"We have to get him back!" said Danvers.
"Yes, you're right," said Dave. He looked at the control panel in front of him. They still had a partial lock on the head scientist.
"It appears that your window maker operates on a similar frequency to my portal generator. When the two of them are active and near each other they create portals, which are a combination of your viewpoint and the dimensional placing." He went over to the other control panel. "Now the problem with the time differential you have is to do with the frequency setting. My generator is automatically preventing you from seeing my dimension's true time. I think that if it were to happen, our two worlds would be sucked in to the portal, destroying each other, though I'll have to check that with my own scientists when I get back. You'll have to find a different frequency to view our future, but I'm not a temporal mechanic." Danvers was listening and doing some calculations of his own.
"If I adjust the frequency to the right area, we can see what is happening?"
"No, that frequency is the same as my frequency. You can see any other time, except that of where my world is at the moment."
"I thought as much, but wasn't sure. I think that's why the mini-portals to your world opened before when we experimenting."
Dave frowned as he fiddled with the machine. Then he smiled.
"There you go," he said and a portal opened. The head scientist came back through the portal which then died. "It just needed the diamond filament adjusting to re-open the portal to my world." Danvers went over to the machine and removed the filament. "It's too dangerous to interfere in your or even my planet's history. Who knows what damage he could have done if he had been there forever."
"Sir," said the scientist," I saw open access water!"
"We use water to power our machinery over here," explained Danvers to Dave. "To have it as open access as you do is forbidden here. In trying to keep our world safe, we robbed ourselves of some of it's beauty." He sounded a touch sad and there was a hint of regret in his eyes
"Listen, I'd love to stay but I have to get home," said Dave. "I'm having a meal with a few friends."
"I understand," said Danvers. "Come back, soon!"
"I will," said Dave and activated the portal home. It flared to life and Dave stepped through. When Dave arrived back at C&C, he noticed that the R&D lab was strangely deserted. His gauntlet suddenly flickered and died as it's power dropped to zero. Weird, thought Dave. He went up to the meeting hall where he had left his guests. It was empty and dimly lit. He walked in to the centre of the room. "Hello!" he shouted and he heard a noise behind him. He turned quickly and then felt something hit him over the back of his head. He fell to the floor, fighting off the urge to black out. He turned to see who had hit him. It was Blaquesmith.
"I didn't think you'd return, avatarr," he said. "Now I will have to kill you again." The urge to black out was amplified as he heard this and so he decided to take advantage of it and slipped out of consciousness.
Dave awoke with a headache. The last thing he remembered was Blaquesmith hitting him with something. He didn't care what with, he wanted to know why. He reached out with his mind, trying to find Jo, but if she could hear him, she wasn't replying.
"This is very odd," said Dave.
"Isn't it?" came the reply. Dave turned around to see several familiar faces. There were X-Warriors from all of the teams about the room, and in the centre of the room were Blaquesmith and a man he had not seen in a very long time.
"Lord Geneva?" whispered Dave.
"You know me?" he said. He turned to Blaquesmith. "Commander, what is going on here?"
"I don't know, sir. I said we should have killed him."
"You did that before. He came back."
"He wouldn't do it again," said Blaquesmith menacingly.
"What is going on here?" asked Dave.
"You do not know?" countered Lord Geneva. "You destroyed this world, avatarr, and twice you have returned to see your handiwork." Dave decided to improvise.
"I've just come back from the dead, right?"
"Yes," said Blaquesmith. "You gave me a good fight, but once I trapped you on the astral plane, you were mine."
"I don't remember. Look, where's Jo? Why is everyone together like this?"
Lord Geneva looked at him, then at Blaquesmith.
"He seems genuine," said Blaquesmith, "but with his cosmic powers he could be fooling my pisonics. I'd go along with him. It'd not be the first time we would walk in to a trap."
"Nor will it be the last, my friend," said Geneva. "Okay, avatarr. When you first visited the Earth, all those years ago, you sent a signal ending the human race. An alien invasion fleet monitored your conversation with Order and Chaos, and determined to have the 'potential' of our race for themselves. When you left and did not return, they invaded the planet, taking us over with advanced technologies."
"Why in blazes would I not return? What about your daughter? Where is Jo?"
"I do not know to whom you refer. I have never married. I have no children."
"What the hell is going on here?" cried Dave. "I don't understand!" His outcry was rewarded by a TK shot to his nervous system, which sent him to the floor in pain.
"Shut it!" cried Blaquesmith.
"I don't care if you were once my friend, you do that to me again, I swear, I'll kill you," whispered Dave.
"You'll try," laughed Blaquesmith. "Do realise what you cost this planet?" he shouted, no longer laughing. He was angry. "I am from the future, I have seen what your actions have wrought. In my time, there will be as little as a hundred members of the human race - all in slavery, all with enhanced attributes. My own powers got me here, where I joined the last group of resistance against the invaders."
"Be at peace, my friend," said Geneva. "I will continue." He turned to Dave. "My own power is also time travel. I was in the past when the invasion occurred. I travelled throughout the ages, watching the enemy slaughter the human race, taking only it's richest genetic stock, those who would fulfil humanity's potential. Resistance cells were crushed quickly. Slavery was introduced. This building here has been secure for the past twenty years, as I gathered this team of super beings together, preparing for a final
assault on the enemy. Blaquesmith came back to tell me we failed, and to lend his expertise to the battles, in order to liberate humanity. Then two years ago, you returned to Earth.
"You came down to the planet to how it had progressed. You saw the destruction that had been wrought, you used your cosmic powers to judge the situation, and found it fair. You decreed the situation should remain the same, and no argument from us would change your mind. We attacked you, we would have forced you to help us remove the evil from the planet Earth."
"Good and evil are abstract terms to cosmic beings, if the universe was in balance there was nothing I could do to alter your situation. I am sorry, but there it is."
"You were a lot colder about it then," hissed Blaquesmith. "In the battle with you we lost many of our best warriors, including my family."
"I'm sorry about her. You and Crystal had a great destiny ahead of you."
"Her name was Lionna!"
"You married Fever? That is so other you, Micah," said Dave, in surprise, smiling in spite of himself and he knew he'd made a mistake. He was right and Blaquesmith was outraged.
"No one has ever called me that since you killed her. You killed her and our children with a wave of your hand, and you laughed."
"I laughed?" said Dave in sudden shock. "I was bent on an act of vengeance and for cosmic beings that can be an equivalent of madness." If a cosmic being took events in to his own hands then there were always going to be disasterous consequences. "My God, how far did you push me?"
"Perhaps we went too far with you, avatarr," said Geneva, coldly, "but for every hit we gave you, you made our agonies a thousand fold. But we did wound you grievously, allowing Blaquesmith to take his vengeance on the Astral Plane. He slaughtered you, a thousand times before he finally killed you. We then had your body teleported to the sun and we thought that was the end of you. Until now." Dave felt a TK grip around him as he was lifted in to the air. This was trouble, he could feel it. The creation of the AoX paled in to significance by this. For whatever reason, he and Jo had never met. If they had never met, he would have had no reason to return to Earth. If the avatarr was making frequent visits to the Earth, the aliens would not dare attack. It all came down to Jo. Why had he not sensed her? Time's new course would not affect him as the person who was him was dead. There would be no cosmic powers for him now, and no way of him to understand what had happened, unless he went back in time. There were too many 'ifs' and not enough facts and right now, time travel wasn't happening. He prepared himself for the worst.
"Take him to your ship, Blaquesmith," said Geneva. "We'll find out how his rebirth has left him."
"My pleasure," smiled Blaquesmith. Dave saw the look in his eyes.
"Don't," he warned. Blaquesmith laughed at the futility of Dave's staement and fired another TK shot at Dave's nervous system and this time Dave passed out, and dreamt of numerous ways of killing his assailant.
As he dreamt he also saw a familiar face.
"Eternity?" he asked.
Who else, Dave Goldfish? The changes in the time stream have not reached my being yet, Eternity is a vast place. But I can feel the changes occurring within me. Avatarr, this time I cannot help you for 'you' are dead and so you are alone. Be advised this is your Earth, though it is no longer the Earth you knew. Return whence you came and right what is wrong and finally you will return home. This is not the way it should be, but for now it is the way it is.
"That sounds vaguely familiar, old friend."
Avatarr, beware, the universe always ends in the same way, as you know.
"Are your feelings towards me changing?"
Slowly.
"But slowly enough, for me to right the damage? Before it becomes permanent?"
You should know the answer, Goldfish?
"Why?"
It is your dream, after all...all...all...all...all...all... Eternity's voice faded away, and Dave awoke.
The dream was fresh in his mind and so he knew it was up to him to save the universe. He tried to get up but couldn't. He looked about and found himself strapped to a table.
"Don't bother to move," said Blaquesmith as he prepared some sort of machinery. "My scans of you indicate you don't have your cosmic powers anymore. They also indicate there is something wrong about you. I call this machine Cerebro. With it I will scan your mind. It is highly experimental and it may completely destroy your mind. Never mind, though. I won't feel a thing."
"I will kill you," said Goldfish.
"No, you won't," said Lord Geneva, who was standing out of Dave's visual range. "You touch him in any way and you'll be dead so fast you won't know it." He turned to Blaquesmith. "Activate Cerebro."
Blaquesmith grinned as he switched the machine on. Dave's mind filled with pain.
"Oh, did I forget to mention that it'll really hurt?" said Blaquesmith. He then sent to Dave telepathically. :::This is for Lionna, and everyone else you killed!::: The feelings of revenge came through to Dave very clearly. Then his mind started to go back to when he had been promoted to Chief of Operations at C&C. "Got it," said Blaquesmith. "I have his mind from two years ago. The images that I see will be displayed on the screens." Geneva nodded. He sat down ready to watch Dave's memories, not realising he was about to see a defining moment in the history of Goldfish and Geneva...
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