Time and Time Again, For You, Anything (Byakuya comes to the Stone World AU)

Chapter 1: Crash Landing

Almost anyone who knows Byakuya Ishigami would tell you he is a very smart man. The man himself, however, would not. Why? Well, he raised a genius. Someone who knows a genius also knows how far from genius they lie.

Nonetheless, Byakuya is a "relatively" smart man. Smart enough to put 10 billion percent of his effort into making sure his son, whom he knows will make it out of stone, can save the world, just like he knows the kid would immediately plan it.

Byakuya managed to squeeze in a small bit of effort along with this 10 billion percent, however. Throughout his life, which he knows will be over soon, he, with the help of the other astronauts and then their families as they grew, has been piecing together the most elaborate thing he has ever created—something he knows Senku would be proud of.

He remembers the day his son told him he was working on a time machine, and now look at him. As he stands inside the hulking contraption of seemingly piecemeal metal, he offers a smile to his family that has supported him in this crazy adventure. They smile back, and he, at 75 years old, closes the door to the Time Machine and presses the big red button.

He could have died, technically. There are no test runs nor safety checks possible with this machine. It could have erupted in flames or outright exploded. The family he is leaving behind would have assumed him dead if they were realistic people, even if the machine disappeared from their time. As luck would have it, he is very much alive. Even more luckily, though he has thus far traveled in time for multiple years, time doesn't seem to be moving forward for him as he keeps reappearing in progressively more dilapidated and overgrown forms of the Earth.

Rather, he gets younger throughout the process. The largest decrease in age was from the first jump. They've been getting exponentially smaller since. Time travel is oddly handy, he guesses, though the inability to travel back in time on this contraption is not quite so. He wonders if he would get older if it did.

He takes breaks each time he and the machine flash forward through time. He makes sure to stake out the area to check for his son or any human life, but no luck is had aside from a run-in with a small village of people descended from the family he left behind. Another thing he has learned is that each time travel lands him in a slightly different location; he never lands far from the last, but they are noticeably different areas.

After traveling through about a few thousand years' worth of time, Byakuya sighs. Still, he holds onto hope for his stupidly smart son. As stupid as he is for his foolhardiness, Senku always makes up for it plus some with his smarts. He ruffles a hand through his messy, dirty hair, deciding to take a bath at the next time stop. He steps onto the metal floor and slaps his hand over the red button.

A disconcerting feeling and flash of light later, he knows he has successfully traveled again.

Creeeak

"Woah!" Byakuya yelps, arms flailing as the machine wobbles from side to side. He's landed on a slope before—that did not go too well—so he grabs onto the guard rails he had installed to hold himself up as the machine goes sideways. He was holding on pretty well until it started falling a substantial distance, knocking him free and giving him flashbacks to zero gravity on the international space station.

Crunch

He winces as he hears something give way in the walling, dread filling him as the thought of his one chance of reaching Senku being unrepairable floods his head. It hurts more than the ache in his side from being flung into a wall.

BANG

The door flies off its hinges.

"Look out!"

Byakuya's eyes, which had been clenched tightly closed, fly open. People?

CRASH!

He tucks as tightly into a ball as he can as he is flung out onto a gravelly floor. He will definitely be decorated in bruises very soon, and he assumes his shoulder is dislocated. None of that matters to him right now, though, as his opening, pain-filled eyes are met with other, very human ones.

His are filled with fear, however, when a sword is shoved to his neck. Slowly, he raises his hands peaceably.

"Name yourself," a deep voice asks from behind two ponytails of long, thick brown hair and a cape lined with plush fur. He shifts the sword dangerously after a second of silence.

"Woah! Woah there! Okay, okay! Name! I'm Byakuya! Ishigami Byakuya!" Byakuya stumbles over his words gracelessly. He sees surprise in his captor's dark brown eyes, both of which jagged scar-like lines run through at a slant. The eyes narrow again, suspicious. "Uh..." Byakuya mutters softly, "would you maybe move the sword? Please?" He points at said pointy object.

Still apparently unpacified, the scary man pulls away his weapon, keeping it in hand. The armed people behind him do the same. Byakuya sighs wearily and sits up. "Thanks." He looks behind him at the utterly destroyed time machine at the base of an odd triangular mountain structure and feels his heart shatter. "No!" he gasps. He scrambles over to the largest chunk of it, hands and knees scraping on rock, metal pieces crumbling from the machine like it is bleeding out. "No no no! No!" His eyes wet as he scoops some of the metal from the floor, organizing it by the machine's side. "My one chance," he whispers, expression crumbling along with his hope.

He holds his hands to his face, leaning backwards onto his knees. He inhales deeply. "Dammit," he says under his breath. Then, he prepares to ask the question that has led him to disappointment throughout the years. A bit louder, he asks firmly, "You people...do you know who Ishigami Senku is?"

"Senku-chan?" a new voice perks up, and Byakuya's heart stutters. "Who's asking for Senku-chan? What happened here?"

The scary man who threatened Byakuya turns to the newcomer, whose hands are folded together neatly in his purple sleeves. "Gen. This man claims to be Senku's father," he explains.

Gen gapes, looking between them, before sighing, head flopping to the side resignedly. "Well, we shouldn't doubt their family, Tsukasa-chan. Let's bring him to him," he says, waving a hand in the air as he turns and walks away.

Tsukasa nods in agreement, but maintains a firm hand on Byakuya's arm as he hauls him up and marches him after the flamboyant man who had made the call, a small entourage of people following behind them. Byakuya can barely believe his ears nor eyes. He wonders if it is real at all or if perhaps he is hallucinating. Nobody has tested the effects of time travel on the human mind, after all. If it is a delusion or hallucination or even a dream, though, he doesn't want to find out.

The hope that fills him is almost giving him a headache—it could be the concussion he has from the fall, but it is at least partly his exorbitant hope. He holds his head, unable to help the smile pulling at his lips as they make their way through dense forest.

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I'm a sucker for cute family things. Took some liberties with the time travel to make it work how I want :3

-Angry
Word Count: 1246