A/N: From an idea by Invader Johnny. If this plot sounds familiar, it should. This one shot is a pastiche of the Futurama episode "The Late Philip J. Fry." This is one of the benchmark episodes of the entire series; a story so creative and emotional that a non-fan could watch it and be entertained.

I hope that my version will live up to that.

Little nervous writing this one because I have read some fantastic Jori stories involving time travel.

enjoy


"This had better be quick, Shapiro!"

Jade's warning (not surprisingly) made the curly-haired boy flinch but he didn't falter from making final adjustments to his latest invention. She had been guilted into being a witness to this thing after school in the basement of Hollywood Arts. Jade asked him earlier why he didn't build the contraption at home but he replied that the school better suited his power needs. His grandma had an annoying habit of rationing the electricity.

"I'm sorry, Jade" he choked out. "I promise this won't take long."

The Goth crossed her arms. "I don't have a lot of time."

A twinkle in Robbie's eye made the thespian uneasy.

"Funny you should say that."

"Are you ready or what?"

Robbie looks around, "We're not all here yet."

"All?"

"I'M HERE!"

Jade closed her eyes, hoping that voice didn't belong to who it sounded like.

"Aw, fucking hell" she growled when she locked eyes with her least favorite pair of brown ones.

"What is she doing here?" the girls asked in unison. They glared at one another. "CUT THAT OUT!" They both managed to bark at the same time.

"Jinx!" Robbie pointed. "Now you can't talk 'til..OW!"

Trina and Jade could also slap the boy on both sides of his head with relatively similar force.

"Robbie," Trina stepped toward him menacingly. "Why did you ask me to come down here..." she then pointed to her sister's girlfriend. "...with that!?"

"Oh, that's it," Jade lunged over to Trina but Robbie got between them to keep the violence at bay.

"I'm sorry I asked for both of you to get down here but I needed more than one witness for people to believe me. Besides, if two people who hate each other could agree on the same thing, it has to be the truth."

"What?" asked Trina.

"What stupid gizmo have you cooked up down here?" Jade pressed.

Robbie stood up straight and unfurled a black tarp revealing a red telephone booth similar to the ones in Britain.

"Robbie..." Jade began massaging the bridge of her nose. "I'm pretty sure somebody already invented the phone."

"This..." he said proudly. "Is my...Time Machine."

A long silence overcame the room.

"Okay, I'm out of here" declared Trina. She tried the handle to the basement door but it was locked tight. "Uh-oh."

"What uh-oh?" Jade asked.

Robbie looked like a deer in headlights.

"Trina, please tell me you didn't lock the door."

"I didn't!" she spat back. "There was this dumb door in my way so I moved it aside and..."

They both look at the older Vega.

"Oh, crap."

Jade face-palmed.

"Are we stuck down here then?" Trina asked.

"Until Monday," Robbie sighed. "There is literally nobody left in the building. Just the janitor and he works with his headphones blasting. He'll finish and lock up; won't even notice us."

Trina took out her phone and dialed Tori. But she couldn't get through. She then tried her dad but still no luck getting a signal.

"Phone aren't reaching to the outside."

Jade threw up her hands. "So what are we gonna do now?"

Robbie turned toward his machine.

"Well...there is one way..."

"You must be joking," Trina groaned.

"I'm serious," Robbie insisted. "I've invented a time machine and it really works. I've experimented with it eight times, going forward 5-10 minutes at a time. It works."

Jade was getting impatient.

"Great! Can it go back a half hour before I agreed to this stupid little rendezvous?"

Robbie winced. "Unfortunately, it can only go forward. I deliberately built it that way because of the potential to cause horrible paradoxes with backwards time travel. By only gazing into the future, we won't do any cosmic damage."

Trina sighed heavily.

"Let's just pretend this hunk of junk is legit. Is it safe?"

"I am not stepping inside that reTARDIS!" Jade yelled.

"Look," Robbie pleaded. "Just let me take us to Monday morning and we will be let out by a teacher or someone."

"You don't get it do you?"

Robbie looked at Jade confused.

Trina smirked, "I know what she's talking about."

Jade glared at the brunette.

"A certain little sister, I won't mention any names, has had it up to here with her freaky girlfriend always being late for stuff." She looked right at Jade. "You're seeing her tonight, aren't you?"

"And what business is it of yours?" Jade asked.

"Oh, I heard it through the grapevine that Tori is giving you one last chance to be on time. Tonight."

The already pale Goth turned a few good shades whiter.

"If you blow this one...you're through."

A helpless expression overcame Jade. Trina thought it would only piss her off (something she was already used to) but this hurt expression made her feel a little bad.

"I've got to tell Tori. I can't lose her." Jade quickly dug out her phone. "Maybe I can text..."

"Jade..." Robbie shook his head. "Its slim that even a simple text could get out..."

"I have to try something. Maybe when Tori wonders why the three of us were missing over the weekend, I can prove I tried to warn her by the time stamp on the text."

Robbie fired up the time machine and opened the small door, helping Trina and Jade inside. While this was going on, Jade was leaving a message for Tori as fast as her digits could manage. She just finished typing when a hard jostle in the machine caused Jade to drop her phone before hitting send. The cell slipped out of the door before locking shut.

In a flash of blinding light, the trio and their strange vessel vanished without a trace.


After what felt like the most nauseating voyage they've ever experienced; Jade, Robbie and Trina gazed outside the time machine and their jaws dropped.

They were no longer in the basement of Hollywood Arts. In fact, the school was long gone.

"Where are we?" Trina asked.

"We didn't go anywhere...just forward through time" Robbie explained.

"Fine," Jade said through gritted teeth, "Then WHEN the hell are we?"

Robbie looked down at the display and his eyes bugged out.

"Oh no."

"What?" Jade asked.

"Something went wrong."

Trina grabbed his shoulder. "What, idiot? What went wrong?"

"We appear to be in the year 10,000."

"WHAT!?"

Jade slammed the boy against the door of his time machine.

"I-I-I-I-don't know w-w-w-what to-s-s-say. Maybe there was a calibration problem..."

"You were supposed to take us a couple of days into the future!" Now Trina was alongside Jade, pissed at their predicament.

"Look, I never went further than a few minutes. I sure as hell never went forward a day before. This was unprecedented..."

The cold steel of scissors were poking Robbie's chin.

"I'LL TELL YOU WHAT WILL BE UNPRECEDENTED! A TIME TRAVELER STABBED TO DEATH IN HIS OWN MACHINE. TAKE. US. HOME. NOW!"

He looked at both Trina and Jade, not sure of what to say.

"I can't."

Trina's eyes were ablaze. "You can't or won't?"

"I told you, I can only go forward in time. There's nothing we can do."

The older Vega started sinking to the floor, devastated. Her baby sister, her parents, her friends - long dead. Jade wasn't faring much better. Not only did she know she likely disappointed Tori yet again, but she completely missed the rest of her life. She was only a distant memory now.

But she was determined to not give up.

"Wait a second!" Jade relinquished her scissors from Robbie. "If your dumb ass could make this porter potty go forward in time, then at some point...someone had to have built a backwards traveling time machine, right?"

He adjusted his glasses while Trina looked up, hopeful.

"It's a possibility. We've got nothing to lose."

"Then let's do it," Jade insisted.

Trina jumped back to her feet. "WHAT IS THAT!?"

A diminutive green humanoid with an over-sized head had what appeared to be some kind of weapon fixed on them from the outside.

"HUMANS!" it shouted.

The group looked up and saw in the distance more and more short aliens and rather large spaceships were heading their way.

"DO IT NOW!" Jade ordered Robbie.

"What should I put in?"

Trina pushed him aside and began banging on the keyboard.

"I don't care! Anytime but here!"

The display read 5,000,000 A.D. and sure enough they evaporated into thin air only to land at their next destination.


Meanwhile, back in our millennium; Tori Vega was sitting at their usual table in Nozu. She had been waiting for Jade for half an hour past the time she promised to be there. Tori knew she gave Jade an ultimatum with her tardiness but being her usual self, she gave the Goth some leeway.

Her phone vibrated. Thinking it was Jade, she quickly grabbed it only to frown that it was Andre calling.

"What's up?" she sighed.

"TORI, WHERE ARE YOU?"

She almost dropped the phone from how loud he shouted.

"I'm at Nozu waiting for Jade, why?"

There was a silence.

"What?" Tori asked, impatient.

"She's not with you?"

"No, Andre. What's this about?"

"There was a fire at Hollywood Arts. Its still going on but it doesn't look good."

Tori felt her heart sink.

"WHAT?"

"You haven't seen Robbie or Trina by any chance, have you?"

The half Latina shakily answered, "No, I haven't. Oh god, you don't think..."

She got up and ran from the restaurant crying, thinking the worst.

"No, they can't be."


This time the coast seemed clear and the gang exited the time machine.

It was a desolate wasteland, like something out of Mad Max.

"This is the year five million," Jade shook her head in awe.

"This is fucking insane," Trina added.

Robbie frowned as he scanned the area.

"I don't know about you guys but I'm not seeing anybody here but us."

"At least there's no aliens," Trina admitted.

Robbie nodded, "This might be how everything looked after we fought them."

"Or they succeeded in killing us and left after sucking the planet's resources dry."

Trina folded her arms, annoyed.

"I swear to god, you should have your own brand of greeting cards, West."

Jade wanted to rip the other girls' head off but she didn't have the energy and it didn't help that she was kind of right. Her usual bleak attitude was not constructive in the face of a calamity.

"Sorry."

Her meek response really surprised Trina. Robbie was just relieved that he didn't have to break up yet another fight.

"Um, guys..."

Trina and Jade both turn around.

"May want to scratch that no aliens thing. Look," Robbie pointed.

A cluster of smallish extra terrestrials, only these ones are more pinkish in their skin tone suddenly appeared before them.

"Who are you?" Jade asked.

"We are the sentient species of this planet. You appear to be time travelers," one observed.

"How do you know that?" Trina queried.

"Humans and Irkens have been extinct for a millennia, long after the fabled war to end all wars."

Robbie tilted his head, "Ir-kens?"

"Green-skinned creatures. Rather disagreeable temperament. They invaded from their old world a long time ago, conquered the humans until one day they rose up and fought back."

Another one, presumably female, stepped forward to elaborate.

"Unfortunately, the battle had devastated both intelligent species, leaving the planet devoid of any true guardian. But through some miraculous genetic accident, surviving DNA from the Irkens and the humans have joined and produced the race you see before you. We have thrived for hundreds of years..."

"Give or take," a third one interjected, "Pardon our historical records but our written language is not very old."

"But we are intelligent, make no mistake." The first one continued. "We only seek peace and enlightenment, wishing to stay away from our more barbaric roots."

Robbie knelt down to their eye level.

"Tell me, have you ever developed time travel like us?"

"No we have not attempted it," the female replied. "There was no desire to do so. However, we can sympathize your aspiration to get back home. If you give us maybe five years..."

"Give or take..." the third interrupted.

"...we should formulate a solution."

"Really?" Jade asked.

"Indeed," the one smiled. "If we concentrate on this goal, a positive outcome would be inevitable."

"I guess we can go forward five years and check on your progress," Robbie suggested.

"That would be wise," the female nodded. "We will see you in five years, my friends."

The humans waved before getting back into the booth and setting the controls (carefully this time) to reach exactly five years from now.


Schneider Community Hospital was abuzz with activity; much more than usual today with the Hollywood Arts fire. A certain half Latina was pacing around like mad, trying her older sister and girlfriend at least fifty times by phone or text. Not a single response. She was seriously freaking out.

"Tori?"

She blinked as she looked up to her father, failing to keep the fresh batch of tears at bay.

"Dad!"

The daughter and father embraced tightly. He sat next to her.

"Sorry I didn't get to you sooner. I was checking with literally everybody at the scene. How long have you been here?"

"About four hours," she sighed. "Ever since I found out about the fire. Tried getting down there to see but they turned me away. It was too intense, they said."

David Vega nodded grimly, "I know. I got about as close as the fire department would allow. There's almost nothing left."

Tori felt like her guts were ripped out.

"It's really gone?" Tori asked.

"If there was anyone inside, it doesn't look good. And they rounded up what few people made it out alive. There were a few remains but they are going to have to require further analysis. The burns being so...severe..."

He trailed off, still in cop mode he often forgets that civilians like her little girl doesn't care for the gory details. Quickly changing the subject the cop asked, "Did you call your mother like I asked?"

Tori nodded.

"She worried?"

"Relieved that I wasn't there but Trina...and...Jade are still missing. Robbie, too." Tori wiped her eyes, gripping her dad's hand. "I went to the bathroom a couple of times and each time I checked with the nurses if anyone was admitted while I was away."

"Anyone else missing?" he asked.

"No," she shook her head.

David put his arm around his daughter and pulled her in.

"Let's be optimistic until we know one way or the other."

"I'll try," Tori said.


The blinding light wasn't getting more comfortable with the teenage time travelers.

Robbie was relieved to finally lower his arm when it dissipated.

"What the hell?" Jade asked.

Trina and Robbie quickly ran out of the machine and were dumbstruck to find the once magnificent civilization in ruins. The diminuitive intelligent species were completely gone.

"I don't get it," remarked Trina. "Where is everybody?"

A hungry snarl made the group turn and they screamed at the sight of a what looked like a gorilla covered in grey hair. His mouth was dripping with blood. Fresh blood.

"RUN!"

The girls followed Robbie's word and made haste back to the time machine. Fortunately for them, the brute was not very fast so they made it back to the vessel and disappeared in time to avoid getting torn apart and eaten.


Almost a week had passed and David along with the LAPD have exhausted all of their usual channels regarding missing people. They've checked every medical facility, as well as a litany of hotspots that frequented by teen runaways and drug addicts. Mr. Vega prided how his team was good at finding people who were difficult to find.

So it was frustrating that they were coming up empty.

The official conclusion was declared on the news. Jade West, Robbie Shapiro and Trina Vega were counted among the names that perished in the inferno. Apparently they were in a very bad place given how there was no skeletal remains to confirm. The police couldn't investigate further and the feds refused to become involved, siding with the fire explanation.

David Vega, however, was one cop who didn't take that for an answer. As long as there wasn't a body, his oldest daughter was still out there somewhere. His youngest on the other hand was not as hopeful. She completely gave up on this nightmare having a happy ending.

Tori was sitting, beside herself in grief. She felt like her whole world was taken away from her. She lost not only the sister she had known her whole life but also Jade. They began as a rocky friendship at best but blossomed into something unexpected and beautiful. Anything could have happened to her - any obstacle imaginable - and it would have been fine as long as those two people were always in her life.

How could she go on without them?

It hurt that much more because two of the most important people in her life were always at each others throats. Tori wished with all her heart that Jade and Trina would make peace somehow.

But they would never get the chance. Not in this lifetime, which either one of them would probably say.


Robbie was afraid to check the screen. In his panic during their escape, he just hit keys to make the machine vanish forward somewhere in time.

Upon reading their current destination, his throat constricted. The words would not come out. Adjusting his glasses, he double and triple-checked the numbers.

"Can't be," he whispered. "Fuck."

"What?" asked Jade.

Trina didn't wait for an answer from the boy so she brushed him aside and checked the display: 1,000,000,000.

"Are you fucking kidding me?!"

"What?"

The older Vega's expression was grave. Her general peppiness, as well as the snarkiness she harbored toward Jade wasn't there. That certainly unnerved Jade seeing this side of Trina. It sure didn't prepare her for this revelation.

"We're in the year one billion."

Jade scowled. "Vega, that's not funny."

Trina stepped aside. "Fine, don't believe me, West."

Jade glanced over at the display and her face fell.

"We really did it this time..." Robbie remarked, as he exited the vessel and looked at how the land had been reduced to nothingness. It was as if they were no longer in Los Angeles and were taken to Death Valley. "...we are at the end of humanity. Maybe even all life as we know it."

He looked over and saw Jade laying on the dried-up earth, her hair hiding her crying.

"It's the end of the line, isn't it?" Trina asked as she took in the hopelessness of her surroundings.

"I'm so sorry, Tori!"

That made the older Vega look down at the Goth. She felt a desire to soothe the tortured girl. Yeah, Jade West was a little messed up but someone who loved her baby sister so much that it hurt her physically to never see her again couldn't be all bad. Ironically, Trina once said seeing Jade defeated was something she had on her wishlist before she died. But now she didn't even want it anymore. Trina never thought she would say this but she wished Jade was happy again because by extension that would mean her sister was happy, too.

Tori had dated some real losers when she was going with boys. As much as Trina despised Jade, she could never think of anything bad between her and Tori (when they started dating anyway). She had to admit that the freaky little actress was the first person to measure up. Trina regretted never really rooting for them. Just because things never worked out for her romantically didn't mean Tori (or even Jade) deserved to be unhappy.

Jade flinched when arms wrapped around her. She could tell by the tickle of hair on her neck that it wasn't Robbie. But at this point, Jade was so physically and emotionally exhausted, she didn't resist. She must have been at the world's end - her least favorite person was holding her and she was letting herself be held.

She wished there was some way she could have left something behind for Tori to let her know how she felt.


Tori was laying in bed, intending to nap but it never really came.

A knock on her open door turned her head.

"Sweetheart..."

"Hey, dad" she smiled plainly.

People very much agreed that her smile was hands down her prominent feature and it was a tragedy she hadn't had much to smile for in a long time. Tori needed a distraction from everything, so she threw herself into her studies and got a part time job. Before she knew it, she had the grades and money to begin her journey to higher education. Tori should have been excited to be going to college but she always envisioned sharing the experience with Jade and Trina.

"I have something to show you."

"What?"

David produced a ziploc bag with Jade's cell phone inside.

"How did you get that?" Tori asked, sitting up so quickly the blood almost rushed to her head to the point of a migraine.

"It survived the fire," he sighed. "Apparently there was a small grill in the basement of the school. It overturned and landed on top of the phone. The stainless steel protected it from the flames."

Tori tilted her head.

"What was Jade doing down in the basement?"

He shook his head, "I have no idea, baby. The guys down at the precinct already have gone through it and didn't find anything strange. I called Jade's father and he'd rather not look at the phone."

"But why did you bring it to show me?" Tori asked.

"One of the first things we check is the text messages. I still held a little hope that she was just missing but nothing I saw points to that." He unzipped the baggie and gently handed the device over to his daughter. "There's um...an unsent text addressed to you. Looks like she wrote it and it never went through. I figured you had every right to read that. It would have been fair to Jade."

Tori couldn't believe what she was hearing. Contained in this phone is Jade's very last words to her.

"I'll leave you alone, Tori. If you're hungry, dinner is in an hour."

She looked up from the phone to say "Thanks dad."

He smiled and closed the door behind him.

The half Latina took a deep breath and opened Jade's messaging app. She scrolled through the menu options and sure enough, one entry was in the drafts folder. Tori took an even more drawn out breath before clicking on it to open.

"Tori please dont hate me. There was nothing I could do. Please please dont leave me. You have my heart and I cant live without it. Those months we were dating was the happiest time in my life. Robbie built this mac..."

And that is where the text cuts off. Jade must have dropped this phone mid-word.

Tori bit her lip as salty tears cascaded down her cheeks. She plopped down, staring at the ceiling as she clutched her girlfriend's phone to her chest.

"I'll always love you Jade."


"Thank you," Jade sniffed, wiping her eyes.

"Forget about it" sighed Trina. "Chalk it up to big sister instincts kicking in. You still didn't cry as much as when Tori fell off for the first time without training wheels."

The Goth chuckled, resting her head on Trina's shoulder.

"You really cared about her."

Trina nodded, "We may but heads but we're always love each other."

"I can understand that." Jade lifted up her head and looked Trina in the eye. "I know I can be a bitch sometimes..." she then rolled her eyes. "alright, most of the time. But I love Tori with all my heart."

"I'm beginning to understand that. But you had to admit, the way you were to her on your first day...didn't make the best first impression."

Jade brushed her hair back.

"To say the least. Man, what Tori wouldn't give to see us getting along now, huh?"

"What we wouldn't give to see her again."

"Um...guys?"

They both looked at Robbie.

"Does the sun look...well...bigger than usual?"

Much to their collective horror, our closest star was indeed several times its size. After a few billion years from its inception, the sun was now becoming a giant only to explode. And the ending of a star was no laughing matter for any neighboring planets.

"Might as well see the end of all things."

The trio returned to the time machine and Robbie worked the controls, moving it forward and forward in time. Within moments, outside the windows, the gang witnesses the sun get larger and larger and then turn into a red super giant. After which the earth becomes consumed beneath them. The titanic explosion rocked everyone, knocking them unconscious.

When they finally came to, they found themselves enveloped by total darkness.

"What happened?" Jade asked.

"I don't know," Trina held her head. "Shapiro, where are we?"

The boy struggled with the controls but they weren't doing anything but continuously traveling forward. Somehow.

"I'm not sure what's happening here but the time machine is still traveling ahead."

Suddenly, an even more devastating explosion took place. It took quickly grew and waned. Now there were stars just like before and they began to see ground forming beneath them. Space was restored and Earth was...rebuilding?

"No way, did we just witness the Big Bang?"

"How the fuck did we do that?" Jade asked.

"I'm confused," Trina said, raising her hand.

"You know," Robbie pressed. "The Big Bang Theory."

Trina folded her arms "I hate that show."

Robbie rolled his eyes.

"I'm talking about the creation of the universe. But if that already happened and we had just seen it... then that means..."

"The universe was destroyed?" Trina asked.

"...and starting anew from the look of it" Robbie suggested. He gasped. "Don't you know what this means?"

Trina and Jade just looked at him,

"It means that time is actually cyclical. Things are born and then they die and the same goes for the universe. But since there is no other universe to supplant it, then it must regenerate itself!"

"SHIT!"

Trina was taken aback when a tyrannosaurus rex ran past them, looking for food.

"We need to get this box under control or we will spiral too far ahead in time again."

A light bulb went off in Jade's brain.

"Can we make a stop first?"


Tori was leaving school preparing to head over to Nozu to meet up with Jade in an hour.

She felt a slight rumble as she entered the parking lot but shrugged it off as a mild tremor. These things were everyday occurrences in L.A. after all.

Unbeknownst to her, in the Hollywood Arts basement, a red phone booth fashioned into a time machine materialized.

The vessel came down with a crash, practically smashing it to smithereens.

"Is everyone okay?" Robbie asked.

Trina rubbed the back of her neck, "I think so."

"What happened back there? We never fell down like that before!"

Jade was right. Robbie figured that this new universe must be 'a few feet' over from the previous one.

"Uh, gross!"

Jade noticed Trina was lifting a piece of the busted time machine, looking underneath.

"What is it? We landed on something?"

Trina made a face. "More like someone."

Its not every day you find your own mutilated form as the result of you crushing it.

"That's us..." Robbie looked like he was going to be sick.

"Was," Jade pointed out.

"I guess that was the universe's way of taking out any paradoxes."

Robbie grinned at Trina's observation.

"Explains Jade missing her target."

The Goth scowled at Robbie, referring to her attempt to sniper Adolf Hitler during the 1936 Olympic Games. She missed.

"I came close but it was fun to watch Jesse Owens beat Germany."

Robbie chuckled, "Hitler looked fuckin' mad."

Trina sighed, "Well, West came closer than I did."

Her attempt to cause a collapse during the construction of the Trump Taj Mahal in the late 80's when a certain real estate tycoon visited the site. The collapse succeeded but the fool wasn't standing in quite the right spot.

"Worth a shot," the older Vega lamented.

"The past is the past," Robbie noted. "All we can do is help the future."

Trina checked her phone.

"Hey, West, if you want a future with my sister you'd better hurry."

Jade checked the time and made a B line for the exit.

"What a mess," Trina shook her head at the bodies before them.

"Welp, got any shovels?" Robbie quipped.


Tori huffed, checking the front door for her girlfriend but nothing yet.

Noticing a waitress walk by, Tori asked if she could get a refill of her iced tea. The girl nodded and said she would be right back. Tori then turned back and was surprised by seeing Jade sitting across from her.

"Hey," the Goth blurted out.

"Talk about cutting it close," Tori smirked.

Then again, she did sound out of breath.

"But I am glad you made it."

The warm tan hand on top of hers was the greatest feeling imaginable and she couldn't believe the universe decided she was worthy of a second chance. Maybe there is something to destiny and fate.

"I know I've been late for a lot of thing lately. And I don't want to disappoint you again. I promise you, the old Jade is dead now."

Tori batted her eyes.

"Just don't change too much, West. I fell in love with a strange girl and that's what I want."

"There's something very important that we should do...right now."

Tori leaned in. "What's that?"

"Kiss me."

"Okay."

Jade grabbed the back of Tori's neck hard and drew her in and wasn't prepared to let her go any time soon.

The waitress quietly refreshed Tori's iced tea and decided to come back five minutes later. Maybe ten.