Chapter 20: To Save Their Uncles
Madame Amberly's Academy was huge. Really huge. Observing the place from atop one of its many buildings Blaze could see where thousands of students would be seen walking to and from classes on the large courtyard that lay in the center of several large buildings during the day. This particular courtyard was just one of four that each was surrounded by more buildings comprising this enormous university. And Nina apparently wanted to meet me here. In probably the most crowded place in all of Australia during the day. She defiantly had a weird definition of the word "private." Blaze couldn't exactly walk amongst the students and faculty without being noticed. He looked like a large purple fur covered dragon on either two or four legs, depending on my mood. Though from his current vantage point he was completely inconspicuous from anyone below. Blaze was supposed to meet Nina in an unoccupied science lab at around two in the morning when almost everyone would be asleep and the campus would be clear of people.
Thoughts of the impending encounter with her dominated Blaze's thoughts. She was the niece of Dr. Cortex. And she was there, present, the day Crash and Elora died. She was on the opposite side, aiding Cortex and Ripto in their schemes until everything went so wrong. How could I trust her? Would she try to kill me? Could she even help? I was taking an enormously risky gamble upon even agreeing to meet with her, revealing who I was to her in an email.
I had read some peer reviewed articles she had either published or co-published. The papers which Blaze read in researching time travel detailed the hypothetical sciences needed to form non-gravitating geometric Ellis Wormholes to create an Einstein-Rosen bridges in spacetime. Essentially, she knew what she was talking about. In the fifteen years since her uncle died she had evidently gone on to pursue a life in academia and eventually earn a Doctorate Degree in Theoretical Physics. Now she worked here at the academy as both a professor and a researcher. If there was anyone on the planet that could build a Time Twister besides my mother, Nina Cortex was the person.
The thing was, Nina Cortex wasn't only related to the man who actually successfully built the Time Twister (along with a man named N Tropy), she was also directly responsible for Crash, Tawna, and Coco's creation eighteen to twenty years ago. Apparently she knew Crash before his mutation. Well, she raised and took care of him in his feral state at a carnival when she was six years old. Coco only told me this once, which was why I was able to identify that it was Nina herself who emailed me anonymously a week ago, but evidently my mom had mixed feelings about Nina as a person, though she loathed Cortex. That conversation did last that long, and it was a conversation I snooped on between my mom and Spyro. They were recounting the events of the Time Twister's explosion, and she mentioned Nina's name at the time as well as why she knew who she was.
Was it possible that Nina - I don't know - still regarded either Crash or his sister in some sort of friendly manor? That shouldn't be possible; she was related to Cortex who was my mother's mortal enemy. This potential ambiguity brings up those thoughts I had a week ago about how good or evil Cortex actually was. About how both of my parents were murderers yet I wasn't sure Cortex was. My uncle had always stopped Cortex and his schemes, because doing so was the right thing. Yet my uncle always forgave Nina's uncle and gave him second chances. He couldn't… permanently stop Cortex, his creator. Did Crash have some sort of sympathy for the guy because of that fact? Even if Cortex had Tawna's death orchestrated by Coco. It didn't make any sense! What was I missing! Crash and Coco were good, Cortex and Nina were evil. That notion was simple and easy. It made sense, like with Spyro and Ripto. One was a hero and the other was a heartless monster. But this simple structure just didn't seem to hold up with Cortex and who I was about to meet. I need to know! I need to know if I can trust my life, my mission, and the future of myself and my parents with an enemy.
I was simply going to have faith. That what I was doing was right, abandoning my parents and allying with Nina to build the Time Twister was going to work out in the end. I can't do this alone. I've learned all that I can learn, I helped my mother all I could and that didn't get anywhere. She tried so hard. She should have been the one to do this, fix the past. Maybe it would have alleviated the burden in her heart that she carried for so many years, of what she took from her brother, by saving his life. And also sending Spyro home; allowing him to return to where he belongs with the Faun he grew to love until her untimely death. That possibility, that happiness is why I press on. Restoring it is why I'm alive, I know it.
He was above the right building, a glass dome marking the large room Nina said they would meet at. An access panel on the periphery of the glass ceiling would allow him to drop into the room, but there was a lock on it. Freeze or melt it? Freeze; don't want to turn this metal lock into a hot soup. He concentrated his breath onto the metal handle of the lock, freezing it until the iron became very brittle. The blunt force from one of the large pieces of gravel on the rooftop broke the hinge, and Blaze opened the hatch fully. He inhaled deeply in preparation before he entered. I'm doing this for you Coco. It was now or never.
He dropped down and used his wings to land gently on the floor below. The room was huge yet was dark albeit the light reflecting of the moon. How could she not be here yet? Was I in the right building after all? Oh great! The lights then flicked on, startling Blaze. He looked around, until he heard a whining noise behind him. The dislodged hand followed the path of the retracting cable it was attached to, until it snapped into place upon Nina's wrist. That was her.
"The 'Griffin's Heart.' Your email address was a hint, but seeing you in person shatters comprehension. The son of Coco and a Dragon. A creature unlike any other."
Nina herself was in a lab coat. She had to be around thirty years old. She was the first human being I ever spoke with, his time in N Sanity Island making this the case. Browsing the school's website, I was able to see a photo of Nina since she worked here. Nina herself didn't have such luxury. All she had to go off was that I was Coco and Spyro's son. And for as hard as that concept was to grasp, seeing me in person had to be flabbergasting. The last time she saw Spyro was fifteen years ago. Being reminded that such mythical creatures like Dragons did exist had to be an unsettling proposition. It was also a new feeling, to have someone in awe of your appearance. I had never felt that before, it was really awkward.
"Nina Cortex I presume. A lot has happened in the fifteen years since the Time Twister exploded, since my uncle died. It made my mother utterly alone in the world. The only surviving example of her species. And the same could be said of my father Spyro. A dragon trapped in the future with all others dead for so long ago. All they had was each other, a love forged by the loss of loved ones. I am the product of that love. It's how I came to be, from tragedy. By the actions of your uncle."
Nina looked at me, all over him from top to bottom. Her look of disbelief was replaced with a series one. She was sizing me up, studying me; looking at someone she had reached out to on a limb. "A lot has indeed happened in the fifteen years since the Time Twister exploded, since my uncle died. So I ask you Blaze, why are you here?"
I returned Nina's cold glare with one of my own. "Isn't it obvious? To change the past; to undo what happened to my parents and set things right."
"Why are you here, Blaze?" Nina responded unsatisfied. "Why did you agree to come? You know who I am; I know you must hate my dead uncle. Your mother did. So let me ask you again. Why agree to meet? To trust me?"
I mulled my answer over. How truthful should I be? What should I say and shouldn't. I'll settle on the complete truth, with nothing held back. Because I need Nina's help, regardless of whom she is. "I don't know if I should be here. If I can trust you. I don't know if it was right to run from my home when my parents needed me the most. If it's even right to change the past in the first place. My father Spyro doesn't want to. He feels, despite all he lost fifteen years ago, that what he found with Coco was real. I'm the proof of that. But my mother couldn't accept it. She couldn't accept a world without her brother. He was her world, her reason for being who she was. She took Tawna from him, yet Crash forgave her. She learned what it meant to be good from him. So for fifteen years she tried alone to recreate her own Time Twister against Spyro's wishes because she couldn't live with herself with her brother gone. That almost came to be, until my mother almost killed herself trying to activate an unfished Time Twister. She gave up too many setbacks. She can't live on now. Spyro and I… aren't enough to appease her guilt. I can't… see my mother like that: broken and grief stricken. I don't know Crash or the Faun Spyro lost in the explosion. I just know that my family's current fate is just not meant to be. It's wrong, and if that means my existence is wrong, too, then so be it. Time Travel is the only reason my parents came to be together. It can also be the thing that sets things right for the both of them. So here I am. I'm here because of my mother. And I came here to see if I can't put my faith in you. If you're willing to help, if you care about Coco or Crash like I think you at one point did, then thank you. I need your help. I can't do this on my own. That's why I'm here."
Nina continued to maintain her gaze uninterrupted on Blaze. It was a little unsealing. She was only the third person Blaze had ever talked to face to face. "If you do this, if you travel back, if you travel back and change the past, you're parents lives won't be the only thing that change. This course of action is very selfish. You realize that, right?"
I knew this, I had thought about it over and over. What I do in the past, at what specific point I show up at and who I save and what would change given my presence would have unfathomable ripples of distortion radiating from that point. I can't predict with any accuracy what will happen when I show up in the past. I might fail to save anyone's life or I might cause more deaths including my own should I fail. I might in my efforts prevent Ripto and Cortex from dying and then who knows what they might do if still alive. And above all else, there was the impact of Time Travel upon the whole world. There as a chance that a butterfly effect from my course of action would cause something a whole lot worse than the fate of just one dragon and one bandicoot.
"I know Nina. I've thought about this a lot and concluded that what I'm doing is ethically wrong from a lot of standpoints. But I don't know if I can let myself stand idly by when there's a chance to spare my parents from what they've suffered through. My life as their child might outweigh the negatives. My father thinks so but my mother did not see things the same way. Her actions would have wiped me from existence. I wasn't sure I could justify her point of view until she tried to kill herself. Spyro lost the love of his live: Elora, Coco lost her whole world in Crash. If there's a way I can save lives and brighten their futures, I have to do it for my parents because I love them."
"And you plan to go back in time yourself, and save Crash and Elora from my uncle and the fiend he brought forward in time? You would strand yourself in that timeline, with no parents and no home, since both would not have come to be yet. Their happiness is worth more to you than your own, then anyone else's?"
"I was raised by a hero to his realms and with the tales of another from this time. I thought I was some fusion of the two, a doer of good of unquestionable honor and morality. But facing this current situation, I know what I want to do yet I know how wrong it is. I know it makes me a bad person uncaring of anyone else but who I love but I don't care. I'll accept that burden if it does right by my parents and who they love."
"Heroes… If anything, your uncle, Crash, was a hero. I won't question that. Made to do evil, a fate I had a part in giving him yet he defied all logic and became an agent of good: selfless, an altruist. Who knew all that potential was housed within a simple bandicoot I raised like a pet at N Sane's Carnival? It was love, love that set him free from my uncle. He loved Tawna and that's why he defected. Cortex then made Coco and she was loyal until love too allowed her to be free." Nina at this point was shaking her head, her stare with Blaze broken for the first time. "Love, it freed me as well, from a life of service to a cause I chose to believe in. It allowed me to marry, and have a daughter of my own."
Nina was married and a mother as well! This had happened after the Time Twister exploded. If Blaze went into the past and altered the course of events, Nina may never find the person she loves. Her child would be wiped from existence. That was a death Blaze would cause on his path to save others.
"I would cause your daughter to cease to exist if I went back to that day. That's what you meant when you said I cared about my parent's happiness more than the happiness of others…"
"Yes… Tell me something, Blaze. If you did go back, would you save my uncle's life too? Or would you let him die?"
This was something I never considered. I just wanted to save Crash and Elora's lives, regardless of what that would entail. I would do what was necessary, so if that meant rescuing them from the Time Twister's impending explosion or prevent the machine from detonating in the first place I would do so. But Cortex and Ripto would be an obstacle in that mission. I would have to combat them both along with Nina when I travel back. Would I have let both Ripto and more importantly Cortex die in the explosion if I saved everyone else? Would I stop Ripto or Cortex with lethal force if necessary? Could I do that? Nina demanded an answer from me given her look, and I wasn't sure he could provide an honest response since I honestly didn't know what I would do. Ultimately, I should say what was on my mind.
"I don't know a lot about your uncle, other than what I've heard. My mother murder once in her life, my father did so as well. I've blamed Cortex for the deaths of Crash and Coco but I guess I failed to care that he died in the explosion as well, a detonation he did not want or plan. I know my uncle and Cortex were enemies, yet Crash always forgave him and was content to just stop him over and over instead of stopping him for good. My blind hatred of your uncle, is not something I can justify with facts. I've just hated him because of what I thought he did. But this opinion of him that I've formed I've come to realize I can't have unless I treat my parents under the same lens. Ultimately, Crash was right. If he could forgive Coco for murder of her own volition, then why should I hate someone I don't know? Yes Nina, I would try to save him. It's the right thing to do."
"Before you make that decision," Nina surprisingly responded, "You should know of my uncle first... I assume Coco told you about Aku-Aku: the tiki mask which protected and guided Crash throughout his life. The mask was a familiar to a spirit which believed in life, preserving order and defeating evil. Aku-Aku chose Crash because he could sense the good and virtue within him. My uncle was the opposite. He had ambition, a drive to better the world. He saw the world's imperfections as things he couldn't tolerate. Before he was even born, my uncle was gifted and cursed with a genetic marker that would make him an unparalleled genius by altering the development of his brain. So like Crash, he was a mutant. My uncle was also a peasant, born into a dirt poor family permanently in debt to the same circus I grew up in. All he had in his life was his family and his intelligence, until his parents and older brother were killed by the circus owner Lesly. At this point Cortex had already gone on to seek his education, the money for this stolen from Lesly, thus why he killed my parents and grandparents. I survived that day and I ended up telling my uncle what happened, and years later my uncle sought revenge, murdering Lesly as revenge."
"But another force was altering my Uncle's actions: Uka-Uka. He was a spirit who sought nothing more than the death of life, cause chaos and destruction. And he did so by corrupting those he sought to control. Aku-Aku and Uka-Uka do not act on their own; they act through those they choose to carry out their will. My uncle wanted to do good in the world, at least I believed he wanted to do so at first growing up. But the death of his family led him to believe that their murder was merely a microcosm of the state of the world itself. He at first had a vision to change the world, but Uka-Uka then twisted every action my Uncle took to have sinister intent. The anthropomorphism of animals to build an army, The power of the Power Crystals to enslave the world, the use of the Time Twister to alter history. My uncle's genius was Uka-Uka's tool. But ironically, each action my uncle took was subconsciously to foil Uka-Uka even in cooperation. Of the mutations he created, the very first he gave free will and that mutant would turn out to be Crash. But more impressively, Cortex used the Time Twister's he was forced to build to destroy Uka-Uka with the machine's volatile energies during Crash's final confrontation with my uncle at the base of the device."
"It's just that when my uncle finally freed himself, he still thought it was his destiny to better the world, but now unconcerned with how he did so. I don't know what my uncle could have been like had he never been controlled by Uka-Uka. He may or may not have sought vengeance against Lesly after I told him what he did, but under Uka-Uka he also kill Lesly's wife. At my recommendation my uncle chose the bandicoot I raised to be his first subject of his Evolve-O-Ray, which wound up being the reason Crash came to be. He then used Crash's feral biological sister as a means of revenge against Crash because of the influence of Uka-Uka. My best friend, Andrew, was suffering from terminal cancer and Cortex cured him completely per my begging, but also made him a slave, N-Gin, in the process. Cortex used the Time Twister, Uka-Uka's ultimate plan against the world to destroy the mask as he rebelled on the inside, but then rebuilt the machine once freed so he could go back in time and alter all of humanity's timeline until Crash and Spyro stopped him. I just don't know Blaze. I loved him; because even under Uka-Uka's spell my uncle still loved me. It's just unfair, that's all. I miss him; he saved the life of the man I'd marry from certain death. Even if he still has some mental problems latent from the means my uncle used to enslave his mind. I just don't know if Cortex was evil by nature or by circumstance. I know I would have followed him in that path, until my love for Andrew set me free. I realized living in it the world my uncle wanted to change isn't all that bad. It isn't completely tragic like he thought it was. If my uncle was alive, maybe my daughter could change his mind about the world. I just… don't know Blaze."
It was a long story thought provoking story. I knew of Aku-Aku and Uka-Uka. Aku-Aku never invaded Crash's mind, he was above doing so. But Uka-Uka was a maleficent evil unconcerned of right or wrong. Cortex was robbed of his own free will… if not of his own ambitions. It isn't possible to say whether he would have grown up to be good or evil or something in-between. But Uka-Uka robbed him of his life. It paralleled Coco struggles. She was created to do evil so that's what she did. It just so happens that her master was under a similar affliction. There was ambiguity in this, in everything. Coco, Cortex, altering the past.
"It's all the more reason to save his life" Blaze said softly. "I just don't know if ultimately going back in time is the right thing. I can't ask you to help me change history if it would kill your daughter. I was content with my own existence being erased from continuity when my mother wanted to warn her past self about what was going to happen. But I can't be responsible for someone else's child dying. I won't ask you to do that." I realize that this was a reversal from the stance I came here with today. But Nina's story changed my mind. In trying to change the past I learned so much more about the present. There were others impacted by my decision. There was a whole world out there that I haven't been a part of. My isolation from it was depressing but necessary. And above all, my parents still had each other and me too. They needed me.
"Blaze…" Nina said strongly. "The thing is, I want you to go back. I first thought you were Coco seeking to set things right, but hearing what's happened to her and knowing Spyro is also trapped in the present; what happened to my uncle, what he was forced to do. I can't live with it either. What I want is wrong, erasing my daughter from existence. I know it makes me a monster. I still love her with all my heart but… I have to do this. There's finally an opportunity, there is someone with so much invested who wasn't alive at the time of the Twister's explosion willing to make the journey free from any paradox. It's an opportunity I cannot pass. I don't have the Time Twister fully operational. I have all the recourse and the money needed to complete it. I have my uncle's teachings and years of schooling. I just needed a reason to finish what I started building fifteen years ago and someone who could make the trip."
"You… you want me to go. You're serious?"
"I've lived a good life ever since the worst day of my life. But my uncle and Crash deserve the chance to live as well. I'm not saying changing things to make this happen is right. But I don't care. I was never a good girl my whole life. I just learned to be one when need be. So if you want to do this, make the sacrifice to go back and make things right, I'll help you. But you have to promise me two things. You have to save my uncle's life, and you have to hand this letter to my past self." Nina pulled out what seemed to be a very worn out, crinkly sealed letter from her pocket and handed it to Blaze. "I want you to deliver this to her unopened. Can you promise me that?"
"Yes."
"Good. Also, is Coco still alive? You weren't clear on that."
"Yes… Spyro is taking care of her."
"Then tell her what's happening. We could use her help, and I think my daughter Coco would be excited to see her, as well as a real life dragon."