I guess what I'm really asking is along the lines of something like this: suppose someone creates a Lock_time transaction open until a certain XX block, now if a certain event doesn't happen before said XX block, they want to cancel the transaction by broadcasting a replacement set to close at an earlier block (and suppose there is someone willing to accept the higher sequence transaction and mine it) is there a chance that a major pool will in fact receive the first (lower sequence version) of the transaction, store it in memory until said XX block but not accept the higher sequence replacement?
No. IsStandard() returns false for any tx which is not final (next block is less than lock value) or if it doesn't have max sequence value. They won't be relayed or stored by any client by default.