Cael lugged the head of the robot back through the junkyard – while fending off the spawn, mind you! – and back to Peach Creek Commons to Mandark.
"Excellent work, Cael!" he said, happily. Or, at least, that's what she figured he was expressing…
"Thanks," she said, putting her ponytail up again. "Alright, I'm off." She smiled at the boy who was now using a wrench to secure a panel on a NanoStation.
"Claw – Number Two wants you at the KND treehouse. Now."
"Okay, thanks!" she called, changing her direction.
Number Two stood outside the massive treehouse. "Finally! We've been waiting for you! What took you so long?" he joked, knowing she'd just come from Peach Creek Commons, and that Mandark hadn't told her about the quick transport units scattered all through the towns. The KND operative stepped onto a warp pad and she followed; it brought them into the topmost part of the treehouse.
Light beamed through the loose boards of the roof. But it was not the soft yellow glow that reflected most off of the people and objects in the room. It was the harsh blue light emitted from the time portal. Cael swallowed hard.
"Well, it was nice knowin' ya, kid!" Number Five said, enthusiastically, patting Cael on the back. "Good luck in your own time!"
Cael went up to the top step of the stairs that were positioned in front of the portal, looking back at the group of people. Mandark, Numbers Two and Five, Buttercup, Samurai Jack, Eddy and a strange purple bull-like creature. She noticed Venvor standing in the back of the room with Computress. He nodded slightly to acknowledge this. Cael took a deep breath and turned back to face the portal, her knees shaking. "I can do this. I've done it before…" she thought, tightening her fists at her side.
From behind her, she could hear footfalls on the wooden floor, but simply couldn't look away from the menacing blue void in front of her. "Cael?" Venvor said, leaning over her shoulder. She tried to answer, finding that her voice wouldn't work. She was terrified. She couldn't do this. Going into the future was one thing, she'd managed to convince herself, but going to the past and tampering with events was completely different. When he realized that she wasn't going to answer, he put his hands on her back. "Good luck back there." And he pushed her.
Cael gasped as she felt herself enveloped by the time vortex. Whatever was happening, it burned her skin, felt like she was being stung by a thousand hornets. The pain brought her to her hands and knees, though on what she was kneeling, she wasn't sure, but it didn't matter. The pain was coursing its way into her body. Every bit of her felt like it was vibrating. Time traveling while conscious, she learned, was very painful.
Dexter ran through the streets, ignoring the curious stares of passer bys and soldiers who were scattered here and there. Many people were confused or alarmed; Dexter hadn't come out of the massive complex of his labs for quite some time, now. For nearly eight months, he'd been labeled as more of a recluse than anything. And, now, for these people to see him out in the open, it was a shock. Most feared that something horrible had happened regarding the invasion that had forced him out of his labs. But it was quite the contrary, Dexter thought. Today, or rather, in three minutes, Cael Claw was going to return to her time. Given, of course, that everything went well in the future. But he hoped more than trusted that this would be so.
At 7:09, Dexter arrived, out of breath, in Hero's Square. Ben Tennyson, Double D, and MojoJoJo were there, as Mandark had said, but there was something out of place, something missing: Cael. She was nowhere to be seen.
"You got one too?" Ben asked, casually.
"Where is she?" he panted, holding his hands behind his head to catch his breath.
"Cael?" Ben asked, receiving nothing more than a nod from the boy genius. "Not here." He replied. There was a sort of implosion in the air a few feet ahead, and they all gasped.
The pain simply grew as she felt a heavy gust of wind, and then the pain was gone. Now she could feel the grainy dirt underneath her hands and the sun on her back. Her eyes had been squeezed shut with pain, but when she looked up, she felt better than ever.
The group of boys stood behind her, watching as the girl stood and dusted herself off. "Found her." Ben said, recovering from the slight shock of seeing her appear so suddenly.
Cael turned to face her guides, slightly confused. Time travel was disorienting…
"Dexter!" she exclaimed, rushing for the boy. Because of the thirteen-year-old's smaller frame, she nearly knocked him over as she stooped slightly down to hug him. Finally, she was back in her own time!
He didn't entirely understand. You'd think that after being god-knows-where in the time stream for more than a year because of him, she'd be a little less…happy to see him.
When she stepped back, he cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses, looking her over. What on earth was she wearing? It looked like a wet suit. He didn't get the chance to voice this curiosity because of MojoJoJo. "We should leave, before spawn attack us because we are still here."
Cael's insides dropped into oblivion and her smile vanished. "Spawn?"
"Fusion Spawn. Come back to Dexlabs with us and I'll tell you what the Fusions are."
"I know what spawn are, you already explained it," at this Dexter was momentarily confused. "But there shouldn't be any spawn here. I left a month before the invasion!" she wrung her hand together, immediately upset again.
"Come on, kid. Let's get back to the Labs and then you can get a better understanding of what's going on here." Ben guided her away from The Sector Five area, the others following.
"Dexter explained most of our situation to me when I was in the future. And what he didn't, Computress did."
"So you're the time traveler Dexter was telling us about," Double D ran out in front of her and held out a hand. "Nice to meet you!"
Cael smiled wryly and took his hand.
Dexlabs, a place she'd never actually been before, was more magnificent than she'd have ever been able to imagine. The place was forty-seven stories tall, half of which were underground laboratories. The small group she now found herself in, however, stationed themselves on the fifteenth floor, which was a small underground infirmary. They sat in a wide semicircle around Cael, which made her feel strangely alienated.
"Mandark's message told us that you'd have important information about the war." Ben said, leaning forward.
Cael shifted uneasily in her seat. "There's not much to know, boys. Three years from now, there's not much left." She listed off the towns that were going to be left three years into the future, while all four sat in a rather stunned silence.
"Everything's gone…" Ben added, quietly.
"Even Dexlabs is nonfunctional…" The boy genius played with the wrist strap on his oversized purple safety gloves.
She finished her story, and Dexter found an opportunity to ask her something he'd been wondering about since she'd gotten there.
"What are you wearing?"
At first, the question took her off guard, producing a "Pardon?" When he motioned to her Holosuit, her cheeks flushed pink. "Oh," she said quietly. "It's a Holosuit. Your invention, actually."
"I do not recall creating anything of the sort."
Cael smiled. "That's because you haven't. Not yet." The room became eerily quiet at this. Cael felt a tad bad for causing the silence.
"Well, I daresay we're overdue for a sector report." Edd broke the silence, his eyes shifting around the room rather nervously.
"Agreed," MojoJoJo grunted. "As for my report, that is much overdue, Buttercup is still missing."
"The Cul-de-sac is well, as are the soldiers." Double D said, "The spawn have not yet been able to infiltrate the Cardboard Castle!"
"Well, let's see how long it's able to hold up," Ben said, unimpressed.
Cael looked between them, hesitating. Eventually, she spoke up, "The Cardboard Castle is the safest place in the future." she said, her voice small. Never has she been one to interject in an argument that she wasn't involved in, but it was the truth.
"Oh, thank goodness! Where else would the soldiers go if the Cul-de-sac was Terrafused?"
"Ben, what about the Offworld Plaza?" Dexter sat up in his chair, hands folded in his lap very formally.
Cael looked at the boy. He's thirteen, she thought, and burdened with such responsibility. When she was thirteen, she was playing softball six days a week, not heading up an interplanetary war. Of course, from the moment she met Dexter, it was evident that he was never really a normal child, but still. She wasn't truly listening to Ben at the moment. Her heart skipped a beat when Dexter looked briefly at her. She particularly didn't like being caught staring at people. But it was fleeting. He looked back at Ben and the others after a mere second.
He didn't notice, she told herself. She was looking at the others now, listening.
"…can't take the guards out of the KND jungle post. That place is bombarded enough as it is." Double D said.
"But Endsville and Townsville don't have any guard." Ben argued.
"That's because there's nothing there. There's a whole KND operation in the jungle."
Dexter spoke again. "He's right." All conversation stopped. "There are soldiers living at the KND jungle post. We can't afford to move any guard from the base." He said. No one argued with him.
Sooner than Cael had really wanted, Dexter, MojoJoJo, Double D and Tennyson left Dexlabs. Cael wandered aimlessly around the small infirmary, until she found herself sitting on one of the cot-like beds when the thirteen year old boy genius came back, shutting the door with a soft, inevitable click.
She looked up at him. "I'm not supposed to be here." She said, playing with the scrunchie that she'd pulled out of her hair. Dexter paused momentarily.
"What do you mean?"
"When I was in the future, you told me that Planet Fusion arrived in the sky a month after the accident. I'm supposed to be back in MY TIME. How long has it been since the accident?"
"In the lab? A little over a year." Cael heaved a sigh. "But don't worry about it," the boy said. "You're needed here."
"But what if something goes wrong because of my being here? Earth was in no position for mistakes when I left."
Dexter frowned. "Science is all about taking chances," he said, sternly. "When you agreed to help me with my time travel experiment, you agreed to become a woman of science. You cannot be scared by such trivial things like 'if something goes wrong', especially now." The boy paced back and forth in front of Cael. "So: Are you going to be a cowardly little girl or are you going to help us win this fight?"
Cael bowed her head. He was right, she knew, but she just didn't want to admit it to herself, much less to the boy in front of her.
"Well?"
"Well? Well, I know I didn't step into a time portal and endure conscious deatomization through the fabric of the time space continuum just to sit here while you scold me." She stood, and to her amazement, Dexter smiled.
"There you go." He said; Cael frowned deeply. "Now, we need to get moving,"
Cael's frown disappeared and she sighed. Dexter…was right. Defeated, she followed the boy out of the infirmary, back up the strange energy lift (Cael couldn't help herself from swaying as the pair shot up some twenty stories in four seconds.) and down endless corridors until they came to another room, this one no bigger than the infirmary, perhaps smaller. "Go on, sit. I've got some work to do."
Cael watched silently as the boy genius worked on a warp pad, the solitary machine in the room at the moment.
"When this is done," he said, sliding out from underneath the pad, "We'll be able to storm planet Fusion" Dexter smiled from underneath the oil stains on his face and wiped his glasses clean before going back to work.
Chrizz Chrizz Chrizz.
"Dexter." Cael stood. "Did you hear that?"
