Superhero Adventures, UK Style

Inspired by the Green Ronin Adventure
– “Havoc for the Ages” by Julian Kay

Write up by Ant L. (Team Archivist)

Previously
The team, swirling through a storm of chronons, found themselves being chased through the time stream by two Hounds of Tindalos before escaping by being suddenly and violently deposited on a rundown, cobbled city street, to the shock and surprise of the locals. They’d landed in a stereotypical eighteenth-century ramshackle city on the shore of a large tropical island. The locals, dressed apparently as sailors and pirates, or in other well-worn eighteenth-century clothing, stared at them as the team realised that, once again, they had misplaced Tempus and Doctor Tomorrow, along with their temporal transport.

As they watched, a rider’s horse shifted into a hovercycle mid-stride, a clock tower became a power reception dish, and the stink of horse dung on the cobbled street was replaced with the smooth feel of self-cleaning plasticrete, before changing back. However, none of the locals seemed to be aware of the changes. To them, their current reality had always been the way it is, even if it had been centuries different only moments before.

Some areas were apparently more stable, a mishmash of the Golden Age of Sail and some sort of Cyber Revolution. There, pirates and revolutionaries wore jury-rigged cybertech and peculiar gadgets, and checked their palm-decks for potential criminal opportunities.

***

Now – on the Island Of Libertalia, 1720 CE

“I suggest that we begin to search for Tempus and Doctor Tomorrow,” said Celestus, a resigned note to his voice, “if this event is similar to last time, they will be somewhere on the island.”

“Any idea how?” asked X-Ray, who was bewildered by the changes occurring around them.

The city shifted back and forth before their eyes. There were constant changes effected by the chronal radiation leaking through, presumably from their previous location.

The team overheard some of the locals talking in English, albeit an older form than they were used to; it was almost perfect “Pirate-English”, with many a ‘Shiver-me-timbers’ and ‘Arr, that be a-right’ comments peppering their speech.

Brief conversations with the curious folk led to their location being identified as the island of Libertalia (better known as Madagascar to Mary), seemingly sometime in the past (or future?). The entire island was apparently being warped by temporal energy dragged in from Magic Mesa, shifting its progress closer to Tempus’s future era… or possibly Dr Tomorrow’s.

The result was that the historic 18^th century pirate haven of Libertalia was now .Libertalia (pronounced Dot-Libertalia), a city leading a technological revolution in a world where magic apparently co-existed, if the small dragon flying past, seemingly restrained by a young mage using a mystical leash, was anything to go by.

Akira somehow managed to end up enjoying the oddity of an offered bubbling alco-soda, much to the dismay of the others, who had no such offers themselves. Unfortunately, no-one nearby had heard of Tempus or Doctor Tomorrow.

The Earth’s Chronoverse had clearly fractured dramatically. The Balance appeared to be getting tossed throughout time by a series of uncontrolled paradoxes as previously collapsed variant timelines folded in on each other, reasserting their own realities on top of the primary timeline.

What was causing this chronal tsunami? Who, or what, was this Gaviel, and why did Doctor Tomorrow seem so important in stopping the temporal chaos, when seemingly having two versions of him meeting each other hadn’t triggered a paradox response similar to what had occurred when two temporal versions of the vampire Boire had faced each other on Westminster Bridge in their own timeline? The rules of time travel were being seriously inconsistent, which couldn’t be good.

X-Ray asked a group of locals if the town was run by a “Lady” but was told that a committee of pirates was in charge, not a single woman, although the newly elected chairman was a Captain Errol Flint, a name-mash that had the surgeon raising his eyebrows in surprise.

“Should we observe the island from the air?” asked Celestus, “Perhaps we shall see if any other parts of the island are affected.”

“If we do that,” said Akira, after another sip of his alco-soda, “my suggestion would be to head to the place which is most unstable, because that’s probably where we need to be.”

“I’ll take a look around,” said X-Ray, inverting gravity and rising rapidly into the sky to the surprise of the locals. Most of the island was jungle, at an almost uniform temperature when he shifted his vision into the infra-red portion of the spectrum. Brian detected plenty of wildlife, as he fully expected, but as for people, he found only .Libertaria and another small settlement way up on the northern tip of the island. He didn’t pay too much attention to it; a stockade and a few wooden shacks comprised the hamlet.

He tried to patch into the Commdots using his ability to piggyback onto radio frequencies, but he couldn’t find the wavelength that the Bluetooth was attuned to. He wondered if he was out of range, since they only worked within about one-hundred feet of each other.

“So,” said Akira to the woman who had given him the alco-soda, “what’s with all the ‘pirate-technics’?”

The woman frowned, confused by the new lingo, “Do you mean the cannons?”

“No, I mean the cybertech,” he said, pointing to several examples held or used by some of the crowd.

“Oh, that’s just our little gems,” she said, “got to look good when we’re strutting the town, dearie!”

 X-Ray found them a short while later and relayed his findings, with the additional information that the harbour seemed to be less affected than the rest of the town.

Akira mulled this over for a few seconds, “Well, if there’s no real centre of instability, I think we should head to the area of most stability!”

Saying their farewells to the crowd around them, The Balance headed for the harbour, an easy task to wind slowly down the hillside towards the tall masts visible over the rooftops below them.

Akira couldn’t help but wonder if there were some sort of kooky logic to their intrusion locations, or was this just synchronicity at play? He cast a spell of Insight, hoping to receive some clarity regarding their current circumstance, and was a little thrown by the response he received; Zeitgeist had chosen an albino gorilla as his host during their first time-twist, a gorilla that had been able to speak. As X-Ray was able to confirm, gorillas shouldn’t be able to speak the way humans do due to major differences in their vocal anatomy.

There was an exception, if you ignored the gorilla Koko’s ability to learn and use sign language… when Akira and Banshee had previously visited Konza City in Kenya, they had encountered a talking, fully-sentient gorilla called Speaker, and his talking pup JaJa, whose troop had apparently come from the island of Libertalia. All of these creatures had been genetically manipulated by a mysterious group to allow them to speak. They had apparently escaped into the interior of the island and established a city there. Had that albino gorilla been one of those sentient apes?

Was it therefore a coincidence that they now found themselves on the same island of Libertalia, though admittedly earlier in time? Mary rolled her eyes, the first twinge of a headache coming on; all this uncontrolled time travel was doing her head in!

There was no sign of their favourite Time Agent, Danni, or any attempt by her Time Watch Agency to correct the madness that was now spiralling out of control. Was Time Watch still around somewhere, or somewhen, or had they been ‘drowned’ in the chronoflood of alternate realities seemingly manifesting and trying to establish themselves on top of their paratime?

***

By the time they had reached the harbour walk the surrounding temporal shifts had stopped; it was quite a welcome sight to see a normal, steady landscape for a while.

Akira spotted something before the others had even finished looking around, and pointed it out for them. They all looked to see a ship that had just berthed, sleeker than the others, more… advanced… hi-tech… and Akira recognised the captain stepping ashore. “Tempus!”

The time-traveller startled at the sound of his name, but waved as he spotted the foursome. He was wearing a jaunty tricorn cap and captain’s jacket, and was accompanied by a techno-pirate crew.

The Balance made their way along the quay to what certainly seemed to be Tempus’s ship, floating steadily three-feet above the gently lapping waves, no masts just a single tall transmission tower, it was an obvious masterpiece of advanced technology.

“Greetings Tempus!” Celestus said, seemingly pleased to see the man. X-Ray was ready to box his ears for all the trouble that he seemed to be causing, but resisted the urge to show him up in front of his ‘crew’.

“Ah, here you are!” Tempus said with a broad smile on his face, “I wondered when you were going to show up! I’ve already been here a few weeks, waiting for you.”

“We have only just arrived,” said Celestus, “What is going on? This place keeps changing all the time!”

Tempus turned to his crew on the ship and waved at them; to a man, they all raised their hats and cheered. “The Cyber-Rovers, a great bunch of lads” he muttered.

As he turned back to look at The Balance his smile faded. He looked hesitant, full of doubt, “I’ve been… busy,” he said at last, “This is a wonderful place, what with all these time-changes.”

Around them, men began to unload cargo from the ship. Further down the quay, similar activities were taking place with the sailing ships already in dock.

Celestus could tell that Tempus had more to say, “I imagine so, but we need to find the source of all these,” he waved his hand around him then looked back at the town, “things!”

“Why?” Tempus asked, the smile returning, a twinkle in his eyes, “This is a wonderful time to be here!”

Tempus headed off the inevitable shouts of disagreement from his former teammates before they could be voiced, “Before you say anything, I want you to hear me and think this one out. There’s an opportunity here to do some good… cultural good. We’re in the age of sail, or at least an alternate. Think of how many valuable artefacts went down with ships, lost forever in Davie Jones’ locker and we can take… save, it all. I can make sure valuable art pieces are saved… stashed away for ‘prosperity’, I mean posterity, and you can take all the gold and silver we save that you want and donate it to the orphanariums’, or whatever charity warms your cockles in your time?”

Tempus could see the disbelief in everyone’s faces, “Hold on; this is all going to be fixed when the time-changes run out… Eventually,” he added, somewhat warily.

His ‘crew’ seemed mildly interested in what was going on, and The Balance could see that the Cyber-Rovers were exactly that; cybernetically enhanced humans with robotic limbs or other noticeable differences such as replaced eyes, half-face sensor arrays, and even a cyber-parrot.

“This,” Tempus said, pointing back to the town on the hillside, “is just a hangover from the Magic Mesa; it will pass in time. In the meantime we can help ourselves, and others!”

Akira was first to question him, “Why do you think it’s going to run out?”

“Well…” Tempus searched for the right phrase, “at some point the energy that’s leaking in, the chronal energy, will leak out again.”

“Does that mean this place will return to being an eighteenth-century pirate haven?” asked Celestus.

“Yes!” Tempus confirmed, “And in the meantime, let’s make the most of it. I mean, have you got to rush off? We’re time travellers, doesn’t that mean anything to you? We don’t have to rush and get everything done ‘now’, we can always do it ‘yesterday’!”

There was a pregnant pause before X-Ray said, “Are you married?”

Tempus was taken aback. “Married? Why, is this a proposal?”

X-Ray couldn’t believe that Tempus was cracking jokes, “No! I am just trying to establish whether you understand what it’s like to be away from your wife and children?”

“Yes, but you can be back the second after you left! That’s the beauty of time travel!”

“And I could slap you around the earhole, as well!” Brian was getting upset, “You are supposed to be sorting this out! You are why we are in this mess in the first place, isn’t it?” He was really missing Stacy And Chris, and hated the fact that he had no control over his current situation.

Tempus frowned, “Is it?”

“Yes!”

“Look, you rescued me, we escaped…”

“And it was you who turned up in London and threw us into the bloody Time Vortex in the first place! You’re the one who’s caused all this!” X-Ray’s eyes were beginning to turn orange as his internal energies began to boil over; Akira decided it was time to step in. “It would be nice to get home at some point…”

“But we could do that next week!”

“Okay,” said Akira, rolling his eyes, “but what can we do now? I think going off on some treasure hunt’s a bit… ridiculous. What we want to do is stabilise this reality…”

“Well,” cut in Tempus, “there is an alternative. Magic still lingers here, advanced tech is a cornered market, lots of opportunities. Those ‘pointy-hats’ try to keep those resources out of .Libertaria’s hands, we could make sure they don’t.”

“Pointy hats?” Akira asked.

Tempus gestured with his hands above his head, making what looked like a triangular shape.

Akira raised on eyebrow and looked at his teammates, “Does that mean anything to anybody, ‘pointy hats’?”

Celestus was very matter-of-fact about it, “I know nothing of these things of which he speaks.”

X-Ray was trying his hardest to stay calm, “Unless he’s talking about tricorne hats…”

“Well,” Tempus went on, “there’s more than a few of them, up at the trading post on the other end of the island.”

“The stockade that X-Ray saw?” asked Akira.

“Yeah, it’s a trading post.”

“That’s where the pointy hats are gathered?”

“It’s where the East Arcadia Company run their trading post. They’re not very happy with the pirates of .Libertaria, they keep on trying to wipe us out.” His eyes wandered skyward, “In fact,” he said, pointing, “there’s one of them now!”

Everyone turned to look and in the distance, heading in their direction, they saw a dragon. Seconds later they saw more, and X-Ray’s enhanced visual acuity could tell that they all had riders on their backs.

The few Cyber-Rovers that were on the quayside quickly made their way back on board Tempus’s ship, the Wandering Wastrel. Dockworkers began to shout and hastily abandoned their tasks, heading off the quay towards the town. Boxes and crates were left in piles where they had been stacked, either on board or on the quay.

Tempus piped up again, “Look, we need to get out of here! Why don’t you come on board the Wandering Wastrel?” He indicated the sleek floating vessel, on which energy sails were beginning to appear on the tower.

Tempus’s ship was layered with a hovering force-hull and neon-blue circuitry, floating above the surface of the sea. Tempus explained that the ship was powered by his excess charge of energy from the Magic Mesa, and that he had been using it to speed the boat’s travel and intercept ships across the seas. It was impressive, but it was also dependent on him as the power source.

As the winged dragons got even closer, X-Ray determined that the riders were in metallic armour, though he could not tell whether they were power armour or just protective wear.

“Does anyone else fancy a ride on a ship?” Akira was smiling his boyish smile, all charm and ‘why not’?

“Look,” Tempus said, arms out in front of him in a pleading manner, “This is a once-in-a-timeline-chance! A thief can’t have a ruckus unless he’s the one causing it!”

X-Ray turned to Akira, “I’d rather keep my eyes on Tempus, if I’m being honest.”

“Yes, I agree,” said Celestus, “and, by the way, where is Doctor Tomorrow?”

Tempus shrugged, “Isn’t he with you?”

“No.”

Tempus shrugged again, “He didn’t follow me. You’ve got another one lost in Time. He’s probably stuck somewhere, some other time period. He’ll make his way here if he can.”

“So,” said Akira, keeping an eye on a bunch of ships that were rounding the headland at the harbour entrance, “if we go with you on the Wandering Wastrel, you’re just going off in search of treasure?”

“Er, yeah! And getting away from those things in the sky; they don’t like us. They could well try to burn down the whole of the pirate city!”

“I think we need to stay close to Tempus for the time being,” said Celestus, noticing that a number of incoming ships were now blocking the entrance to the harbour, a dozen at first count.

“It’s a blockade,” said Akira.

X-Ray was engrossed in the flying dragons and their riders; being a natural flyer himself he knew that his role was going to involve combating these great beasts, and as a multi-year student of human biology he was analysing the suspected reptilian anatomy as best he could. He possessed an ability, that he had never fully been able to understand, that allowed his intuitive senses to ‘guesstimate’ a being’s capabilities – it didn’t take a genius surgeon like Brian to understand that these creatures were dangerous, incredibly strong, and with organic mechanisms for creating jets of flame.

The Cyber-Rovers were making ready to leave as one of the dragons diverted towards the quayside, shattering a large building’s roof as it landed. Terracotta tiles showered onto the street below, shattering with a sound like artillery firing. People ran screaming from the structure, their escape followed lazily by the dragon, its long, sinuous neck easily snaking around its huge body. Timbers creaked and groaned under its weight.

A rider sat side-saddle atop it, oozing smugness, her jumpsuit adorned with a colourfully gauche cape combination of the superpowered and the garishly noble.

“Welcome to the Age of Wonders,” the woman shouted, “And with the authority vested in me by the East Arcadia Company and the Lady Gaviel, the Anachronist has come to remove you bumblers from it!”

“There you go,” said Banshee, nudging X-Ray, “you wanted to find a woman.”

“Lady!” exclaimed X-Ray, “I was looking for The Lady!”

Banshee already looked slightly translucent, a sign that she had shifted into her intangible form; trouble was coming, she had thought, might as well get ready for it.

X-Ray activated his force field, hoping that it was strong enough to hold off the fires of the dragons should he suffer a full blast from one.

Tempus, on the other hand, ran for the ship.

“We’d better go with him,” said Akira, to mutual agreement from his teammates; nobody was going to risk getting left behind and, most importantly, they all wanted to keep an eye on their only ticket home.

Tempus was tapping away on his ‘passport’, the wrist-mounted cybertech that he kept with him. The ship was responding to his controls, a soft, electrical whine building up as he jumped aboard.

X-Ray tried to focus on the temporal ‘passport’ device and, to his surprise, realised that it could actually take the Wandering Wastrel through Time!

He didn’t get chance to tell anyone though, as four roaring dragons swooped across the harbour, distracting The Balance from their personal musings.

“Give me a couple of minutes!” yelled Tempus above the rushing of wind and the exultation of the dragons.

“Let’s help him out,” said Akira, “we can give him two minutes to get ready.”

Celestus looked back at The Anachronist; her dragon had raised its head high, and appeared to be drawing a deep breath – it was preparing to attack!

X-Ray floated gently into the air as Celestus tapped Akira on the shoulder, pointing him at The Anachronist. Akira instantly gestured, creating his trademark multiple mystical energy blasts. Four beams shot from his hands, zig-zagging their way to the dragon and impacting directly onto its chest and neck, blasting sections of its scaly armour away. The beast reared up screeching, but not before it released its jet of fiery destruction towards the ship; four of the crew were engulfed in oily flames, their fate sealed even as attempts were made to douse the fires. The rider struggled to control the beast, but even side saddle she retained her seat. Another sailor was at the receiving end of her own powers as they were blasted and his body aged in seconds resulting in him dying of old age.

Seeing his opportunity, X-Ray sent a concentrated gamma beam at The Anachronist’s dragon, following up Akira’s opening salvo. It caught the dragon’s neck again, with part of the beam striking The Anachronist herself. She seemed unharmed, her armour having protected her from the energy itself, but she was now having to work hard to steady her mount. The dragon roared in pain, its taloned claws scrabbling to maintain its foothold on the damaged building. More of the upper floor broke away as the dragon thrashed its wings causing dust and debris to be swept into the air by the backdraft.

To the left and the right of the town, fires were springing up as the other dragons vomited flame into the wooden houses and shacks; if they were run-of-the-mill dragons compared to The Anachronist’s mount, they were no less deadly.

Celestus pressed home the advantage; still on the quayside, he focussed in on The Anachronist and unleashed a psi-blast against her mind. It hit her with no pity, and she screamed as she clutched her helmet, slipping from her saddle to vanish into the ruined structure. Her response as she was unseated was to unleash a temporal blast which as a result completely missed, hitting a fleeing bird instead, de-aging it into a plummeting pre-flight chick.

The dragon, now masterless, shrieked again and took to the air… to be struck down by Banshee as she unleashed her sonic blast at the monster. The soundwaves had an extraordinary effect on the dragon’s physiology, as its neck rippled briefly before the head and neck exploded in a shower of its own ‘napalm’ that rained down the hillside as the lifeless carcass crashed into shacks not far from the harbour. Any sense of sympathy for the death of the magnificent creature was lost in the chorus of cheers from the Cyber-Rovers combating on board the Wandering Wastrel.

“I need a couple more minutes!” Tempus yelled, still tapping onto his ‘passport’ device.

Akira whirled on him, “You said that a couple of minutes ago!” It hadn’t been that long, but even the usually unflappable Akira was wondering whether the remaining dragons would land a lucky strike.

“How many dragons do you want us to fight before you get us out of here?”

X-Ray noticed that three of the blockading ships were approaching the quay, with marines preparing to disembark as soon as it was safe to do so. What to do? Sink a ship? Or keep the dragons away?

As if in response to Brian’s musings, one of the circling dragons unleashed a stream of fire in their direction. To X-Rays’ expert eye he assumed that a dragon had an organ like a bird’s gizzard, that could store swallowed rocks. In birds, those rocks helped break down tough foods; but if instead a dragon swallowed flint they might rub against each other inside the dragon, sparking a flame. If that spark was close enough to a very sensitive fuel, that might be enough to ignite it.

He assumed that the dragon’s body had to contain a specialised gland that produced and stored a flammable substance, similar to a venom gland in some animals. This substance could be a mix of highly combustible compounds stored under high pressure within the dragon’s body. He couldn’t be sure but it seemed logical. To unleash their fiery breath, dragons would need a powerful expelling mechanism. This could involve muscular contractions that forced the flammable substance out of their mouths with great pressure. When the substance met the ignited source, it burst into flames.

To avoid self-immolation, dragons would likely need bodies highly resistant to extreme heat; and it appeared that these had fireproof scales.

X-Ray used his enhanced vision to ‘zoom-in’ on the dragon that was threatening his teammates on the quay, then tied in his energy emission – it was almost like using a laser sight, and although the cost of the effort was a reduced-strength beam of electromagnetic energy, it rarely missed. Brian witnessed the creature’s shocked expression as its neck ruptured just below the head, before igniting into a thrashing fireball of flaming death. The rider vanished in the flames, quite possibly incinerated. Brian told himself that this shouldn’t even be happening, so his death wasn’t real. One more step home, to Stacy, that’s all.

The flaming wreckage of the beast landed in the town’s main square, luckily avoiding the buildings around the edge. More cheers rose into the air.

Armoured as they were, it didn’t prevent the Balance blasting the dragons with energy blasts, mystical bolts, and sonic shrieks, igniting the gases before they could be expelled and causing them to explode.

Unfortunately, it rarely worked when assaulted by physical attacks, unless it was timed and targeted just right so that the blow caused them to take a deep breath in just as they had ignited the gases, causing them to inhale their flames into the gland in the back of their throats and… boom!

Akira wounded another dragon with his multiple bolt attack; Celestus caused another to crash-land on the quay as his psi-blast scrambled its nervous system. Cargo was sent crashing aside as the beast slid to an undignified halt part way along the stone quay, the rider unconscious from the impact.

East Arcadian Company Marines poured ashore from the three now-docked ships. Instead of muskets, each man held a thin stick… wands of magic! Banshee thought it was the worst Hogwarts cosplay scene ever, and vented her annoyance in the form of a dreadful wave of fear, summoned up from the hellish depths that lurked somewhere deep inside her supposedly tainted soul. Pirate-folk and marines alike cried out in terror as unseen demons of the mind raised their heads above the lip of the living world, and men ran for their lives before them.

Akira shouted, “How long?”

“A bit longer… another couple of…”

“Oh, for…”

“I’ve almost got it all connected up,” Tempus said, almost apologetically.

Taking his frustration out on the dragon that had just crashed onto the quay, Akira once again loosed his multiple mystic bolts, turning his head away as the creature exploded into flame. Burning offal landed amongst the ships of the East Arcadia Company, and blazes sprang up all around the harbour.

Celestus surveyed the scene before him; crews were trying to dampen the fires on board their vessels, and the nearest Company ship to the Wastrel was preparing several cannons, albeit they resembled advanced plasma blasters of an exceedingly large variety! He realised that any one of those landing a direct blast against the hull could jeopardise the Wastrel’s ability to flee, so he targeted the ship’s command.

Celestus lifted into the air and set off, targeting the two officers on the rear poop-deck of the moored ship, dodging round the masts, and grabbing them both before flying his captives into the sky. He was struck a glancing blow by one of the plasma blasters on his way in, but it had no lasting effect against his tough alien physiology.

Banshee had followed Celestus’s actions and seen the danger of the ship’s cannons; she unleashed a sonic scream that holed the ship’s hull at the waterline, quickly taking on water. The ship lurched as the water poured in, and men fell, or even jumped, into the sea. Some could swim; others sank quickly.

The remaining dragons were keeping a safe distance, so X-Ray swooped down to the stricken vessel and used his ability to alter gravitational flow to rescue some of the flailing sailors. Away to his left, out in the harbour, Celestus dumped the two officers into the ocean, noticing that the blockading ships were now heading in to the quay.

Banshee regained her solidity and flew over the water, pulling more endangered men out of the sea. She noticed that some of the pirate-folk had begun to use bill-hooks, oars, and ropes to reach out to some of the East Arcadia Company crewmen and help them ashore. She was less pleased when those same rescuers began to beat the rescued men with fists and tools, but she remembered that, for them, reality had taken a different turn, and this harsh treatment could well be a justifiable action against oppressors who, in turn, had dished out their own rough justice before now.

Akira heard Tempus shouting at his crewmen, “Go now! You have been a wonderful crew, but you don’t want to go where we’re going! Take your gold and get away. Now!”

Something in his tone resonated with the Cyber-Rovers, and with several men carrying a large iron-bound chest, the crew bid their captain farewell; some were visibly crying, consoled by others.

“Why are you telling the crew to leave?” asked Akira, catching up with Tempus. Around them, the other members of The Balance came aboard, landing around their erstwhile commander.

“Ah… I’ve got an idea,” he said, “but it means going back a few centuries. Maybe a thousand… or two…”

Akira frowned, “What’s your idea?”

Tempus suddenly grinned, “Look! I’ll show you!” And he pressed a button on his ‘passport’.

Tempus had finished rewiring the ship and connected it to his ‘Passport’ control bracelet; the power of the Magic Mesa flowed into the surrounding sea, and in a tide of chronons, the team and Tempus washed away to another time and space.

***

Abydos, Egypt, 1355 BE

The ship swirled through a storm of time. However, they were immediately in trouble upon their arrival.

The heat, the sunlight, the dry air; it all hit them in a moment, but it was overshadowed by the sense of uncontrolled motion they all felt. Stomachs churned, the world lurched, they plummeted downwards like the worst rollercoaster ever… they were not on the ground or the sea.

No longer hovering, or mystically powered, the Wandering Wastrel fell through the air. The entire ship slammed down with a reverberating shock, landing on the monument below them: a pyramid. Then, it started to slide, skiing down the pyramid, scattering stonework and sun-whitened limestone into a spray of dust.

X-Ray, whose power over gravity granted him immunity to the effects of the moment, raised the ship using his gravi-kinesis and landed it safely on the plush golden sand that covered the area around the pyramid, only broken by the hard arid sub-strata evident before the pyramid, evidence of the work carried out by human hands.

Tempus looked nervous, worried even, and took a few moments to get his breath back. The last vestiges of his chronal energies dissipated and the Wastrel became inert, the few remaining lights dying out completely. His ‘passport’ fizzed and smoked. He tapped at it, achieving nothing, and put his head in his hands.

Akira put a hand on Tempus’s shoulder, “Not part of the plan I take it?”

Straightening up, Tempus shook his head, then looked around him.

“About two miles that way,” he said, pointing southwards, “is the royal palace of Per-Hay. We need to travel south to meet him. He will know, if anyone does, where Doctor Tomorrow is.”

“And you’re coming with us?” Akira asked, rather concerned that Tempus may not be of a mind to leave his ship.

“Yes. Well, there’s not a lot I can do with the ship now. So, yes.” He looked at the Wastrel, then out to the land around them. A good way off they could see a settlement, much more modern in construction than it should have been for ancient Egypt; dozens of people were looking in their direction, and Brian couldn’t help but wonder whether legends of the Pharaoh’s solar barge had begun yet, or were they about to…

Tempus broke the silence, “I wonder what’s going to happen in about a thousand years when they find the remains of a sailing ship in the desert? It should be entertaining… anyway, not my problem!”

He seemed to have regained some of his ‘mojo’, his grin returning.

“So,” said Akira, not wanting to waste time, “we’re off to see the Pharaoh?”

Following Tempus’s directions, The Balance flew south. As they crossed the desert they witnessed in the distance an ambush by Arabian raiders on horseback led by a European in Bedouin robes against a troop of SHADOW soldiers crossing a dune. X-Ray thought it might be British officer T.E. Lawrence, who’d united Arab tribes against the Turks in World War One. The Arabs changed midstride into a squad of Special Air Service soldiers in jeeps before they all vanished in a heat haze.

Even flying at safe speed the team arrived at their destination within minutes. In this time period, the temple city of Abydos was one of the oldest in Egypt. Real or otherwise, the sight would stay with the team for a long time to come.

Given that this was an age in which the ‘Gods’ still moved openly, before the Pact, The Balance were able to see first-hand the innate grace and beauty of a couple of these time-bending futurists as they flew away in the distance.

Mary disclosed a theory that she had developed, based on her interactions and knowledge over her lifetime.

“In reality the ‘First People’, or Atlans, had arrived back in time fleeing a disaster in the 27th Century. The First People consisted of Homo Deus, evolved from Homo Superior and Homo Immortalus interbreeding and gradually forming the Empire of Atlan. They were both super-powered and immortal, as long as no-one killed them. They became the origin of the various worldwide pantheons.”

Celestus asked Tempus, “Who is this Pharaoh that you are taking us to meet?”

“Pharaoh? Hmm… I know him as the Time Vizier, Amenemhet, give or take a vowel or two… you had to ask, didn’t you?”

The clear stars and bright moon shone down on The Balance as they approached the area of Aten and, most importantly, the Royal Palace of Per-Hay, the “House of Joy” – canals stretched across it, feeding greenery and groves, as well as a glittering lake to the east. Even now, at night, fires burned and servants worked. This wasn’t simply a stone fortification; it was a garden, a city, and a temple to the pharaoh’s divinity and largesse.

Tempus said, “I haven’t snuck in here before, probably, but time travel can make liars of us all…”

Tempus took a deep breath, then turned to face the team, “Look, I travelled here deliberately. I want to consult with an expert on the timestream, Amenemhet the Time Vizier, who, possibly, can locate Doctor Tomorrow. The energy from the Magic Mesa is gone, more or less; I have no way of getting back safely… well, my ‘passport’ device can’t handle more than one more jump, and I might be risking you not getting back. I could really do with finding Doctor Tomorrow, and getting the Time Vizier to send us on.”

Having arrived at the Royal Palace (known in the modern era as “Malkata”), the team sought out the Time Vizier.

The palace wasn’t over a decade or two old, and bright blues and rich reds adorned the surfaces with paintings of pharaohs, queens, beasts, and much more. There were canals, bridges, lush greenery, artificial hills, and an army of servants employed for upkeep. Temples surrounded the palace, both to the gods and the dead, radiating spiritual power.

Their first option they considered was to sneak in, as Tempus suggested. However, the palace was well-populated, and it would be difficult to avoid notice. There were also the Time Vizier’s wards, which restricted unnatural movement like permeation, teleportation, or unnatural speed. Lastly, mystical guardian sphinxes existed to intercept flyers or invisible intruders.

The second option was to talk their way in. That meant facing the Great Sphinx of Per-Hay who riddled outsiders to ensure the worthiness of their entrance.

The sphinxes weren’t beasts but spiritual, intelligent manifestations of the pharaoh’s providence. They were single-minded in what they did and as stubborn as the rock they were hewn out of. They had names, but those names came in long riddles. It was easier to refer to them as the “Great Sphinx” or “Sphinx of the West Temple.”

Akira led the way. Walking straight up to the sphinxes before the gates, “Are you going to let us pass?”

The largest Sphinx looked down at them and, with a voice like an avalanche in a sandstorm, said, “ONLY IF YOU ANSWER MY THREE RIDDLES…”

The team exchanged glances, and a few shrugs, before Akira said, “Shoot.”

The Great Sphinx glowered at them and spoke in a powerful booming voice, “I AM A HOME THAT NEEDS NO DOOR, NO EXIT, NO ENTRANCE. WHAT AM I?”

Frowns abounded until X-Ray correctly guessed that he meant the pyramids which were, supposedly, designed to be tombs.

“A tomb,” he shouted, “or a crypt. A place of the dead.” The Sphinx nodded slowly to show its approval.

“I AM A RIVER; I FLOW BOTH UP AND DOWN, NO ONE SWIMS IN ME, NO ONE DRINKS OF ME, BUT SHOULD I BE DAMMED, ONLY DEATH RESULTS. WHAT AM I?”

“Ooh, that’s blood!” This time it was Akira who correctly guessed it was blood flowing through veins.

“I DO NOT BURN, BUT I SHINE. WHEN I SHOW MY DARKENED FACE, SO DARKENS THE WORLD. WHAT AM I?”

There was some confusion between the teammates for this riddle; initially they assumed it had to be the Sun, but that clearly burned. X-Ray suggested an eclipse. That helped Akira to suggest, “The Moon?”

The two sphinxes bowed and backed away from the gates, the Great Sphinx raised a huge paw and gestured for the team to enter, and the golden gates swung back silently to allow them entry.

Walking through the wide, lavish corridor, Tempus whispered that Amenemhet appeared throughout the history of ancient Egypt under different names, but “Time Vizier” had always been his favourite title. A pharaonic patriot and chronomancer, he ensured that temporal travellers did not disrupt ancient Egypt’s timeline. He could see the future, but his knowledge was based on short glimpses, and he didn’t fully grasp all of future history.

The audience hall of the Time Vizier was enormous, its pillars and walls cast in painted reliefs telling tales of times to come. Some of it echoed familiar history. Other parts seemed incidental, glimpses of the future without obvious significance; a two-dimensional tourist slideshow.

He wore a thick, elaborate neckplate that bore a blade emerging close to his face, its shape akin to the gnomon of a sundial, with his angled kilt verging in the other direction as if to offset it. His makeup gave him a vague, indeterminate age, with only a vague irritation to his features, creasing his expression of control.

He glared down at them from the throne that topped a stepped dais, “What brings you to my time, and how do I get you to leave?” he said in perfect English.

“Well,” muttered Akira, “that’s not much of a welcome, is it?”

Banshee answered, “No, it’s not exactly what I wanted to hear.”

Celestus stepped forward and bowed low, “Greetings! We have been brought to your time by a mechanism which we fear no longer functions. This man,” he pointed to Tempus, “will explain.”

As soon as he spotted Tempus, Amenemhet’s brow creased, and anger flared across his face, “Thief! Do you believe that simply because you arrive before your crime, I’m not aware of it? How you will come to rob my tomb? Disturb my afterlife? Your presumption will cost you dearly!”

“We have no desire to rob your tomb, sir.” Celestus said, politely retaining his bowing posture.

Tempus’s widened eyes gave away his surprise, “Hey! That hasn’t happened yet, and besides, we’re here for…”

The Time Vizier interrupted him, “It happened in your past thief, and I have seen it unfold in my future. And whatever your ploy, I assure you, it’s quite irrelevant.”

Tempus wobbled slightly as X-Ray cuffed him around the ear; Brian’s temper had got the better of him, and he could see their chances of returning home dwindling by the second.

Akira thought on his feet, “The thing is Amenemhet we’ve put this man under arrest, and we’re taking him back to face charges, so… erm…”

The Time Vizier stared blankly at Akira, dismissing him before he even spoke a word, “Do you not know that I can tell a truth from fakery?”

“Ah, damn it…”

“Do you really wish to burden yourself? He is here, in my domain – he is mine to judge! And I have found him guilty!”

“That was a quick trial,” said X-Ray.

Celestus turned around, “These Time Viziers’ don’t mess around.”

“They don’t, do they?”

The Time Vizier continued, “As a judge I am not remotely conflicted. I have not decided what his punishment will be, but he will be examined to determine the exact punishment for his crime, and a judgement will be found. Because he is guilty, any mitigating circumstances can be submitted at his trial. Meanwhile…” he looked directly at The Balance now, “I can transport you to Doctor Tomorrow’s facility in 2121 C.E. For that is who you seek, is it not?”

Even after everything that had happened, the team could still be blindsided. How did he know? General mutterings of agreement bubbled over; this guy was like a more useful version of Tempus!

“Yes!” Celestus said, just to ram the point home.

X-Ray knew that ancient Egyptian law was typically corporal, particularly in regards to tomb robbery, and questioning was often accompanied by torture to ensure its integrity. As much as Tempus was annoying him, he couldn’t leave the man to be killed here. He quickly explained this to the others.

“And quite right too!” he finished, glaring at Tempus.

“I’m tempted to act as his counsel!” declared Akira, as seriously as he could muster.

As the conversation died down, Tempus touched Banshee on the shoulder, taking her a little way aside, “Hey, you won’t leave me here? I can get us to Tomorrow’s time, but I need you to keep the Vizier’s attention while I make repairs and program the final settings on the passport.” He pointed to the device on his wrist, “It’ll work, but I can’t have him throwing spells or calling for guards until it’s done properly.”

Akira provided a distraction by creating an illusion of himself juggling snow globes, though to those guards and courtiers watching the globes were full of images, their lives flashing before them, past, present, and future. Chanting began around the room, as prayers were spoken to the gods of Abydos.

“A clever trick,” the Time Vizier said, not without honesty in his voice, “and it has amused me. As a reward, I will transport you to Doctor Tomorrow now. Please note I’m not helping you; I’m ensuring you don’t cause any more trouble than you already have, and with excessive politeness, considering the damage you’ve done.”

He then waved a hand at the guards, who moved, a dozen as one, heading for Tempus.

“Give me a minute!” Tempus pleaded, trying to get his ‘passport’ to work.

In response, Celestus said, “Flare!”

Knowing what was coming, the team closed and averted their eyes.

The throne room was lit with the light of Aten itself for a second, and when The Balance opened their eyes they saw the guards and courtiers covering their eyes, or waving their arms out before them in temporary blindness. Even Amenemhet had been affected by the flash of light, though he held one arm out in front of him that gestured, as though trying to empower a spell of some kind. Sure enough, a blast of fiery energy erupted from his hand, but headed wildly towards the wall, completely missing everyone.

“Ha ha! Got it, you pompous royal!” Tempus shouted, making his final adjustment to his ‘passport’ device, and holding out the tangle of wires and neon power cells, “Get cozy, because here we go!”

Amenemhet reached out towards the team, his mouth yelling, “NO!!!”

***

They were digitally broken down, their cellular information transmitted into the Time Vortex. The light around them shifted like an underwater distortion, and they were drawn into the distant future. It felt this time like they were being flung into a raging river without even the faintest notion of breathing, until suddenly they reformed above the torn concrete and shattered remains of a ruin, looking out over a city from nearly ten stories above the ground.

They fell, wind tearing at their clothing, until they all used their ability to fly. Banshee caught Tempus and held onto him, holding him steady as they all looked down at the Embankment of the River Thames, surrounded by a shattered London.

Landing, they stood amongst the rubble. Distant sounds of conflict echoed through the ghostly landscape, and the sky was an eerie red. It looked like blood. Blood, and death.

“There is magic in the air,” said Akira, dispassionately. In one way or another, they could all feel it, all see it. Advanced technology lay strewn all around them, wrecked weapons, abandoned equipment, most with the logos of the East Arcadia Company or SHADOW.

It was all wrong; what little plant life could be seen looked sickly, pale yellow-green, twisted, a dandelion covered in thorns, grasses that ended in barbed hooks. A pigeon limped into view dragging one of its wings, its four legs struggling to work in unison, and a face with four eyes and two beaks.

In the distance, they could see that SHADOW troopers waged war against cyborg humanoids, blaster fire echoing off the empty buildings.

“Are you sure that Doctor Tomorrow is around here somewhere?” asked Banshee to her former teammate.

“Yes,” Tempus answered, “I’m pretty sure this is the right location. There can’t be too many Metas’ in this time zone…”

***

After their experience at .Libertalia, The Balance recognised the distant roar of a dragon. Evidence was pointing to the culmination of that particular timestream, or maybe everything they had witnessed was part of that timestream, who could tell?

Celestus took to the air, silently ascending until he had a good view of the ruined battleground below him. Although he wasn’t very familiar with London, the view to the Embankment, the choked river and broken bridges, certainly reminded him of the place where he had stood with his teammates during the parade; it seemed a lifetime ago, and, for all he knew, it was.

Movement caught his eye, in the way that even ants catch the eye of a gardener, and he realised that there were small groups of humans moving slowly but steadily through a maze of hidden tracks all around the team. The people looked ragged, unclean, diseased and they used every piece of terrain to hide themselves – walls, rubble, blasted vehicles, twisted railings, a bus shelter, waste bins, craters – anything and everything was utilised to mask their movements. From this height it all looked so surreal, like an Avant Garde oil painting that tricked the mind into seeing the shapes twist and turn.

Still, the threat was real; Celestus saw spears and bladed weapons of various, crude construction and, despite their appearance, it would have been remiss of him to assume that the people were not skilled in their use.

It was but a thought to drop back to the ground, and the alien princeling landed with a crunch amidst the detritus of this future war.

“There are groups of people armed with primitive weapons, like spears, approaching from several directions. They appear to be creeping up on us.” He said, shifting his weight as he readied himself for a fight.

“We can all fly,” said Akira, apparently unperturbed, “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I’m still putting my force field up!” Brian had gone through a bad patch in recent weeks, forgetting to power up his force field and suffering the occasional minor injury as a result; today was not going to be another one of those days.

Mary, for Banshee had shed her supernatural form to become the loveable old Irish lady of her human aspect, materialised her harp beneath a knitted cardigan, and suddenly the air was filled with the joyous sound of an up-tempo jig!

Turning around, the team witnessed the sight of two-dozen or more men, women, and children, emerging from their hiding places with smiles on their grimy faces – weapons were dropped where they stood, and then they were dancing… clumsily, perhaps, but dancing, nonetheless. Heavy boots stomped the ground in time to the harp’s beat, bandaged feet scuffed the earth following the melody. A couple held hands and twirled each other dramatically, laughing as they did; one young child spun on the spot, jumping and twirling with gleeful abandonment.

Mary’s magic wasn’t directed at her teammates, but even they couldn’t help but smile and tap their fingers as the music played. “It’s like some big old Glastonbury festival,” said Akira, smiling broadly.

Brian looked at Mary with fresh respect; magic or no, her abilities were to be respected.

“You’ve got your moments, Banshee, I’ll give you that,” he said, as his fingers tapped along to the melody. His thoughts wandered to Stacy, and to young Chris, and he realised that he had never wanted to get back to them as much as he did right then and there.

“Hopefully someone can talk to them if they’re in a jollier mood,” she replied as she plucked at the harp.

Suddenly, she noticed that some of the dancing group had lost the merriment from their eyes – they looked confused, some downright scared.

Following their eyes, she looked around; noticing, Akira did the same.

“Ah!” he said, as his gaze fell on a metallic silhouette picking its way through the rubble behind them, about a hundred yards away. Humanoid, large, robotic, two extra auxiliary arms protruding from the sides of its chest; it was armoured, intimidating, and had two auto-cannons mounted onto its shoulders. A single round “eye” hogged the upper half of its head, a doleful crimson-red glow pulsed from within the lens. The carapace was silver, tarnished with dust and grime. Emotionless, it stepped toward the humans, its intent obvious, its gait slightly awkward.

The music had died away as Banshee’s concentration faded. That prompted X-Ray and Celestus to turn around.

“My!” said Celestus, “We are popular today!”

“It’s not a hundred per-cent functional…” said Mary., “it’s limping.”

Akira turned to face the others, “We’ve had a run-in with this before.”

If it was meant to be an explanation it fell well short in X-Ray’s opinion; was he going to be plagued by his teammates past exploits for all time?

“I think we should get out of here,” said Akira to Banshee, “there’s no point in hanging about, but where do we go?”

“Yea, quite!” she replied with a short chuckle.

X-Ray didn’t recognise this version of the machine, but it was a Mekha Prime battle droid. He had met a version of Prime itself shortly after arriving in Wessex, but this was totally new to him.

It limped on, the malfunctioning ankle bearing only serving to enhance its singular attitude towards snuffing out all organic life.

Akira sighed, then began to move his arms in a familiar pattern of moves, remarkably similar to martial arts disciplines.

“No point putting myself in harm’s way!” he muttered, as several beams of mystical energy erupted from his glowing fists, arcing away towards the oncoming assassin.

His attack struck home… and the bolts simply bounced off the droid’s metallic hide.

“Oh! Right…” Akira looked humbled, a sight not often seen, it had to be said.

X-Ray’s eyes began to glow, a subtle burnt-orange, as he channelled his EM powers.

“What do you two know about this thing?” he asked.

“It’s a robot,” Akira responded, “and it’s evil.” To others, his answer may have sounded glib; to X-Ray, it warned of a hard fight ahead.

“Right enough, then!” Brian exclaimed, setting his hands into a position ready to unleash his gravi-kinetic powers at the construct.

“Okay, let’s just destroy it then!” said Celestus, with naïve off-handedness.

Unseen by all except X-Ray, gravitons shifted around the robot, reversing their direction entirely, throwing the machine high into the London sky. One-fifth of a mile straight up it rose in seconds… then X-Ray switched off his power.

Brian mentally adjusted the focus of his eyes, light warping into his lenses with the same effect as a powerful pair of binoculars – he saw the robot begin to fall and smiled, knowing that the impact would be spectacular. His smile faltered when he saw jets of high-pressure flame spewing forth from the robot’s calves and feet; a built-in flight system!

“Well, that’s just… you might have said it could fly!”

The droid descended rapidly before hovering about ninety yards away. X-Ray saw the twin cannons adjusting their aim… then a high-pitched shriek caused him, and almost everyone else present, to turn their heads; Banshee was screaming at the battle droid, which seemed to stagger, blown backwards as the destructive sound waves crashed against it, disrupting the aiming sequence of the auto-cannons.

Celestus dug his fingers into a huge chunk of blasted, steel-reinforced concrete, the remains of a wall to a large building, and hefted it easily above his head. With minimal effort, his alien strength made the throw look as easy as throwing a paper plane; his aim was true and the block struck the robot head-on, exploding into a cloud of fragmented dust and twisted metal bars.

When the breeze took the dust cloud away, the robot floated there, a shimmering force field deflecting the last of the falling debris away from its chassis. The onlookers thought it had suffered no damage whatsoever, but then one of the smaller arms could be seen touching an area on its chest… a puncture… and the clawed hand pulled a steel bar from the wound, throwing it away with something approaching disdain. Sparks erupted from the puncture, and the robot wobbled slightly as it floated before them.

Wisely, most of the humans had sought cover when The Balance began their assault on the robot; only a handful saw the cannons fire twin energy bolts that struck Banshee with the speed of light… and pass right through her, intangible as she was. The explosion behind her threw rubble high into the air, leaving a decent-sized crater in its wake; several people screamed as fragments fell on them from above, but no-one suffered any major injuries.

Celestus ran forward quickly, picking up a large foundation stone with ease, and flew up into the air above, and somewhat forward of, the droid. As the robot tracked him, he threw the block down at it with as much venom as his muscles could give him; once again, he was able to penetrate the robot’s force field, and he nodded with satisfaction as he saw the two cannons falling away as the robot steadied itself after the impact. A large dent in the centre of its upper chest betrayed the limitations of its protection, and its flight jets began to sputter sporadically.

X-Ray allowed himself a quick fist-pump as he saw the large stone hit the droid, but as Celestus admired the damage he had caused, Brian felt the radio waves emanating from the robot – a call for aid, reinforcements!

“Oh… it’s sending out an S.O.S.!”

Quick as a flash, Akira completed another flurry of arm movements and sent more magical bolts hurtling at the automaton, blasting its left leg clean away at the knee joint. It began to fall towards the ground, its remaining set of leg-thrusters unable to keep its bulk airborne alone.

Without warning the droid began to rise again, though its confused reaction told the others that X-Ray was once again altering the gravity field around it. Banshee watched as X-Ray extended an arm, the robot rising high above the street, then, as X-Ray lowered his arm at speed, the droid plummeted with sickening speed, flailing wildly until it slammed into the ruins ahead of them, throwing up a dust cloud that took several seconds to clear.

It moved.

Slowly, its buckled arms clawed at the ground, pulling its sparking, twisted bulk over the blasted road. X-Ray detected an energy signature fire away from the droid but could do nothing as a massive low-frequency soundwave rippled over them all, causing instant unsteadiness and pounding headaches. The humans came off worst, many of them falling forwards or sideways, unable to remain even kneeling. Akira saw something falling out of the corner of his eye; a pigeon, fresh, but dead. Looking up, he saw more birds suddenly drop out of their flight paths, dropping to the ground. Birds… and something else.

“Doctor Tomorrow!” he cried, as a figure flew into his field of vision from over the Thames.

Black trousers with white side-stripe, red boots and jacket, a shock of blonde hair, red angular shades, gleaming brass jet pack, and twin blaster pistols, he flew straight and true, arms crossed at his chest, towards them.

“Hooray!” shouted Celestus, relieved that both Tempus and the Doctor were now in their hands for once.

“After all this time chasing him down,” said X-Ray, “and he bloody finds us!”

Like something from a Golden Age comic, Doctor Tomorrow circled the group and shouted down, “Follow me before all of that thing’s synced partners show up. Hurry now!”

He pointed away to their right and they followed with their eyes; a concealed subway entrance. The group began to move, and that is when they realised that none of the humans were following; they were frozen, unmoving, mouths open in silent screams, hair in dramatic still-motion… Time had locked around The Balance, but not for them.

Banshee and Akira picked Tempus up from the place where he had been hiding, “Repairing my ‘passport’,” though the device appeared lifeless now.

A crack of thunder broke nearby, an eerie red/purple tinge visible away to the west – an electromagnetic storm was brewing over the dead city.

Moments later the team were down in The Undercity, following Doctor Tomorrow as he led them through long disused subway tunnels.

It was clearly neglected. Strange fungi grew in large, fat clumps throughout the old train network, with some tunnels overgrown with the stuff, totally impassable, but Tomorrow led them through tunnels clear of the vegetation. X-Ray lit the way for them all, his personal store of EM energy easily capable of producing light from his entire body. He did not need to recharge, nor to absorb energy consciously; his body acted as a focal point for the Earth’s EM field, and he could access it at will, anywhere he found himself.

Grimy old posters littered the station walls, and some tunnels still had warning signs and instruction notices for maintenance crews that had long ago stopped caring about the subway system.

Only Tomorrow had spoken for a while, giving brief directions so that everyone knew where they were going.

“I can try to answer your questions, if you have any?” he said, after a long spell of silence, broken only by the occasional ‘zap’ and spark from his own ‘passport’ wristband device.

“How long have you got?” asked Celestus, deadpan, despite the chuckles from his teammates.

“It will take us about another fifteen minutes to reach our destination,” Tomorrow answered.

Brian decided to start, “What the hell did Tempus do when we were in London that started all this?” he asked, intent on rubbing Tempus’s nose in it, proverbially speaking.

“In fairness to Tempus,” Tomorrow said without breaking stride, “it was not him, it was Gaviel.”

“Gaviel?” echoed Akira.

“The female.”

X-Ray was having none of it, “It was definitely Tempus that threw us into the Timestream!”

“Tempus grabbed, or will grab you to stop Gaviel from using you, since he knew who a couple of you, at least, were.” Tomorrow sounded sympathetic towards Tempus, leaving Brian feeling somewhat miffed; he just wanted to land a good punch on the time-travelling nuisance’s mandible.

“And what did he want to use us for?” asked Akira, mildly intrigued with the chance to glean some kind of answer at long last.

“To try to stop Gaviel. To free me. To find me, and hopefully work with me to stop The Technician, Gaviel, from changing Time permanently.”

Celestus now, “And how can we do that?” The alien was fully aware that none of The Balance had any power over Time.

“By your endeavour.”

“She must be around, in this time, somewhere,” said Akira.

“No,” replied Tomorrow, “but it turns out I can find her. Most time travellers wouldn’t be able to since she’s holed up outside of the timestream, but all her work leaves a distinct form of chronon, one you don’t get simply by moving through time. She’s holed up in one of the old Miniverses the Time Keepers made long ago. She must have worked with them or the Associates to even know about it, or maybe the Futurekin had that intel. I’ll figure that out later. The present problem is, I don’t have my time machine.”

“Ah!” said Akira, “Why didn’t you start with that one?” A grin on his face when he said it, Akira was nothing if not jovial in the face of adversity.

“I thought that saving you was more important than telling you my woes…”

“Okay, okay, so you haven’t got your time machine and you need help to… find it, or…?”

Tomorrow continued to lead the team through the damp, smelly tunnels, “I need to replace it. We need to build a time machine. I’ve got some intel that SHADOW might have the item I need, an artefact called the Epoch Stone. I didn’t think we had much of a shot… until you showed up. We can talk about it more once we’re settled in.”

“So,” Akira followed up, “what does it look like, this artefact?”

“You’ll recognise it by its temporal effects on the time around you and your surroundings.”

X-Ray cut in, “Give me someone with a dodgy appendix and I’ll help you out, but building a time machine wasn’t really in my seven-year training course to be a doctor!”

Tomorrow pointed to Tempus, “Between the two of us, we should be able to build one using what we already have, if we can find some means of directing the Time Stream. This Epoch Stone is our best bet.”

“Is it down here?” Celestus asked.

“SHADOW has it, on SHADOW island. You might know it as the Isle of Dogs.”

“Well,” said X-Ray, “at least that gives us a chance to kick some Nazi bottom!”

“Yeah,” broke in Akira, “you guys are the muscle, and I’m the eye candy. I think that’s why they’re taking us along.” Another big grin. Even Celestus had to smile; he was starting to get used to Akira’s quips.

Banshee, as usual, remained quiet. As they walked, she had been noticing the faded, torn posters that dotted the platforms and tunnel walls – SHADOW propaganda, East Arcadia Company doctrines… a new world of science and magic that was just so wrong the very fabric of the reality screamed its pain into the void. Her path, at least, was clear; put things back to how they were – how they should be – or die trying.

“When the chronostorm swept us up at the Magic Mesa, I hoped to try and stabilize it with the orrery machinery, but the power overloaded it, blew us in different directions. We’re currently in 2121, in the ruins of London. I have been helping the survivors of the undercity fighting against SHADOW—and the East Arcadia Company, to a lesser extent. SHADOW used to run things around here, and their ‘Eugenics Brigade’ couldn’t hack it when Makha Prime invaded and tried to destroy what remained of organic civilisation. Not sure what happened after that but they left a lot of murderous trash around.”

“So where are we headed now?” asked Akira, more seriously.

“We are heading to a shelter,” Tomorrow replied, “where we can rest and plan accordingly.”

“A bit of R and R…”

“Is it going to be Arrow’s art deco disused train station?” asked X-Ray, suddenly wondering whether scenes would replay themselves in this new time zone.

He and Doctor Tomorrow halted as his glowing body illuminated a brick wall that blocked the entire tunnel’s width in front of them. Tomorrow took a few steps forward… and vanished through the wall!

The Balance followed warily, but the wall was a holographic shroud, and beyond it was the Undercity. Although Brian had only been in the London Below once, he recognised the otherworldly sensation that came with being someone who was not a long-term resident of the strange parallel world that existed beneath the feet of billions of ignorant people.

“London Below!” Banshee exclaimed, confirming Brian’s suspicion as she realised that they were entering a future version of London Below, the ‘eternal’ sanctuary and once the concealed domain of Lady Doors.

In the belly of the old train network a bustling, raucous community of survivors made a living out of the former underground system, creating a fighting “gladiatorial arena”, making do with scavenged technology and distasteful but edible goods. Most of those there were human, but there were one or two rarities in the form of Metas’. SHADOW’s oppressive regime and the following apocalypse had made for strange bedfellows.

Several people welcomed Doctor Tomorrow back, patting him on the back and offering him drink and something that passed as food.

“If you want to, you can rest for a bit,” he told The Balance, “and later we can discuss a raid on SHADOW island.” He waved the team over to a cleaned-up map of the London area that had been glued onto an old poster display board, and he pointed to the Isle of Dogs.

“This is the primary SHADOW stronghold here,” he said, “We can provide you with nullification beacons so that the Mekha battle droids don’t attack you as you travel. I must warn you, though, SHADOW Island has a gravivector field generator that prevents movement effects that defy spatial laws, like Permeate or Teleport.”

Something caught the eye of Doctor Tomorrow, and he excused himself, walking over to a group of scavengers that had arrived through the same holographic wall. He began to admonish the group, and Banshee realised that they were the humans that had tried to ambush them earlier.

The team managed to relax for a few hours, partaking of some anonymous chargrilled meat that Akira nicknamed ‘McRat’ and such water and flat pop that had survived in cans or bottles. To be fair to the struggling survivors, it looked a lot like a kebab… only what looked like a limp barbecued tail really gave it away.

“This fare is not to my princely taste,” Celestus argued, “but at least I can’t be starved.”

“Lucky you!” X-Ray said, nibbling the stale wrap but shying away from the flesh.

“My physiology allows me to survive without food or hydration, should I wish it.” Celestus beamed a smile at X-Ray, proud of his ability to avoid eating rodent.

***

The night passed slowly. Tomorrow had ‘borrowed’ Tempus several hours ago, and the pair had been working on the Doctor’s ‘passport’ device, attempting to convert it into a functional time machine. Tomorrow revealed that the two were, in essence, the same person from different time-eras or time streams, and it became a little disconcerting when they finished each other’s sentences as they talked through the early hours.

“The Epoch Stone is our shot at powering this,” Tomorrow said, “It will take a lot of power to step outside of the Time Stream and find Gaviel’s Miniverse.”

***

They spent an entire day in the Undercity and, late the next night, The Balance followed Doctor Tomorrow out of the tunnels, emerging into the ruined city. He explained that the acidic rain from the recent storm was more potent than what they would know as ‘acid rain’, and they could see the sizzling scars on the plants and dead animals around them.

Doctor Tomorrow had advised the team not to fly, as it would be far easier to be detected by radar and other sensors, or even creatures, from all three sides of the battlefront.

The nullification beacons were small, pocket-sized electronic boxes that emitted a signal to the Mekha Prime death machines, causing them to identify the signal as a ‘friendly’; wary as the team were, the few droids they passed ignored them entirely. As if to ram the point home, one robot came to life some distance from the team, pursuing a group of humans that had wandered too close to it in the darkness.

Doctor Tomorrow led them on, carefully picking his way through the cluttered, blasted streets of the former capitol. Overhead, largely unseen except on one occasion, dragons could be heard roaring or calling out to each other. The one they saw unleashed a torrent of liquid fire against a SHADOW patrol away in the distance before gracefully arcing back into the blacked sky.

“The East Arcadia Company still opposes SHADOW,” Tomorrow said as he led them through the shell of an apartment building by The Thames.

Making their way to the island, the Team were instructed about SHADOW’s perimeter defences: mines, armed spotlights, and patrols by mutated sharks in The River. Closer to the buildings that make up the complex, there would be SHADOW trooper patrols and an array of sensor fields. Easy.

Tomorrow explained, “SHADOW island’s original purpose was as a stronghold for SHADOW to keep alien prisoners and technology, and it’s their last redoubt in the City. Though they’re aware of my presence in this time zone, they won’t be prepared for your specific capabilities.”

Two hours or more later, across The River, a blunt, brutalist complex loomed before them, looking for all the world as though some giant had thrown massive cubes at the island with little care for symmetry or balance. A disaster had unmoored them, but it’s clear that the airwalks and passageways that once bridged them had been replaced with scaffolding and temporary gangways. Lights shone from guard towers.

“What you see is not the fine-tuned, stereotypical SHADOW operation run by fanatical clone soldiers. Here, they’re simply hanging on. For the central building, there’s no gateway in; peripheral buildings once served as security complexes, but the building itself was a vault, a massive safe. Thankfully, the apocalypse was not kind to it, and its crumbling edges contain weakened portions you can exploit. I am certain that the Epoch Stone rests within that centre structure.”

Even from across The Thames, Banshee could feel the tickle of the gravivector field like a million pins lightly touching her skin; she shuddered as she imagined those million pins pushing into her flesh, the expected consequence of her attempting to become intangible.

Over the tang of ozone, The River gave off a rank stench that was difficult to stomach. It still flowed but looked like effluent.

With Banshee carrying Tempus, due, in part, to X-Ray’s barely veiled threat to “drop him in the shark-infested River”, and Celestus carrying Doctor Tomorrow, everyone held hands and were rendered invisible by Akira’s magic. They set off flying above the surface of the Thames before landing softly by the first of the perimeter fences, where Akira was able to determine that the fencing supports only went underground by about a foot or so… he was deep into explaining that he could turn a portion of the ground into polystyrene, thus making it easier to dig a tunnel under the mesh and steel structure, when the sound of beating wings overhead caused them all to gaze skywards.

Dragon wingbeats thrummed across the whole island, fiery jets of dragon-breath destroyed the fencing as though it were made of butter, and gargoyles descended on the SHADOW soldiers in droves as chaos erupted across the perimeter of the complex. In the purple-tinged gloom, distant forms of steamships converged on the shoreline, disgorging marines.

The East Arcadia Company was attacking en masse.

“Well,” he muttered, standing up, “that’s useful as well.” Akira was undeterred, and began digging with great vigour, his magic transforming the ground into soft, crumbly polystyrene that came out easily in great handfuls.

X-Ray and Celestus helped to clear the rubble that Akira pushed out of the tunnel, it having turned back into stone and concrete, and as the battle raged away to their right they all crawled through undetected and headed to the nearest of the huge square block buildings.

Making their way through a massive storage facility, they located a massive, inclined freight elevator that Tomorrow sensed was the right way to go to get down into the secure storage below.

Below ground, they crossed another empty hall until they found their way blocked by a large heavy door, flanked by a security panel.

“Let me take a look, dearie,” said Banshee as she transformed back into Mary. It was the work of a small penknife and a minute to lever the panel free from its mounting and hotwire a bypass connection without setting off any alarms. The door slid open slowly, revealing the sight and sound of SHADOW troopers racing past on the other side, heading to protect the complex from the E.A.C.’s attack. From what The Balance could hear of the destruction occurring above them, they didn’t rate SHADOW’s chances.

Helpfully, a sign across the corridor pointed left, with the legend “Secure Vault Prime” and “Extraterrestrial Detention Area C”.

“I could be wrong,” said Tomorrow, “but I think this way feels about right.”

Akira once again turned most of the team invisible, X-Ray and Celestus electing to remain unaffected so as to attract any opposition left before them, thus keeping Tempus and Tomorrow out of harm’s way.

As the team descended into the deepest, darkest levels of the complex, the scent of salt and decay began to overwhelm them. The cells they began to pass by probably once held alien prisoners, but their protective clear shields were shattered, and only two cells contained any sign of their previous occupants, desiccated corpses sprawled across the floors inside.

Water dripped from numerous leaks in the ceilings, forming stagnant puddles every few feet. As they passed the final security doors, breaking in easily as saltwater and rust had damaged them beyond any real functionality, the water became ankle-deep, and despite the massive storage spaces promising so much, the actual containers were all completely empty.

There was no sign of the Epoch Stone, or much else. Perhaps they were used in the war, or moved elsewhere, or the facility was one big distraction?

Doctor Tomorrow turned to the group, “But… the manifest showed… we can’t have come for nothing…”

Akira shrugged, “Perhaps we’re in the right place, but the wrong time?”

A sploshing noise behind them cut off any chance of reply as, from behind a row of smaller container pods, another figure arrived in a blast of time-tinged light. It was the Exterminator, raising its blasters with clear, heartless, intention.

Brian clearly remembered their previous encounter at Magic Mesa, and wondered whether invisibility would be enough to protect the others.

“Whoo! That is a big gun!”

Celestus wasn’t wrong; the Exterminator had configured its weapon arm into a massive blaster cannon, almost as long as the robot itself was tall.

Whether it was the same robot as the one at Magic Mesa Brian had no way of telling, but it was not beyond the realms of possibility that there were multiple Exterminators. He tucked the thought away as the robot locked onto Celestus and himself, raising the gun-arm menacingly.

It took a step, another, but a third caused it to jerk suddenly, and a chain, shimmering with an energy field, snapped into view above the water. Deadly it may have been; free, it most certainly wasn’t.

Celestus floated into the air and moved around to the robot’s right flank, noting that that side gave the Exterminator less freedom of movement, thanks to the chain catching on the side of a storage pod.

X-Ray watched intently as Celestus launched himself at the Exterminator, punching a fist right through the upper right portion of its chest. Intending to bowl the robot over, he was dumbstruck when it not only stayed upright, but held his arm fast as liquid metal flowed around his limb, constricting painfully. He pulled his arm free with a growl, noting that he may not have been able to do so had he not been immensely strong.

The Exterminator raised and fired its gun-arm swiftly, but was off-balance from the attack by Celestus; the blast of energy shot past the prince and blasted a large section of the far wall away, chunks of concrete crashing down and off the metallic containers below. The cacophony of sound was deafening.

Several bolts of colourful energy shot out of the gloom to strike the Exterminator fully in its back and shoulders – Akira had forsaken the protection of invisibility to strike, and the attack left the robot reeling. Chunks of the chassis flew off it and it staggered visibly, a viscous liquid flowing from the wounds, tinged with a pale blue colouration.

Doctor Tomorrow, also now visible, shot the Exterminator with one of his blaster pistols, further damaging the robot, though with less effect. It mattered little, really, as X-Ray blew a football-sized hole through its chest with a beam of ionizing radiation, destroying the container pod directly behind it for good measure.

Once again, X-Ray sensed a message being sent by the stricken robot, making Brian consider the idea that it was another of Mekha Prime’s creations. However, this signal was different in one significant way – it was being sent through Time!

“Jeepers! It’s sending a Time signal, of all things!” X-Ray shouted.

From nowhere, Banshee appeared, releasing her own power of invisibility, “Could it be using the thing we’re after?”

The Exterminator collapsed to its knees, then fell forward with a splash, defunct.

Everyone looked at Doctor Tomorrow; after a short pause, understanding dawned, and he rushed over to the Exterminator’s inert chassis, digging into its shattered torso.

“We couldn’t get the Epoch Stone, but we can…”, he opened up the Exterminator, “use this thing’s temporal technology against its master. But I’ve got to stay behind to steer. Good luck!”

“That’s my cue!” Tempus said, walking over to Doctor Tomorrow. “See you guys later! Or maybe sooner!”

The sound of approaching SHADOW soldiers and the roar of monsters breaching the complex overhead could be heard. The Balance took up a defensive stance, covering the entrance to the vault whilst the two-time man behind them worked on the guts of the machine in the water. As the SHADOW troopers burst into the chamber they heard “A-ha!”, then a blinding light and a keening sound wrapped around them, whisking them across the temporal gulf, leaving Tomorrow and Tempus behind.

***

MINIVERSE TRIGINTA UNUS, UNKNOWN TIME
The team found themselves in a frozen slice of London, the Mall at the time of the original parade, but now amid a terrible disaster.

The sights were familiar, but the damage wasn’t. The landmarks of the site were recognisable but shattered, the ground torn up and flung into the air in frozen time, specks of it burning white-hot. Buildings lay in ruins throughout the place they had sworn to protect.

And so did they.

Shock, confusion, denial – each member of The Balance had his own personal reaction to seeing their own aged bodies, some of them floating in midair, hanging there in the midst of being thrown aside by the blast of a huge explosion.

Were they dead? Unconscious? Soulless? They could not tell with any certainty, with the moment occasionally jumping and shifting like a corrupted image drive, straining to move back into motion.

It was strange to see themselves in another time zone, another reality, but stranger still to see themselves defeated.

However, they were surprised to see more figures in the same scene – Zeitgeist, the Lady of Terrible Scales, Mekha Prime, the Exterminator, The Anachronist, and another handful they didn’t recognize, also caught in death throes.

Fallen.

Decaying.

***

“Well, I’d hoped you wouldn’t see this,” said a woman’s voice by way of greeting, “but here we all are!”

The Balance turned as one to see a tall black woman with short dark hair, tightly curled in the afro style, round spectacles framing her attractive face. A form-fitting bodysuit flickered from burnt-orange to crimson-red as the surroundings jumped and stuttered, altering the lighting across her form. Gun-grey armour covered her upper torso and shoulders, evolving into sickle-like antennae that rose from the back of the shoulder plates over her head. Gauntlets in the same dull metal covered her hands and forearms, ending in cruel clawed fingers, one hand of which held an open-faced helmet with a tall fin-crest; chrome-bright armoured boots that covered her right over the knees finished the look.

“My name is Gaviel.”

This was it, they knew; the endgame. Wittingly or otherwise, their actions had led them here and, one way or another, the next few minutes were going to decide the fate of reality for all Time.

“You are in the Miniverse of Trīgintā Ūnus. This place is a frozen moment in which myself, and my allies, were defeated… killed… that includes The Balance.”

The gauntlets vanished, as did the helmet, allowing her to remove her glasses and clean them with a handkerchief she extracted from a pocket in the bodysuit.

“Trīgintā Ūnus no longer exists as part of any timeline due to the machinations of the Time Keepers. You are in a frozen ‘plot-twist’. I was trying to take the Epoch Stone.”

Replacing her glasses the gauntlets and helmet reappeared instantly, as though they had never been gone. She poked a clawed finger at a nearby shattered, glowing, iridescent fragment amongst the floating bits of Earth and flame.

“It broke. You died. And the Time Keepers edited it out, threw it into this waste bin of possibilities. This,” she swept an arm theatrically around her, “is their editing room floor.”

A pregnant pause, then Celestus said, “So, this is some kind of cosmic dustbin…”

Gaviel looked exasperated. “Well, you’re all dead! In some story, anyway. Given infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters, and infinite multiverses… once upon a time, you died… but not anymore. They edited it out, and left it here.”

“And why are you here?” asked Banshee.

Gaviel nodded. “I was an editor for the Associates. I made it so the story would always go on. But I saw terrible things, wished there was another way… but you’re told that a tragedy is always part of the narrative; senseless tragedy, no twist. Somebody gets hit by a car, and they learn nothing, just one less character leaving endless danglers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with death as a narrative device, but tie it up first!”

The Balance was struggling with the concept that Time could, was, being rewritten over and over again. How could this even happen?

“So you’re still trying to tidy it all up?” Banshee again, frowning deeply as she thought about what Gaviel had said.

“I saw the editing the Time Keepers… the Associates… perform, and decided we needed an independent publisher, a fresh set of eyes. The timeline isn’t for them. Some of us make art of history, not stable pablum.”

“You’re an artist,” Akira said, “a performance artist.”

Gaviel smiled sweetly at that.

“The Time Keepers tried to stop me. And can’t. The story where you died happened first before they got out of the editing business. Since they’re at the end of Time, they can’t now, except through tools like Dr. Tomorrow and his Time Watch. How do I explain to you…? There’s the time you live in and the time you travel to. They travelled long before us, edited things before we could escape our narratives and travel across Time. The first editing pass. By removing the first of their tools, Doctor Tomorrow, before he could make order out of chaos, I have trapped them in a cul-de-sac in time. This isn’t about sense, it’s about stories. You’re not writing this story. I am.”

“Where is this story heading? Where is the ending?” Banshee again, trying to glean as much information out of Gaviel as she could.

“I robbed future SHADOW of their alien tech, built the Exterminator out of some of it, gave some of it to the others, that little device the Lady of Terrible Scales cobbled together, and as for the Epoch Stone, well, many of the changes are pinned within it. You can use it to get things back to normal. Consider it one big eraser.”

Another smile, the story continued for a while longer, “Somethings just happen regardless, such as the restoration of magic, and that Mekha Prime, but they made good plot twists so I left them in.”

X-Ray and Celestus exchanged glances; this was heady stuff, and wasn’t making much sense to them although, as Gaviel had declared already, it wasn’t meant to make sense.

“Wait!” X-Ray suddenly made a connection, “You built the Exterminator?”

“I don’t like doing death scenes. Very stressful. I appreciate that Doctor Tomorrow, Tempus, the Tick-Tock Doc, Chrono, Woden the Wanderer, and many others, are all fragments of the same person scattered throughout time. So, I invented an assistant that handled killing them for me. Remove Doctor Tomorrow and kill, or at least prevent, his other selves from gaining access to the Time Keepers and being converted to their plan for the paratime continuum.”

Akira had been reflecting on everything that had been said, eyes closed, body still, and now he felt the moment right to join in.

“So, apart from the basic laws of the universe, what…”

“They are boring!” Gaviel cut in, sounding very similar to Tempus in that precise second.

Akira opened his eyes, “What else have you broken?”

“I didn’t break anything,” Gaviel replied. “You know, I felt bad about all this. I thought I could reshape things, make you the greatest team in history, on your Earth. Others came before you, overshadowed you, so I removed them, making you the only superteam to have ever existed in your continuum. I dumped all that unnecessary world-building and what has gone before. This is about you! You were going to be the greatest team, the protagonists of existence. You got your “all-is-lost” timeline, and if you’d remained, you would have changed things. For better, or worse.”

“Are you telling us,” Celestus said with some venom, “that everything that has happened to us has been dictated by you?”

“Only since Tempus started interfering,” Gaviel said, in a way that said, ‘that’s all the information you need’.

“Up to that point you’d have been swept up with the Time changes. Britain would have been taken over by the Germans, Doctor Tomorrow would never have existed, the dinosaurs would have co-existed at the same time as yourselves… you’d have been the only ones to have any superpowers… you would have been the greatest team of all time!”

“But you’re telling us that we’re dead,” Celestus said.

“When you spend enough time with Time, you learn that there’s a beginning for every ending. If you don’t deconstruct, it’s the same old tropes. People don’t get sick of a Dark Age unless you cram it down their throats with the purpliest prose.”

“If you’re so powerful,” Celestus continued, “why do you accept your exile here?”

“I’m not exiled, my darlings. This is where I keep my editing cuts, the bits I have edited out, such as your deaths… I’m taking bits from out of Time and Space from all over the multiverse, from other Timestreams, and repairing them here, before I send them back out.”

“Are you going to repair us?” Celestus asked.

“Well, not you, here, now, but you there…” Gaviel pointed to the figures of The Balance in the jarring images around them, “… yes!”

Celestus pressed on, “So will that mean there are two lots of us?”

“No! You won’t exist. You shouldn’t exist at all! You’re outside the Timestream, you shouldn’t exist here.”

“Then send us back!”

“No! I will send them back, instead of you!”

“And we’ll be gone, with no-one any the wiser…” said Banshee.

“I’m going to have to re-edit the whole thing from start to finish – again! It’s gone a little bit… loopy. This whole story is not what I intended.”

“That’s not our fault!” Celestus exclaimed.

“It is your fault!” Gaviel retorted, “You should never have stepped into the nineteen-forties!”

Celestus was like a dog with a bone, “We did not intentionally do that, as I remember…”

“No,” X-Ray interjected, “and remind me to cuff Tempus around the ear for that one, an’ all.”

“He has rather gotten away with all this, hasn’t he?” Celestus agreed.

“I have the timestream held hostage and every narrative tool to execute it. And if you don’t let me carry on my task, I will kill you, and remove you from Time, for all time, my darlings.”

“Bring it on…” Akira spoke softly, having once again remained quiet, listening, thinking.

“That does sound like a threat,” X-Ray said, wondering what Akira had got planned but ready to follow his lead.

“So,” Celestus said, somewhat affronted, “it’s not just humans who are discourteous here!”

A flurry of orange sleeves and Akira produced a mystical blast of energy that rocked Gaviel where she stood, leaving a blackened scorch mark across the bodysuit and over her left shoulder armour.

“Let’s hope I’ve bruised her ego…”

And then the stuttering images stopped their jarring, repetitive half-lives, and stood upright around the team. Blood and flesh, pieces of torn costume, part of a finger, scorched hair… all these and others hung in the air around the blasted bodies of the other Balance as, counterpart to counterpart, they attacked. Glazed eyes glinted wetly, reflecting Gaviel’s own gaze.

Celestus reacted quickly, whirling away from the doppelganger of himself and lunging for Gaviel, his recently-acquired Psi-blade bursting into life around his right arm and hand as he moved. Gaviel tried to move out of his way but was too slow, and the glowing blade touched her gently on the cheek.

{I have nullified the female’s ability to repeat a time sequence, as that would have resulted in her inevitable victory} The soft feminine voice cooed inside Celestus’s mind, a gentle reminder of his mother.

In response, the remaining figures became active, rising upright behind the alternate heroes.

X-Ray reached out with his enhanced senses and was satisfied that gravity still played a part in this Miniverse. He had wondered whether his awareness of their spatial positioning was merely an illusion of the situation, but now he waved his arms wide around him, and gravity changed direction; everyone was blown away from him, friend and foe alike.

“Sorry” he shouted, as his friends tumbled through the air, but at least he had given them all some distance from their other selves. X-Ray’s own doppelganger seemed particularly upset by his action, if the snarling, skull-faced grin was anything to go by.

That’s when Brian felt the tingle at the back of his skull, like fingers tracing circles across the inside of his cranial cavity. He felt the sensation shifting through his cerebellum, reaching for his brainstem.

‘The mid-brain’, he thought, ‘response calculation… she’s trying to shut me down!’

He had no psychic defences to speak of, but what he did have was love, and desire. He focussed on Stacy, his wife for more than twenty years and, oh, how it broke his heart to be away from her for so long.

‘You will not stop me from getting back to her!’ he said to the encroaching feeling, and the searching halted, faltering. Brian imagined Stacy in front of him, her crystalline body deflecting harm away from him, and the attack ceased. He gasped, sucking in breath greedily as he recovered from the effort of staving off the mental attack. He glanced at Gaviel. She gave him daggers in return.

Banshee flew back towards Gaviel, her usually attractive visage morphing into the ghastly haunting face of death that she used to inflict crippling fear upon her foes. Gaviel balked, and Banshee noticed that her puppets jerked and faltered, her control over them weakened as she fought to regain her composure.

The other Akira swirled his arms in broken movements, mimicking the real Akira, and a mystical barrage of energy beams streaked towards across the mish-mash of moments, harmlessly bypassing the agile Akira as he twirled and cartwheeled through the magical bolts.

The other Banshee, her once-beautiful face scarred by shrapnel and weeping blood into the stillness of her frozen moment, flew headlong at the real Banshee, bo-staff held out before her. Banshee could tell that her plan was to thrust the staff, intangible as he was, into her body, and then let go, leaving her impaled. She waited until the last second before she ghosted herself, the doppelganger passing through her to fall away as Gaviel’s control over her wavered.

Celestus met his counterpart in the space where they had both been thrown by X-Ray’s gravity push. The doppelganger was in a truly bad way, with part of a severed finger floating a few inches away from its stump, part of his skull opened up by the force of the explosion, and the rest of his body caught part-way through the process of burning from blistering heat. He wondered whether he had put himself in the way of the blast, to rely on his healing ability afterwards… then reeled under the onslaught of a Psi-Blast from the unfortunate alternate. He steeled his mind, conscious that he should be able to resist the effects of his own power, and the pain faded. He felt something on his forehead and wiped away a sheen of sweat; it was a reminder that his power was enormous, and dangerous if misused.

Looking up, having regained his breath, X-Ray saw his doppelganger generating a gravi-kinetic bolt, sending it silently at him at the speed of thought.

Brian smiled, his own thoughts clear and sharp, and he held firm, his body completely immune to the effects of altered gravitational fields. The gravity bolt dissipated around him, ineffectual. Brian had always known that his powers… his entire Meta status… was not the work of chance; he truly believed that he, and others out there, had been ‘created’ for a higher calling, and in that moment, as he laughed aloud, he knew – just knew – that he would survive to meet that calling, even if it meant his death at the end.

Celestus saw Zeitgeist and Mekha Prime heading towards him, about to make his odds three-to-one. He hoped the Commdots’ were still working.

“Cover your eyes!”

The Miniverse exploded into white light, a mini-sun of intensity that reduced every obverse surface to black shadow, and blinded every optic nerve that it burned into.

When Celestus checked, only his teammates – his real teammates – were unaffected, warned as they were by the working earpieces. The doppelgangers were all holding their hands over their eyes or holding arms out before them, unable to see anything, and that included Gaviel.

Akira wasted no time – unable to see, unable to concentrate, she was a sitting duck for one of Akira’s signature mystical blasts, five pulsing beams sizzled through the air, hitting her centre mass in a heartbeat.

Gaviel screamed as the magical energy blasted away part of her armour, breaking one of the sickles. She was reeling, on the ropes… and X-Ray was closest.

“X-Ray!” Akira shouted, “Blast her! We need to knock her out!”

Always eager to please people, Brian blasted Gaviel with a beam of high intensity gamma radiation, knocking her unconscious swiftly… and painfully.

It was over.

The doppelgangers collapsed, then moved back into their original positions around the Miniverse, resuming their places in the edited ‘cuts’ of Time from whence they had come.

Akira gathered the others around him.

“I was quiet a lot then, but I was working the problem,” he pointed to several pieces of rock, the same that Gaviel had indicated a little while earlier, “we need to gather these pieces of the Epoch Stone together. This was her grand plan that backfired, this is what killed us all.”

Celestus carefully manoeuvred himself around Gaviel’s form, picking the stones out of the air one-by-one, before returning to Akira. As he opened his hands, they were astonished to see the fragments moving towards each other, affixing themselves to corresponding sections, rebuilding itself. Slowly, a three-sided pyramid formed, pulsing with a warm silver-white light.

Without understanding how, they all looked each other in the eyes – it was telling The Balance that, with its power, they could change Time.

“How would we use it?” Celestus asked.

X-Ray took a deep breath, then blew out his cheeks, “Perhaps we all hold onto it and think about things the way they used to be? The way it should be?”

“I suppose that Tempus and Doctor Tomorrow should know how to use it…” said Akira.

“If we all touch it, then, and concentrate on them being with us,” said Celestus, “focus on that mental image… see if that works?”

With more than one shrug of resigned acquiescence, the four teammates stood around the fist-sized pyramid and touched it with their fingertips, each man thinking of Tempus and Doctor Tomorrow standing beside them… and suddenly they were there, both men wearing expressions that mixed shock and confusion.

Doctor Tomorrow smiled as he looked around Miniverse Trīgintā Ūnus, seeing Gaviel floating there, still and defeated.

“Well done, all of you, very well done. Myself,” he nodded at Tempus, “and I are extremely grateful for your endeavour.” He looked at Celestus, a slight bow of his head following, before he continued.

“Tempus and I share a history; he is my past, I am his future. Even for travellers like us, clarity is a wonderful thing. Still, if I may take the Epoch Stone, it is time that I set things right, and return you all to your correct time streams. Assuming none of you have any objections, of course?”

The look on his face meant that he wasn’t expecting any, but once again the Stone reached out to The Balance, telling them that if they agreed to Tomorrow’s plan it would mean consigning their doppelgangers… possibly their own future selves… to death.

It was a sobering thought, and no-one took it for granted.

“I mean,” said Akira, “we don’t want to fall into the same trap that Gaviel did, you know? Trying to alter Time and taking powers that, really, don’t belong to us.”

Celestus nodded sternly, “Regrettably, I think that we are just going to have to put things back to the way they were.”

X-Ray was staring at Tempus; Tempus was trying not to stare at X-Ray. Out of the corner of his eye Tempus saw Brian extend a hand, and he took it warily.

“Wow, that’s a strong grip!” He said, more seriously than he intended. “All forgiven?”

Brian continued to stare him down, “Stay of execution.”

Tempus shuffled away, eager to avoid a cuff around his ear; he never saw the grin on X-Ray’s face.

Doctor Tomorrow took the Stone and walked around the Miniverse, touching the glowing pyramid to each and every person that was held there in immortal stasis, living or dead, in that frozen zeptosecond. Each vanished as the Stone returned them to the correct time zone from whence they had originally been edited by Gaviel. He saved Gaviel for last, shaking his head wearily as she disappeared.

Tomorrow then stood before The Balance, suddenly looking like he carried the weight of the universe upon his shoulders.

“Now it just remains to get you home, then I can get started on rectifying any temporal ‘errors’ left behind by the reset. Happily, I can confirm that my personal timeline is no longer disrupted! Time Watch once more exists, and I am sure that Danni is on her way to find and return you all to the V.E. Festival as that time zone resets, just as soon as Akira’s time, and dimension, travelling pooch, Calamity, tracks down your displaced presence outside the time stream.”

Tempus raised a hand like a shy schoolboy in a rowdy class, “And now I can explain why I was apologising to you when you saw me. I have to make you aware that I need to head ‘back’ to twenty-twenty-five and ‘time-nap’ you lot from the parade, so that I can take you to nineteen-forty to close the loop, and prevent a temporal paradox occurring…”

He never saw the hand that cuffed him around the ear, but it landed with a surgeon’s skill.

Just in time to distract and diffuse the situation, Danni and Calamity arrived in a flash of golden light, the incredible corgi bounded over to Akira with a happy yap. Danni seemed to be a woman in her twenties, long blue hair flopped over on her right-hand side, with the left side of her head shaven short. She wore a sleeveless pale blue bodysuit with white accents and golden armour around her head, shoulders and arms.

Calamity made cooing noises as Akira tickled the two antennae that protruded from the dog’s brow.

As he was about to set off, Danni reminded Tempus that he needed to change his clothes to match the outfit he was wearing when he originally ‘timenapped’ the Balance. Unfortunately he had no idea what he had worn (or will wear?) but he headed off to see what he could scrounge. Half an hour later he returned dressed in an eclectic outfit he’d scavenged.

He was now dressed in a heavily padded silvery jumpsuit, with arm and shoulder-guards, and kneepads, with glowing red trim and highlights and a hood over a full black bodysuit with integrated gloves. He’d added a pair of green-tinted goggles to the ensemble. “Will this do?” he asked hesitantly. The team just nodded, a smile on their lips.

With Danni’s assistance with the geo-spatial-temporal co-ordinates, Doctor Tomorrow moved the team through a myriad of time zones, placing them back on the VIP rostrum just a few seconds after they had been ‘time-napped’ by Tempus. After the relative quiet of the Miniverse, the cheering crowds and marching bands were nigh-on deafening. They could barely hear each other saying goodbye as they all exchanged handshakes and pleasantries.

Tomorrow used his ‘passport’ device to create a time-portal as he, Danni, and Calamity prepared to leave. As he looked out, The Balance followed his gaze to the surviving members of the Crown Guard who had the row of seats immediately to the left of The Balance. They were standing in line, all with eyes fixed on Doctor Tomorrow.

As one, they saluted him.

Heroes past. Heroes present. Heroes future. Heroes all.

***

The parade continued for another hour before the last of the contingents has passed by and the cheering subsided.

The Balance began to mingle with the Crown Guard, a nice end to the day for all concerned. It quickly became apparent that there was mutual admiration between the two teams, and stories and tall tales were told long after the roadsweepers began to clear away the detritus of the day.

As X-Ray, Mjölnir, and Celestus began to compare biceps, Akira gently led the white-haired Albion to a quiet spot on the pavement.

“You saluted Doctor Tomorrow earlier, but we didn’t think he existed in our time stream.”

Albion smiled warmly, a light in his eyes despite his age.

“Son, he gathered us together, covertly, at the start of the War. He was the mastermind behind most of our operations, only to vanish as mysteriously as he first appeared. None of us saw him again, until… until now. Hasn’t aged though, the swine.”

A tear trickled from his eye, then he straightened his back and nodded.

“Great times, son. The best of times and the worst.”

Finis ~ Lest We Forget

***

“That’s how you make things better. Don’t you see?” “Of course you don’t.”
Gaviel

Gaviel was a technician with Time Watch working in the City at the End of Time, Gaviel was a troubled woman. Her strong creative streak and ego drove her to look for more ‘artistic input’ beyond her assignments. She thought they could do more than counter temporal chaos and subtlety alter events for the good of all. “Time Watch loved plain grey walls. Some of us yearn to paint in multicoloured hues.”

Eventually, she secretly defected to the Futurekin Sect, who levied her ambition against their rivals. She tried to find ways to alter temporal events benevolently, to make them more ‘colourful’ and ‘exotic’, but it rarely went well.

Her work always backfired or turned bittersweet, and she would blame the Time Keepers, her fellow Agents and bureaucrats, the people she tried to ‘help,’ or the resistant nature of Earth’s time flow.

She couldn’t be to blame she would tell herself. Failure wore down her good intentions, and her ego twisted them. Eventually, she no longer cared about the results of her allocated problems and became more focused on simply fomenting change.

Hiding from the Agency and utilising chronal anchors, she explored the Miniverses, slices of dangerous continuity removed by the Time Keepers to preserve the timeline.

In the Miniverse of Trīgintā Ūnus, she found a moment where she allied with a group of cross-temporal criminals and battled the powered team over a Preserver artefact known as the Epoch Stone.

When it shattered in that conflict, the temporal backlash slowed everybody present and set time off-course.

Contacting her deceased alternate self, using a fragment of the Epoch Stone as a Chronal Anchor, she merged with it. Even as jaded as she was, her capabilities took her aback. In aiding villains, she started redirecting the course of history. Acting from outside the timeline, she manipulates it more clearly than from within.

Given that Doctor Tomorrow set up Time Watch initially, recruited the agents with time travel ability or able to act as Chronal anchors she hoped by ‘removing’ him from the picture before he could act would prevent the Time Keepers from rectifying her changes to the timelines.

Note all versions of Dr Tomorrow have the power to freeze time or time travel to a greater or lesser degree but without a functional passport or temporal navigation device they have limited ability to control the specific time period they will arrive at – the further away in time (past or future) they try to travel to the less control they have over when or where they will arrive.

Gaviel had the frustration of a service worker told their ideas are no good—and if an idea’s merit was measured in the benefits to others, hers were particularly dire. She saw history as a narrative without inherent value beyond the story it told. She’s obsessed with the Team because, somewhere deep down, she feels guilt for their deaths. However, she’s not going to deal with it healthily and is grandiose in a very self-centred way. It’s not about them; it’s about the great thing she’s doing for them, a gift born of hubris rather than kindness.