Stop this. Look away.
Rex feels the impact like a body slam, even through the impact foam.
Jarring, shuddering pain curses through his body, threatening to liquefy everything inside him. He feels himself losing consciousness.
“Anrianna!” he yells before the darkness covers him.
Please not this.
The Professor is coming around. He realises the predicament and punches a button at his console.
“Why don’t I have that button?” wonders Rex as The Professor’s impact foam surrounds him.
The gelatinous goo encases him and the roaring sound of the ship decomposing in the atmosphere becomes a wash of quiet white noise.
Rex hopes Anrianna was at her station.
Not this. Not this.
The Hundred-Tonne-Husky slammed into the atmosphere, igniting a trail across the sky.
On the ground below, the Nolix heard the thunder and saw the fire and prayed to their deity to spare them.
Aboard the ship, Rex grit his teeth and tried not to black out. Through blurring eyes he could see The Professor passed out at the navigation console.
He could not see Anrianna.
“Do we dare?”
The Princess Anrianna looked at Rex with shock at his suggestion.
Rex had an impertinent smile on his lips and his eyes sparkled.
“Of course we dare! I know how it ends.”
The pair had escaped the Sultan’s planet in the fastest ship they could steal from his extensive collection. They rocket back to base with all the power they could draw from the engines. Rex had been uneasy. They were fast approaching the time of his most recent memory and they didn’t know what might happen to Rex when his time came full circle.
On approaching the base, Rex had sent his security code ahead to initiate landing protocols and was baffled when they were rejected. He wondered for a second if this was what it felt like to not exist.
Before he could worry further, his comm-board lit up and he heard his own voice through the ship.
“Unidentified ship, this is a private communications channel. Please identify yourself.”
Rex was gob-smacked, and a glance at the Princess told him she was gob-smacked too.
“I thought you were dead,” she said, shock overcoming tact.
“I mustn’t be,” he replied, shock overcoming eloquence.
They conferred, ignoring the insistent summons of the comm. It was decided that The Professor must have discovered the secret behind the anomaly and reversed the paradox. It helped that as the comm chimed and bleeped and past Rex left increasingly desperate pleas for a response, Rex remembered being on the other end.
“I thought it might be you,” he said to Anrianna, “When I returned from… wherever I was… The Professor and I couldn’t piece together where you were. Our hail to me today became the seed of my worry for you.”
“But it turns out I’m safe with you after all.”
The memories of the next three months started to make sense and he realised they had some time to kill between now and the next anomaly. He remembered he had missed the Princess terribly, but also remembered how much more he’d loved her when he’d found her safe in the past.
He loved her.
“Let’s blow this joint and see the universe. Just you and me. Neither of us are due back for three months.”
Anrianna looked at Rex. Her look said she thought he was mad.
It also said she loved him back.
“We’ve been locked in here for three weeks, how in space do you wake up cheerful every day? “
Rex had been whistling as usual, and despite herself, Anrianna felt buoyed by it, despite their incarceration.
“Well,” came Rex’s reassuring voice through the thick brick wall between their cells, “it has a little something to do with what I was about to share with you before we were captured.”
“How you knew about the trap, you mean?”
“Sort of. I’ve been reluctant to bring it up because we might have avoided all this if I’d told you sooner.
“I’m not the Rex you think I am. I came from the future to save myself, but instead I got myself killed.”
He explained what had happened and how past Rex had died.
“Oh Rex, that’s dreadful! I couldn’t bear it if you… were gone.”
The Princess hated, more than ever, the solid brick between them. She wanted to give him a hug.
“So how have you been so cheerful?” she finally asked.
“Because every day I’m here with you is another day I know you’re alive. In my future you’ve gone, disappeared without a trace, and we don’t know where to find you. Back in time I might be dead and locked in a tower, but at least I know where to find you.”
“The future sounds ghastly. Can we not go back in time and put it right?”
Anrianna was sure she felt a draft from the long sigh from the next cell.
“The Professor is working on it, but I can’t risk losing you again. If it comes to it, I’d rather have you safe.”
The Princess smiled. “I wouldn’t exactly call this safe,” she said.
There was silence for a few moments. Anrianna wondered what Rex was doing, as she’d expected a snappy reply. In the stillness and quiet she heard a scratching sound. It was familiar and she wondered if it was the same sound she’d heard each night in her fitful sleep.
The sound gave way to the louder sound of stone on stone. The wall bulged. No - not the whole wall, but a single large stone. She jumped back.
“Rex?” she started, “I said I wouldn’t exactly call this safe…”
The rock slid out of its place in the wall between their cells. In the gap stood Rex, shirtless, trickles of sweat cutting through the dirt on his arms and face. Rex, stronger than ever. He held out his hand to her.
“Well we’d better get you out of here,” he said.
She grabbed his hand and he turned and led her back into his cell. Leaning into a rock on the adjoining wall, he pushed with all his might and Anrianna leaned in to help. The rock juddered and jumped forward. Pushing harder, they forced the rock further out. Stepping back from it, Rex motioned for the Princess to back away, and gave the rock an almighty kick.
The rock broke free and tumbled down the castle wall and into the moat below. Wind rushed through the cell from the opening, bringing a chill freshness Anrianna had missed.
“If only I had my rocket boots or even my grappling line,” lamented Rex.
“Would the hang-glider The Professor built into my corset do?” asked the Princess with a smile?
Rex grinned and Anrianna grabbed him around the waist, and they leaped from the tower into the blue sky outside.
Rex gripped the Eldoan Death Fish, only a hands-breadth from his face.
The smell of doom was in the air.
As the monster slipped towards his throat, a bolt from one of his Corral Specials ended it’s life and saved his.
Limp in his hands now, he dropped it to the floor and grinned at the Princess, poised with his gun still raised and smoking, nearby.
“Not the only thing smoking,” he thought to himself.
Tossing him his weapon, she rummaged in the pile of dead fish at her feet and retrieved her own gun. They’d both dropped theirs in the first chaotic moments after falling through the trapdoor into the elaborate fish-trap. They had disabled most of the deadly creatures with a vial of The Professor’s anti-fish gas.
They should have never accepted the invite to the Sultan’s Ball. Rex had feared a trap, and was certain this would be where the Princess would disappear, if he couldn’t prevent it somehow. He couldn’t convince her though, not without revealing that he was dead, and only alive due to some accident of time-travel. So he’d gone with her to the ball and despite the death-fish he was enjoying himself quite a bit.
Until the walls started to close in.
“I’m sorry I got us into this mess Rex,” said Anrianna. “You were right about the trap, but I can’t possibly see how you knew!”
As she talked she produced a bright lipstick from somewhere on her person, and peered at it.
“I actually have a confession to make about that,” began Rex.
Anrianna found the secret button she’d been searching for and the lipstick sprang open into a long metal pole.
“What’s that?” asked the Princess continuing the conversation casually.
“Where in space did you get a spring-loaded nesball cue?” asked Rex, momentarily forgetting what he was saying.
The Princess wedged the cue between the walls as they began to press in. The cue bowed slightly but held, and the walls groaned to a halt. Rex was sure he could hear gears slipping and grinding behind the walls.
“I love nesball, so The Professor made me my own cue, that also happens to be made of solidium. And now we should be able to shimmy up the walls to the trap door we came through.”
“I have jetboots if that’s easier,” suggested Rex.
Anrianna smiled conspiratorially and grabbed Rex in a full hug, stepping onto his feet. “Get us out of here!” she cried over the explosive punch of takeoff.
At the sound of the rockets, the two goons who had been set to watch guard over the trapdoor peered in.
Rex’s fist caught the first in a jet-powered uppercut as they exited the hole. The other had enough time to look up at the duo before Anrianna lashed out with a kick to the head that sent him spinning and stumbling into the death-trap. A “sproing” sound told the two the goon had dislodged the cue, seconds before his scream echoed around the hall followed by a sickening crunch.
The Princess grimmaced at Rex, “I was hoping I might get that cue back.”
{{% timeswap %}} {{% timeline 1 %}}The Professor was concerned.{{% /timeline %}} {{% timeline 2 %}}The Professor was concerned.{{% /timeline %}} {{% /timeswap %}}
{{% timeswap %}} {{% timeline 1 %}}When he’d first spied the spacetime anomaly, he knew it was the same one he’d seen six months ago from the other side. Reluctantly, he’d let Rex go, knowing he’d been waiting for this day and itching to get going.{{% /timeline %}} {{% timeline 2 %}}When he first noticed the spacetime anomaly, he had no way of knowing what danger it could bring from the other side. Happily, he let Rex go, knowing Rex had been waiting for this day and itching to get going.{{% /timeline %}} {{% /timeswap %}}
{{% timeswap %}} {{% timeline 1 %}}He was also curious himself. His memories got hazy after their first encounter with the anomaly, probably something to do with the effect of the tachions or some-such, and there were a lot of questions he couldn’t answer when Rex had come back.{{% /timeline %}} {{% timeline 2 %}}He was curious about the anomaly, but any threat it posed was yet to be seen. But when Rex failed to check in after the Sheebat game, it raised a lot of questions.{{% /timeline %}} {{% /timeswap %}}
{{% timeswap %}} {{% timeline 1 %}}Questions like, where had the Princess gone? Who had brought Rex back? Why had his lab exploded?{{% /timeline %}} {{% timeline 2 %}}Questions like, where had Rex gone? How would he find him again? What was causing the spacetime anomaly to move?{{% /timeline %}} {{% /timeswap %}}
{{% timeswap %}} {{% timeline 1 %}}So he’d let Rex go, knowing that if he didn’t, Rex’s past would be at the mercy of Mondex.{{% /timeline %}} {{% timeline 2 %}}He wished he hadn’t let Rex go, but knew he would have gone anyway. The Ortrix was too grand a prize to pass up.{{% /timeline %}} {{% /timeswap %}}
{{% timeswap %}} {{% timeline 1 %}}Sitting in his back-up lab, he was analysing data taken from the anomaly when Rex strode in with Anrianna by his side. He didn’t look like he’d been battling one of his greatest foes. In fact he looked… rested.{{% /timeline %}} {{% timeline 2 %}}Maybe the anomaly would provide the answers. He’d just begun to analyse the latest data when Rex strode in with Anrianna by his side. He looked worn out, like he often did after battling a challenging foe.{{% /timeline %}} {{% /timeswap %}}
{{% timeswap %}} {{% timeline 1 %}}And the Princess! How wonderful it was to see she was safe!{{% /timeline %}} {{% timeline 2 %}}And the Princess, she looked puzzled, like something was bothering her, but she want sure what.{{% /timeline %}} {{% /timeswap %}}
{{% timeswap %}} {{% timeline 1 %}}“Where have you been my girl?!” he cried as he embraced her.{{% /timeline %}} {{% timeline 2 %}}“Where have you been my boy!?” he exclaimed as he took Rex’s hand.{{% /timeline %}} {{% /timeswap %}}
{{% timeswap %}} {{% timeline 1 %}}She giggled and squeezed him back, “I’ve… been around.”{{% /timeline %}} {{% timeline 2 %}}Rex smiled lazily, “I’ve been around.”{{% /timeline %}} {{% /timeswap %}}
{{% timeswap %}} {{% timeline 1 %}}The glance she and Rex exchanged, and the unsubtle cheeky smiles they both failed to hide told The Professor it would be better not to ask too many questions.{{% /timeline %}} {{% timeline 2 %}}The Princess turned her puzzled gaze on Rex, then back The Professor, who gave her a wry smile. They both knew it would be better not to ask too many questions.{{% /timeline %}} {{% /timeswap %}}
{{% timeswap %}} {{% timeline 1 %}}But here they both were, happy and healthy and all was right with the world.{{% /timeline %}} {{% timeline 2 %}}But Rex was back, tired but alive, and all was right with the world.{{% /timeline %}} {{% /timeswap %}}
{{% timeswap %}} {{% timeline 1 %}}Obviously Mondex had posed no problem.{{% /timeline %}} {{% timeline 2 %}}Obviously Grubner had posed no problem.{{% /timeline %}} {{% /timeswap %}}