Science Fair

They landed the time machine in an alley next to the InventCo Science Fair, and Wilbur turned on the cloaking device.

"You guys should leave this to me," said Wilbur. "The situation calls for finesse."

"I'm good at physical finesse," said Dash.

"Not fitness, genius," said Violet. "Okay, Wilbur. We'll stay out unless you need backup."

Wilbur went inside.

Dash asked, "Are we really going to stay out of it? He could use help from our powers if the super villain attacks."

Violet said, "I know, but I don't want to compromise our secret identities yet. I'm going to sneak in invisibly and look for that Bowler Hat Guy. You stay here."

"If you're getting in on the fun, so will I," said Dash. "I can run in without anyone seeing me."

They argued for a few minutes, until they heard a crash.

Wilbur had tried to talk to the young inventor Lewis, his future father. That hadn't gone very well. Then Wilbur thought he saw the Bowler Hat Guy, and charged him, but it turned out to be another science fair contestant with a solar system exhibit. The resulting crash knocked over a box of frogs, and Wilbur was stuck picking them up under the watchful eye of the young girl who owned them, who somehow reminded him of his mother.

Dash ran over quickly, in street clothes, to help Wilbur with the frogs. Violet came in a little later, invisible, having stripped to her costume. She joined the group that was starting to watch Lewis demonstrate his scanner.

"Have you ever forgotten something, and no matter how hard you tried you couldn't remember it?" Lewis said. "Well, what happens to these forgotten memories? I propose they're stored somewhere in your brain. I built a machine that can retrieve them. I call it... the memory scanner."

Violet thought she heard something moving under the cloth covering the exhibit, and she moved closer to investigate. But Lewis pulled off the cover and there was nothing, so she relaxed.

Lewis entered a date on his control panel, which Wilbur noticed was housed in a Captain Time Travel lunchbox. He turned on the machine and it started to warm up.

"It will just take a second to get the turbines going."

The machine started to vibrate, and a spinning propeller came loose. It flew into the air before Violet could catch it in a force-field bubble. It flew into one of the electric lights on the ceiling, setting off sparks that ignited the Mount Vesuvius exhibit.

"She's gonna blow!" Stanley cried out.

Dash went to super-speed and grabbed it, and looked around for a way to get it away from the crowd safely. He saw an exit door directly behind Lewis, and he ran for that.

Violet realized Dash wouldn't have enough control at that speed to avoid injuring Lewis, possibly destroying the future father of Wilbur. She threw up a force field around herself, Lewis and his broken machine. Dash ran into that, slipping and dropping the the volcano, which exploded with hot orange jelly all over the people in front of the machine: Mr. Willerstein, Dr. Lucille Krunklehorn, and the gym coach. A glob from the volcano hit the fire ant farm brought by a girl named Lizzie, and the ant farm fell to the ground and broke open. There were fire ants all over the floor, and some went up on people's legs and bit them, adding to the panic. Then the hot "lava" set off the sprinklers. Everyone had to evacuate the gym.

"I'm sorry," Lewis said. "I had no idea that would happen."

"Not now, Lewis," said Mr. Willerstein.

Lewis went sadly out the exit, leaving his memory scanner behind.

Violet slipped out invisibly and back into her day clothes at the time machine. Dash joined her after picking up many of the spilled fire ants at high speed and getting them back into their ant farm.

Wilbur came running out. "It was a disaster! That machine wasn't supposed to fall apart, much less pull in that volcano and make it explode. The Bowler Hat Guy sabotaged it. We've got to stop my dad from giving up, or he won't get adopted, and then his future will be different and I won't exist."

"We can still fix this. We have to," Violet said.

As he started up the time machine in local hover mode, Wilbur said, "I could have sworn I saw two people in red costumes appear just as the volcano exploded. They looked like Invisigirl and Dasher, but that's impossible."

"You did see them," said Violet. "My brother and I are superheros, and we were trying to help."

"Some help," said Wilbur. "You made things incredibly worse."

"We can still fix this. We have to," Dash said.

"You stay out of it. I'll talk my dad into coming back, fixing his machine, and getting his life back on course."