Strike 3: The Returning Sunrise

by Charlie Wood

  “Orion has really good eyesight,” Scatterbolt explained.

  “And I also have these,” Orion added, “which doesn’t hurt.”

  Orion held up a pair of binoculars to his eyes. From where he stood at the edge of a cliff overlooking the island, he could look down and see the closed, gated entrance to the naval base.

  “See anything out of the ordinary, O?” Keplar asked.

  “Not yet—unless you count nobody being around as out of the ordinary. The only people I can see are two armed guards at the entrance. And something tells me they aren’t the normal guards who watch over this place.”

  “They’re Rytonian,” the dog said.

  “They must be, though they just appear to be normal humans. Whatever is going on here, it’s clearly going on behind closed doors, and very quietly. Which isn’t surprising.”

  Orion turned to his left, pointing his binoculars downward at a small, empty parking lot, a few feet in front of the entrance.

  “Jennifer, when this base isn’t closed, it’s open for tourists and other visitors, right?”

  “Yeah, they do tours all the time. I used to go with my dad like every summer.”

  “And when it’s open, where do you buy tickets? Right at the front gates?”

  “Yeah, basically. Right outside the gates, at the end of the parking lot.”

  “What do you wanna do?” Keplar asked. “You wanna send Jen and Chad down there, have them act like they are just looking to go on a tour? Then, after they are turned away, hopefully someone will spot them and report back to the Daybreaker that some kids were snooping around?”

  “Possibly,” Orion said. “But it might be too dangerous. I don’t want to send them down there alone, in case the guards or Rigel recognizes them. What I want to do right now is go back to the museum and come up with a way to get—”

  “Uh-oh,” Scatterbolt said, as his yellow eyes lit up.

  The little robot turned around, facing the forest.

  “What is it, Scatterbolt?” Orion asked.

  The little robot blinked his eyes. “Something that was cloaking itself from my radar is no longer cloaking itself.”

  Orion and the others turned around.

  The group was now surrounded by an army of green-skinned Rytonian soldiers. The grim-faced, camouflaged, fatigue-wearing men and women quickly approached Orion, with their laser rifles raised and ready. Looking down, Chad saw the red dot of a laser scope on his chest.

  The leader of the army—a grey-haired, green-skinned woman who was about fifty years old—stepped to the front of the soldiers.

  “Nobody move,” she said to Orion and the others. “Drop your weapons.”

  Keplar placed his plasma cannon on the ground, while Orion dropped his bow. The heroes, Jennifer, and Chad stood in front of the soldiers, with their hands held in the air.

  ***

  Walking through Ruffalo Rock Castle with Wakefield, Agent Everybody, and his father, Tobin followed the king of Ruffalo Rock through the palace’s elaborately decorated hall. As if meeting his father wasn’t strange enough, now Tobin found himself speaking with King Ontombe—a seven-foot-tall, muscular, brown-and-grey feathered eagle, with green eyes, a curved beak, and talon-tipped hands and feet. The deep-voiced, very serious bird was wearing armor made out of chain mail and wielding one of Ruffalo Rock’s signature weapons: a diamond-bladed sword that glowed with a yellow, shining light.

  “When we heard what was happening,” the king said, “and what Rigel had done on the other world, we knew immediately we would help. Here, we are safe—here, we can protect you from Rigel and the others. They would never dare and try to breach this kingdom.”

  “Why is that?” Tobin asked.

  “Because this land is guarded by me and the other animal warriors of Ruffalo Rock. We are the most powerful heroes in the galaxy. We have never been defeated, because no super-villain has ever dared challenge us. All the wrong-doers of Capricious know it would mean certain death to face the animals of Ruffalo Rock.”

  Tobin looked to his father. “That oughta do it.”

  Scott laughed.

  “But we are a peaceful people,” the king continued. “And we are here to help you. We would do anything to help Orion and his friends.”

  Wakefield turned to Tobin. “I came here, Tobin, because Orion and I knew the only way we could truly stop Rigel is if we sent the Daybreaker back to his own timeline. No matter what happens, that needs to be accomplished. So, I’ve been working here on reverse-engineering the Chrono-Key.”

  “Which is possible,” Agent Everybody added, “because dear old dad over there brought his own with him.”

  “So you have a Chrono-Key,” Tobin said, “but it’s not the Chrono-Key that Rigel used to bring the Daybreaker here.”

  “No,” Agent Everybody said, “but this is.”

  Agent Everybody opened his suitcase. Inside, protected by black foam, lay the Chrono-Key.

  “You had that with you the entire time?” Tobin asked. “How’d you get that?”

  Agent Everybody morphed into a green-skinned scientist. “My powers come in ultra-handy when something needs to get stolen. And don’t forget I lived behind the Dark Nebula’s walls for the last month and a half.”

  “And you were able to sneak in there and take Rigel’s Chrono-Key?”

  “Sure was. Took a damn long time, and a damn lot of observation to see who was let into the floor where it was being held, but here it is. Some of my best work, if I do say so myself. The watch they have there now is a dummy, which hopefully they haven’t realized yet.”

  “And,” Wakefield said, “since we have the real one, I can get to work on it and make sure it’s capable of sending the Daybreaker back where he came—through force, if necessary.” He reached in and took the Chrono-Key from Agent Everybody’s suitcase. “Since time is of the essence, to say the blurkoppin’ least, I’m gonna take this to the castle’s airplane hangar and start working on it. You all do whatever you wanna do.”

  Agent Everybody stretched his arms over his head. “I know you all can’t tell by how terrific I look, but I’m in desperate need of a nap. Wake me if the world starts ending.”

  “And I will go with Wakefield to help him with whatever materials he needs,” King Ontombe said. “You two make yourself at home.”

  Within seconds, as the others departed through the doors around the castle’s main hall, Scott and Tobin were left alone.

  “So,” Tobin said.

  “So,” Scott replied.

  They laughed.

  “This is strange,” Scott said.

  “Just a tad.”

  “Wanna go for a walk?” Scott asked.

  “Sure.”

  ***

  Outside the castle, Tobin and his dad walked along the building’s side wall and through a wooden arch, leading to one of Ruffalo Rock’s beautiful rock gardens. They were surrounded by tropical plants of all colors—yellow, red, blue, purple, orange—and as they followed a garden walkway made out of tiny stones, Tobin’s father was carrying a blue duffle bag over his shoulder.

  “Here, let me show you some pictures,” Tobin said, retrieving his phone from his pocket as they sat down on a stone bench near a pond with a babbling waterfall. “It still works, amazingly, even though it got soaked.”

  Tobin’s father eyed the device. “What is this you said, an iPhone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And this is from Earth or Capricious?”

  “Earth.”

  “Whoa. That’s pretty cool.”

  Tobin flipped through the pictures on his phone. He stopped on one that showed the outside of his house.

  “Here. There’s the house.”

  “Wow. Still the same place. Looks good.”

  “Yeah. The shingles were redone last summer by—” Tobin stopped himself. “One of mom’s friends.”

  Tobin flipped to another picture; this one showed Chad and Jennifer. Jennifer was holding Chad in a headloc
k in the cafeteria, while Chad grimaced as if he was in terrible pain. “And here are my friends. We’re just being idiots at school.” Tobin flipped to the next picture. “And here’s mom.”

  Tobin handed the phone to his dad. His father took it and studied the screen, squinting, a smile across his face. The photo showed Tobin’s mother, standing with Tobin at a family party on the 4th of July. They were holding sparklers and standing in front of a bonfire.

  “Wow,” Tobin’s father said. “She’s still so beautiful. God, she’s beautiful.”

  Tobin laughed. “Aged pretty well, I guess.”

  “You’re damn right. Geez, sometimes I forget what a lucky son of a bremshaw I am.”

  Tobin chuckled. “It’s beyond weird that where you come from, it’s fifteen years ago. And mom is fifteen years younger.”

  “Yeah, and you’re only three years old.”

  “Yeah.”

  A silence. Tobin stared at the screen of his phone. Scott didn’t know what to say.

  “What was it like?” Scott finally asked. “Growing up without me?”

  “It was...okay. We missed you, though. Especially Mom. I never really knew you, so I didn’t know the difference for a while. But...it was tough for mom sometimes. Especially when I was little.”

  Scott nodded.

  “I’ve had a wonderful life, though. Honestly. Mom did an amazing job. I never realized it before, not until recently, but she did an amazing job. She’s an amazing person.”

  Scott looked at the photo. “Wakefield told me what happened. What happened to me the night I left you and your mom. I would have never wanted that to happen, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “They told me...” Scott stopped, thinking it over. “Orion told me what I did that night, to stop Vincent. He told me that I did it because I knew there was no other way to stop him. That’s the only reason I ever would have done it. I had to do it for you guys.”

  “I know. I know that now.”

  Another silence.

  “Did Wakefield tell you why I came here to this timeline?” Scott asked. “Why I came here to the future?”

  “Kind of. But not really. I think he wanted you to tell me.”

  Scott cleared his throat. “Well, a few months ago, during your battle with Vincent, when you traveled back in time and came to me and your mom, I realized pretty quickly what was going on. And after I calmed your mom down—who was understandably freaking out that her 17-year-old son had traveled back in time and was now in her house—after I calmed her down, I knew what I had to do.”

  “You realized I was fighting Vincent in the future. And losing.”

  “Yes. I knew I had to send you back to the battle, but I knew you and Orion couldn’t win against Vincent. Not without the Staff of Titan.”

  “So you gave it to me and sent me back to the future.”

  “Yes. And it worked out pretty well, I guess.”

  Tobin chuckled. “Yeah, it did. Vincent is gone now. Thanks to you.”

  Scott nodded. “The only problem is, Vincent isn’t gone in my timeline. He’s still there—he is there, right now—and still threatening Earth. So I knew I had to come here—I had to follow you to this timeline so I could take back the Staff of Titan.”

  “How’d you do that? How’d you follow me?”

  “I went to Wakefield—the Wakefield in my timeline. After a lot of work, he was able to reopen the Chrono-Gate you traveled through in our house and I was able to follow you. He told me it would be dangerous, and that I might not even make it through alive, or I might go insane, and he was right.”

  “Which is why when Orion found you, you had no memory.”

  “Right. Traveling to this future—to this future that isn’t my own—nearly destroyed my mind. But it was worth it. Because now I have this.”

  Scott reached into the blue duffle bag on the ground. He retrieved the Staff of Titan—the pure white bo-staff Tobin had used to defeat Vincent nearly a year ago.

  “So that’s where Wakefield took it,” Tobin said, eyeing the weapon.

  Scott nodded. “He brought it to me here a few days ago. I could not return to my timeline without it. It’s the only thing that will stop Vincent.”

  Tobin thought it over. “That’s terrifying, to know that Vincent is still alive in your timeline.”

  “I know. And who knows what he has done since I left. I’ve been gone now for over three months. I have to go back now, with this, so I can face him.”

  A silence. Tobin stared at the weapon, then looked down to the ground. “I’m just...I’m just sorry.”

  “For what?” his father asked.

  “That you have to go back now. And you know—you know what is going to happen to you when you get there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know now—you know how it ends. You know that you have to go back and sacrifice yourself to stop Vincent.”

  Tobin’s father laughed. “No, I don’t.”

  Tobin looked up, his forehead furrowed. “What do you mean? You know your battle with Vincent ends with you dying.”

  Scott laughed again. “No, it doesn’t. That’s how it happened in your timeline. That’s not what’s gonna happen to me. Not if I can help it.”

  “How is that possible?” Tobin asked. “I thought it was your...destiny or something. To sacrifice yourself to stop Vincent?”

  Scott shook his head, smiling. “There’s no such thing as destiny, Tobin. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, it’s that. No one is born on this world to do anything. No one is destined for greatness, or for pain. We all make our own choices. Everyday, every second, we make our own life. Nothing is predetermined, or meant to be. The future is open. Everything doesn’t happen for a reason. We have choices—we choose what we want to be.”

  Tobin thought back to what was happening in Boston. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.”

  “No, you’re right. Sometimes, we don’t have a choice—in rare times, other people’s choices affect us. But, even then, we get to choose how we react to it. We get to choose how we let it affect our lives. No one gets to choose that for us. Life is crazy, and it can be random sometimes—most of the time, it is random. But that’s the beautiful thing about life. The future is unknown. Nothing is set in stone for us.”

  Tobin thought it over, watching the pond’s babbling waterfall.

  “You know who taught me that?” his father asked.

  “Who?”

  “Your mom.”

  “That doesn’t sound like something she’d say. She’s way too neurotic for that.”

  Scott laughed. “That’s definitely true. But meeting her is what taught me that. My whole life, I always thought that I would marry a woman from Capricious—probably another superhero. But, instead, I met and fell in love with a woman from another world. An alien being, basically, with no super powers to speak of. And I had a son with that woman from a different world, and started a new life. Everything that I thought would happen to me when I grew up? None of it happened. Almost literally none of it.

  “When I was a kid, Tobin, when I was your age and I was a superhero with Orion, I pictured my life going like this.”

  Scott straightened his fingers out and raised his hand diagonally upward, like it was traveling up a hill.

  “I pictured myself growing older, but keeping all the same friends I had, and my life basically staying the same. Just getting better and better as I grew up. But that’s not how life is. Life is more like this.”

  Scott stopped his hand from climbing the hill and waved it around, making it rise up and down, dance side-to-side, and flip over from left to right. Tobin laughed.

  “Life doesn’t just go in an upward motion. Things don’t stay the same, they don’t always get better, and you don’t get to keep the same friends always and always. Sometimes you do, but most of the time you don’t. Your life changes. Things happen that you don’t expect, good and bad. Things happen that yo
u absolutely do not see coming. But that’s the greatest thing about life—a lot of those times, those things that you don’t expect are the most wonderful.

  “You can count on one thing—life will surprise you. It’s not just made up of one beginning and one ending. It’s made up of several beginnings and endings.”

  Tobin shuffled his feet in the dirt underneath the bench. “Right now...right now I’m going through one of those downward turns. I thought things were going up, but then...they went down again. Way down.”

  “Because of the Daybreaker.”

  Tobin nodded.

  “Wakefield told me you’ve been having a tough time knowing that the Daybreaker is you.”

  Tobin nodded again. He felt his throat clench. He could not look up. My god, he had just met his father, and already his father knew the terrible truth about him. Tobin had to do all he could to keep from crying.

  Scott placed a hand on Tobin’s back. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Tobin. You weren’t destined to be a superhero. You chose to be one. It was your choice. Your future was not set. When Orion met you and explained what was going on, you chose to become a hero. Nothing was set for you beforehand—you chose how you reacted. And so did the Daybreaker. He wasn’t destined to be a super-villain. But because of the things that happened to him—terrible things—he made the choice to do what he’s doing now. He made that choice. Not you.

  “No one gets to tell you who you are, Tobin. No one gets to choose that for you. You make that choice. And I can already tell you’ve made the choice to be great.”

  Tobin nodded, looking at the ground. He sniffled and wiped away a tear, turning away from his dad. He breathed in through his nose, his voice wavering as he tried not to cry.

  “Life is a series of sunrises, Tobin. It is not one long day. It is made up of several different eras of time, that each begin and end and lead into one another. My time with my friends as a teenage hero began, and then eventually it ended. It had to. We grew up, and things changed. We changed. But then, the sun rose on the next period of my life.

  “Nothing can last, Tobin. Good or bad. The sun sets on everything. Even the good times. But, the sun always rises on something new. Eventually, the sunrise always returns.”