December 31st, almost midnight:
“Face it, heroes, I am beyond your powers. I am time itself!” Father Time taunts them.
Private Eye Peyton dashes into the square with a handful of heroes around him. Each has an odd fuzzy field of energy around them that makes them almost a blur. Father Time blasts them with his power, but it evaporates off the surface.
“What is this?” Father Time lost that confident grin.
Peyton skidded to a halt and took aim with his gun. “You aint the only guy in this city with time powers!” He shot, but Father Time shifted away.
“So I see. What do you think a small rag-tag group of heroes can hope to do against me? I am outside of time. Even with protection against my powers, they cannot hope to stop me.”
The heroes surrounded Father Time, keeping their distance. Peyton strolled up, still holding his old revolver. “Oh, we aren’t here to defeat you. That seems impossible. However... I used my power to help someone else.”
Father Time frowns. “Who?”
“Chase! Now!” Peyton called out.
Chase ran in, both her blades ready to strike. Father Time gained a strange look on his face at the sight of her. When she threw her blade, he shifted in time, but then everything slowed down. He saw all the heroes come to a standstill. The fires burning around him stop flickering, the babies stop crying.
“How is this happening?” He asks.
Chase comes right at him and nailed him in the face with a well-placed punch. “I can move time backward. With a little boost from Peyton, I can use my power to put myself in your past. You can’t shift while time is not moving for either of us.”
Father Time reached out to blast her with his power, but she moved out of the way and then grabbed the enormous clock he had hung around his neck. He fell over as she pulled it free of him.
“NO! MY POWER!” He cried out as she smashed the clock against the pavement.
Chase smiled, “now, it’s all over.”
Screaming people, blaring sirens, and flicker flames all returned to normal speed. Heroes moved again, babies crawled around. Then, those babies became adults. The various pockets of changed time reverted to modern time. The city returned to its modern appeal.
Peyton smiled, “looks like you did it!”
Chase nodded and then covered her eyes. All the heroes that had been babies were now naked adults. “Oh, that can’t be unseen.”
“Father Time, you’re under arrest.” Peyton aimed his gun at the old man.
Father Time smiled. “This is far from over.”
The world slowed down again and then began moving backward.
“Is this your doing?” Peyton asked Chase.
“No.”
Then, as if someone had reset all reality, everything rushed backward in time. They moved quickly through the days that had transpired since this all started. Suddenly, Chase and Peyton were standing in the middle of the Conference Center with Nova on a stage speaking.
“And as we continue to further our political connections with national...Peyton, what are you doing here?”
Just then, Rutkowski and Steelfist came rushing into the room. Two BADGE security guards were hot on their trail.
“HEY, NOVA, I GOTTA TALK TO YA!”
Nova yelled, “arrest them!”
“Wait, I ain’t done nuthin wrong dis time! Hey get yer hands offa me before I…”
“Hold on! Wait!” Chase called out. “Rutkowski isn’t here to cause trouble.”
That put a stop to the fight. The security paused in their attempt to arrest the pair of gangsters and Nova was red in the face. “Chase, explain yourself!”
Chase looked at Peyton. “He shouldn't be here. Rutkowski said he only got in just before everyone was trapped in the advent calendar.”
“You’re right. Look!” Peyton picked up the large clock she had been holding. “Father Time’s clock.”
Santa came over, his eyes filled with awe. “Where did you get that?”
EB joined Santa, his eyes glistening with a touch of fear. “Oh no, not that thing. Who had it?”
Chase said, “this belongs...or belonged to Father Time.”
Rutkowski said, “that’s the mug I was here ta warn ya about. he’s on the loose!”
Peyton said to Chase, “I think we changed time.”
While Chaz Hamilton scribbled down all that was happening, Nova calmly, but firmly, asked, “Chase, what is going on?”
Chase said, “Peyton will have to explain this. He was there.”
“Peyton?” Nova was not happy with that notion, but he turned to the P.I. and asked, “care to explain?”
Peyton went through the entire story from where he and the others here had been trapped in an advent calendar box created by Santa to the fight with Father Time that ended moments before New Year’s Day.
“And Chase and me ended up right here, in the middle of this conference. I guess this is where it all started. This time, though, it seems that we changed time and things are working out differently.”
Nova turned to Santa. “What do you know?”
“Him?” Chase asked.
Nova answered, “He locked us all in an advent calendar to protect us, apparently, and he has some knowledge of this device.”
Santa walked over to the clock in Chase’s hands. “This is a very special, magical timepiece. I should know. I helped create it.”
“You created this?” Chase held it up.
Santa slowly nodded. “Early in the exile here on your world, my people came up with an idea. We could use our powers to alter time. It is a dangerous magic that is horribly risky. But we desperately wanted to mend our lost world, return it to its former glory. I designed this with some help of the others. It was decided that it would be too risky to try it on our world. Too much time had elapsed. Then, there was a disaster here on this world and we used time magic to fix it, but it went wrong and we needed this to help solve the mistakes. So, I built it and it is infused with a massive amount of time altering magic.”
“Why didn’t you destroy this thing? It is dangerous.” Nova asked.
EB explained, “Destroying it would be impossible. It is protected by time. It has a spirit of its own, a will to exist and work. When it encountered the soul of a man that had the aptitude for power in him, what you would call a morphonic affinity, it bonded with him. We have been fighting to keep it out of his hands for centuries. How he got it this time, I don’t know. With all that events around the war with Jinn, it is any wonder that stuff went missing.”
Peyton eyed Rutkowski. “maybe he had help stealing it.”
Rutkowski glared back at Peyton. “Look, gumshoe, I ain’t ever helping that geezer. He has tried to ice me for years. He wants to suck my power away, and yers. But, he ain’t nothing without his little watch. When I saw him with the clock, I knew it was trouble. I ain’t fight’n him with this thing in his hands, it’d be suicide. So, I ran to the only jerks I know who can try to stop him, BADGE. And you can call off yer goons, Nova. I’m on parole. I ain’t break’n any rules today.”
“See that you don’t. Now, get out of here and keep your nose clean.”
“Yeah, whatever. Come on, Steelfist, let’s go feed some pigeons or something.” Rutkowski walked out with his hulking goon on his tail.
“You want me to trail him?” Peyton asked.
Nova said, “do whatever you want. This conference is over. We are taking this clock back to the station and checking to see if there was any residual damage from the time shifts.”
EB hopped over and got near Chase with a big smile. “Looks like you get a second try at Christmas, and I just happen to have put up Mistletoe ALLLLL over the station.”
“I told you to take all that down.” Nova stated.
“And not put it to good use. No siree.”
Santa held onto the clock and joined the group returning to BADGE.
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