It's almost hard to believe that this story of mine's ending up, kid. I'm amazed that I actually managed to remember everything as vividly as I did when I started talking into this machine to let you know about it. However, there's still more left to tell, so hold on for a few minutes more as I reveal everything else you need to know.

If you can imagine how difficult it is to describe what happened next, I'd say that you would be absolutely right. I've been mulling over how to tell you about this the past couple of days, but I really didn't have a set plan to offer, so here's what I can think of right off the top of my head.

Sara, the kids, and me tried to gather everyone together as the battle station finally fell down and collapsed near us—miraculously with some of its major and even some of its minor systems still intact—but it was pure chaos at first. The citizens of Zari-Bars all wanted to make the former soldiers of Hellywood pay for what they'd done by killing them all, which, to be perfectly honest, I could identify with somewhat. Far be it for me to lie to you, because I really wanted to get rid of some of those soldiers, especially the ones like Pashahanta—who managed to escape the battle station only to end up with bits of the falling debris paralyzing him from the waist down—but I'm no executioner and it's not up to me to decide who will live and who will die, as far as I'm concerned that's a God thing.

The soldiers and civilians alike almost clashed as the sun finished its descent to bring in the night, but someone stopped them; someone more well-versed in the manners of using charisma to influence people into heading into the right direction. Fresh from his loss of Lala-Ru, Shuzo Matsutani descended from the remnants of Hellywood to set us all straight.

"Everyone stop it!" he roared the moment before hostilities would have started. "Stop it right now!"

To my surprise, everyone did indeed stop at his command, more than likely the result of the rumors that had spread that day of the man who'd singlehandedly destroyed Hellywood. (Despite my ego, apparently no one thought to include me in the previously mentioned destruction for some reason.) They all watched as Shu stared them down with a fierce look in his eyes.

"Don't you people get it?" Shu asked. "Why do you think you're all alive right now? Why do you think we've all been given a second chance?"

No one answered him. Sara and I knew why, but we decided through a mutual glance that we'd leave it up to Shu to work out.

"It was because of Lala-Ru!" Shu shouted. "She saw that we have good in us and that we can stop fighting each other if we try hard enough! Do you want to waste the life that she gave us by killing the people you don't like when all we have to do is forgive each other and start over? Please stop all the fighting!"

(Honestly, if I wasn't one of Shu's biggest fans, I would have called him a no-good, dirty hippie, but the man made sense, so I said nothing at all to contradict him.)

I looked to the crowd that consisted of newly-freed soldiers and former captives brought together by a man who I was sure no longer existed. Soon enough, one side—I can't remember which one—dropped the weapons in their hands and the other side did as well, eventually with both groups meeting each other in the center and talking things out, which was even more staggering to view than the laying down of weapons. In not but four seconds, generations of hate had seemingly died.

I smiled as the scene unfolded before us, holding onto Sara's hand as the two of us approached Shu, who seemed glad to see us there safe and sound.

"Thanks, Shu," I said, offering my hand. "We tried to get these misfits together, but apparently we're just not as good as you are."

We laughed, as Shu shook my hand, but there was a mild coldness to it. "Why did she have to leave, Matt?" he asked, surprising me with a conversation I wasn't prepared for at all.

Sara—thank God—took up the slack for me by saying, "She did what she was meant to do, Shu. It was her time to go."

Shu, crestfallen, sighed.

I placed my hand on his shoulder, sending a disarming smile, which—for once in my misbegotten life—worked on the person I was working on. "She used up all of her power to save us, Shu, you know that," I said. "She just couldn't exist here anymore."

"I'm going to miss her," he said, frowning.

"You and me both, Shu. All of us will."

"Well, I—" Shu started to say, but he was interrupted by the sounds of a woman screaming in the distance.

The three of us looked up toward the wreckage of Hellywood—where the screams emanated from—and spied a lone hand trying to pull the body it was attached to out of the rubble. Acting on pure instinct I rushed off to get to her in time, barely avoiding the broken pieces of metal that surely would've killed me if I'd been unfortunate enough to slip and fall on them. I could hear Shu and Sara running behind me, but there weren't near as fast as I was—which was something I really needed to get used to—and I made it to the woman first, finding, to my shock, that it was Abelia.

When she noticed that I was standing above her, Abelia's head drooped, as if she were resigning herself to her fate. "Just make it quick," she said.

Make what quick? I asked myself. What does she—Oh, she means make killing her quick. Sorry, sweetheart, but that's not how I do things.

By that time Sara and Shu had met up with me, while I examined the wreckage that kept Abelia trapped beneath them. There was a rogue iron beam situated right above her legs. If we could move that out of the way, then we could get her out of there safely.

"Sara, move some of that smaller rubble over there out of the way while Shu and me take care of this beam here," I said. "Hey, Abelia, look at me."

A puzzled expression on her face, Abelia raised her head to look me in the eyes.

"Get ready to move out of there as quickly as possible," I said. "When Shu and me take care of that beam it means that the stuff it's holding up will fall down and kill you if you don't move quick enough. Do you understand?"

Abelia nodded, still unsure of my motives.

I turned to look at Sara, who was already moving several of the lesser pieces of metal out of the way, which would prove invaluable once Shu and I tried to move that gigantic beam out of the way. Shu had moved over to one side of the beam and was waiting for me to get there. I approached the right side of the beam and tried to guess how much it weighed, but figured it didn't matter in the end. We'd either succeed and save Abelia or fail and get her killed.

"Ready?" I asked Shu, as Sara came to his side as well to help him life it up.

"Ready," they said in unison.

"Then lift!" I shouted out as we brought up the iron beam, while Abelia hurried out from underneath it, right as the effort caused the metal rods above the beam to fall down, narrowly missing her.

Struggling with everything I had in me, I finally let go of the beam just as Shu and Sara did the same. The beam fell to the ground and we rushed off to two different sides, barely missing the other dropping wreckage as it hit the sandy ground beneath it.

Sighing deeply, I let out a small laugh, glad that it had worked. Looking over to my left, I saw Abelia trying to stand up, but having some difficulty due to the pressure exerted from the beam that had almost crushed her legs. She looked back at me, waiting for whatever decision I'd made about her to come to pass.

"What happened to Hamdo?" I asked in as friendly a tone as I could offer.

"He's dead," Abelia said, deadpan.

"He's dead?" Shu repeated, surprised by the sudden news. "How?"

"He attempted to get into the bound system to go back into the past, but he could not operate it by himself, so he tried to contact me in order to save him. I followed after him to find him raving madly in the middle of the room, panicking as four separate waves of water drowned him. He didn't make it."

"And how does that make you feel?" I asked.

"Relieved, if you must know. I finally saw him for what he was in his final days on this planet: A madman. I have realized it too late, though. I will accept any form of punishment that you deem necessary."

"Punishment?" Sara repeated, her eyebrow raised. "We're not going to punish you."

"Absolutely not," I said.

"And why would that be?" Abelia asked, her tone still devoid of emotion. "Why am I not to be punished for my actions in causing the deaths of untold thousands in this world? I could have stopped it at any time if I wanted to, could I not have?"

"Maybe, but we're not going to kill you because of that. You made some mistakes in your life, Abelia, and I get the sense that you want to make up for them. You and I both know your history. You were taken away from your people and forced to serve that madman. Better you learn your lesson now than never."

"That's right!" Shu added. "We'll make sure that no one hurts you, Abelia."

And in that moment I saw a side of Abelia that I'd only seen once before, back when I'd discovered her past. Her face changed from a monotone of nothingness to, at first, a subtle rising of her cheeks, and then later on a full-fledged smile of gratitude.

"Thank you," she said.

"It's alright," I said. "It's them we'll have to convince."

I pointed out the massive crowd ahead of us, who'd been watching our exchange with mild interest which had peaked the moment some of them discovered that we'd just saved Abelia from the wreckage. Some of them looked hostile and others looked ready to kill her, which was something we couldn't have happen.

"I can get you back home safely in exchange for my freedom," Abelia said, as she revealed a portion of Hellywood that wasn't completely annihilated. "I can reactivate the bound system and take you back to your families to make up for what I did."

I took it that the bound system referred to the time tunnel I'd so nicknamed, which meant that all three of us had a ticket straight home.

"Matt, can I talk with you for a moment?" Sara asked before I could answer Abelia. "It's very important."

I looked over to her and saw the serious glint in her eyes and nodded my head. "Sure thing, beautiful," I said as I followed her away from Shu and Abelia.

Sara brought me over to where the kids had been standing while we were dealing with Abelia's problems. Some of them were playing a game of tag to keep themselves at least a little bit entertained. I smiled at them, knowing they'd finally have a somewhat safer world to live in now that Hellywood was gone from their worries.

"We can't leave them behind, Matt," Sara said, staring at them with me.

"You want to take them home with us?" I asked. "I'm sure that'd be real easy to do. Then again we'd have to explain just why we disappeared only to have fifty plus kids with us the moment we came back."

"I'm not going back."

Furling my eyebrow, I looked over to Sara and found the most serious expression on her face. "Then we're not going back," I said, nodding.

"Matt, at least argue against what I said," Sara said. "You can't tell me that you'll stay if you don't want to. Tell me why we have to stay."

I looked back at the kids, who were waving at us. I waved at them as well, smiling at them too to see the looks they would give me.

"Sis is gone," I said solemnly. "They need someone to look after them."

"There are plenty of people here to do that for us," Sara said, confusing me with her seemingly changed opinion, but I picked up on why she was doing it a second later.

Sara was trying to get me to understand exactly why we had to stay behind, but she also wanted to go back home too just as much as I did. She'd made her decision, but she wanted my input as well, hence why she was asking my opinion on why we needed to watch them and not someone else.

"We'd never be able to live with ourselves if we left them to some total stranger," I said. "Sure we'd be safe back at home, but not knowing about them would kill us inside. We'd have to know, so that's why we're going to be the ones who look after them."

"But what about the baby?" Sara asked. "Wouldn't it be safer to bring it back home to operate on? Can we raise a child in a world like this?"

"A rejuvenated world like this? You better believe it, sweetheart. I'll raise the heck out of that kid."

Sara offered a semi-glare at me for my comments.

"Alright, seriously, though, I think we can do it," I said.

"Think?" Sara repeated. "Or know?"

"Definitely know. I don't know why, but I just do. All I know is that as long as I'm with you, then everything will work out, Sara."

She smiled. "Thanks, Matt. But what about your family and my dad? Are we going to let them go on without knowing what happened to us?"

I paused to think about that for a moment. What kind of a heartless son was I that I hadn't at least considered about telling my family about what had happened to us? What could we tell them, especially if we stayed behind?

"I've got it," I said later on. "Shu's for sure going back; I can see it in his eyes. We'll ask him to send a message to our parents."

"But why would they believe him?" Sara asked.

"We'll tell Shu to tell them something that only we could think of or know of," I said, trying to find something that my parents would understand. "I'll ask him to talk to them about the time that you saved my life way back when and make Shu tell them that I offered you a check for whatever you wanted, because no one but us knows about that, well, besides our parents, but who're they going to tell about that? Surely not some little, rascally Japanese kid half a world away."

Sara considered it for a moment. "That would work," she said, nodding gently. "I think that can work, yeah."

"Well that solves that."

"There's one more problem."

"Of course there is. It wouldn't be us without one more problem."

"What are we going to name the baby?"

Honestly I almost laughed then and there. If naming a kid was the only problem I ever had to deal with in my life again, I'd be the happiest man alive in this world of ours, which, coincidentally, I think I am.

Instead, I had the great idea to ask, "Do you think it's a boy or a girl?"

Sara placed a hand on her belly—which was nowhere near showing signs that she was pregnant—and looked down at it. "I think it's a boy," she offered. "It is a boy."

"We could always name him after me. I think it's a good name."

"I was thinking about naming him after his father."

I stopped for a second, listened to what Sara had said in my head one more time, and smiled. "Kazam sounds like a wonderful name to me."

"But what if it's a girl?" Sara asked, smiling at me.

"I think Sis will do nicely. Second-strongest woman I've ever met in my life."

"Oh, really? Who's the first?"

"Take a wild guess," I said.

Sara's smile grew larger. "Flattery will get you nowhere."

I chuckled.

By that time Shu had obviously gotten bored waiting for us to come back to him, so he decided to come to us. "Hey, are you guys ready to leave?" he asked.

Sara and I exchanged glances and I said, "We can't."

Confusion dominated Shu's face. "Huh?"

"We have to stay, Shu," Sara said.

"But why? Don't you want to go back home? I know I do."

"The offer's tempting, Shu, but we can't leave," I said. "We have responsibilities to take care of here."

"Like what? Are you sure you don't want to go back?"

"I'm sure," Sara said, as the kids gathered around us, also tired of waiting for us to finish talking things through alone. "We're going to stay. Our life is here now with my children." She looked down at her belly. "All of my children."

I wrapped my arm around Sara's shoulders and nodded.

"Sara, you know, you once said that I lied to you," Shu said, bringing Sara's attention back to him. "You do remember that, don't you?"

This had obviously been a part of some conversation I hadn't been involved with, so I listened intently to discover what it had been about.

Shu moved closer to Sara's face, determination lording over his voice, "Well, I still believe that I was right," he said. "No matter where you are, whatever troubles you face, as long as you've got your life, something good is bound to happen. Something so totally awesome that would make up for all the bad stuff. Sure it can get pretty tough in the meantime. I don't know how quite to put it, but, well…have a good life."

"Well said, Shu," I said, nodding my head. "Now let's get you back home."

In the inner parts of the destroyed Hellywood the bound system remained one of the few working pieces of the battle station, something I'd tried to make sure would stay so, and Lala-Ru must have done as well, because there was no other explanation for how well it worked.

Shu stood in the middle of the platform that had brought us into the future of our planet, ready to go back home. Sara, the kids, some unpleasant men with guns, and I all stood with Abelia, who was working on the bound system.

"Target coordinates locked," Abelia said.

Shu looked over to Sara and me, and I said, "Be careful, Shu. Remember to tell our parents where we are now and that we're safe."

"I will, Matt," Shu said. "Nankurunaisa."

"Nankurunaisa," Sara and I said in unison.

Abelia turned to us and said, "He can go at anytime."

Sara nodded and Abelia activated the bound system.

"Beginning transfer," she said.

An orb of light surrounded Shu in a protective bubble, expanded, and soon took him away from the future and back to where he was meant to be. The moment he was gone, however, the aforementioned unpleasant men with guns almost shot Abelia.

"So I guess I've done my part, huh?" Abelia said.

"Nowhere near close enough," I said as Sara lowered the men's weapons with a disapproving look on her face. "So long as you're alive, Abelia, it's up to you to make your own path. You can stay with us if you'd like, or go back home."

"We'll take you in and keep you safe," Sara said.

Abelia's face betrayed her surprise, even though we'd already promised her as much earlier that day. I guess she'd never really believed us before then.

"I have no home to go back to," Abelia said. "If you're serious about your offer, then I shall remain here and keep everyone safe from those who would misuse the powers left inside of Hellywood."

"Works fine for us," I said, smiling at her.

Abelia, now a free woman, walked past the guards and left the room that held the bound system behind. To this day she has never set foot within a hundred yards of the once great Hellywood, even when I asked her help in working on some of the systems to enable this conversation with you, kid. I can't say that I blame her.

Sara and I stared back at the platform where Shu had been not ten seconds ago and marveled.

"Do you think he'll be able to tell them about us?" Sara asked.

"You bet, sweetheart," I said. "If I know anything about Shu, it's that he's just so stubborn, which means he'll never give up until he does what we asked him."

Sara smiled. "What now?"

"Guess it's time for us to find ourselves a new home. Would you guys like that?"

The kids cheered my decision and hopped around joyfully.

I looked over at Sara and smiled, seeing it returned. The kids cheering in the back of my mind, I leaned in and kissed her, knowing that maybe if everything wasn't going to be perfect in our lives, it could at least give us enough time to find that "Something so totally awesome that would make up for all the bad stuff" that Shu was so fond of talking about to us.

As for me, I found that something two years ago, and as long as she's with me, Sara will always be able to make up for all of the bad stuff in my life. It just took me this long to figure it out.