked into the dimension that would be his prison, with the girl finally letting her hands fall to her sides as she breathed heavily, chest heaving as she finally placed the seal on the Crack of Time.
Once the task was done, she collapsed on the ground, succumbing to her injuries as she laid on the ground.
An owl fluttered down to her side, and she looked up as its power came over her, her rising to sit on her knees after a moment.
She gazed at Tokitoki as it said something to her, and she gave a surprised look at what he said.
Despite her expression becoming contemplative however, she spoke lowly.
"I'm sorry Tokitoki." She replied. "But I can't let things stand like this."
As the image began to fade in color, instead of being consumed in light, it was instead blanketed in pitch blackness.
"That was… the Supreme Kai of Time." Ace recognized the girl.
"Yes." Trunks grasped his chin, holding his elbow up as he looked down at the enigmatic scroll. "What I don't understand is what this Scroll's trying to tell me." Trunks looked to Ace, grasping his hip while raising his other hand up to gesture the Scroll. "I can tell this is the time where the Supreme Kai of Time sealed Demigra away. But it only shows that specific moment in history. Beyond that, it won't show anything else, no matter what I try."
"That's strange." Ace noted, looking to the blackened image that laid before them. "What's the plan then? We can't just let this slide, can we?"
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about." Trunks said honestly, adopting his thinking posture again. "There's definitely something wrong here, but if it were only minor changes, all we'd have to do is just stick this scroll with the others, and the problem would fix itself. But that isn't working either. This timeline's Scroll is obviously special somehow, if it can force itself to stay… unique like this. It's still our job to investigate why these changes exist, regardless."
"So I'm going in?"
To Ace's surprise, Trunks shook his head.
"No. I'm not sure what you'd be getting into. After the last time, I want to be more careful with who we send in for these things."
It took Ace a moment to realize Trunks was talking about when Towa, a magic-scientist from the Demon Realm, had abducted and brainwashed him before making him attack both Trunks and another Time Patroller when they'd cornered her.
"You're afraid I'll get kidnapped again?" He questioned.
"Yes. I don't want to risk it." Trunks nodded. "But the fact stands that we don't know anything about this timeline right now. Nothing beyond the Supreme Kai of Time not wanting to let things be the way they were."
"What's this about me?"
Ace and Trunks turned in unison to the entrance, where the Supreme Kai of Time stood at the top of the stairs leading deeper into the chamber.
"Speak of the devil." Ace said dryly.
She smiled back at them whilst crossing her arms.
"Ironic, calling a goddess a devil." She said as she went down the steps, her heels clicking lightly against each one she walked down.
"Supreme Kai of Time." Trunks said. "Thanks for coming. I wanted to see if you could tell what was wrong with this Scroll."
The time goddess paused as she saw the strange energy swirling around the Scroll in question.
"What's the change?" She asked, and the partners shared a look before looking back to her.
"We were thinking you could tell us honestly." Ace spoke up, and she quirked an eyebrow before nodding, coming closer to take a look at the change that occurred in the timeline.
When she'd seen the singular scene the Scroll showed, she crossed her arms.
"This was the moment where I chose to become the Supreme Kai of Time." She said. "I should've accepted the offer. But it looks like I didn't."
"Any idea what this power we're feeling right now is?" Ace asked her.
"I'm not sure." She said. "It isn't any kind of dark magic. Nothing I'm familiar with, anyways. It doesn't feel malevolent at all though. But there's still something… familiar about it."
"If that's the case, should we go inside?"
"I'd say so. I'm not sure what caused this to happen though, so could we focus on that first?"
Trunks explained that they couldn't see any other part of the timeline beyond the moments involving her sealing Demigra and her rejecting the offer to take up the mantle of the Supreme Kai of Time.
She initially didn't believe it, and thus tried forcing the Scroll to let her see more.
What ensued was a power struggle between a goddess and a scroll possessed by a foreign power.
The goddess lost.
Blown back by a force that began from the Scroll, the Supreme Kai of Time's heels scraped loudly against the floor as both Trunks and Ace looked in shock at the sight, before looking to the Scroll as if it they were liable to be shot down by a gunman who brandished their weapon at them.
"Supreme Kai of Time, are you alright?" Trunks asked her, yet when she scowled at the Scroll, Trunks saw a fire fill her gaze that put him on edge, as if the Scroll had challenged her to a duel.
"You rotten Scroll…!" She said, and her body glowed with energy.
Trunks slid in front of the Scroll without thinking, arms spread out.
"Wait, Supreme Kai of Time, we still need to go inside." Trunks said.
She stopped at this, then sighed heavily.
"Fine. Which of you two will be going inside?" She asked.
Trunks crossed his arms.
"I'll go." He said.
"By process of elimination." Ace muttered as he looked to the Scroll. "Are you sure though Trunks?"
"I am." Trunks said as he walked to the Scroll and rolled it up. "Wish me luck."
"You usually need it." He pointed out.
Trunks frowned at this quip, yet, upon thinking the general course of his life over, could only nod in agreement, as this comment was, tragically, accurate.
"… You're not wrong." Trunks said, before gripping the Scroll as light covered him and consumed his body as a Scroll fell to the ground, Ace catching it before it could fall to the ground.
Ace gazed at the Scroll for a moment, and the Supreme Kai of Time looked at him in a questioning manner.
"What's wrong?"
"Do you ever wonder if it'll make someone dizzy, if you shake the Scroll while they're in there?" Ace asked her.
The Supreme Kai of Time's curious gaze turned to the Scroll then.
"… Now I want to try it." She admitted.
"Pl-se do-on't!" Trunks' voice came out in a garbled manner from the Scroll, and Ace set the Scroll down before opening it up.
Time: ?-?-?
Trunks stood amidst a foggy landscape then, looking about as he tried to sense any type of energy from beyond it.
"Where are you Trunks?" The Supreme Kai of Time's voice asked him.
"I don't know." Trunks said as he looked around himself. "I'm in the middle of this deep fog. I can barely see anything around me."
"Is the signal breaking up? It's hard to hear you." Ace said, Trunks blinking.
"I hear you guys fine on my end." Trunks replied, before he saw a figure moving in the fog, him pausing before narrowing his eyes, reaching behind himself and grasping the hilt of his sword while narrowing his eyes.
"I see you're alone." A pair of women's voices said through the fog, as if in sync. "That's good. Can you promise not to attack me?"
"That depends." Trunks said. "Who are you?"
They didn't respond for a moment, before both chuckled.
"Alright." She began to step forward, the sound of bare feet padding against the ground filling the silence between them, her face being illuminated as she created a ball of blue energy in her palm, Trunks' eyes widening at the sight of her face, the lone woman smirking in turn. "My name is Chronoa. You probably don't know that though, do you?"
Her voice came in a reverb, as though she had two voices speaking as one.
"Supreme Kai of Time?" Trunks asked, him very much taken aback by the sight of her.
While she had the same appearance, the same pink-tinged skin, reddish hair, Potora earrings and onyx black eyes, the person before him looked like a significantly older version of the time goddess who'd been his boss for the past several days.
"If you want to call me that," Chronoa replied, "but… that's sort of a mouthful to say, right? Just call me Chronoa. It's what I prefer. I never became a Supreme Kai in this timeline anyway."
Trunks looked her over warily, noting the fact that her robes had a strong green color to them.
"What's going on? Do you know?" Trunks asked.
"I needed to draw you here somehow." Chronoa replied, crossing her arms.
"So this was a trap?" Trunks asked.
"No," she turned away and looked back into the fog, "more like… A test to see if what I wanted to work worked or not."
"A test for what?" Trunks asked.
"A test to see if me finding out about your world could benefit me or not." Chronoa replied.
Trunks, deciding she wasn't hostile, lowered his guard, releasing his grip on his sword.
"Since I'm already here, could I ask a few questions?" Trunks asked her.
"Go right ahead."
"How long has it been, since you sealed away Demigra?"
"Over 75 million years." The woman replied.
"Was that your energy from before, that was affecting the Scroll of Eternity?"
"Yes… It's an incomplete copy, but it managed to get you through to me."
"Why did you want me to come?"
She didn't reply for a moment.
"Because this timeline is the one where the worst has happened." Chronoa said, her turning to look back to him. "It's hard to explain honestly, but I'd like to let you know why I've gone through the trouble of placing a fake Scroll as a medium between our worlds."
Trunks nodded to her.
She breathed a heavy sigh.
"Do you remember what happened with Demigra? How he binded your partner and Goku both down, and you were too out of commission to fight?"
Trunks nodded.
"In that moment, that was when I realized how powerless I'd become, in the face of real danger." Chronoa told him. "I was the only one left who could oppose him, but I couldn't do anything. There wasn't much time left to do anything at all, before Demigra destroyed the Time Vault. I grabbed the closest Scroll I could, and fled to another dimension. There wasn't anything left right after I did. Not at first, anyways."
She looked to the foggy world around them.
"Demigra remade the multiverse after destroying the Time Vault." Chronoa said. "In the end, the only ones who survived it by the end were me, Tokitoki, and Demigra himself. Despite that, I was able to create a scroll from that universe, to record all of history. And when I did that, I merged the Scroll I'd saved with the one I'd created. In the end, I managed to create a timeline that let me travel up to the end of the first multiverse, to the present of the new one."
Looking to the sky, Chronoa frowned.
"And when I did that, I went back to that day, the day where I sealed Demigra away in the Crack of Time. I told the version of me from the past what had happened, how it would all end if she wasn't strong enough when the time came. I even showed her the future. And that was what led to her refusing the position of the Supreme Kai of Time."
Trunks, processing this knowledge, remembered the last words the girl in the Scroll had said.
"I'm sorry Tokitoki. But I can't let things stand like this."
"Together," she looked to her hand then, "together, we trained for 75,000,000 years. And when the time came for Demigra to be unsealed… We put on our Potora earrings, and fused to become the person you see before you."
Trunks, realizing the person before him was the result of a fusion between two versions of Chronoa, understood the reason her voice sounded like two people speaking in perfect unison.
"We couldn't do anything to keep Demigra from winning in the end though." Chronoa sighed. "When the past version of me refused the offer to become the Supreme Kai of Time, any authority to change the timeline was null and void. But now we've reached the beginning of his multiverse. At this point, this timeline's one all of its own, separate from the timelines you've been working on fixing. Right now, Demigra's multiverse is packed with powerful factions of people, all of them rooting to kill each other. The reason I wanted your help is because Demigra was defeated in your timeline. Would you be willing to help me defeat Demigra here?"
Trunks crossed his arms.
"I will. But I'll need some time to gather some fighters before I can do that."
"I understand. We need more manpower than just the two of us." Chronoa nodded in understanding.
"What's the situation with Demigra's multiverse right now?"
Chronoa crossed her arms.
"Right now, Demigra's pitted the World Trade Organization, run by the Cold Empire, against a race of corrupted Super Saiyan Gods. The Cold Empire's been manufacturing mutants and running experiments to make their soldiers and fighters more powerful, or at least powerful enough to stand up to the Saiyan Gods. If the Saiyans defeat the Cold Empire, then they get to control their entire universe. In the Other World, Demigra's possessing every soul of anyone who dies to go to Demon Realm and get transformed into ghost monsters serving under Demon King Dabura, who still has a race of demons serving under him."
Trunks scowled at the grimness of the situation, before looking to Chronoa.
"I'll be ready to help soon. I just need some time."
"Thank you." Chronoa nodded. "I'll see you soon then."
He nodded, and it was with this that Trunks returned to the Time Vault.
A/N: I remember having the inspiration for this sort of story for a couple years now; where Demigra had managed to, near the end of Xenoverse, make a version of the universe in his own image while in the Crack of Time, before the player fights him in his final form.
Since there's a whole arc dedicated to how his worm holes affect the timelines after his death, I never quite understood whether or not it was Demigra doing it from beyond the grave or Towa abusing it because of how convenient it was, though I eventually just went with the latter since it made more sense to me.
With the inspiration for this idea, I imagined that the player defeating Demigra created two different timelines of sorts within the Crack of Time, and the one they play in Xenoverse 2 is the one that results in the player beating him, while the timeline where Demigra wins is the one where all the things are happening as a result of his machinations.
It was only when my friend and I started talking again that I really felt the idea grow, since he usually helps me to write my ideas more coherently just by talking to me (I don't know WHY that is, but it is, and I'm happy to be talking to him either way).
Strangely enough, it really started from me wanting to write a story where the Supreme Kai of Time had her earlier character design rather than what was put in the final product, because while I like her final design, I like the older version since it gives off the feel of those female Dragon Ball characters that become popular on account of having the Android 18 design down-pat (as is the case with Towa, Vados and #18 herself compared to most others), being attractive girls who seem to ooze a level of confidence that isn't hindered by them being completely bossy or overbearing (Bulma and Chi-Chi respectively).