58 Time travel theory
Bunnix followed Tuzi between the bushes and the trees in the park that surrounded Khans palace in Xanadu. Both of them were transformed and rabbits see in the dark better than humans so it was rather easy to avoid sleeping guards and trees.
"They are very young guardians." Tuzi noted offhandedly while she and Bunnix walked away from Ladybug and Chat Noir. She gave them a task to fix the miraculous and she was rather certain that two young and inexperienced guardians had a lot of work to do about that.
"How can you tell?" Bunnix asked before she observed Tuzi. "Is it because of their height? You're not much taller and I can assure you that there are kids in my class that are younger but taller than me. And height has nothing to do with physical abilities ..."
"No." Tuzi laughed softly. "If they share a duty of a guardian, that means they got wed by the monks in the temple." Bunnix gasped lightly. "They may have passed the trials of a guardian and have the skills, but ..." She did not sound patronizing, just thoughtful.
"Ladybug and Chat Noir may be my age, but they have been through a lot already." Bunnix noted. They walked over grass between the trees silently, the only noise was their talking and after that their breathing, Bunnix followed each step Tuzi had made as a good student.
"Why don't you tell me what you know about that, about what they have been through?" Young woman whispered and turned around, but then she put a finger over her mouth. "Just wait a minute or two until we are at a safe distance from all these guards." She warned.
After a minute or two, Tuzi encouraged Bunnix to start talking and the young rabbit hero began with the first akuma and continued with everything she knew. She spoke quickly and up to the point, but she knew a lot, she was in the same class with Alya, she had no choice but to know.
Tuzi listened about akuma battles and Hawk Moth, because she thought there was another reason for the heroes to be there, but then story flipped to Adrien and Marinette and how Hawk Moth was defeated by two civilians in the temple in Tibet.
"Still, Ladybug and Chat Noir are really young to be guardians like this. The training in the temple takes at least seven years for that. They had to go through school and everything afterwards." Tuzi was deep in thought as if she considered weather to tell something to Bunnix or not.
"I … don't know about their training … " Bunnix was unsure if it was up to her to tell how the temple was destroyed and there was no way that the two heroes spent seven years there. "They were in the temple and talked to the monks but … " She trailed off, only then she comprehended what she had just heard.
"Seven years?" Bunnix almost shouted her last words. "That is too long!" Then she noticed how Tuzi was alarmed (because Bunnix shouted and they could be heard not because the young hero was surprised by the number of years for the training).
"I mean … " Bunnix schooled herself. "I want to learn and I don't mind seven years actually, and considering my power is the time travel I can come back at the same moment, but what if I grow?"
Tuzi chuckled lightly while she watched her young counterpart ramble all her concerns and fears. She covered her mouth with her hand and smiled at her antics. Bunnix was a cool girl, but right then she was loosing her grip and spiralled into her own train of thought.
"I mean … I said, my older me said that I would get the miraculous when I'm as old as her! If I return from this." Bunnix motioned towards her body from head to toe. "To the size of that future me, everyone will notice. I mean, papa is in his own research and Jalil is a bit dense, but still there is no way … "
"Okay, stop." Tuzi tried to contain her laughter. "First of all, I am not a teacher and this is not a temple." Bunnix returned a nod. "Second, I was trained in the temple, but they started with me when I was six winters old."
"Oh ..." Bunnix was even more surprised by that statement. "I am already fifteen." She continued in tiny voice. Tuzi heard her just fine. "That means … that means that I will be … twenty two when I finish with the training?"
"First years we learned how to read and write, we listened to the stories about history and various skills like cooking, making clothes and making pictures with the coloured sand and practised patience and fighting skills." Tuzi tried to remember her favourite activities in the temple.
"Hey, I'm in school, know how to read and write, and a lot of history too. Not that I had a choice there due to my papa and Jalil … and I practised several sports and I'm really fast on my rollers and … I don't do coloured sand, but I spray paint, does that count?" Bunnix grinned.
"Well, that's covered then … " Tuzi smiled and looked away. "Then there are other skills, like patience and kindness and empathy and each of us in the temple was taught rather little about other miraculous, just some basic stuff, so I know mostly about the rabbit one."
"Patience … I can do that, if anyone had ever tested my patience, that was Kim … and Jalil! and Marinette with her crush on Adrien!" Bunnix rolled her eyes. Tuzi chuckled. "Kindness, um, I don't know if I really do that, that is mostly what Marinette does, and Ladybug and Chat Noir."
"Well, you are honest. I think you are doing just fine." Tuzi smiled gently. "Perhaps you should know that I am through twenty winters now and in the temple they would consider me too young to be a teacher yet, in fact I'm not very popular there." She sighed. "Go on."
"As for empathy, as I said, it really hurt to watch Marinette suffer through her crush for Adrien, I mean I felt the pain, I just don't know if it was for her or because of her pining. I'm not a romantic type, sort of .." Bunnix trailed of.
"Well then we can go straight to the miraculous stuff." Tuzi started with a small smile. "And since you are not training for a guardian it is sufficient to tell you only about the time travel one!" She smiled more widely.
"Yeah." Bunnix exclaimed and raised her fist into the air. "I'm positive that other temporary heroes did not receive much training before they were involved in the akuma battles, so I wasn't sure why the training, and then you told me seven years … "
"That is because the power of time travel and a temporary hero do not really go hand in hand." Tuzi chuckled. "Usually, the kwami can explain to the wielder all about their powers, or at least the basics, then there are additional power ups that only guardians should know how to make ..."
"Power ups?" Bunnix perked up, there were so many theories and speculations on the Ladyblog and Alix had to know all about them, firstly because Alya was her classmate, but lately she paid more attention because she knew she was about to become a hero.
"Guardians will tell you about that." Tuzi chuckled. "Although they are young, they certainly know about that, I can tell from the stories you told me, about the times when they glided on ice or swam in the water or ..."
"Guardians … Ladybug and Chat Noir? Yeah, okay, they will tell me about that I guess." Bunnix shrugged. "Skating on rollers is very much like ice skating, I would be really fast doing that. And I could totally use the swimming power … " Nah, she wasn't at all thinking about beating Kim.
"You do know how to keep a secret?" Tuzi inquired next. "It is really important! You will know someone else's future, you may learn the identities of the heroes and the villains and you will have to keep that secrets. The other heroes are not supposed to know."
"Um … yeah!" Bunnix grinned, she was certain she was able to keep secrets. She did keep secrets from Jalil and her father, facts that would have made their lives easier (like where they have absent mindedly left their keys ...).
"You will take them to the future, or the past and you might have to prevent them from learning the identities, or all the details that have lead to the event. You might have to watch your loved ones suffer for it … " Tuzi trailed off with a few tears in her eyes as she watched the young hero.
"Well I have kept mine so far … except … Peagasus doesn't know my identity, Ladybug and Chat Noir know, of course, I had to pass them the message while I was a civilian, I had no idea my watch was a miraculous, but I might have told Peagasus that there was a message." Alix admitted sheepishly.
"That … is fine." Tuzi tried to talk reassuringly. "Fluff will appear only when you are ready … or when you are absolutely needed … when the other heroes can't solve the problem … or when …. they are no longer available."
"But that other watch I had before I gave it to the older me … Fluff did not appear." Bunnix frowned. "I just received a message and passed it on. Then the older me took it in her hands and it activated and she got fluff."
"That watch you had ... was an emergency watch. In case everything gets destroyed beyond the point of repair, Fluff appears from the watch even if the owner is not trained!" She was explaining calmly. "Even before the wielder is considered trained." She added more to herself.
"Oh, you mean, I was some kind of emergency superhero on stand by?" Bunnix grinned, this sounded way cooler that she first thought, that watch her old man gave her was way cooler than she first anticipated, she was actually a hero that whole time.
"You … you could thing about it like that." Tuzi replied calmly. "But then you gave away your your watch to … well yourself." This actually made a lot of sense to the older hero, she just had trouble to put it into words, and she watched as younger Bunnix nodded.
"And then there was no one on watch with a spare miraculous! A time travelling hero is always on watch, so you were not needed until … well until Fluff asked for you." Which was, according to mixed information Tuzi just obtained expected to be later … or better yet, when that young wielder was older.
"Oh, I played a lot with my watch, in those first days after I got it. Then I got a message and exchanged the watch and the one I got in return … well it did not glow or produce a kwami, and after Hawk Moth was defeated I did not even expect it to work." Bunnix admitted.
"Because the future isn't set in stone?" Tuzi raised an eyebrow. If this girl, an aspiring wielder of the rabbit miraculous was ready to accept that she might have never had another opportunity to exercise her powers, then maybe she was the right candidate … just like her.
"Yeah, because Adrien and Marinette defeated his father and his secretary." Bunnix replied glumly. "I assumed that maybe then there will not be an akuma from the future."
"But you still had the same watch that the older you gave yourself. I have just asked the guardians to fix it." Tuzi replied. And she knew the purpose of this visit was to reinstall an emergency watch and having a spare watch was so much batter than having to give away your own.
"Not that I was able to tell the difference, the hologram only appeared when I had my birthday and when I was supposed to pass a message to Ladybug and Chat Noir." Bunnix cut in. She hated to admit that, but she was often disappointed with how dormant the watch was.
"Since this is not an emergency … " Tuzi trailed off, she wasn't absolutely certain in her own words, she expected she was wrong this time, but it was still her secret to keep. "We can start with the training and learning about powers of your miraculous. "
"What about my powers then?" Bunnix inquired. She thought how she already knew a lot, she saw her older self in action, she sort of received the first hand training from herself, she was rather certain she mastered it all beautifully, just no yet.
"Right. So you do know the basics, how to transform and detransform and how to create a portal in time and go through it obviously." Tuzi smiled thoughtfully. "That is as much as a kwami would tell you." There was a strange undertone in her voice.
"Yeah, I guess I have proven it by bringing us to this time … " Bunnix fiddled with her umbrella unsure weather or not she should admit it. "Fluff told me about that but I … I didn't really know when to go, this was just random."
"Everything happens for a reason, you have chosen this time you just did not know it, I don't know, I never tried to use my power without setting the time when I wanted to go." Tuzi admitted. "Maybe I envy you for having the time to do such experiments." She smiled.
"But you have the power of time travel, you can make the time." Bunnix grinned excitedly eager to have some fun with a fellow hero who had the same powers.
"This power is never to be used for selfish reasons." Tuzi warned. "That is one of the reasons why I was given this power, I guess." She looked down at her feet.
"Um … right." Bunnix muttered. So there was no organizing competitions with Kim and beating him with the help of a miraculous, there was no outsmarting Jalil and his stupid theories by proof she was able to collect using the power of time travel.
"Right." Tuzi watched her young fellow hero carefully, she watched and waited to see when and if the teenager was going to accept the terms of use for the rabbit miraculous, there should be no pretence, only pure determination, and then she got it.
"I'm okay with that." Bunnix concluded. "I don't want to mess up the past." She stated firmly. "Just, there were some events in history … it is really tempting to be able to fix that, to reduce or avoid the pain and the suffering … "
"Sometimes, bad things have to happen to people, other times it happens to other beings, look at this city of Xanadu, animals and forest have been moved to make space for people, but people can't really live without them, so Khan removed people from this park and settled animals here."
"I … um … " Bunnix looked around, they were surrounded by trees and bushes and she was able to see several kinds of animals who used them for hiding, but the guards that slept around fires on a small clearing nearby were also clearly visible.
"You have to make sure that there is no catastrophic event, caused by magic or misuse of a miraculous, that would change the course of history to lead into a complete disaster!" Tuzi stated calmly. "But the evil has to be caused by magic."
"How will I know about such event, how will I know that something will lead to such a disaster, how … do I wait for the disaster to happen and then determine what caused it and then go back in time to the point where it all started." This all started to sound like a job of solving mysteries and it was exciting for Bunnix.
"Wait?" Tuzi was baffled. "No, you do not wait, that is not why we practice patience." She sighed. Nope, she wasn't a teacher, but her teacher also wasn't very good, he was the guardian in the temple who considered time travel unnecessary complication and huge threat.
"No waiting?" Bunnix tilted her head and watched Tuzi. "Right I can travel in time! Back into the past, but also in the future! I can simply travel forward on some kind of regular time patrol and check that everything is unfolding okay and … "
"What if you see your own future? And you like it? Or not?" Tuzi asked next.
"The future is not set in stone." Bunnix shrugged and smiled while she repeated a saying that she heard so many times. Besides, if she saw something she did not like, it was a fair warning to adjust her actions.
"Well, you could do that by going on patrols as you said, but there is a better way." Tuzi stated with a small smile. "I wish my teacher told me about this, but he did not, he probably didn't know. Fluff mentioned it was possible to monitor multiple events from multiple times."
Bunnix was all ears (pun intended). Her rabbit ears raised high into the air and spread lightly like antennae as if they were trying to catch each word before it escaped into the thin night air around them, forever lost in wide space and passage of time.
"Rabbit's burrow is a place with multiple exits." Tuzi smirked. "You can create your own place in time from which you can monitor what is going on at different times. It is also a safe place, sort of a hiding place, from where you watch other heroes and events."
"Oh, so cool, so I can … " Bunnix was already rather excited.
"But!" Tuzi raised her finger. "And this is important." She stressed the words. "You only watch, you do not intervene, it doesn't matter how painful it is to watch and do nothing. That is where you need patience, you need to sit and do nothing, most of the time." The last words were barely a whisper.