As the dust cleared from the explosion, Dave picked himself up and looked around. Blaquesmith's ship was trashed and it was doubtful if it would ever work again. The supply cupboard had been opened and guns of all types had fallen out. Lord Geneva was trapped under some weapons and could not move. From what Dave could see, he was badly wounded. Blaquesmith was trying to free him.
"Why don't you use your powers?" asked Dave as he went over to help.
"Some sort of interdiction field is blocking off our powers. Under normal circumstances, he'd teleport out." Dave tried his own powers but they too were not working.
"I have a really bad feeling about this," he said, as he worked to free Geneva. As Dave and Blaquesmith freed him, Geneva groaned.
"Avatarr, don't let it end like this. Find a way to correct time and save us all," he rasped, his breathing ragged. "Tell Jo I love her."
He looked at Blaquesmith. "You didn't warn me of this," he said to him and died. Blaquesmith turned to Dave.
"This is all your fault. He wasn't supposed to die for another ten years. Your presence here has disrupted the continuum. We are all finished."
"Not if I can help it. Pass me a gun. I'm gonna help you repel these invaders." Blaquesmith looked at him uncertainly. Without his telepathy he couldn't read Dave at all. Dave smiled. "You don't have a choice, Blaquesmith." Blaquesmith passed him a gun.
"After this is over, we have a score to settle."
"Damn right," said Dave. "Now let's get to work."
They joined the battle, but the invaders were slowly advancing and the rebels were taking a lot of losses. Without their powers they weren't fighting as well as they could. Two people though stood out as examples to the other warriors. Dave and Blaquesmith were fighting with all the viciousness they possessed. Blaquesmith was working out his anger and frustration about being unable to save his wife and Dave was angry about this whole situation. In his mind it came down to the Science world. Whatever had happened there had had an affect on his own world. In trying to save it he had destroyed it - at least for now. He had to get back there and sort out this mess, but to do that he would have to survive this battle, and he was damned if he was going to die here. The battle raged on for an hour or more and soon everyone was getting tired. The X-Warriors were being routed, and only the force of will of Goldfish and Blaquesmith were driving on the remainder. However the enemy called in reinforcements and the battle was nearly over.
Blaquesmith was surrounded but he was taking out as many as he could, but he missed one who brought his energy weapon full to bear on him. Dave however didn't miss him.
"Blaquesmith, duck!" he cried as he fired towards him. Blaquesmith hit the ground, dropping his gun as he did so, as the Dave's shot flew over his head and hit the invader full in the chest, killing him instantly. Dave fought his way over to Blaquesmith.
"You saved me," he said. "Why?" Dave smiled, which for some reason made Blaquesmith nervous.
"Because," said Dave. His voice was cold and calm. He stood back out of Blaquesmith's reach.
"All I've given you is grief ever since we met. I even meant to kill you," Blaquesmith said, then his mood changed. "For what it's worth, you should have let me die. This changes nothing." Dave laughed.
"You know, I'm glad you said that," said Dave and pointed his gun at Blaquesmith's head.
"What are you doing?" asked Blaquesmith. "You just saved my life."
"I said I'd kill you if you hit my nervous system with a TK blast again. You ignored me. Don't make the same mistake in your next life." He fired his weapon at Blaquesmith's head.
"You bastard" said Blaquesmith as he died.
"Yeah, but I've no regrets." Inside it bothered Dave that he felt no regrets. Blaquesmith was his friend. He should feel some guilt, but he didn't. It was an issue he would have to deal with at some point. He lay down his weapon and surrendered to the invaders. He had a plan, assuming they didn't kill him.
The invaders had decimated the rebellion and most of the X-Warriors were now dead. Some had been kept aside for slavery, but most were gunned down without mercy. Dave was taken to one of the lead craft which had attacked them and was strapped to a table. The invaders did many tests on him and examined with wonder the gauntlet that he wore.
"You have great genetic potential," he was told. "You will make an excellent servant. However, there is the problem of this device." They presented him with the gauntlet. All it's buttons were up, so the device was switched off. "It has no power that we can find, so we cannot activate it. How does it work?"
#"It needs charging up," said Dave, smiling inside. He told them how to charge the gauntlet up and what frequency to use. They did so and the gauntlet surged in to life. The first part of Dave's plan was working. "To switch it on it has to be in contact with my skin. The metallic structure of it interacts with my powers."
"From our scans of you this does seem to be an accurate assessment of your powers. We will allow you access to them but be advised any tricks will get you killed instantly. There is only one way out of this room and it is guarded."
"Of course," said Dave. They allowed him to be freed and deactivated the interdiction field. Dave powers flowed through him again and he called the gauntlet to his wrist. He pressed the red button to activate it and then he pressed the blue button. A portal surged in to life. "This portal can take me anywhere. The green button can take me to anytime," he told them.
"Demonstrate. One of us will accompany you."
"No problem. After you?" he asked.
"Yes," said his captor, "to make sure there are no tricks."
He walked through the portal and Dave followed. Dave then pressed the red button to activate the portal home, and grabbed the alien by his armour and threw him through the portal. Then he pressed the green button to shut the portal down. He had escaped and he was in the generator room of the window machine. "Yes!" said Dave. He turned to the head scientist. "Get Danvers down here, right away!"
"Yes, Commander Goldfish," he said and summoned his boss down. It was time to fix time.
Alex Danvers raced down to the window room, in a complete panic.
"Dave, thank Creation!" he said as he met up with Dave Goldfish. "The instant you left here, I got a call from the sales department. All the graphic magazines are rewriting themselves."
"Yes, I know," said Dave. "I think when your man when back through time he altered a critical event in my world's past that has redesigned the timeline. I was unaffected by being here. The gist of it is, my world is now dead. Somehow a living hell was accidentally created by my past self."
"Yes, we have gotten the idea. Whatever you did is severely disrupting the sales figures. Some of our magazines are completely disappearing. The fans are in a mad panic. They are wanting their money back, blaming us for this."
"Technically, it is your fault, but it also lies with me. Hold on a minute," said Goldfish. "I can find out exactly what the problem is. Do you keep back issues?"
"We are a graphic magazine shop. Of course we have back issues. What are you looking for?"
"The history of the avatarr, when I came to Earth and met Jo for the first time." Danvers whistled.
"You don't ask for much, do you?" he said. "Only one of the rarest titles we have."
"Rare?" asked Dave.
"Yes, the seven issue mini-series is one of the best sellers we ever had. It had a very low print run and is worth a small fortune. We only have one complete set in stock and things like that we keep in the Vault."
"The Vault?"
"The Vault. Doctor Valiant," he said to the head scientist, "I'll need a secondary authorisation to enter the Vault. You are on the list."
"Yes, sir. Your office?" Valiant asked.
"Yes. However we will have to fight our way through the crowds to get up there, unfortunately."
"Allow me," said Goldfish and went upstairs ahead of them. Danvers and Valiant looked at each other and went after him.
In the shop, a temporal vortex was sweeping it's way through, altering everything it touched. The crowds however were unfazed by this, though when it touched them they departed as if nothing had ever happened. The talking Blaquesmith doll had disappeared completely and the shop was a mess. Dave took a deep breath as he fought his way through. He had another one of his plans, and this one was echoing through his head as a mistake. He stood up on top of one of the serving counters and shouted out "Hello everybody! I am Commander Dave Goldfish, Guardian of the
Fringe!" The crowd stopped shouting and looked at him. So far so good, he thought.
"Prove it!" someone cried out. Dave lifted the man in to the air with the iron in his blood. "W-w-w-works for me!" cried the man, very frightened. Someone looked at one of the comics she was holding. It had not yet been touched by the vortexes and she looked at the front cover. It showed Dave and Jo entering the realm of magic.
"It is him," she said. "He wears the gauntlet!" The crowd gasped and then mobbed him. I knew this was a bad idea, he thought, and he pulled himself out of the shop and in to the street outside. Inside Danvers and Valiant made a dash for Danver's office.
"If we can get to my window, we can open it and Dave can levitate himself up," said Danvers as they raced up the stairs. Valiant nodded. Temporal physics were not his thing, he was an engineer and he was confused by the whole situation. He was just going along with it as he was swept up in it's tide. They got up to Danvers office and
opened the window.
"Dave," he shouted, "up here." Dave was surrounded on all sides. He looked up and jumped. The jump took him a few feet in to the air and Dave levitated himself up to the window. Danvers hauled him in. Dave was exhausted. The levitation had taken a lot out of him. "It must be this place," he said. "It works in reverse to the magic realm. My powers aren't what they were here. Usually levitation isn't that hard." Danvers helped him over to a chair and went over to his desk.
Outside the fans were chanting 'Goldfish! Goldfish!' Danvers smiled, as he realised that if Dave put the continuum to rights, the profits would sore. He pressed the panel on the desk, then beckoned over to Valiant, who did the same. A loud whooshing noise was heard behind Dave as the Vault opened.
"Welcome to the Vault, Commander!" said Danvers. "In here lie the answers to your questions." He walked over to one filing cabinet and produced the seven issues Dave needed to solve the mystery.
"Tales of the Avatarr," said Dave, and sat down to read the comics. It told him of what happened, but not why. For whatever reason he had not met Jo. It had to be something that happened whilst Valiant was there, thought Goldfish. So he asked him. "Well, I bumped in to this lady. I think she fell over in to the path of a carriage. I think she died, but I'm not sure. I was taken aback by the lake in the park." Then it hit Dave. He had met Jo in a park.
The only possible explanation he could think of for this whole affair was that it was Jo who had died.
"I've got to go back," he said. "Before we opened that portal to the past. I need to convince myself to go to Earth before I did so originally and meet Jo earlier than planned, then when she dies, I can resurrect her." Danvers looked at him.
"Why not travel back and just stop her from dying in the first place," he asked.
"Because he wasn't there when I was there," said Valiant, finally getting the gist of what was being said.
"Exactly!" said Dave. "We've got to engineer events in the window room so I can travel back to the past, allowing me to save Jo and correct the timeline."
"Will it work?" asked Danvers.
"I hope so," said Dave. "I hope so."
Later that day, after the shop had closed and the screaming fans were all outside, Dave Goldfish, Alex Danvers and Doctor Valiant made there way down to the window room. The new plan was a simple one - they create a portal to the past before Valiant had travelled back, and to let Goldfish go back, contact the avatarr and get him to Earth before he arrived originally. At least it sounded simple to Dave, the others were not too sure about it all.
"How will you contact yourself when you arrive?" asked Danvers.
"Well, Alex, what I propose to do is to use the gauntlet to create a major rip in the space/time continuum which will summon me," said Dave.
"But how will you get back?"
"I'll send me home."
"You really understand this, don't you?" asked Valiant.
"It must be something to do with being a cosmic being. Humans think of time as linear more often than not. It isn't. There are no specific rules and give it a few years your world may understand this. Mine will never truly know." He sighed. "It's a shame really." He looked towards the two people in front of him. "Let's get to work."
"Now do you understand what I did before to bring you back?" asked Dave after he had shown Valiant what to do with the machine.
"Yes, I've got it. Good luck Commander"
"Thanks," said Dave. He turned to Danvers. "Alex, keep an eye on the time circuits. When we activate the window there will be an amount of flux."
"Yes, I've got it. I think I can limit the flux to within two months of the time you want."
"Good," said Dave. "Open the window." Valiant pressed a few button as and the window opened. They saw the world Dave had just left behind and Dave's gauntlet was sparking. The window began to hum as it came in to contact with the frequency of the gauntlet. Danvers turned the dial back to back through the time period, seeing the history of the other world. Danvers also pressed the record button.
"Hey, this'll make the best seller list for sure," he explained to Dave. Dave smiled, he liked this world. Soon the correct frequency had been reached and the time period Dave was looking for was available. Dave looked at the dial and adjusted the frequency of his gauntlet. The window began to hum again.
"You'll only have a few more seconds to make the crossing," warned Danvers.
"I know," said Dave and pressed the red button. The window became a portal which was screaming.
"Go!" cried Danvers. "I can't hold it much longer!" Dave nodded and dived through the portal. Danvers reacted quickly and changed the frequency again and the danger was passed. "Come on," he said to Valiant. "Let's go see if everything returns to normal."
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