Out of Time
Chapter One
Clockblocker used to think that he was a star. He remembered when he first came up with the name, the night before the interview. After he had said it live on air, not even the Director could change it. She had been furious at him, but what could she do? She was just a cog in the machine, while he was the boy who could stop time. It didn't matter if he was facing a purse thief, a supervillain, or a goddamn Endbringer, he was ready to take on the world!
Then he took on the world, and the world won. Oh, he had his moments. Supposedly that mad bomb Tinker ... what was her name again? Bermuda? Whatever. She would have taken out the entire eastern seaboard if he hadn't done something, and a few weeks later he had managed to finally tag an Endbringer. Sure, he had also swallowed a gallon of seawater, nearly drowned, and woken up in the hospital with a bunch of tubes down his throat, but he had made a difference. Supposedly. To the ones who lived, at least.
But villains kept on popping up who were stronger than him, smarter than him, more ruthless than him, and it had been all he could to slow them down. Worse, when those villains ended up taking over the city, they had made it safer, cleaner, and better than the heroes ever could.
Was it petty of him to think like that? Absolutely. He had never gotten much in terms of fame and glory. Hell, his reputation had shot so far down the toilet, he would have rebranded if he'd had a more generic power. But he could have lived with that if he had known that he was making the world better in some small way. What sucked was that the best thing he could do, to help the most people ... was nothing. In the end, he wasn't a hero. He wasn't a star. He was a cog in the machine.
And now I'm just a puppet.
What a joke. He used to be able to let loose during Endbringer attacks, push himself to his limits, test out new ideas. But Scion wasn't an Endbringer. He was the end of the world.
Clockblocker's body moved on its own. His power worked on its own. He couldn't even blink by choice, let alone break free from Skitter's control. He wasn't sure he wanted to.
For a while, he had tried to pay attention to what Skitter was making him do just in case something happened to her and he had to keep it up. All the world's Tinkers were together, building some kind of ... what? An anti-Scion weapon, probably. It looked like a giant, metal brain with teeth to be honest, and his body was walking around it while his power froze some of the rods sticking out.
He didn't understand it, so he let his mind wander. Scion could pop in and melt them all in an instant, so this could be his only chance to let his life flash before his eyes.
It was ... kind of a disappointing life, really.
Fortunately, an explosion interrupted his train of thought. Scion, it seemed, had arrived.
Was he going to go fight? No? He was going to stay here and keep using his power on this machine? Good to know. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw some of the Tinkers rushing off, some disappearing through portals—oh, look, Defiant! Hi, Defiant! But Clockblocker kept on freezing rods on this machine brain thingy.
Then Clockblocker finally did something different. While more explosions rang out in the distance (and some kind of vibration that seemed to affect colors, whatever that was), Clockblocker stopped at the front of the machine, and climbed into its mouth.
He had time for one last thought before everything went black.
I wonder if this thing is going to eat me.
WWW
Well. That was horrible.
What he experienced could not be accurately described in words. It could be inaccurately described as someone folding his brain into origami, and he was happy to stop there.
Once it was over, he found himself staring into a strobe light that slowly faded into the image of a ceiling. His ceiling. From his bedroom.
It took him a while to understand what he was seeing. No one really noticed ceilings. He could look at a ceiling all day long and see nothing but empty space, like a dull, indoor sky.
But when it clicked, it clicked. His ceiling. His bedroom. His house. All of which had been destroyed along with Brockton Bay. He had dug through the rubble just a few days ago, looking for survivors.
His dad hadn't been one of them. Dennis had never gotten around to dealing with that. His dad slowly dying was what had gotten him into all the cape nonsense in the first place, and for a whole year afterward the man had been getting better, worse, and better again. Then, after two whole years in the clear, wham. Scioned from orbit.
Maybe I'm dead too. Hell, maybe the afterlife used the deceased's childhood bedroom as a sort of waiting room, and any second now some satyr with a pitchfork was going to walk in and drag him off to a lake of fire and overdue tax returns.
No, that didn't seem right. As the throbbing in his head cleared, he dared to stand up, which wasn't the worst decision he had made that day, but there was some stiff competition. He was pretty sure he wasn't hallucinating—not that there was any guarantee with all the Master nonsense going on—but there was something surreal about this. His room was both familiar and off in a way he couldn't put his finger on.
Then his alarm went off, and his hand slammed down on his phone by muscle memory. Only when he looked at the time did it click.
6:00 a.m. the screen said. Tue, April 12.
He stared at the date. It was supposed to be June, June ... twenty-something. He couldn't remember the exact day, it didn't seem to matter when the world was ending. How had he gotten here? Skitter ... she hadn't made the Tinkers build a weapon to defeat Scion. They had been trying to give themselves more time.
Two months. Two months to stop Scion from going insane, two months to prepare for Jack Slash's big return, two months to ...
It was 2011. Skitter had sent him two years in the past. Why? He wanted to load his last save before the final boss, not reset the game entirely. So why send him all the way back here?
What happened on April 12, 2011?
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As it turned out, not much. The Slaughterhouse Nine was last seen in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The world only had three Endbringers to work with, so that was manageable. Locally? The PRT database had no record at all of Skitter. None. Zip. Nada. The Undersiders had barely more information than that. They had hit a casino the month before, which was big compared to their previous jobs, but nothing compared to what they would later do.
He started pacing through the Wards HQ, which was empty except for him. Everyone else was at school that morning. Dennis didn't go, not only because this was more important or because he had already learned whatever his classes would be teaching him, but because he legitimately couldn't remember what classes he was taking. His senior year of high school seemed like so long ago. Hell, even being a Ward seemed like so long ago.
He paced and he thought, and he thought and he paced until the rest of the team showed up.
"Hey, Dennis," Vista said, coming into the room. "You're here early. What's up?"
It was hard not to stare. His parents hadn't changed that much in two years. Well, his dad was bald and needed an oxygen tank again, but that was it. Vista? Vista was tiny, and it was all he could do to not go d'aww at how cute she was. "Not much. I, uh, I slept through the last meeting, and I'm trying to get caught up before Piggy bites my face off."
Piggot was still the director, and not Miss Militia. That would take some getting used to. He wondered if the woman was as hard to work with as he remembered, or if he had just been an idiot hero who thought he knew more than he did. Well, he'd find out.
Kid Win came next. Dennis wondered what sort of tech the Tinker had to work with these days. He had started building bigger over the years. With the Undersiders keeping the "peace" as it were, there wasn't much to worry about besides the Endbringers, and Kid's cannons could pack a punch. These days? No idea.
Then there was Shadow Stalker. She gave him a brief, condescending glare before sitting down by herself. He had never liked working with her, but he had sometimes enjoyed annoying her, which was as close as someone could get to her. While the future had been hard to Vista and Kid Win, it had left Shadow Stalker behind entirely. Almost one year as a Ward, then over two years in juvie.
Finally, back from the dead, came Aegis and Gallant.
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The rain pattered against his smooth, white helmet. With it on, no one could see him cry. But neither could he wipe away the tears.
The rest of the team was there, even Shadow Stalker, who had offered to say behind. Had asked, more like. The Protectorate too, and what was left of New Wave. Maybe it was a dumb idea to have all the heroes in one spot when the city needed them all over, but they needed this too.
A memorial. A marble block with names carved into stone. Some of his closest friends, sharing a grave with some of their worst enemies. What a joke.
"Clockblocker," Miss Militia said as the heroes started to leave. She was the leader of the Protectorate now that Armsmaster was ... well, not gone, but neither had he earned his place on the marble block.
And Clockblocker was the brand spanking new leader of the Wards. "Hey."
She looked up at him, studying him with her deep, brown eyes. "They're counting on you."
He glanced over at his team. Vista, Kid Win, and ... well, Shadow Stalker had ducked out already. She wasn't one for funerals.
"I know." Him, team leader. What a joke. He wasn't disciplined. He wasn't inspirational. He was just a jackass with a bad sense of humor, and ... and he had never wanted anyone to depend on him.
"Not just them." She gestured toward the city. They could see the whole of Brockton Bay from this hill. Half of it was underwater. "Them." Then, just to twist the knife in deeper, she nodded toward the memorial. "And them."
Names, one after another. He had read them all, as an act of ... what? Tribute? Penance? They all meant something to someone, but Clockblocker, selfish asshole that he was, only cared about two of them.
Carlos, Aegis, the previous team leader of the Wards.
And Dean. The man who, in a better timeline, would have succeeded him.
WWW
One would think that two years would be enough time to get over something like that, but normally the dead stayed dead. Fortunately, Carlos was too busy rattling off his meeting notes to notice anything that wasn't disruptive, giving Clockblocker time to stare numbly at an honest-to-God miracle.
You're not going to die again.
If they did, it would be a terrible joke.
He had two years to save the world and, what, a month to save his team? Yeah, a month. It had been on Missy's thirteenth birthday. A hell of a party. Everyone showed up, no one brought any presents.
"Is everyone clear on what to do?" Carlos asked. "Good. Let's go."
As everyone got up, Dean walked over to him. "Hey, Dennis. Are you doing okay?"
There wasn't a whole lot Dennis could hide from him. Eventually, either he'd have to tell Dean everything, or Dean would enact Master/Stranger protocols. Which was pretty reasonable, considering how he was either future Clockblocker pretending to be past Clockblocker, or future Clockblocker Mastering past Clockblocker. Hell, it might even be for the best if the whole team knew and was working together, but ... not yet.
"I'm fine." A lie, but a common one, and Dean accepted it even if he didn't believe it.
"I'll talk to you later."
"Yeah." He turned to Carlos. "Hey, Carlos. I'm not feeling too good. Any chance I could trade with Sophia for console duty?"
Carlos gave him a pained look. Why? Oh, Sophia was probably on console duty as part of a punishment. Maybe she had been caught doing solo patrols again, or was just being her cheery, likable self.
"How bad is it?"
Dennis shrugged. "Bad enough that I'd rather be behind a desk all day than going outside," he said, aware of the look Dean was giving him.
"Fine, fine." Carlos glanced back at the rest of the team. "Shadow Stalker, you're with ..." He looked at Chris, who shook his head frantically. "Dean, and Missy? You're with Chris."
"What?" Missy protested. "But ... fine." She shot Dennis a glare, which would have been a lot more intimidating if she weren't, well, twelve.
"I'll make it up to you," he said as she walked past. Both of them. Missy loved patrolling with Dean more than anyone, and no one liked spending time with Shadow Stalker.
But he had work to do. He had spent all morning trying to play catchup with the past, and he still had no plan. So after everyone else had left, he sat down in front of a computer ... and continued to do nothing.
Sure, there was a lot to do, but nothing he could do right now. As his mind started to wander, he kept on coming back to one singular question.
Why me?
He wasn't someone who could plan years in advance. He didn't have a Thinker power. He wasn't even involved with most events leading up to the end of the world. The fact that he had been involved with any of them was because of Skitter herself. He had talked to her maybe ten times in his entire life, and then out of the blue she had picked him to lead the Brockton Bay Wards (which he was no longer a part of) to face off against whatever Jack Slash had spent the last two years cooking up.
She hadn't even asked him. She had told Chevalier who had told him, which was an asshole move by any definition. In fact, there was only one time Skitter had asked him for anything, and even that had been a trick.
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"I need your help."
Skitter stood over him as he lay dying. Which was honestly nothing to write home about. All the cool kids were doing it right now
"Can't fight," he wheezed. He tasted blood in his mouth, but not enough to drown in. His lungs weren't punctured, just ... generously massaged.
"Don't need you to fight." She took out her gun and pressed it into his hand. "If and when she comes for me, aim for the back of my head. It's unarmored, anything else might mean I survive. I don't want to be hers. Not again."
"Hers?" he repeated. It sounded like ... "What are you doing?"
"Wait until the last moment. Just in case. You can call it more optimism, I guess."
The gun felt heavy in his hand. She couldn't be asking him to ... "Skitter?" She was the closest thing the city had to a cartoon villain with her sinister mystique and grandiose plans, not the sort of cape who would go out in a blaze of glory. If anything, the Skitter he knew would have ducked out long ago and left everyone else with the bill.
But she was still here.
She stepped out onto the street, ready to face the monster alone. And Clockblocker? He lay on the ground, a gun in his hand, aiming for a mercy kill.
But the mercy kill never came. At the last second, he froze the gun on her command, froze the thread attached to the gun, and cut Echidna in two. It was the gambit that turned the fight around, and like most of Skitter's plans, it was vicious, insane, and worked perfectly.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked later, after he had been healed.
She hesitated, as though turning over the question in her mind. "I guess," she said at last, "a part of me thought that if you figured out what I was doing, you wouldn't have frozen the gun."
WWW
That was when he first started to understand who Skitter was. Not a criminal mastermind, lurking in a bond villain lair, stroking a tarantula as her plans came to fruition. She was someone who wouldn't even give her allies time to think twice before she moved them like chess pieces across the board. Or, after her nightmare upgrade at the end of the world, any choice at all.
And now, two years later and two months earlier, Dennis was still holding the gun, not sure if he was supposed to freeze it or fire it. All he knew for certain was that he didn't have any extra time.
"So," he said to the empty room, "what happens today?"
To his team? Nothing. To the city? Nothing. To Skitter? He couldn't say, but he was sure that everything revolved around her, if only to spite him.
So what have you been up to?
Part of him wanted to go to her house in person and knock on her door. Evening, civilian! I'm just your friendly neighborhood superhero just checking in to make sure you're not going through any life altering crisis at the moment!
Yeah, that would work. Dean might be able to pull it off, but not him. Actually, from what he knew of Skitter, even Dean's natural charm and genuine concern might not be enough to cut it. He'd need the help of someone Skitter knew, which limited his options to ... Sophia. A laughably bad idea. Hilarious, even. He examined that thought from a different angle to see if it looked a little better, and ... nope, still bad.
What about Defiant?
He stopped dead. Now that was a possibility. Skitter and Defiant had some sort of secret history where he blamed himself for all of her bad choices. Dennis had never pried into what had happened between them. He regretted that now.
Still, it was the best—the only thing he could think of, so he gave the man a call.
"Hey, Armsmaster!" That was his name these days, before he had rebranded. "How's it going? I haven't had the chance to congratulate you for ..." He glanced at the computer screen. "For arresting Lung! Way to go!"
A pause. "Is there a point to this call, Clockblocker?"
He sounded curt. No, he sounded pissed. Why? Lung was a pretty deal these days, wasn't he? Or had Dennis done something two years ago that the man was still upset about? Well, there wasn't much he could do besides blunder forward. "This may sound weird, but have you run into any capes with bug control powers recently? Arthropodokinesis?" That was the technical term for it, a term he suspected was invented for her specifically.
Another pause. "Since you haven't mentioned this cape in any report I've read, I assume that she has asked you not to."
Jackpot. "Well, you know how skittish new capes can be." Well, he had never been skittish starting out. He had been ninety-five percent overconfidence, but some people had the sense God gave a duck. Wait, she had asked Armsmaster not to mention her? That ... yeah, that checked out. "If you meet with her again, could you bring me along?"
"Why?"
Okay. How to phrase this without sounding crazy? Or lying? He didn't know if Armsmaster's lie detector worked through the phone, or if the man had even built it yet. "Because I am really good at talking to teenage girls."
Not a lie! And if it set off Armsmaster's lie detector anyway, then that thing was just busted.
"If that's the case, why shouldn't I bring Shadow Stalker instead, who actually is a teenage girl?"
"Uh ... Armsmaster? Believe me when I say that the fate of the human race depends on you not doing that."
Armsmaster chuckled. Was that normal? Dennis was pretty sure that Defiant had replaced his sense of humor with an advanced processing unit, but maybe this was before that. "I was joking," he stated. "Alright, Clockblocker. I haven't arranged to meet with her, but if I do, I'll bring you along."
"Great. Thanks. I owe you one."
There. He had done something. Was it the right thing? The wrong thing? Did it matter at all? No idea, but if Skitter had wanted him to do anything specific, she could have said something. So if this all went to hell and the earth was doomed all over again? It would all be Skitter's fault, and that was all that mattered.
WWW
Surprisingly, Dennis' plan worked. Or, Skitter's plan, if that was what he was doing. He got a call from Armsmaster the next day. "What, right now? Where? The old ferry station? Right. I'll be there."
April 13, 2011. Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. The Wards weren't patrolling that day. It was usually two weekdays as a team and one day pulling sidekick duty—sorry, mentorship duty with the adult heroes. Which was mostly nonsense. He had been an adult hero two days earlier, and getting older hadn't blessed him with a font of knowledge and wisdom. It had just made him grumpier.
Oh, and weekends were the undisputed property of the PRT until the end of time. He had been to the end of time, and the only reason the PRT had let everyone off for that was because Skitter had mass mind controlled the human race.
But speaking of Skitter, he was going to meet her in person for the first time ever. On this timeline at least. His first time on his own timeline was ... when the Undersiders had attacked the PRT building? Or was it when they were fighting against the Slaughterhouse Nine? Ugh. He really should have kept better notes the first time around.
He spotted Armsmaster in the distance, standing conspicuously out in the open. As Defiant, he had become basically one of Dragon's mechs with a few human components, but there was something to be said about his sleeker design. He didn't approach him, though. If he knew Skitter at all, she would scout out with her bugs first and come forward second, and that was if she came forward at all. She might just gather her swarm into a bug clone and talk to Armsmaster that way, but just in case she was coming in person, he didn't want to scare her off.
So he ducked around a corner and waited. And waited. And waited some more. But he didn't have any surveillance powers, and the only way he could stay out of sight was to risk missing the meeting entirely, and only noticed anything when they started yelling at each other.
"This is the only thing I need, and you've got them!"
He hurried back.
"You're a stupid girl," Armsmaster said. Wait, really? Armsmaster stooping to basic insults?
"I—"
"You're asking for my permission to carry out a major crime. At least, I assume it's a major crime, because you wouldn't be asking otherwise! You want me to ..." He spun around and looked straight at Clockblocker. "If you're going to be this late, you might as well not show up at all."
"You brought someone else?" Skitter asked. She sounded a lot more nervous than he had ever seen her, and he had seen her get arrested.
"He says he knows you."
"By reputation, mostly," Clockblcoker said. It was even true. "Hey, girl!" She probably wasn't called Skitter yet. "I'm a huge fan of ... that thing you did." Had she done anything yet?
Evidently yes, because he could see her eyes widen through the lenses of her mask. "You heard about that?"
He laughed. "Of course!" Probably. Eventually. At some point.
"You're lying," Armsmaster said.
Really? Do you have to call me out like that? "So, what did I miss?"
"Your friend here wants me to give her a free pass to engage in criminal activity to play double agent with the Undersiders."
"I gave you Lung!" she protested, giving Clockblocker a pointed look. "Full credit! You can't give me the benefit of the doubt?"
Wait, what did Skitter have to do with Lung? He really should have kept better notes.
"You gave me a dying man!" Armsmaster shouted. "That was on my shoulders! I had to put up with two days of losing command of my team, two days where they confiscated my Halberd and power armor! I was interrogated, all my equipment taken apart and checked! All because you couldn't resist using your bugs to—"
Clockblocker tapped Armsmaster on the shoulder, and the man stopped dead. He didn't know why, but he always managed to freeze people when they had the most ridiculous expressions on their faces, like a movie paused at just the wrong time.
Skitter stared at Armsmaster, then turned to him. "What ... what did you do?"
He had only the vaguest hints at what was going on. A more cautious man would have stopped to figure things out first, but he didn't have that kind of time. He forced a grin through his mask and turned to Skitter.
"I," he said proudly, "just committed suicide. Anyway, I'm Clockblocker. Let's start over."
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A/n And that's the end of the chapter. There aren't a whole lot of good Clockblocker fics I've found, which is a shame because he was a pretty interesting character in Worm. I kind of drew from Spider-Man when writing him. Sure, he has a sense of humor and tells jokes at inappropriate times, but man do things suck for him sometimes. At least that was the idea. We'll see how things work out!
Anyway, this story was thought up and commissioned by my illustrious Patron, Tap Tap, who also wanted more Clockblocker fics, so a huge shout out to her, as well as the rest of my Patrons, Exiled, Prime 2.0, Sphinxes, Hubris Prime, Janember, Yotam Bonneh, Lord of Edges, LordXamon, Victoria Carey, Kurkistan, Christopher Harris, Luminant, Jan, Jamie Hayes, Ian, Ryan Cosly, Elayda, and Alex Beard. Finally, I'd like to thank my editor, Eschwartz, who looked at this chapter before it was ready to be looked at. And that's it. See you next time!