“Ouch, I’ll never get used to that” shouted Tina.
“It’s the damn wormhole, keeps on shifting the event horizon” Drax added.
“Actually, it’s the frequency of spatial elevation and land topography that is affected by changes in time sometimes over thousands of years so since the wormhole is generally quasi-fixed in space and time in relative to position its position will appear to shift and deposit us at a different location when it’s the same but in fact was the environment that has changed from one time period to another.” Mercedes dissertated to her stunned comrades.
“Well said, professor”, joked James. “You sure know a lot.”
”Too bad the creators of the stone couldn’t fix that little mishap,” said Drax. “Suppose we land in a body of water one time or an uninhabitable region like a snow covered peak or dead space” he finished with his hands on his hips.
Mercedes gulped.
“Oh my God, were together again” said Tina.
“Awesome” screamed Mercedes.
“Yes” said James.
“Oh crap, great, I missed you guys” said Drax.
The four ran to one another and embraced and as they did, the time stone in Drax’s and Mercedes’ hands merged together as one and became solid together.
“We’re reunited and it feels so good” sang Tina.
“Where are we now or when are we?” Asked Mercedes.
James looked down around the hill and town in the valley below. “And about the time stone, I’m sure that there are probably safety measures we haven’t learned about yet, but now it’s dead. So, let’s get moving.” They sigh and walk down the valley to the town below, Drax clicks a button from the car alarm pocket beeper of the scorpion car and the vehicle fades out and vanishes blending into the surrounding, “a stealth mode” he winks and the others smile impressed. They head down happy that for the moment at least they are together again. Drax smirked with a sudden rhetorical comment, “did I ever tell you guys how much I love each and every one of you? You’re awesome!”
In solitude in the well lit room of Valandir Mansion in the far end of the small town below, the isolated house that loomed over head like a monolith, a lonely figure sits in a large chair covered in satin and the room adorned by the candle light of multiple candelabra and a mantelpiece with a bust of Shakespeare amongst a litter of old world relics and artifacts. The elderly gentleman had a balding hairline, grayish scraps of loosely drawn hair, a silver tongued smile, and dark pupils as large as olives. He sat curled up like a thin skeleton of a man shivering no matter how hot it seemed indoors. He wore a red velvet robe and held a pipe puffing away. “Soon the time will come.” He said to himself over and over every night as he waited to fall asleep.
“Well, it seems by the local newspaper, ‘the Flintown Gazette’ the time period is March 18, 1947.” Said Drax reading the better headlines, “local affiliate buys out town treasurer. There’s something you don’t hear about every day.”
“Maybe there is something there that can help us get home” said James.
“And clear our names” said Tina.
“That will be two cents please” said a young woman approaching, she had chestnut brown hair and smiled at the foursome.
“Oh sorry,” said Drax putting the paper back.
“Yeah, we’re still flat broke” said James as they all walked away together. Then suddenly a swift movement stirred the wind before them. “What the …?” Said James. And what stood before them, a young woman with an adventurous and grungy outfit.
“Who are you people?” Said the woman, her slender form and athletic build made her seem vivacious and her determined grit and hardnosed personality made her seem dangerous. She wore a tight leather outfit from neck to toe and a white twill shirt and vest, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and a brown fedora decorated her head with blonde locks and curls flowing down her face. Like a femme fatale she exhibited a primary virtue of never showing fatigue and maintaining courage in her pursuits. She had clear skin, smoother complexion, and ears that extended slightly upward and to the side with her hair curling about them. “I am Eugenia Smack, Female Bounty Hunter.”
“We are travelers just passing through” said Drax.
“I am the law in this town. Do not let me catch you up to no good” she stirred around with a jerking motion and stiffness about her as her words came out clumsily with a strong Latin American accent.
“I think we can manage fine.” Said Drax.
“Make sure that you do as I will always have my eye out for you” she twirled away and was gone in an instant.
“Weird chick” said Mercedes.
“Interesting personality for sure” said Drax.
“Did you notice anything about the way she moved and her ears?” Questioned Drax.
“Yeah” said Tina. “What was up with that?”
“She is a human-beast hybrid” said Drax.
“What? Is that possible?” Asked Mercedes.
“Yes, sometime after the initial encounter, the Machination began experimenting with the idea to clone a beast and someone suggested combining human DNA to accelerate the transfiguration process. I didn’t think it was successful until now.”
“Look at those people” said Tina. The four looked on as they walked deeper into town and saw several different people in routine activity, a postman making delivers, a pizza boy in a car, a paperboy on a bike, a grocer carrying bags, and a milkman making his rounds. Each of them and others had strange features on their faces and bodies. One had extra hair on his face near his eyes, another with a wrinkled extra limb on her body, another with small blue orbs on his face and bear arms and legs, and yet another exhibited superior agility and speed in his rounds as he had a long furry tail curved around his right leg.
“They are all human-beast hybrids” said Drax with a shock.
“This whole town is” said Mercedes.
CHAPTER 81
“What the hell do we do now?” James asked.
“It seems we are stuck here until the time stone regenerates.” Mercedes said.
“God knows how long that will be” said Tina “so we might as well take advantage of the situation and have some fun for once.”
“This wasn’t fun to you what we been through?” Asked Drax.
“Almost being killed? Ha, no.” Said Tina.
“I am feeling strange like my powers are growing again” said James “and I feel confused and lost.”
“You’re not alone.” Said Mercedes. “We got your back.”
“I know but I think they are getting stronger, so strong it’s scary.” James waved his right arm and summoned a small car towards them. “I just wish I knew more.”
“Whoa” said Tina, “keep that trigger under lock for now.”
“Yeah” said Mercedes.
“James” said Drax “I know you are of the old maxim that knowledge is power… but sometimes what you don’t know can make all the difference in the world. Keeping yourself oblivious to some things may help you discover something more promising and prevent bad things that may occur, like not being to control powers that grow beyond measure, you understand?”
“Oh wow, that’s true.”
CHAPTER 82
A young policeman in uniform is walking down the street monitoring his beat and feeling confident but yet struggling as one of the first African Americans to make it on the local Police Force. He knew there was a series of gruesome murders plaguing the country side and he was on patrol to monitor for suspicious activity in the old industrial part of town, now mostly abandoned. No one could explain how the victims died, puncture marks in their necks and completely devoid of blood as if something out of a horror movie attacked them and drank their inner fluids. He sees some movement in an abandoned warehouse and stumbles over to investigate and what he sees is a secret meeting in the abandoned warehouse. As he peers through the window he is shocked at what he sees that he sees the meeting between three men in
black suits and hats who enter after leaving an unmarked black sedan parked outside. He is terrified when he sees them approach a weird looking creature with long horns on the top of his head, a brown snout like a wildebeest, a pair of giant wings resembling those of a bat, dark long brown hair around his waist and down his backside and he was standing upright like a man on hooves with arched legs like a horse, and a tail like a pterodactyl.
“It’s a Satyr” he whispers as he nearly collapses at the sight of it but hears a dialogue that shocks him.
“The killings have to stop because they are drawing too much attention to the project” said one of the men in black as another quickly talked after him, the three seem to voice themselves in unison.
“There will be a coming soon so unnecessary attention is unwarranted.”
"We can obtain a substitute for your cravings, Satyr!"
"I have already looked. There is none! It ain’t worth it, guys. I must feed or I will not live to see the coming." Said Satyr.
"Then we will have to employ an alternative." The three men appearing to speak with one voice, a dark and crumpled voice, a voice of evil emit a strange shadowy odor of smoke. One removes a device from his jacket pocket and the others stare endlessly into the creature with beady eyes like coal as if harbingers of a soulless machine needing all their concentration as one to make any movement possible and the movement is mechanical and artificial. The man with the device holds it up, a small silver cube with no markings and a smooth surface. The cube suddenly lights up with no indication of a lighting mechanism as if by the will of the three men staring into him and it's bluish aura appears shocking to Satyr as he curiously eyes it but then realizes their plan to subdue him so he tries to escape by flying away but doesn't make it two feet off the ground when he realizes it’s too late and he is caught by a beam of light emanating in the blink of an eye from the device and enveloping itself around him. The threesome acted as one and restored the device to the pocket of the man on the far right and turned as one rotating on an axel of air with one motion as if joined together at their waists. They faced the direction of the cop peering in the window in awe and he suddenly jumped back as their pale complexion, dry skin, and pitch black small round eyes bore into him. He swore he saw a shadowy aura surround their lidless eyes if only for a moment and the motionless embodiment of their facial features, their mouths a small slit with no apparent lips and their nose a small orb with no point or curve. He knew they saw him and tried to run but there was something about them of which he could not run and in an instant he turned his head as he heard sirens approaching. When he turned his attention back to the warehouse window, he was amazed to see that they were all gone. He turned and felt as if he was dreaming and felt as if he had been in another dimension. “Weird.”
James sits with Tina on the stoop of an apartment complex in the meager community and waits.
“What are we waiting for Tina?” Asked James.
“Drax said he needs to get something like a letter or postcard from someone about someplace in the mail place here. He said he recognized one of the people there and Mercedes went with him because it’s best for us not to travel alone in this environment. I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“Yeah” he smirked wryly.
“Tina, I was thinking a lot lately about everything we have been through and what do you think it all means?” Asked James.
“You mean like ‘meaning of life’?” Tina asked.
“Yeah!” James exclaimed in recognition. “Well I always grew up with the notion that we all have a mission to complete in life, a destiny!” “I wish I still believed that. After all the hardship and struggling we have been through, it is hard to believe in anything anymore.”
“I guess you got to have something to believe in sometimes but it’s not always necessary” Tina said.
“I wish I could believe in something… I feel that there is nothing left to believe in” said James.
“Do you have to?” Tina asked.
“I don’t know … It’s just, how we can think we’re doing the right thing? Are we really helping to make a difference or are we succumbing to every Satyr or other villain that is out there waiting and ready to take advantage. It just seems like it’s not worth it or is there another way?”
“Beats me” said Tina. “It’s like with me. I never had a real family. I lost my parents at a young age. I grew up in a boarding school after being abused all my life and they were the only family I have ever known but it wasn’t really the same. It was artificial. No one to really care for me you know?”
“Yeah.” James frowned looking at his friend.
“Now, being with you, Mercedes, and Milton, I think I am starting to feel like what a family is supposed to be like. You look out for one another above all else and got each other’s backs all the time. I finally know what it means to have a family, a real family.” She smiled.
“That’s good. But destiny-wise, I think that I forgot what it is that I started fighting for.” James said.
“Maybe that’s why we’re here. Maybe I’m here to remind you. We were put on this same path together for a reason. It’s bigger than both of us.” Tina said.
“Sometimes, I feel I’m a rebel without any cause.” Said James wallowing in utter sorrow, depression, and desperation. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like there is anything left in the world that is worth saving. I feel so bad for thinking like that.”
“I don’t think you can be bad in anyway. You’re too sweet and good. You were blessed with amazing powers and only used them to help those in need” replied Tina wildly and passionately as she reached out and gripped his hand. “James, there is hope in the shadows of doubt.”
“You’re getting philosophical on me?” James uttered.
“I can read you know” she laughed forcing a brief smile from him. “I know love and friendship can be some things worth fighting for, otherwise I am clueless as to what is too.”
“There is this power I got and something is growing within me that I feel sometimes I cannot control or figure out a damn how it…I think it’s trying to break free and I am afraid I won’t be able to stop it or want to.” James added.
“Maybe you’re not supposed to or maybe it’s who you are really and what you’re meant to be.” Tina said and smiled.
“You think so?” asked James.
“You know what I think? I think that when you are ready to do what you were meant to do, you will do a great miracle. I know you have the potential to be really great. I know it because just believing in it is enough. After all, knowledge is power.”
He looked at her for a moment and smiled but then frowned again. “Like I said, I don’t believe in anything anymore. I don’t even believe in myself anymore.” James said upsettingly distrait and focusing on his worries.
“It’s ok if you don’t believe in yourself,” she smiled after a long pause, “because I do.”
“Maybe I was wrong….” James said looking at the skies above. “You know which the better time is?” asked James.
“What?” asked Tina.
“The next time!” Said James. “Let’s go!” They got up and headed out towards the post office at the center of town.
At the post office, Drax nodded to a man with a postal uniform and strange mustache that stretched out like whiskers on a raccoon.
“Thank you” as he took the letter from the man who scattered off.
“What’s that?” Asked Mercedes.
“Something from an old friend. When I recognized this friend of mine who works for the postal service, I put it together that it’s no accident we’re here.” Drax said.
“What do you mean?” Mercedes asked.
“Remember when I explained about experiments by the machination with human and beast DNA?” Drax asked.
“Yeah.” Mercedes replied.
“Well, the experiments were also with time travel to pre-war effort periods of isolation some operativ
es from the more successful experiment results were sent here when a hole in time was erupted by accident. Some of the agency’s original team existed here, even if later went elsewhere. But others were back in the late nineteenth century, 1880 AD to be exact.” Drax said.
“How do you know that?” Mercedes asked.
“Because they reached out to us by leaving letters for long periods of time in the post office, like this one…” he held the letter up. “In short, we aren’t the only ones in this century who are from the future!”
“Who else could there be?” She asked.
“The other agents, including our old counterpart, Broad Staffnight and the team that disappeared that night from the Magnitude fortress for starters also are trapped in time.”
“The chanting in the citadel that rainy night?” Tina asked rhetorically as she and James walked up to their friends.
“Exactly” said Drax.
“And where there is Broad, there is a Satyr?” Mercedes asked rhetorically.
“Indeed.” Said Drax. “They want the time stone and they have killed for it and would stop at nothing to obtain its ultimate power that the ancient peoples of the Yucatan worshipped as the source of divine power and control over the entire world in all of time, the key to time travel.” They walk out of the post office together.
The Time Stone Page 38