Emerging Compassions

Chapter 44: Wrongly Accused, Past and Present

(Sheen's POV)

As our group watched what was being reported on the Neutrons' television through Goddard, it was gradually revealed that one of us was framed for a jewelry store theft. The individual filmed bore an uncanny resemblance to a certain someone in our group, but I couldn't put my finger on who, exactly... The thief seemed to have super-speed in everything they did, from flinging the living daylights out of Officer Tubbs to running away from the scene of the crime! Only someone with superpowers could run that fast, and it reminded me of the time I got super-speed once. But I knew it wasn't me, cuz I was back in the past with the others. However, I was still confused beyond belief about the whole thing, so I asked the entire group, "Okay, I'm confused now. The thief in the video looks like one of us, but I can't figure out who, and how can it be one of us when we're all back in time?!"

"Ugh! ! You idiot!" Cindy snapped firmly, "Who does it LOOK like?! The blue jeans, the red t-shirt, sound familiar?!"

"Yeah, it does!" Carl agreed, quickly getting fear in his eyes, "That's Jimmy on their TV screen! Only, how can it be him when he's standing right here with us?!"

"Isn't it obvious?!" Libby barked, clearly frustrated, "Someone created either a clone of him or some sorta hi-tech robot that looks remarkably like Neutron."

Then a close-up of the imposter was shown on the screen, revealing its glowing red eyes. The newscaster was clearly oblivious to that fact as she mistakenly identified it as Jimmy, saying that a reward of $20,000 was offered for his capture and being turned in to the authorities.

Marie took notice of that and pointed out, in her first complete sentence, "Hey! Daddy's eyes are blue, not red!"

"Excellent observation, Marie!" Jimmy noted approvingly of his daughter, tickling her under her chin a bit, which caused her to giggle, "Glowing red eyes are clearly artificial, meaning that the culprit was artificially made, as well! But the question is, who created that imposter?!"

Getting a thoughtful look on her face, Erika interjected, "Clearly one of his arch nemeses, for sure!"

"Very insightful, Erika...," Cindy added thoughtfully, then apparently realized something, saying, "Wait. How do you know he has arch nemeses? ? For all you know, he could only have allies on his side!"

"Now that I think about it, his name does sound familiar, and no wonder!" she realized with a snap of her fingers, "How can someone be so smart and people not know about it over time?! I hear about him from time to time in the World News, when he makes a ground-breaking discovery in science or invents something that could potentially benefit mankind. I think he's even won a few Nobel Prizes, if I'm not mistaken!"

"Dang, I wouldn't doubt it for a minute!" I observed, wide-eyed, "He's a freaking genius!"

Jimmy just shrugged with a smirk and admitted, "Yeah, she's right. One of the three I've won was for the discovery of atomic monopoles in the Arctic. Quite ground-breaking, actually..."

I just gave him a blank stare and commented, "As usual, I have no idea what you just said..."

He laid a hand on my shoulder and replied with a laugh, "Hey, that's okay, cuz you're one of my best friends, Sheen!"

"And that's what matters, dude!" I thankfully agreed, then put in, "Yeah, I actually wouldn't be here today if it weren't for him!"

Erika could hardly believe her ears, it seemed, cuz she sputtered, "Wha- How?!"

"Well, wouldn't ya know it," Cindy remarked sarcastically, "Sheen here thought it would be funny to mess with Jimmy's chemicals when he wasn't looking! Happened around six months ago when the five of us got stranded in the jungles of Indonesia for a few months, since a missile had severely damaged his rocket and it took him a long time to repair it with the limited resources he had at hand. He had previously been concocting an advanced strain of the H1N1 virus to develop a vaccine for should the advanced form ever arise naturally, it being contained in a carbonated liquid which Sheen mistook for fizzy water when he tried to make himself some Purple Flurp... Jimmy had to find ingredients for an antidote in Indonesia and concoct it before Sheen became unconscious and the virus taking over and killing him, which it almost did. Making the antidote took around three days, almost enough time for that to happen to him, but the antidote was finished in time and his life was saved."

"I was just gonna say that I got sick and Jimmy cured me, but your explanation works, too, I guess," I responded with a laugh.

Jimmy gave me a stern glare and additionally reminded me, "And that taught you to not mess with my hazardous chemicals anymore, right? ?"

"You got that right, dude! !" I breathed with a sigh of relief, "I certainly won't do that again!"

Libby just groaned and snapped, "While we've been reminiscing about our past, some loser in the future is getting away with framing one of us! Man, that pisses me off! How are we gonna get back an' stop them?!"

"Unfortunately, we lack the technology to transport ourselves back to the future where we belong, at least, at the moment...," he hastily informed us, "I'll have to construct something with the resources we have at hand to do just that, but that means we'll have to be stuck here for a while until I'm finished."

"Like, for how long?!" Carl worriedly questioned.

"That's just it. I don't know, Carl," Jimmy told him apologetically.

"Um, may I interject?" Erika requested politely, "I might have an idea that would help transport us back to our own time!"

"By all means, proceed!" Cindy encouraged her, tickling Marie under her chin and making her giggle for a moment.

"That lightening strike to my teleportation doorway actually completed its circuits instead of frying them, and with the technology built into Goddard, we could connect both via tachyons and construct a wormhole large enough for us to traverse to connect us back to our time!" she proposed, a sheepish look on her face, "Then I can finally get back and put some REAL clothes back on instead of these itchy things I'm currently donning!"

We all just stared at her, bewildered, hardly believing that that complex terminology had just left her mouth. She noticed we were and wanted to know, "Uh, what are you staring at? ? Jimmy's not the only genius around here, ya know!"

The rest of us snapped out of it pretty quickly and returned to reality. Once he'd regained his composure, Jimmy complimented her, "Erika, that is the most brilliant thing I've ever heard! What exactly IS your IQ?!"

Erika just smirked and informed him, "It happens to be 201, to be precise."

"Hmm...," he noted aloud, "Not that far off from myself. Let's get started, then!"

While the two of them began tinkering with Goddard and the help of Jimmy's hypercube he always seemed to have on hand, I wandered over to a nearby rock, leaning back against it as I laid down, and was soon fast asleep out of boredom, like Carl had already been doing.

I didn't know how long it was since then, but found Jimmy waking me and Carl up a while later, with him saying fervently, "Carl, Sheen, get up! It's finished, and we're gonna finally head back to our time now!"

"Finally! !" I exclaimed, "C'mon, Carl!"

"Yeah, it's about time!" he heartily agreed as we followed Jimmy to where the rest of the group was, gathered around a wormhole that had formed on the side of the cave wall. It seemed that he and Erika had used some parts from Goddard, rendering him thankfully separate from the project, and used them somehow to make the wormhole sitting in front of us. Impressed with the work, as usual, I complimented them, "Whoa, awesome! Sweet work, you two! !"

"So, this thing will get us back to our time, right, Jim?" Carl verified.

"That's right, Carl! Then we can get to the bottom of the plot of whoever framed me!" he informed him, then told all of us, "This thing won't last very long, for only about two minutes, so we need to jump in immediately! You have Marie, right, Cindy?"

"Yep!" she agreed, tickling her under her chin and making her giggle again.

He looked down near his feet to make sure Goddard was with us, and the mechanical dog seemed to understand and barked happily in response.

"Well, looks like we've got everyone! Let's go! !" Jimmy announced, and the eight of us, plus Goddard, lept in and were almost instantly transported back to a hi-tech lab of some sort, only it wasn't his. This lab must be Erika's, since she's almost as smart as Jimmy! Sweet! I thought to myself, Looks like she made it out of her garage, since there are windows in this one, unlike in Jimmy's lab...

My thoughts were interrupted when he asked Erika, "Do you have any sort of transportation that would get us back to Retroville, such as a rocket?"

"It just so happens that I do!" she happily replied, picking up a remote from her workbench and pressing its button, opening a large compartment in the carport in front of her lab, a large rocket emerging that could thankfully seat all of us.

"Looks very efficient, Erika, but there's just one problem," Cindy reminded her.

"What would that be, Cindy?" she politely asked her.

"Where are our daughters gonna sit? There aren't any carseats for them..." I could tell she was really concerned about that, as were I, Libby, and Jimmy. Now that we had little girls to look after, safety was of the utmost importance.

"I've got it handled, so don't worry a bit!" Erika confidently reported to us, pressing another button on her remote and causing two carseats to appear on two of the eight seats available in her rocket.

"Whoa, cool! !" I exclaimed gratefully, taking Taylor and strapping her into one of them ever so gently. She just giggled and clapped her little hands out of glee. She didn't seem to be afraid of anything, just like myself.

Cindy stepped inside and strapped Marie into the other carseat in one of the rear left passenger seats, then sat beside her in the seat opposite her so she could keep an eye on her easily, whereas Jimmy sat just behind Cindy so he was able to keep an eye on his daughter, too.

The seating arrangement was as follows: Erika sat in the driver's seat and Libby took the seat next to her. The next two seats were occupied by Taylor and me on the right side of her. The following ones behind us had Marie, behind Taylor, and Cindy to the right of her, then in the back of the rocket sat Carl on the left and Jimmy on the right. We all strapped ourselves in, then Erika questioned as she pressed a button and closed the hatch, "Is everyone seated and strapped in? ?"

We all gave her a generally positive response in unison, with Marie interjecting, "We all safe now. Blast off! !"

Erika just laughed when she heard that, then agreed while starting up her rocket and lifting it off the ground, "How cute! Off we go, then!" Her rocket lifted several hundred feet off the ground, then took off at full blast, with our destination being Retroville, Texas, USA.

While on our way there, at more than twice the speed of sound, the possibility of who could've framed one of us, and who exactly it was, was avidly discussed among ourselves.

"It's absolutely disgusting!" Erika went on as she drove, "I mean, WHO in their demeaning mind would want to frame one of you guys?! I smell a rat who's either a highly-skilled genius who had the skills to build such an intricate droid look-alike or a filthy-rich moron who paid someone a HUGE lump of cash to make it... Who would wanna frame you guys?!"

"Oh, I could name several creeps who'd wanna do just that, Erika...," Cindy remarked, "We've all foiled our share of villains in the past, but they're all usually after only one of us..."

"And that would be me," Jimmy interjected with a tone of disgust in his voice, "After carefully surveying the footage that Goddard had recorded via the tachyon transmission, I've discovered that the droid created was specifically designed to look like me. The utter nerve of that imbecile! !"

"But who tried to frame you, Jim?!" Carl persisted.

"Yeah, Jimmy!" I agreed, just as anxious to know as I suspected he was, "Who's the culprit this time?!"

"I've narrowed it down to just a few suspects, but I'm not sure exactly which one it really is: Eustace Strych, Professor Calamitous, or Cousin Eddie," he clarified for us.

"They ALL bad! !" Marie put in with her adorable voice, and blew a strawberry for emphasis. Taylor seemed to agree with her and blew a strawberry, as well.

"I thought Professor Calamitous couldn't ever finish anything, though...," Libby reminded us.

"Libby brings up a valid point!" Cindy pointed out, "That creep can really only finish his sentences, from what I've observed. And didn't he, a few months ago, ally with Jimmy's cousin Eddie for some strange animal mind-control plot? ?"

"Oh, yeah! That's what he was talking about then; I remember now!" I recalled with a snap of my fingers, "What a loser!"

"Good point, you two!" Jimmy seemed to remember, concluding, "So, that eliminates Calamitous and Eddie. That only leaves... Eustace Strych! ! What a jerk!"

"You said it, Neutron...!" Libby scoffed furiously, "That spoiled, rich moron will do anything t' get back atcha!"

"Sounds like a real idiot to me!" Erika heartily agreed, then abruptly changed the subject as she added, "Hang on. I'm presently decreasing our speed so we're able to land safely..."

"Once we landed and all emerged from Erika's rocket, however, we beheld a chaotic scene almost too horrific for words! Our very lives and that of everyone around us were in dire jeopardy! !