Wow...it took me forever to update this, huh? I went down to number 20 on the fics list, and that's a record for me!
But I have an alibi! I've been really busy with school lately (my neighbor wasn't kiddin' when she said my sophomore year would be my hardest!) so I haven't really had much time to work on this, but I promise I'll try to update this weeked, but it might be sometime next week before I update, considering my mother and I are getting babtized at church on Sunday and Saturday, I have a friend coming over to stay the night and a Halloween blog party to host...
Anyway, enjoy, and please review!
Disclaimer: I do not own MTR, thought I do own it on DVD! All characters from the movie belong to the Walt Disney Company, but I do own Krys, Cassie, Nickolas, Jess, Anthony, Donna, Cleo, and Kevin!
Chapter Two: A Mystery Revealed
----Robinson House, the next morning----
Something wasn't right.
Wilbur knew it from the moment he stepped foot out of the invisible prototype time machine into the cold November 2009 air.
About five police cars were parked outside the Robinson house on the snowy lawn. The front door to the house was wide open and Wilbur wasted no time racing up the hill towards it, running through the doorframe.
"Mrs. Robinson!" He called out. "Mrs. Robinson, where are you?"
Wilbur ran around the corner and into the kitchen, where he found a teary-eyed Lucille and a worried Bud Robinson, both still in their pajamas. Five or six policemen stood around them, and one was taking notes on a notepad.
"Wilbur!" Lucille said, her voice filling with relief at the sight of a familiar face. Wilbur opened his mouth to talk back, but a hand clamped down hard on his shoulder and he was pulled away from the Robinsons.
"Hey, kid, what are you doing here?" A police officer asked in a gruff voice as he pulled Wilbur through the door. "You can't be here; this is a potential crime scene!"
"Crime scene? What?! Let me go!" Wilbur said.
"Wait, officer, let him go!" Lucille said, coming to Wilbur's aid. "He's our son's best friend."
The officer looked from Lucille back to Wilbur, and let him go.
"What's going on?" Wilbur asked, looking back at Lucille.
"Cornelius is gone!" Lucille said. "We woke up this morning and we couldn't find him anywhere! He wasn't in his room or the lab!"
Wilbur cocked an eyebrow quizzically. "That's not like Lewis." He said.
Bud nodded. "We were hoping maybe you knew where he was, but we weren't sure how to get a hold of you."
"Believe me, Mr. Robinson, I'm pretty hard to get a hold of." Wilbur said. "And no, I haven't seen Lewis since I was here last week."
The Robinsons' faces fell.
A police officer saw this as an opportune moment to intervene, and he stepped forward.
"Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, when was the last time you saw your son last night?" He asked.
"Well, he woke me up around three AM last night hitting his foot on a table outside of the staircase on his way to get something from the lab. I asked if he was alright, and he told me he was, and I didn't think of it anymore and went back to bed. Our son is one hundred percent trustworthy, and it's just not like him to leave like this!"
The officer scribbled this down on a notepad and nodded. "Mrs. Robinson, would you mind if we took a look at your son's room and lab?"
Bud shook his head. "Not at all." He said. "Right this way."
Bud led a few of the police officers from the room and down the hall. Wilbur followed close behind. He followed two policemen up the stairs to Lewis's lab, where the lab door was still open, and cold air hit them like a freshly formed snowball in the back of the head.
"This is his lab." Wilbur said.
"Are you sure?" One of the two policemen asked. Wilbur cocked an eyebrow.
"Uh, hello, best friend, remember?" He said. "Of course I'm sure!"
The policeman just shrugged and walked inside the freezing observatory Lewis called his lab. Wilbur glanced around. He could see his dad had completed a few more inventions, some of which Wilbur had never seen before, and Carl's prototype lay on a desk in the corner. Nothing seemed to be disturbed, and aside from the fact that the window was wide open in the middle of winter, everything was pretty normal.
Wait.
The window wide open? In the middle of winter?
Wilbur's eyes widened as he rushed over to the window and looked down. Below, he could see two sets of footprints – one smaller, obviously Lewis's, and one bigger.
"Guys!" He said to the police officers at Lewis's desk. "I think I found something!"
The officers wasted no time hurrying over to where Wilbur stood. "What is it?" One asked. Wilbur gestured to the open window.
"The window's open, and I know for a fact Lewis would never leave it open like that on purpose. And there are footprints outside the window, too!" Wilbur said.
Sure enough, when the policemen looked down, they saw the footprints Lewis and Anthony had made the night before leading away from the house. One of them pulled out a walkie talkie.
"Hey, Max, I think we found something. I think we're looking at a kidnapping here."
"'Kay, Sam, thanks." Came the reply back.
"Kidnapping?!" Wilbur said, his eyes widening. "You think Lewis was kidnapped?"
The officer known as Max nodded. "Yes." He said. "But we'll worry about that later. For right now, the most important thing to do is tell his parents and follow those footprints!"
Wilbur nodded and raced down the stairs. He ran past the kitchen where Lucille and Bud sat alone, trying to console each other, and out the door. He ran around the back of the house towards the trellis that led up to Lewis's panel window.
Wilbur could see that Lewis – or whoever had kidnapped him – had fallen on the way down the trellis, or had jumped and landed in a heap. His eyes quickly scanned the snow-blanketed ground in front of him, following the two set of footsteps across the Robinson yard.
He took off running in the direction the footprints led, not stopping until he reached the end of the trail at the driveway. He could see that whoever had taken Lewis had been in a hurry from the looks of the tire prints in the snow. He could see that they had done a backwards U turn, and then had sped off, and the tire tracks from the kidnapper's vehicle mingled with the police car tracks, causing the trail to go cold.
Wilbur quickly turned and ran back the way he had come; back up the hill, towards the house. He found Max and his partner examining the two sets of footprints in the snow where he had started.
"They go down to the driveway." He said, stopping in front of them to catch his breath.
Max nodded. "Thanks, kid. At least we're sure of what we're looking at now." He said. "Do me a favor and go and tell my buddy Sam that we're going to track the prints as far as we can, okay, kid?"
Wilbur nodded, turned, and walked back around the house to the still-wide open front door. He walked into the kitchen where he found Lucille in tears, crying into Bud's shoulder as Bud tried to console her.
"Don't worry, honey, they'll find him. Cornelius is a smart kid; I'm sure he'll be fine." He looked up and saw Wilbur, who looked at his future grandparents with a worried look on his face. Bud smiled and sighed. Lucille looked up towards Wilbur. She and Bud smiled before motioning Wilbur over to them. Wilbur hesitated for a minute before walking towards them. The Robinsons both enveloped him in a family hug, all three feeling the exact same thing: Worried for Lewis and his safety, confused as to why someone would kidnap him, and questioning where he was.
"What are we gonna do?" Wilbur asked.
"The only thing we can do." Bud said. "We'll wait it out. The police are doing all they can at the moment. It's not like they can track him with a microchip. All we can do is hope and pray he's alright and that the police will find him."
As Bud's words seeped into his brain, an idea suddenly hit Wilbur. Maybe they couldn't track Lewis with a microchip, but Wilbur knew someone who could!
"That's it!" Wilbur said, stepping back and out of the group hug.
"What's it, Wilbur?" Lucille asked. Wilbur turned around to face her quickly.
"I think I know someone who can help us." He said. "I'll be right back."
With that, he turned on his heel and ran out of the Robinson house and back down the hill, where the invisible prototype time machine still waited. Wilbur quickly hopped in, closing the hatch as soon as he did so. He started the engine and punched in a date on the keypad.
November 19, 2067
"If Krys can't help me find Lewis, no one can!" Wilbur said as he flew off into the cloudy sky and the time-travel bubble formed itself around the time machine. With a small thrust of speed and a familiar flash of light, Wilbur disappeared from 2009 and rocketed through the timestream towards his future.
Hm...I can't help but hope Wilbur was in character here! I've never had ANY problems keeping him in character, teenager or adult, but I wasn't sure how he might react to hearing his father's past self had been kidnapped without panicking, so...yeah...
Please review! Frankie needs something to blog about!
-Robi