RIO (A New Bird)

More often than not, many people often make mistakes. Mistakes are unforgivable, irredeemable, nightmares that haunt you forever. Mistakes always lead to bad endings, horrible circumstances, which is why nobody wants them to happen, which is why everybody tries to avoid them one way or another. But once they happen, it's too late. You can't rewind the last hour of your life to fix it. It's already occurred, and you can't stop them from happening. You can pretend that they didn't happen, but you're only lying to yourself.

Of course, if you could restart everything from the beginning, you would know what to do. You would do whatever it takes to make sure that these mistakes never happen again.

That is why if you're the sandman, you are always justified to do everything again, and make sure these mistakes don't happen again.

If you can control time, you could always make things new.

Chapter One (Pixelated Fantasies)

They say that in a case of kidnapping, one should remain calm and collected. Blu, however, was neither of those things.

He had just woken up and found himself strapped to a small, stainless-steel table. The cold metal surface was like ice, and the leather restraints were immovable, no matter how hard he strained. Becoming increasingly flustered, Blu could only look around at his surroundings. He seemed to be in a poorly lit warehouse, surrounded by large crates, tables and boxes.

"Where am I?" was his first coherent thought."What is happening? Why am I here?"

All he could remember was falling asleep in his nice cage. He and Linda had left the window open to let in a cool summer night's breeze, a mosquito net covering it to prevent the pesky bugs from entering. But now... he was here.

Just where the heck was he?

"He's awake", said a voice in the surrounding darkness. Blu strained his eyes in the voice's direction: all he could see were shadows.

"Excellent", replied another voice. This one seemed to be lower in pitch than the first.

Blu couldn't see this voice either, though it appeared to be in close proximity to the first voice. With a shock, he realized that neither of the voices was human: they were the voices of birds. They seemed to be big ones too, judging from their slow, deep breaths.

"Who are you? What do you want with me?" His questions received no reply. However, there seemed to be hushed whispers between the two voices. Finally, a third voice, louder and deeper than the other two, responded. "We might as well; it couldn't hurt."

The other low voice responded, "Terra, could you please hit the lights?

"Sure thing, Kel", replied the voice belonging to the one called Terra. There was a series of shuffling footsteps, punctuated by loud clattering against the concrete, and then a bright light flashed over Blu. He closed his eyes, temporarily blinded by the sudden illumination.

After a few seconds of eye adjustment and the sounds of more shuffling, Blu opened his eyes. Blinking in the bright light, he turned his head towards the place where the voices originated. He gasped.

Blu couldn't believe it: standing before him, next to a steel table were the largest birds he had ever seen. They stood at least seven feet tall, and each had to weigh about 400 pounds. Their large, hooked beaks marked them as predators, but they had short, stubby wings that ended with a hooked point, like a claw. Each foot had three wicked-looking talons attached to enormous feet. The legs were surprisingly slender, but were extremely muscular at the same time. Powerful, slender necks connected the massive heads to their large bodies; S-curved in nature, they seemed to somehow bulge with muscles.

Each bird seemed very tense. The middle one, who Blu assumed was the leader, had a scar running across its left eye and cheek. The eye itself was an opaque gray, while the other eye was a clear and golden colour. Interestingly, the good eye was covered by a monocle. Odd choice for a bird, Blu thought. The birds' feathers were mostly silver with patches of gold, and they seemed to be ruffled. Its crest feathers, about five in all, were sagging against the back of his head.

The one on the left, although approximately the same size as the middle one, seemed to be somewhat younger. This one's feathers were golden in colour, with small patches of red sparsely patterned throughout. Its eyes were pitch-black, like a doll's eyes. This one's unique feature was the watch it had on one of its stubby wings. This one also seemed to be the tensest; it kept scanning the warehouse, pixel by pixel, turning this way and that. The bird never seemed to blink, and its crest feathers were standing on end.

The last one was perhaps the most different of them all. About six inches shorter than the other two, it somehow gave the appearance of being larger. The crest feathers were absent, and the plumage was a mottled mixture of gold, deep earth tones and black, with some red showing on the throat. The eyes were what held Blu's attention: they were red, a red deeper than the purest ruby, with a gleam in them he had never seen before. Looking away, he noticed the legs: they were covered in bandages, as if this one had been injured. "Odd," he thought. How could that have happened?

"Who, or exactly what, are you?" he asked, trying not to let the fear he was feeling creep into his voice.

"Do not be afraid," said the smaller one. Her voice rang out clear, and was surprisingly gentle in nature. "We mean you no harm."

"Then why am I here?" enquired Blu.

Her reply shocked and puzzled him: "You are here so that your species does not die out."

"What do you mean my species will die out? How do you know of this?" Blu asked, perplexed and more than a little afraid.

"We might as well tell him: he may not remember any this anyway." This came from the middle one, the apparent leader of the group. His deep voice had both a pleasing clarity and resonated throughout the warehouse.

"This is a long story, so you may want to stay silent until I am finished." He cleared his throat.

My name is Dr. Gastorn, and what I am about to tell you is all true."

"We are an evolved race on birds almost all of mankind believes to be extinct. Only a select few know of our existence. Throughout the ages, we have helped mankind through its many periods of growth and decay. Within the last 200 years, their rapid advancement in science finally brought them to a point we were at hundreds of years before. Luckily, many of our kind viewed our position as one of guidance for the humans, so that they would not make the same mistakes we had in the past.

"In order to do this, we needed to build a machine: a machine that could see into the future itself. Through many trials and errors, we were finally able to build it. We have kept it secret from the majority of our human associates, because some would try to use it for their own gain.

"However, as we would later come to realize, the future is never static: it is always in motion, changing sometimes for better, and for worse. Several key events came to our attention: the rise of the smuggling market and the consequences that landed you here in Minnesota. Both of these are connected, and they must be rectified.

"Since the smuggling industry became huge, we have noticed many once-common birds are becoming dangerously close to extinction. Your species, for example: there are very few left of you in the wild and almost your entire species is living in zoos and similar places. The biggest problem, however, is the fact that the species cannot be saved without your unique genetic material. Without it, your species will become doomed to increasingly destructive inbreeding. We must not let this happen.

"However, we seemed to have reached an "impasse" of sorts."

"What do you mean?" asked Blu, unthinkingly.

"In one of two possible futures, you are killed by an unknown, alabaster entity. In the other, your species survives due to your unique genetic material. This is the future in which we help you."

"Can we get this over with? I'm getting antsy about this warehouse: it's too open." This came from the one that must be called Kel. "Also, I'm hungry."

"Fine Kel." This came from the smaller one, the one called Terra. "As soon as we're done here, we'll stop by the meat market and pick up some groceries through some of our contacts. Sheesh, all you want to do is eat." She rolled her eyes.

"What can I say? An operation like this burns a lot of calories," replied Kel.

Dr. Gastorn sighed: "Will you two stop bickering? This requires a lot of concentration, you know." With that, the two were silenced.

"Okay, so here we go." Gastorn picks up the liquid-filled syringes with one of his wings and hobbles over to Blu.

Blu's eyes widen in realization. "What are you going to do?" he yelps.

"We're going to help you, Blu. Now, please hold still: this may sting," replied Gastorn with a look of concentration.

Blu felt the cold needle enter his neck. As he felt the liquid inject into his bloodstream, he could only look on as Dr. Gastorn backed away from him with the empty syringe. Then, he felt his body start to go numb, and then, blackness started to engulf him, pixel by pixel.

The last thing he heard before darkness silenced everything were two sentences between Terra and Dr. Gastorn.

"Will he be alright, Gastorn?" Terra asked.

"Yes, I am sure of it. After all, I am a doctor," Gastorn replied.

"Blu, wake up: it's such a beautiful morning," Linda said as she opened the curtains.

A shaft of light appeared through the window, shining through Blu's eyelids.

"Was it morning already?" thought Blu as he tried to open his eyes. Slowly he opened them, but they kept closing on him. "Man, am I groggy: should've gone to bed earlier."

As he stretched in his cage, Blu thought about last night, or at least what he could remember. It seemed queer that he was experiencing such a migraine… as he scanned through possibilities pixel by pixel, the vivid and permanently etched memories of the mind, slithered into his thoughts. Blu then recalled the humongous, super-intelligent birds that allied with humans… building a time machine… saving his species… and that dreaded needle! Blu shuddered and he immediately dismissed them as mere dreams, illusions that his mind toyed with in his state of slumber, pixelated fantasies.

"Impossible," Blu shook off. "Those dreams aren't real. They CAN'T be… they're only dreams…"He thought over what he had done before he went to sleep. "That's it: no more s'mores before bed. Last time I dreamt I was yellow," thought Blu with a smile.

Then why did his neck itch?

"Probably a mosquito bite" Blu thought. "They are out in force this year."

As the sun slowly rose higher above the hills in the distance, Blu had only one thought on his mind: "What am I going to read today? Some Shakespeare, James Patterson, or perhaps some more history? I believe I was on the Mongol Conquests."

He jumped down, opened his cage and set off to help Linda make some breakfast. "I hope it's pancakes" he thought.

Unbeknownst to him and Linda, the grass outside their window was slightly compressed, as if some large weight had stood upon it. From this flat spot, a pair of large, three-toed tracks led away into the woods, past a nearby farm. As the grass settled and the initial pressure dissipated into the atmosphere, these dew-laden tracks vanished without a trace, remembered by nobody save the beholders and the owner of heaven, deleted fantasies pixel by pixel.