TIME & TIED: DESTRUCTION

ARC 3.2 - With The Group

PART 58b: SEE KINGS 2

Faye grabbed her things and hurried out of the high school as fast as she could. It was only partly to ensure that she wouldn't have to talk to anyone, seeing as she’d only screw up any conversation she was in this week.

No, today, she was supposed to see that her younger sisters got home safely. A task she was accustomed to, but which had been a lot easier last year, when their schools were closer together.

She HAD pointed this out to their mother. For all the good it did – mom never listened to her. Faye considered dragging her feet to prove the point, but she cared too much about her siblings. Plus Lee had offered to do it in her stead, and her brother had enough on his plate already.

Faye had said she would do it, so she would do it right.

The oldest of the King girls headed for the middle school to get Sing first. After all, Soh would have better adult supervision until she got there, not to mention more awareness of her surroundings. "If Sing's reading in the library again instead of waiting outside, I’m gonna smack her upside the head," Faye muttered.

However, as she approached, Faye saw her sister waiting in the proper place. Still reading, mind. Then to her chagrin, she saw a boy come out of the school and grab Sing's book away from her.

Faye broke into a run.

***

"G-Gary? Give that back," Sing protested.

"Nyah, make me," Gary taunted. Sing made a grab for her book, but he held it just out of her reach, laughing. "Poor Singsong, can't read no more now. Whatcha gonna do?"

Sing glared, then bent her knees slightly and jumped, managing to grab hold of her book with both hands. She yanked it back down towards herself.

Caught off guard, Gary wasn't able to pull the volume away from Sing again until she had almost managed to clasp it to her chest. As a result, his subsequent jerk refused to dislodge the tome, and instead completely pulled her off balance.

The two of them stumbled back, falling into the dirt, which was wet from the recent rain. They began to roll around, wrestling for control of Sing's precious book. A teacher standing in the area hurried to break things up; Faye got there first.

***

"All right dumbass, what the hell are you doing to my sister?" Faye shouted, grabbing Gary by the scruff of his jacket and yanking him up.

The grade schooler's eyes opened wide at the sight of Faye's angry gaze. "N-N-Nothin'," he stammered. "J-J-Jes playin'."

He realized belatedly that he was still holding Sing's book, and he quickly tossed it back into the lap of the long haired girl. Sing was now lying in the mud. She didn't even notice at first, busy trying to wipe off her glasses.

Faye's eyes narrowed. "If I hear my sister complaining about you again, the only game you'll be playing will be find the missing teeth, capiche?"

Gary nodded wordlessly, beating a hasty retreat as soon as Faye released her hold on him. The older sibling then turned to look at her sister. "You okay, Sing?"

"I think so. Ohhh, my book's all dirty now," Sing said sadly, holding it up by one corner.

Faye rolled her eyes. "Yeah, you're fine. And I got that detective story you wanted from Azure today, you can read that while this one dries out.” She reached down to help her sister back to her feet.

“Ooh, really? The one Lee couldn’t find in the library?“

“The same. Now come on, let’s report this incident to Mr. Inactivity over there." With Sing on her feet, Faye motioned at the teacher who had stopped his approach in favour of eyeing the situation warily.

***

"Walkie-talkies, we should equip ourselves with walkie-talkies," Julie muttered. She peered out her bedroom window - it was nearing the time when Carrie and Frank were due to return. “It worked in ‘Back to the Future’, and that way we won’t have this whole don’t-call-me-we’ll-call-you mess with cell phone duplicates on the communication grid.”

Chartreuse had finally come completely to her senses about fifteen minutes ago. Yet by the time she'd explained to Julie and Clarke about how she'd been experiencing a vision of Lee comforting a brunette called ‘Sing’ not a blonde called ‘Soh’, it had really been too late to do anything about Carrie’s mistake.

On the bright side, Chartreuse had been able to provide them with the reason she'd been knocked out for so long.

"It was, like, my brain couldn't quite cope with the time strain," Chartreuse had explained. “It's normally attuned to the future, so when our past became a future instead, my mind had to, you know, completely reorient myself. It was real weird. I was kind of aware of you guys, but couldn’t physically do anything.”

Julie wondered whether Carrie would want to time jump again, to earlier in the day, to track the proper King sister. Part of her hoped that would be the case, yet Julie wasn't sure if that was due to humanitarian reasons, so she could make another time jump, or if there was some thirst for gathering information reasserting itself.

A hand waved up at her from the sidewalk. Julie recognized it as belonging to Carrie and waved back. She then crept back downstairs and to the back door, quietly letting both Carrie and Frank into the mansion.

"Jeeves is still reading in the sitting room," she whispered. “And Mimi left. We can use the pantry access rather than the bathroom chute."

The others nodded, and Julie led them back through the kitchen, towards the third access point for Linquist's hidden laboratory. She'd discovered it while exploring the opposite end of the darkened passage, in the direction that didn’t lead to the china cabinet.

Kneeling down on the floor of the pantry, Julie reached around behind the cans of tuna to press the knothole that opened the piece of wall paneling. It swung out, and the three teenagers crawled down into the corridor, following the sloped passage down until they reached the secret room where Clarke and Chartreuse were waiting for them.

"So?" Clarke asked, standing up as they entered.

"So, success," Frank said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a small necklace with a couple of charms dangling off of it.

“Wait, what?” Julie asked.

“But, that's, like, totally impossible,” Chartreuse gasped. “I mean, I was sure that from what I half heard you say in the school, you'd be following the wrong person.”

"Wrong person, right school," Carrie affirmed. "Hey, glad to see that you're up and about again.”

Chartreuse smiled sadly. “Yeah, but I doubt I’ll be able to time travel with you any more. It seems to mess with my head."

"Oh?" Carrie frowned. "That’s a problem. Unless I can interrupt your present self while I’m out of my time - which, no, is it’s own problem. Why, how long until you regained consciousness?"

"Less than an hour ago," Clarke offered. "And even then only with smelling salts." Carrie’s frown became a grimace.

“But seriously, how did you two manage to get the necklace if it wasn't Soh's?" Julie demanded, looking to Frank.

"Lucky break," he answered, placing the piece of jewellery onto the lab table. "Even though we were looking for a blonde at the school, our attention was drawn to a fight – broken up by Faye. It clicked for me that she was Lee’s oldest sister, and we put the pieces together that she had been defending another sibling. It then occurred to Carrie that the fight could have caused the brunette girl’s necklace to fall apart.”

"So me and Frank did a quick search, and managed to turn it up in the mud before it could get buried or cut down by a lawnmower or anything," Carrie concluded. She pointed at the object on the table. "Looks like the catch is loose and it simply slipped off. Bad luck and poor workmanship more than anything deliberate."

"Well, good. I’m glad we could do something for Lee," Clarke said. “We should return it to him and his family as soon as we’re back in the present - does anyone have his address?”

Everyone exchanged glances. Then shrugs. “This is embarrassing for me,” Julie admitted. “Former Information Queen of the school, and yet I don’t know the address of someone on student council.”

“Wait, Lee’s on the council?” Frank asked.

Julie nodded. “Yeah. Heads the committees who do publicity stuff for assemblies and dances. They also put up the posters to keep people recycling. Not a high profile job, but he prefers it that way. We can phone him though, I’ve got his number.”

“The more I think about it, the more I’m realizing how much Lee distances himself from people, even while staying in plain sight,” Clarke observed. “He has nicknames for everybody, doesn’t he?”

“Truth,” Julie affirmed, folding her arms across her chest. “Maybe we should reach out to him? Pull him into our group? He was immune to future guy’s mental control. Could be useful.”

“No!” Everyone turned to look at Carrie. She swallowed. “That is, he obviously has other things to worry about, like his family and Corry’s band. And we don’t him to think we’re using him, on account of that mental thing. For now, let’s keep our group the size it is, okay?” She attempted a smile, before picking up the necklace and pocketing it.

Julie saw Chartreuse reach out to touch Carrie, then think better of it, and simply lean in instead. Was she doing a lot of that lately around the blonde, or was Julie imagining it?

“Carrie, it’s not like Lee’s gonna hate you for what happened last year, you know,” the pink haired girl murmured. “I mean, you told me about it, and I don’t hate you. In fact, I think maybe I’m, like, starting to REALLY not hate you. If you get what I mean?”

Carrie barely looked at the other girl. “Not now Chartreuse, please.”

Chartreuse shrank back. “Right.”

Julie found her gaze flicking back and forth between Chartreuse and Carrie, spotting the signs of an issue there. An issue of... no. She had to be misinterpreting that.

“Carrie, want to help me reset this thing for the trip back?” Frank offered, having popped open the time machine. The blonde nodded, crouching down next to him.

Chartreuse turned to face Julie instead, and managing to sound as chipper as ever, remarked, “Well, go figure on how something as simple as a necklace can, you know, affect an entire family’s emotional well being so drastically, huh?”

Julie smiled back wryly. “Yeah. But know what? You'd be surprised what the simple tearing of a piece of paper can do to a family under the right circumstances."

"Let's not think about such things," Clarke said quickly. "After all, it's not like anyone in our group is facing that sort of tenuous mental situation right now. Okay?”

Their trip back to the present was uneventful, although once again, Chartreuse ended up unconscious for a couple of hours afterwards. Yet there was one event that the time travellers never became aware of.

Ten minutes before their arrival, the young asian girl down in the basement of the LaMille mansion had realized her coding plans were coming up empty. Prompting the teenager to let out a scream of frustration, hurl the red book she was holding into a corner of the room, and collapse onto the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.