Chapter Two: The Observer Effect

Note to self: Don't make quips at the bad guys when you have a chance to take them by surprise.

Max groaned as he came to. Bright sunlight stabbed at his eyelids, a sharp contrast to the mostly dim confines of the temple he'd been in before… whatever had just happened. He opened his eyes and sat up carefully, only to let out a hiss of pain when the spot where that gorilla thing had smacked him throbbed.

Especially when they have freaky giant golem things to protect them, he added to himself. He prodded gingerly at the sore spot, just around the right side of his chest. Nothing broken, thank God, and he didn't think any ribs were cracked either. Still, it was definitely going to leave a bruise.

That business done, Max finally turned his attention to his surroundings. It was mostly vegetation from his current vantage point, but more like the edge of a temperate forest than the dense jungle that surrounded the strange monkey temple his family had tracked Monkey Fist to. The air wasn't nearly as hot or humid either, though it was still pretty warm. He was near the bottom of some sort of dip or hill, which from a few half-flattened bushes above him he guessed he had tumbled down after going through the portal, and he thought he heard the distant sounds of voices and light traffic from that direction.

There was no sign of Monkey Fist, his stolen minions, or anyone else Max knew anywhere.

With a sigh, he stood up and turned on his Maxciever (Wade had way too much fun naming everyone's communicators). That portal had clearly dumped him somewhere far from his starting point, and Mom and Dad had to be worried sick by now. He was kind of surprised that they and the rest of the team hadn't woken him up with a call already.

Max winced when the screen of the wrist-bound device came up with an error message. "Great," he muttered to himself. It had been working fine before, but if something was broken, he supposed that was at least one mystery solved.

With another sigh, he started up the hill. With luck, it wouldn't take him long to find a phone he could borrow and call Wade or someone else who could pass on to the field team that he was okay.

As he walked, he tried to think of what the portal thing, this so-called 'Tempus Simia,' was meant for. It obviously transported people to different places, but was that all Monkey Fist wanted? A way to effectively teleport around the world for easy break-ins and quick getaways?

Fear suddenly gripped Max as the full implications of that question sank in. What if it wasn't just quick transportation around the globe? What if that thing had sent him to another dimension or something? That would explain why his communicator couldn't connect to anyone else's, but how would he contact anyone or get home then?

Max quickly went over what Monkey Fist had said during the fight. "I will stop you from ever getting in my way." "Now I can ensure your precious Han never has a chance to defeat me."

That didn't sound like dimension-hopping. Actually, it was more like…

"Oh no," Max muttered to himself, his steps quickening until he crested the ridge and peered out into town from behind a large tree. "Oh, no no no."

The town looked startlingly familiar – Middleton, of all places, he realized. But it was subtly different from the Middleton he knew. It was in the way people dressed, the design of the cars passing on the nearby street, the style of the buildings. And it wasn't just some vague sense of "out of place" – everything looked old-fashioned. Out of date.

"Oh no."

Max's heart was pounding now as he stumbled toward the nearest collection of shops, but he still had enough presence of mind to recognize the area. That bakery was supposed to be a music store and there was an entire building missing, but –

There. The city library was still just down the street. That would be a good place to get information. He sprinted all the way there, heedless of the pain in his side blossoming anew, and he only slowed down when he burst through the library's doors and made a beeline for the nearest of its ancient-looking computers.

The device happened to display the time and date on its screensaver, saving him a step at least, but his heart plummeted when it confirmed his fears.

August 17th, 2003.

Over twenty years ago. The same amount of time Monkey Fist had been ranting about.

Max leaned onto the desk on shaking hands, staring at the screen while he took deep, heaving breaths and tried to get his panicked thoughts under control. He could sense that people were staring at him now, and he honestly wasn't sure how much of it was from his dramatic entrance and how much was from his future – his hero attire.

"Hey, kid." The voice finally broke him out of his shock, and he whirled around to see a young man in a volunteer uniform.

"You okay?" the man asked, a worried crease on his brow.

I'm trapped far enough in the past that it'll be several years before I'm even born; there is nothing okay about that. "Yeah," he lied.

The volunteer eyed him for a moment, but finally nodded. "Well, let me know if you need anything."

After another moment's thought, he added, "You know, there was another guy who came in looking just as lost as you did a little while ago. He wouldn't be a friend of yours, would he?"

Max's breath caught in his throat. Dad? Uncle Tim? This will be way easier if one of them made it through. Man, why didn't I give Rufus a chance to catch up to me when I went for that stupid portal?

"Maybe. What did he look like?"

"Kind of tall. Black hair, and a lot of it if I'm being honest. He was ranting something about being in the wrong place in this English accent, and he had on some kinda ninja-looking robes."

The man looked Max up and down, taking in his own attire. "He's not… I dunno, chasing you or something, is he? Or are you chasing him?" He smirked and added playfully, "I thought Middleton already had a teen hero."

Max made a very deliberate decision not to process that last statement for the time being. Instead he focused on what had come before it. "It's… kind of complicated, but yeah, I know him. What was he looking for?"

The volunteer shrugged absently. "Mostly just what I told you, he didn't want to talk to anyone. I think I heard him mention something about Japan, but he just looked up something on the computers and then left."

Max forced himself to keep his breathing steady. "Right… That sounds about right," he muttered half to himself.

After a few assurances that the newcomer really was okay and that he didn't need help looking for books or anything, the volunteer left to check on other patrons. Max, meanwhile, rubbed his forehead and tried to organize his thoughts.

"Okay," he said to himself, starting to pace. "You're trapped in the past with a crazy monkey man on the loose. He's gotta have the thing that brought you here, but right now he's busy using it to try and do something nefarious to your aunt…" He glanced at the date again and did a quick mental calculation, "...before she's even born, apparently. So now all you have to do is track down the guy and his giant stone lackeys, stop his evil scheme, and get this 'Tempus Simia' thing to bring everyone back before the timeline is wrecked forever. Great."

He took a deep breath. "Hey, okay, it's like Grandpa always says. Anything's possible for a…"

Max froze in his tracks as he trailed off, the family motto suddenly clicking with the offhand comment that volunteer had made earlier. His gaze drifted back to the computer he'd been staring at as a plan began to form in his head.

"...Possible."

It took him a few minutes to figure out the website. His first instinct had been to put in the address as he knew it, teampossible dot org. Of course, in this time period that gave him nothing but a generic error message about nonexistent web domains.

After confirming that he hadn't typed in anything wrong, he then tried putting the team name into a search engine. That did little better, returning with some other hero team he'd never heard of and a bunch of websites that had nothing to do with what he was looking for.

Did the team not have an official name back… uh, now? He was fairly certain he hadn't gone back so far that it didn't exist yet, especially since he doubted that comment about teen heroes could be referring to anyone other than his would-be mother.

Regardless, he scrolled down the search page just in case. This turned out to be a good call, because it only took him a moment longer for one website to catch his attention. He blinked.

"Oh."

kimpossible dot com wasn't exactly what he expected. Okay, so he was kind of prepared for the bright colors and popping graphics of early 2000s design now that he was getting used to the idea of being in the past, but the actual content was just… surreal. It was clear that this website hadn't originally been intended for full-scale hero work, as there were separate inquiry pages for "emergency" requests and mundane jobs like babysitting and tutoring. She could do anything, indeed.

The weirdness only compounded when, on a curious whim, Max opened the bio page. This technically being her personal website, Kim naturally dominated the page – a teenage Kim, barely older than he was. Still, mission work had apparently been going on long enough that information was also provided on the rest of the now tiny team: an equally young "sidekick" Ron, venerable Rufus still in his prime, and a Wade who didn't sound like he'd ever been in the field before.

Max was about to knuckle down and go to send in a request to meet them when something on the main bio caught his eye.

"Even just out of her Sophomore year of high school, Kim has already…"

Max realized something as he read that line again. This was going to be more complicated than he thought.

See, he knew very well just how his parents had first become a couple. He'd always been a bit of a romantic at heart, and even if he hadn't, the wild adventure surrounding the event still would have left him spending his childhood begging to hear the story again and again until he practically had it memorized. So he was quite certain in his understanding that they hadn't – wouldn't – so much as admit to their growing feelings for each other until right around their Junior Prom.

Right now they hadn't even started their Junior year.

Max could just picture himself trying to explain the situation. "Hi there, I'm your kid from the future. Yes, both of yours. The two of you will finally realize just how much you mean to each other at a crucial moment and I'm sure that me telling you this won't change how it goes down at all. Anyway, I'm here to ask for your help in stopping a time-traveling Monkey Fist from kidnapping and/or killing the prophecy-bound baby girl that Ron's family is going to adopt next year. Yes, that is also a thing that you weren't supposed to know about yet. Oh, gee, it looks like I'm fading out of existence because I said too much. Let's hope I didn't just doom the rest of the world too!"

Max grimaced and shook his head. Yeah, that wasn't going to work. Should he even tell them he was a time traveler in the first place?

He looked back at the photos that accompanied Kim and Ron's biographies, and tried to compare them to his own features. Bright red hair – that was the most obvious connection, but hair color alone wasn't really a giveaway. Hazel eyes – not directly shared with either parent, and common enough. The rounded face he shared with most of his family and the distinct ears he'd inherited from his dad were more concerning, but his hair was just long enough that he could probably flatten it out a bit and make those features less obvious. The smattering of freckles across his face was distinct too, but that was common enough with redheads.

Still, it was a close thing when he put it all together. His mother was curious, intelligent and resourceful, his father deceptively clever and fond of thinking "outside the box," and if either of them started asking the right questions, it could jeopardize everything.

Better not to give them any clues he didn't have to, then. Max wasn't sure what would happen once they tracked down Monkey Fist, but he would have time to figure it out. The important thing now was to alert the people who had experience with this guy and get to him before he did something catastrophic to the timeline.

With that thought in mind, Max pulled up the emergency requests page and began to type.