Legendary Scorpio

Chapter 5

An Even Blastier Blast from the Past

[9 years ago]

"No way, Jessie. There's no way I'm letting you pay for this meal." I said to my date, Jessie Ryler. Without making a fuss, she just agreed and let me pay for the dinner.

[Later that night]

"Why'd you pay for dinner, Jake?" Jessie and I went for a walk down the street from my apartment building after our dinner date. "I could've paid for all the restaurant guests' meals." I just shook my head. "You don't get it? The reason I paid is the same reason I rejected you those first few times that I asked me out." She gave me a confused look. "I mean I rejected you BECAUSE you're rich." Her face went from confused to total cluelessness. "I really did like you, Jessie. I just wanted to make sure you knew I didn't want you because you are rich." "That makes sense. I think…" I looked up at the stars then for some reason, I heard Eric say my name.

[Present day]

"Yo, Jake! Wake up, man!" I looked around and remembered I was at the Daily Planet. "Oh, hey Eric." "'Oh, hey Eric?' We've been here for half an hour, Jake. What were you doing, daydreaming?" I shrugged. "I guess…" "Well what was it?" Eric asked me. "I don't know why, but I was daydreaming about my first date." "Jessie Ryler?" Eric gave me a confused look. "Why were you thinking about her?" "I wasn't thinking about her!" I snapped. "Besides, I'm married. Remember? I was just bored here with nothing to do, so I decided to go back to our freshman year." "Oh, now I remember." Eric said while I hopped up into the hammock. "Jessie Ryler was the richest girl in school, and your first girlfriend." "I dated her until junior year." Eric and I started tossing a baseball back and forth. "You never said what happened." "Ah, she got clingy. Always asking where I've been, checking my phone all the time, calls… text messages… it got to the point where it was making even me paranoid, so I dumped her. Man, if only you were there to see her face. I'm kinda glad it ended up that way. I wouldn't have fallen for Danielle, we wouldn't have made that parkour team, and I wouldn't have tried to impress her at STAR Labs and I wouldn't have gotten my powers." "Wow. Fate is weird." Eric said. "You could say she's a fickle bitch."

"Enough about that," Eric piped up. "We have a job. That jewelry store downtown got robbed late last night. That place that's called JJ's." I almost fell out of the hammock. "That's the place I got Karen's wedding ring! Should I get Scorpio?" Eric shook his head. "That's the strange part. Nothing picked up whatever, or whoever, robbed the place. Not even the alarms." "Sounds like a ghost. I should be able to see them with my mask's infrared or x-ray visions." Eric looked confused again. "I've been gone longer than I thought." "I'll fill you in later. Let's get going."

"You dated my cousin?" Eric asked me on the way to the jewelry store. "Yeah. It was after your funeral." "I really HAVE been gone a long time." Eric mumbled. "Yeah, you kinda tend to miss a few details when you're dead for six years." "No worries, being in hiding didn't mean I couldn't miss out on life. I worked odd jobs here and there, so I was able to see movies, and I could watch TV when I could." The Eric's GPS told us we arrived at JJ's. "Here we are." I said. Eric slapped me on the shoulder. "Dude… look at the name." "What? Jessie's Jewels?" Eric gave me an obvious look. "You don't think Jessie Ryler owns it, do you?" He shrugged. "Wouldn't hurt to ask, would it?" "Guess not." Eric parked, then we showed the police our press passes. "Hey, you're the chief's kid." One of the cops said to me. "I recognize you." I said to him. "Henry Fuller." Fuller and I shook hands and he let us in.

"Same red hair, dude." Eric said to me. "No way. That's just a coincidence. She's gotta be an employee." "She's got the same bob." I was about to say something, but I looked at Eric with a freaked out look on his face. "Okay, I don't know if I should be more freaked out that you remember the back of her hair or that you know what a bob is." "My mom was a hairdresser, remember?" I walked up to the lady and tapped her shoulder, and she turned around. "Same face, dude!" I slapped Eric in the ribs and he backed away in pain. "Can I help you?" She asked me. "Yes, I have a few questions." "Look, I already told the police AND the detectives everything that happened." She snapped. "Whoa, I'm not with them. Though, my dad is. He's the chief of police." She gave me a curious look, but I thought nothing of it. "Okay, first question… do you remember anything from the date of December 5th, 2004?" Her face went from curiosity to a confused annoyance. "What does that have to do with this?" I shrugged. "But yeah, I remember. I went on a date with this really nice kid." My eyebrows shot up. "Excuse me just one second." I said to her, then turned around and calmly walked over to Eric with a freaked out look on my face. "Well?" Eric asked me with a smug look on his face. "Andrew Jackson says she isn't Jessie Ryler." Eric rushed me back over to her and I got to my second question. "You uh… you wouldn't happen to be the owner of this store, would you?" She nodded and Eric rested his chin on my shoulder. "That's right, my name's Jessie Ryler." She looked over at Eric and what he was doing. "Is he allowed to do that?"

"Told you!" Eric called out when we were back at our office. "I told you! Didn't I?" "Yes, you told me." I begrudgingly handed him a 20 dollar bill. "Andrew Jackson, meet my butt." Eric said while sliding his wallet back into his pocket. I hopped into the hammock and tried taking a sip of my coffee, but the top came off and it spilled all over my shirt and pretty much all over the floor. "Today is not your day, Jake." I hopped back to the floor and took my shirt off just as we heard a knock on the door. "Door's open." Eric said. Jessie Ryler opened the door, took one look at me, and almost dropped everything she was holding. "WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR BACK?" She screamed. My eyes went wide. I had completely forgotten that the CL-91 jacked my healing, and the alien I helped fight to save Starfire's freedom left a scar on my back. I quickly turned around to hide the scar on my back and then she almost fainted, but then she grabbed the doorknob. "Your… your chest…" "Oh crap…" Then Jessie passed out.

Eric and I let her rest on the desk while I put a clean shirt on. "Jake! Did you forget about you-know-what?" "Well I didn't know she was coming so soon and I completely forgot about you-know-what." I snapped at him. I rushed outside with everybody staring at us. "It's okay everyone, she's alright." I went back in and shut the door behind me. "Jessie is one of you-know-whose biggest fans." Eric said to me. "She runs an online fan message board for him." "Oh crap! What if she puts two and two together and figures everything out?" To answer my question, Jessie woke up and saw me, then blushed like crazy. "I'm sorry about earlier." She said to me. "I didn't know about…" She pointed at my chest. "That explains why you never took your shirt off in front of me." I was confused. "You must've been in a horrible accident to have scars like that." "Something like that…" Eric mumbled. "Yeah, that's it… an accident…" Good thing she never took any psychology classes, cause a monkey would've been able to tell I was lying. "Well I'm sorry for screaming, anyway. If I had known… I wouldn't have made you self-conscious about them." "Wha-? OH! No, don't worry about that. I'm not self-conscious about these scars anymore…" I giggled nervously. "Back when we were dating, I was. That's why I never took my shirts off." Eric gave me a look that told me to shut my mouth before I blow my cover. "Shouldn't we get down to business?" He blurted out. "Yeah, I forgot why I came up here in the first place.

"So I brought a copy of our security tapes that caught the robbery." Jessie told us. Our security officers have gone over it plenty of times, and they're stumped." She handed Eric the DVD and he put in our disc drive. "One second the jewels are there, the next…" We're watching the security tape and the jewels disappear in a small wormhole looking thing. "They're just gone." "It wasn't hacked or anything, and it doesn't seem to be disturbed." Eric said. "The timestamp doesn't skip." "Well thanks for coming in, Jessie." Eric said. "We'll figure this out." Rather than shaking our hands, Jessie gave each of us a hug. "We're old friends," She rationalized. "It's only fair that we don't have to be professional with each other." Then she left the room. "So what is this?" I rewound the video a few times, but I just couldn't figure it out.

"Think it's an interference?" I suggested. "No, no." Eric pointed to the timer in the corner of the video. "See that?" He rewound it before the point where everything disappears. "That's a timestamp. It records a continuous timer regardless if it gets cut or tampered with or anything. If it was tampered with, there'd be a gap. No, these jewels just disappear." He rewinds it again and, just like he said, the timestamp thing doesn't have a gap. I dialed the Central City police department. "Yes, Barry Allen please." "Who may I ask is calling?" The operator asked me. "Jake Smith. I'm a friend." "How do you know he's there?" Eric asked me. "Hey, Jake. What's up?" I gave Eric a look and he sneered at me. "Yeah, Eric and I need you here ASAP." Now Eric gave me a confused look. "How's he gonna help?" I opened the window and the Flash showed up in our office about a moment later, scaring the ever-living hell out of Eric. "Sorry I'm late, guys. Had to get my good suit." Eric quickly looked at me, then back to Barry, then back to me, all while having a panic attack. "WHO? HOW?" Barry took his mask off and showed his identity to Eric. "Barry, Eric. Eric, meet the Flash." I took the DVD out of the computer and handed it to Barry.

Eric was still geeking out even minutes after Barry sped out. "That was the Flash!" He called out as he slapped my shoulder. "Yes…" I replied with zero enthusiasm. "That is the Flash. I know you've been dead for six years, but you were in contact with J'onn that whole time." He looked at me confused. "J'onn is a Martian, Eric. And you're geeking out about Barry. Don't forget, you did meet Batman during my first unretirement adventure." "Yeah, speaking of… why didn't you call him?" He asked me. "He's out of the country on a usual top-secret mission. Plus he might've chewed me out for giving him something so below his standards. So, I knew Barry was busy with his civilian job, so I called him instead."

A moment later, I hear the phone ring. "Oh, speak of the devil. It's Barry." I pick up the receiver then stick on speaker. "Hey Barry, whatcha got?" "I used all the tricks in my belt, and I finally figured out what happened." Eric looked at me. "What is it?" "A wormhole." I looked confused. "A wormhole?" "It's pretty much a hole in space." Barry will never cease being what he thinks is funny. "I know what a wormhole is. I meant how did that even happen? Is something wrong with the space-time continuum?" Thank you science fiction. "No," Barry replied. "If a wormhole naturally opened up in such an enclosed space, it would cause a lot more damage. These are man-made wormholes. Cause by one of my enemies, the Jumper." Eric and I exchanged glances. "The… Jumper?" Eric repeated in disbelief. "Yeah I have strange enemies, I know. The Jumper's used his wormhole generator to commit crimes all over America." "This guy hurt someone close to me." I said angrily. "This is personal."

"Well you should probably check out the news." I heard Barry say. "Channel 8." I flipped to channel 8 to find downtown trashed… along with JJ's. I then got into costume and jumped out the window, swinging towards downtown. "Jake?" Barry's voice came out from the speaker. "Barry, Jake's going off to fight this Jumper guy." "HE CAN'T! He'll never win!" "What are you talking about?" Eric asked him. "All those times I fought him, he'd always use his wormholes to mess me up. You have to go after him and stop him. Hurry!"

[Downtown]

I swung all the way downtown just in time to see the Jumper fling a car into JJ's. "Hey Jumper!" He turned around as soon as I called him out. "You're going to pay for that!" I jumped off the flagpole I had landed on earlier with some web still attached to the pole, then used the momentum I built up to fling myself towards him. Before I reached him, however, he stepped out of the way and I went sailing into a wormhole which flung me from one building into the column of a building right across the street. I was getting seriously worn out at this point. I could hardly move, let alone stand up. "Oh, Scorpio. How about a physics lesson? What happens when an object falls between two wormholes?" He demonstrated his question on a car nearby. Exactly as he had asked, he did it. The car warped from one wormhole to the other, picking up speed until it was just a blur, then he opened another wormhole right in front of me. I was so exhausted that I didn't have the energy to jump out of the way, even though the spider sense was buzzing on overtime. The car slammed into me at over 200 miles per hour.

A couple seconds later, after I had beaten and killed the Jumper, darkness had overtaken me. Eric drove over to me on my motorcycle and ran over to me. His attempts to shake me awake were useless. My lifeless body would not wake up. "Jake…" He said quietly to himself.

[25 years later]

"You know if you do this, you'll change the course of history, right?" An older man said. "I don't care! Send me through!" A young woman about 25 said. "Bruce… Terry… Warhawk…" She said to them. "Thank you." She turned around to face the now active machine and flew threw it.

[Now]

The spider sense was buzzing on overtime. The car slammed into me at over 200 miles per hour. But… it didn't hurt. In fact, I simply pushed the car out of the way. I simply grinned. "Now… where were we?" I taunted the Jumper. He tried to escape through a portal, but I snagged him with a web and pulled him back out. "Oh no, you don't. You aren't going anywhere." "W-w-what are you gonna do…?" The Jumper asked me, scared for his life. I grinned and felt a big heat from behind my eyes.

I felt my eyes glow red, a familiar feeling that would happen when… I used my newly returned heat vision and fried the Jumper's circuitry. "Who… who are you?" The Jumper asked me. "I'm Scorpio!" He was then placed under arrest by Batman and the jumper circuitry was confiscated by him.

"Good work, Scorpio." Batman said to me and he placed a hand on my shoulder, then drove off with the Jumper in the batmobile.

I heard a screech come from behind me. I turned around to see Eric jumping out of his car and running up to me. "Scorpio!" "Whoa! Where's the fire?" He looked around. "A better question is 'Where's the Jumper?'" "I already took care of him. You actually just missed Batman take him away." I saw him looking over me. "Your costume's intact." I looked over my body, then my back. "Huh… so it is. Sweet! No new scar!" I called out excitedly.

Some time later, Eric started taking pictures of the wrecked part of the city while I helped the construction crew repair the city. "Thanks for the shots, Scorpio." I gave Eric a thumbs up as he drove away. I walked over to JJ's and picked up a broken brick. "Um… Scorpio?" I heard a familiar voice behind me. I turned around and saw Jessie standing behind me. "Or should I call you Jake?" "Uh…" I cleared my throat and deepened my voice to try and throw her off. "Who's Jake? I'm Scorpio…" "Oh please. I know it's you. Karen came in and ordered that same ring that's on your finger two months ago. I remember cause I personally crafted that ring." I looked at my left hand. In my haste to get downtown, I had completely forgotten about my wedding ring. My glove must've been shredded during the fight and I didn't even notice.

"What are you gonna do now, Jessie?" I said, sitting against part of the wall of the wrecked jewelry store as I watched a tow truck tow the car out. "Well thanks to you, I got my inventory back. But I don't think the insurance company is going to cover a car accident." "So… are you gonna move?" She went over and sat on my right and nodded her head. "It'll cost me tons more to get this shop repaired than it did when I bought the building, so I'm gonna move to Rhode Island and hopefully set up shop there. I doubt I'll be coming back here anytime soon, so I guess this is goodbye…" I could tell by her tone of voice that she sounded really sad; I even saw a tear roll down her cheek. I even felt my eyes tearing up. She lowered my mask to my neck. "Thank you Jake, for saving my inventory. Even though my shop is ruined." I pointed to my mask. "I just wanted to see your face one last time." She brushed a hand across my cheek. "I'm so sorry… about our junior year." She pulled my mask back up and walked out of what's left of JJ's.

Sometime later, I made my way back to the Daily Bugle and swung right into our office. "Hey Jake." Eric said to me. I changed back into my civilian clothes under the desk in case anybody came in. The coast was clear so I popped out and helped Eric with the finishing touches on our story.

Later that night, I sat on the couch of the place I share with Karen. "So, Eric's gonna spend one more night at his apartment Jake, then we'll help him move his stuff here." Karen said to me. "You mean I'll be doing all the heavy lifting while you don't let the baby get hurt, right?" I teased. "You know… I've been thinking about names for her." I smirked at her. "How do you know it's a girl?" "I can just tell." I giggled a little, then cocked my head. "Okay, what's your first idea?" "I was thinking… Taylor." I smiled. "That's a perfect name."