Time Travel

Abilities related to Absolute Access
Related Abilties	Dimensional Travel - Time Travel

The Delorean can go back in time

Background

Time Travel is the ability to travel to different points in the past or future. While not directly damaging, time travel can be used strategically, such as defeating one’s opponent when they are weaker or more vulnerable. Some users can even exploit paradoxes, like the infamous Grandfather Paradox, to erase foes from existence. However, the ability to manipulate time comes with a range of limitations and risks. Time Travel allows the user to transcend the typical flow of time, enabling them to move either backward into the past or forward into the future. This ability is often accessed through technology, magic, or natural phenomena. Depending on the user’s method of travel, they might be able to alter events, creating divergent timelines or paradoxes that disrupt the space-time continuum. Time Travel may also grant insight into possible futures, helping users prepare for impending events.

Possible Applications

• History Manipulation: By traveling to the past, users can change historical events, which may result in either subtle or drastic changes in the present.
• Future Visions: Users can travel to the future to foresee upcoming events, giving them the ability to prepare or alter outcomes.
• Temporal Combat: A skilled time traveler may return to a moment when an opponent is at their weakest or anticipate attacks by skipping ahead in time.
• Existential Erasure: Exploiting temporal paradoxes (e.g., killing an ancestor) to remove someone from existence or undo their birth.
• Temporal Healing: Traveling to a point in time where the user was uninjured or healthy, allowing them to "heal" by reverting their body to a previous state.
• Time Dilation: Slowing down or speeding up time in specific areas to outmaneuver enemies or gain more time for strategy.
• Non-linear Strategy: Engaging in events out of sequence or influencing the past to ensure success in the present or future.

Types

• Fixed Time Travel: In this form, events that are altered in the past result in one consistent future, meaning paradoxes may resolve themselves.
• Branching Timelines: When changes to the past create divergent timelines, each forming its own reality or multiverse.
• Instantaneous Time Travel: The user moves to a point in time instantly, without the need to physically travel through the intervening years.
• Relativistic Time Travel: Users experience time dilation, where time flows differently for them compared to the rest of the universe, often requiring near-light speeds.
• Faster Than Light Time Travel: Users can to travel through time by moving faster than the speed of light.
• Consciousness Transfer: Rather than physically moving, the user sends their consciousness back in time to an earlier version of themselves, retaining all future knowledge.

Limitations

• Fixed Location: The user may only be able to travel through time, not space, meaning they remain in the same physical location but in different time periods. This could lead to issues like telefragging if the spot is occupied in the past/future.
• Paradoxes: Creating a paradox could have unpredictable and dangerous consequences, such as collapsing timelines or erasing entire realities.
• Deterministic Universes: In some universes, the past is fixed, and any attempt to change it will result in a self-fulfilling loop, making alterations impossible.
• Device Reliance: If the user requires a specific machine or artifact (like a time machine or magical object), they may lose the ability to time travel if the device is destroyed or taken from them.
• Temporal Anchors: Some individuals or objects may be "anchored" to time, making it impossible to change their fate, no matter how far back or forward the user travels.
• Temporal Instability: Frequent use of time travel may destabilize the user, causing mental strain, aging effects, or difficulty returning to their original timeline.

Users

• Time Pieces (A Hat in Time): The Time Pieces from *A Hat in Time* not only enable time travel but also grant access to areas like the dreams and mental planes of different beings.
• Marty McFly (Back to the Future): Marty uses the Delorean, a time-traveling car, which, once it hits 88 miles per hour, can transport its occupants to any time period entered into the control panel.
• Future Trunks (Dragon Ball): Trunks uses a time machine to travel to the past in order to prevent apocalyptic events from occurring in his future.