Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future.

Author's Note: All right, another chapter, with some fresh exposition that will reveal some stuff that happened in the past of this timeline while keeping some details concealed. Basically, stuff happens. Please read and review.

Chapter Six

Monday, June 6, 2016
11:30 AM PDT
Tannen Valley, California

The office of Cliff Tannen, leader of Tannen Valley, head of the Tannen family, master of wisdom and fighter for justice, was not a place any Tannen Valley citizen dared to visit every day. In fact, almost nobody went there, knowing that their leader hated to be disturbed. Cliff spent most of the day working for the city, or so the official story went, and that was why no one was permitted to see him. Part of that was also because there were no official reasons that any citizen of Tannen Valley should want to visit Cliff – praise could be passed on, after all, and complaints were not allowed. Anyone who ever so slightly criticized the Tannen regime could be sure measures would be taken against him or her.

Of course, there were also those among Cliff's inner circle, those who did get a chance to see their leader every day, perhaps more often than they would have wanted. They were the people that knew Cliff spent more time hanging around with showgirls and gambling than he spent on his work. Those people were mostly privileged, being as well-off as one could be in Tannen Valley, and therefore, they rarely criticized Cliff's decisions. At least, that description applied to all but one person: Cliff's very own brother, Marty Tannen.

From the desk he was sitting behind, Cliff let out a groan as he thought of his younger brother. Martin David Tannen was a member of the family, and usually worked in accordance with the family's wishes, but that was about it. Just like his granduncle, the late Emmett Tannen, he had his problems with the loyalty to his family when it came to the more extreme measures. And Cliff figured he shouldn't have been surprised to learn that those measures included the imprisonment of alternate Emmett Brown.

Cliff sighed. He could still remember the day his father had told him about the visit their family had received from the future. Biff Tannen from 2016 had come to Hill Valley a century earlier and had given the Tannens information – and the younger version of a certain inventor – with which they could start their rise to power. It hadn't been easy to get there, his father used to tell, but it had worked out in the end.

In 1952, Emmett Tannen – formerly Brown, though he had no clue about that – had perfected the mind influencing machine. With it, the Tannen family had had power at their disposal they had never thought was possible. His great-grandfather Driff, who had avoided the car accident that ended his life in the original timeline, had used the machine to influence important people in town. The mind influencer had worked gradually, but eventually, the town had been brought more and more under Tannen control. In 1955, his father had met his mother after getting hit by her father's car – another detail his father's older self had passed on. They had used the mind influencer on Lorraine, who had been reluctant to date Biff at first. However, after a week, she'd been begging him to love her at the dance, vowing to do everything for him. Cliff smirked evilly.

While the mind influencer had been used on Tannen spouses (like his own) it had never been used on Tannens themselves, which was part of why Marty, his younger brother and the only rival he had for power after his father retired, had become such a pest. The boy had too much of his mother's genes – interested in wealth and power, but still too attached to silly morals. That was one of the reasons Marty had never been let in on the family secret. Cliff had wanted to use the mind influencer on him anyhow, but his father had always forbidden that. The leader had thus been forced to hope his brother would mature with age, forgetting his silly predispositions. He hadn't, and right now, forty-seven-year-old Marty was still troublesome.

Which he showed by barging into Cliff's office that very moment.

Marty walked up to the desk, ignoring the guards Cliff had placed on both side of the doors. "We need to talk" he said, softly.

Cliff frowned before showing his best fake smile. "If it's about the issue with the tramp we arrested in the square, I believe we've talked about that already." He tried to keep an optimistic impression, but inside he was seething. They had made sure Marty was out of town the day Old Biff Tannen had told them he had originally gone back. Their plan had been a partial success, as they had been able to track down alternate Emmett very easy. But now, Marty was giving them trouble after all. As usual.

"I know we have" Marty replied. "But we haven't enough. I spoke to him this morning, and found out he's insane. He kept talking about time machines."

"So?" Cliff asked. "That sounds like a good reason to lock him up anyway. You wouldn't want someone like that running around Tannen Valley, would you?"

"No… but we can't keep him in a prison cell either" Marty replied. "The guy needs help, Cliff. I don't know what's wrong with him, but he appears to be a nice enough person. We have a duty to help people like him back on the road to obedience, justice and order. And putting him in a regular prison cell isn't going to help one bit for that. What else do we have a medical ward for?"

Cliff groaned. He didn't want to put Brown in a medical facility – according to the stories-from-the-other-world, he had been bothering the Tannen family for years. He deserved punishment. However, he couldn't tell Marty that, so he had to come up with something else. "It's too expensive" he said. "Do you know how much it would cost us if we sent every tramp who's got a little too much alcohol to the medical ward? That's not what Dad and Grandpa started the Tannen empire for!"

Marty rolled his eyes. "Then what did we start this empire for?" he asked. "We have a reputation in town. Our family is widely hailed as those who brought progress to Tannen Valley. Grandpa was the one who predicted all those future events. He used his gifts for good, didn't he? Then so should we!"

Cliff groaned again. One drawback from not letting Marty know just how the Tannen reforms were affecting the city was that he was able to use the nonsense he was fed as an argument, and Cliff could not respond with a good comeback. "Whatever" he muttered. "Look, why don't you go now, and we can talk about this later. I've got a busy day."

Marty rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right" he said. "I've got just the town police to run, and I do more than you do, Cliff – and that's while you're the supposed leader of the entire city."

"Are you just going to keep insulting me, or have you got anything else to say?" Cliff asked.

Marty sighed. "I know you mean well, Cliff, but sometimes, I think it's a little hard to see" he replied. "Fine, you do what you want to. But this isn't the last conversation we've had about this."

"We could always ask Mom what she thinks" Cliff suggested. "If you want an arbitrary decision…"

Marty shook his head. "We probably shouldn't bother her or Dad for little things like this – they're happy together away from the insanity of running the town. Besides, she'll rule in your favor anyway. She always does."

Cliff smirked. If only Marty knew just why he appeared to be his mother's favorite. "That's not true" he retorted. "When we were discussing how to celebrate Christmas last year, we asked Mom, and you won out."

Marty smiled faintly. "As if that was in any way important" he said. "But I guess this isn't either. Anyway, I've got to go to work. See you later."

"See you" Cliff responded. His brother walked down the path towards the door and left the room. The sound of the door shutting echoed through the hallways for a few moments as he did so. Cliff looked after him, then shook his head and retrieved the bottle of whiskey from underneath his papers. Now he could at last return to what was truly important in life.

oooooooo

"Mr. Brown? Wake up!"

The sound of an unfamiliar voice calling his name was enough to bring Emmett from deep sleep into at least mediocre alertness. He opened his eyes, which wasn't that hard (he had been getting too much sleep here anyway, not that there was anything better to do) and looked at the caller. "Who are you?"

A man in a security guard uniform grinned at him. "Please to meet you, Mr. Brown" he said. "I'm a member of the inside resistance against Tannen's regime. We heard someone was locked up innocently – even more innocently than usual, at least – and since we had been planning an operation against the regime anyway, we decided to break you out." He smirked. "Can't leave them thinking they are safe in their little offices, can we?"

"No, I guess you can't" Emmett mumbled. He tried to sit up, but found that he was still confined by his chains. "Who are you guys?" he asked.

"We're the resistance against the Tannen family, as I said" the man said. "You should have heard of us – we've got a rather big operation throughout Tannen Valley. But I ensure you we're not as bad as the Tannen family claims we are – although seeing you've been imprisoned by them, I doubt you have any reason to believe them in anything."

"That's right" Emmett replied, wondering whether or not to mention Marty – while this Marty might not be his friend, Emmett was still reluctant to count him as one of the 'evil Tannens'. "Could you please loosen my chains? It's getting rather annoying to have to talk to you this way."

"Of course, Mr. Brown" the man said. "We are going to rescue you. That's what I told you, didn't I?" He undid the chains on Emmett's arms and then also loosened the ones chaining his legs, which hadn't been loose for over a day – or at least, he presumed it had been a day. It felt very odd to have his legs free to move again. Cautiously, he put his feet on the ground next to the bed. After he'd adjusted a bit, he looked up at the man. "One question, though - how are you going to get me past all those guards? I haven't seen much of the facilities here, but I doubt the guard that walked around here yesterday is the only one."

The man smirked. "Oh, don't worry" he said. "We don't plan for you to get past those guards."

"Why not?"

His question was answered by a deafening explosion just several yards away. Emmett covered his ears and didn't look up until the noise had faded. When he did, he noticed the wall looked less stabile than it had before. He stared at the resistance member, who looked annoyed.

"That's too bad" the man commented. "We'd hoped this wall would be broken by the explosion, too. Well, I guess we'll just have to use the pickaxes." He took a pickaxe out of a case he'd been carrying, and started hitting the wall with it. Emmett, too stunned to do anything, resigned himself to simply staring as the unknown man did the work.

It took the stranger just about a minute to break through the wall, after some help from the other side. He took Emmett's hand and guided the dumb-founded inventor through walls of other cells, scattered with debris. The amount of stones and dust got more as they neared the explosion site, and suddenly, they stood in the last room before the outside, and were exposed to daylight.

Emmett squinted. He hadn't seen such fierce light in… well, at least a day. He looked at the man, reluctant. Instead of reassuring the inventor, the man simply continued pulling him outside, holding a firm grip on his arm. Emmett nearly stumbled a few times as he tried to adjust to the sudden light. It was all around him, making him unable to see much.

He had been pulled through at least six hundred feet of land when the man holding his arm suddenly came to a halt. "Here's the Tannens' prisoner, miss" he said, with the same kind of obedience Emmett had heard from the guard when Marty had visited him.

"Very good" a woman's voice sounded. Emmett squinted to get a closer look at her. It wasn't very easy, since the light was still blinding him, but after a few moments, the world stabilized and he managed to get a grasp of whom he was facing. Then, he gasped.

"Jennifer Parker?"

That did it, now this world was truly messed up.