In the mid 1970's, Marvel Comics released a comic book series entitled What If? What If? consisted of 70 issues and it featured alternate takes on various Marvel Comics events like changing Spider-Man's origin completely to make him look like an narcissistic asshole who only cares about stardom or having the Avengers take place in the 1950's instead of the 1960's. It was an extremely popular comic book series.
In this chapter, you will be presented with a What If storyline that is like the Marvel Comics series. If any of you followers of this story have ever read chapter 11 of this story, then you'd know that Julius Kore's father Richard Kore had died in a car crash that happened when Julius impatiently called him while driving during a blizzard on the night of January 22, 2019. Richard had been arguing with his son Julius over the fact that he was running late in a blizzard, which distracted him to the point where he skidded on a patch of ice and his car collided with a guard rail and it fell over, killing Richard instantly.
But what if that event never happened? What if Richard Kore didn't wind up in a car crash and died but instead met a future version of his son along with a raccoon, turtle, hippo and a female vixen who had accidentally time travelled to the night of January 22, 2019? You're about to find out what happened if Julius Kore's father hadn't died from a car crash that he'd accidentally caused.
January 22, 2019. Newark, New Jersey. The Human World. Night.
At a dark desolate area of a street, there was a silver 2018 Honda Civic car cruising through the wintry streets of Newark, New Jersey. Normally, nobody would even think about driving in this type of blizzard like weather. There was one man who was driving in this type of wintry weather. Inside the car was a middle aged human man with a goatee and had short brown hair on his head. This man's name was Richard Kore. He is the father of Julius Kore and his brother Tommy, the main protagonists of this story. Richard Kore was Caucasian, who had brown eyes.
Richard was driving home from work at the steel mill, where he made thousands of steel products like knives and tools. He had been working at the steel mill for thirteen years. Richard had been interested in working at a steel mill ever since he had taken a high school field trip with his woodshop class to a local steel mill in the year 1988 when he was a sophomore in Jackson, Mississippi when he was almost 17 years old. That field trip was amazing to the sixteen year old Richard. Here Richard Kore was, three decades later arriving home from the steel mill in a wintry night in Newark, New Jersey.
It was 5:24 P.M. Normally, Richard Kore would arrive home from work at around 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon so that way he would spend some time with his two sons that he was raising by himself. However, since this was a terrible blizzard, the roads were slick with ice and sleet. Driving fast in these roads was a death sentence. People had to drive slow in this type of weather conditions. He was about an hour and a half late from driving to his house.
Richard was going 20 mph in this type of weather. The man was freezing. It was 5 degrees Fahrenheit outside, but the wind chill was more like -5 degrees. He was concentrating on driving to his house. It was dusk out. It was snowing like crazy outside. The snow was like 10-11 inches deep.
Suddenly, Richard Kore's cell phone rang. The tune of Rockstar by Nickelback was blaring loudly from his phone. He picked up the phone with his right hand. He looked at who was calling him. It was his son Julius who was calling Richard. Julius was probably calling to complain about the fact that Richard was running two hours late getting home from the steel mill. Julius should've known better than to call his father when he was driving, especially in such bad weather as this. But there was one thing that Julius was known for and that was being extremely impatient when it come to matters like this. Julius loved his father very much. He would sometimes panic if his father arrived home from work a little late because he was afraid that his father might've gotten into a car accident or something like that.
Richard answered the phone.
"Hi Dad. Where are you at? You've been two hours late." Julius Kore's voice rang out in Richard's ear. He was holding up the phone while steering the car with one hand.
"Sorry about that, Julie. The blizzard caused me to drive really slow so that way I don't slip on the ice and die in a car crash. I'll be home soon, I promise." Richard said to his son.
"Good. I was starting to worry about you. I thought that maybe you were in a terrible accident or something." Julius said to his father.
"I'll be home in a few minutes okay Julius." Richard said. Now, in the original timeline, this phone conversation would turn out to be a full blown argument between Julius and Richard that would've ultimately resulted in Richard Kore's death in a tragic car accident. Julius would feel guilty for that incident for the rest of his life. But this was an alternate timeline in which the argument between Richard and Julius that resulted in the car accident that caused his death never happened. Instead, everything was normal in this timeline of events.
Just as Richard was about to hang up the phone, he saw a van drop out from the sky from out of nowhere and crash into the ground. Richard slammed the brakes in front of the car. He could hear Julius's voice still on the phone in the background. Richard told his son that he would call him back later. He hung up the phone. Richard got out of his car. He walked slowly toward the van. He heard a body fall into the soft white snow beside the van. The van was blue, with a raccoon symbol on the side of it and fire decals on it. The van looked to be a Volkswagen van. It had a weird clock like structure on top of the van's roof.
The human man walked around to the front of the van. He saw a hippo in the driver's seat, a vixen in the passenger seat, a human boy that looked to be around the age of seventeen in the backseat and a handicapped turtle in the van with the boy. Richard wanted to see if anybody in the car was okay. He opened the passenger side door and carefully lifted the police vixen out of the van and onto the snowy ground. The vixen was wearing a tan leather coat with a dark blue mid-driff top that zipped up at the front of her chest which covered up her breasts. The vixen had orange fur. She had azure blue hair.
Richard then went about checking to see if anybody was ok. The human boy hid. This boy was the future version of Julius Kore that was from the year 2021. This version of Julius desperately wanted to interact with the father that he'd once thought was dead but now wasn't.
"My name is Richard Kore." Richard said to the hippopotamus, who surprisingly wasn't injured from the impact of the van hitting the ground.
"My name's Murray." The hippo said to the human man.
"What the hell happened to your van?" Richard asked the group of anthropomorphic animals.
"It's a long story." a raccoon said, getting up from the ground.
"I want to know what happened to this van." Richard said to Sly.
"I don't believe that you would believe us if we told you what happened to this van." the handicapped turtle said to Richard.
"What story?" Richard asked, obviously very perplexed by this whole situation.
"We'll tell you our story later." The vixen said to Richard. "Where are we? What time period is this?"
"You guys are in Newark, New Jersey. The date is January 22, 2019." Richard said to the vixen. "You guys want me to call a tow truck to pick up your guy's van? It looks very damaged."
"Sure." Murray said to Richard.
Richard called the nearest tow truck company and he told them that he found a damaged van. He wanted the van to be towed to a auto mechanics store to be fixed. He turned toward the group of animals while he was waiting for the tow truck company to tow the van. This was how instead of Richard Kore losing his life in a car accident while arguing at his son met a time travelling group of anthropomorphic thieves who came from another world.