Part Two: Summer Camp

Kim scoffs for a moment, and mutters "… shoot the lock…" while rolling her eyes.

She looks around as you all stand crowding around, shouting your threats and requests.

"Talk? Okay, let’s talk. Which one are you?" she asks Em, holding the gun.

"And you? And you?

You want the key? Then I want answers." she says, looking at you all in turn.

Still trying to get on as positive a footing with Kim as possible, Mikey decides to answer her questions. He gives everyone's names to her, but rather than outing his previous lie, he names Em as "Mikey".

"What does that matter?" Em replies back caustically, her slender arms rigid as the holds the gun like she wants it as far from her face as possible. "And didn't you do this to us?"

"Yeah!" Andy says nodding his head emphatically while trying to sound tough in front of everyone but mostly for Em.

Rey steps up to Em, er, Robin, fiddling with the helmet. He turns so his face is aimed away from Kim, and whispers, "Em, don't shoot her please? Just don't. I couldn't bear it, and you couldn't either. No one wins if that gun goes off again. I'd rather smash this helmet than see you destroyed by guilt."

"I'm not going to shoot her!" Em hisses at Georgie, hopefully quietly enough so that Kim can't hear. "But don't smash the helmet -- we'll never get home!"

Those blue eyes glow in the sunshine as the girl glances briefly away from Kim, and Rey sees that sad, haunted look that lurks in Em's gaze sometimes when she's thinking about her parents, and about her friend's father.

"We need to get home, Georgie."

"It matters because I like to know who I’m speaking to. And… perhaps some of you are more eager to go back than others.

The girl…" she waves to Mikey-Devon "… stuck in a big lumbering fools body, I understand. But the fat one, with no father?" she turns to Georgie-Rey with a grin.

"Do you really want to go back?"

She turns back to Em-Robin.

"Yes. I did do this to you. The first, it’s true. But not the last…" she pauses.

"Not by a long shot." she lets out after a moment. She begins to get to her feet, keeping her hands up and watching Em with the gun. But she feels braver having heard you won’t shoot her. Cocky even. She pokes at Em.

"And how about you? Do you want to go back? Look at how your these boys treat you now. You want to leave all that behind?"

She begins to fumble for her keys. He holds them in the flat of her hand in front of her.

"Want them?"

Mikey reaches for the keys and grabs them out of Kim's hand before any of the others can start being swayed by her words. Only then does he turn to them. "Come on, none of you really want to be stuck here, right? Georgie, you're awesome just the way you are. You don't need to be in some skeleton of a body! I like the real Spud. And Mor... I mean Mikey, sure, people are treating you well because of how you look, and Andy likes you now because of it. But it's not really you, is it? So it's not real!" He turns to Andy. "And you don't want to stay in this body, right? You like your own!" Finally, he turns to Jaden and hesitates for a moment as if he's having the most difficulty arguing to him. Then he says. "And do you want to stay in the sixties? All the music you like hasn't even been invented yet."

As Kim talks, Em's jaw tightens as she levels the pistol straight at the woman. Then Mikey takes the keys and starts blathering as well. There's an exasperated really? glance from Morgan towards Andy at one point, but otherwise the tanned and curvy girl maintains her focus and intensity.

"Stop it, M... em. We're not staying. We've stolen these people's lives. And what's even happened to our own bodies? Are these kids from 1969 running around with them? Did she switch animal brains into our future bodies? Who knows what she did!"

The blonde's thin arms tremble a little as they start to tire, and she presses the woman harder. "Except now we have her, and she can tell us. What did you do, Kim Johnson? And why? What's this all about? No more games. Tell us."

Andy finally has the courage to look at Em. Holding out his palms questioningly he sings, "What?"

All this stuff is going on and that's the only response he can come up with.

Rey takes the keys from Mikey gently, saying, "Let's get inside," and stumbles over to the bunker. He places the key nervously in the lock. What am I nervous about? Em, with a gun. Someone could die, just like Hernandez and his machines. Are we becoming Cuckoo ourselves?

He snorts at his own thoughts and mumbles, "That's funny."

Mikey beside him, he opens the door.

"You obnoxious fucking BITCH!"

Jaden screams at Kim with his fist drawn back rushing towards her. He half- throws the punch and stops less than an inch away from her face.

"Ya think you know us so well? Don't get too cocky, you aren't dead yet only because we don't feel like getting rid of you. Yet. You got it? We have every reason to want to go back in our time. Every single last one of us, make no mistake."

Jaden takes a deep breath and stares down on her.

"Besides, you must be really afraid of something yourself to get five teenagers back in time to help you with whatever mess you got yourself into."

Andy finally springs into action and does something. "Hey, Hey, come on now Jaden, lighten up will ya? This won't help anything." Lightly grabbing his/her arm, he tries to coax him to back off and settle down.

"You're right, but just back off," he says in a low voice.

Old Cuckoo hunches around the bottom of a tree trunk. He hugs the bark as he tries to spy what’s happening, without being seen. He sees the kids, going back and forth with her. A gun gets waved around and he watches as the woman tries to coax the children to anger.

His eyes move to the young man standing by the bunker, hands no longer up. He sits in the dirt, his mind racing to catch up with everything that’s being said. The young man absentmindedly turns his head to the trees, as he rubs his nose clean. For a second, the two unknowingly lock eyes. It’s not a thing realized.

And then… blind pain. The kind that sends your world spinning. The man in the dirt and the man in the trees.

Their vision swims; and the loud whine of feedback consumes them.

The man in the trees clutches his ears, and gets to his feet. Half blind, he wanders forward and lets out a shrieking:

"AHHHHHHHHHHHGHHHHGHHHHGGGGHHHHH!"

In the heat of the moment you had forgotten about the young Hernandez. The gun and it’s consequences drawing all of your attention.

Suddenly:

"AHHHHHHHHHHHGHHHHGHHHHGGGGHHHHH"

You had been vaguely aware that he had been sitting in the dirt by the bunker door. The scream startles all of you. You look, and the man is writhing around in the dirt, kicking frantically and clutching his ears.

All the more startling is the fact that another scream matches the young man’s, and you see a figure break the tree line, stumbling towards the group.

"Um, guys?" Em says after a glance at the figure coming from the woods. "You wanna... deal with him?"

The blonde teen is still focused, however, on Kim. She frowns as she makes eye contact with the woman again. "Go on. Tell us. Now!"

Spud points at older Cuckoo. "Andy, don't let them touch. You can't cross the streams, total protonic reversal!" He yells. Every instinct in his body tells him that's rule one of time travel, right up there with don't kill your grandfather is don't interact with past you. The whole universe could implode.

Andy hears Spud, knows exactly what he means, and reacts as only a soccer star could. He runs towards the older Cuckoo at breakneck speed and launches himself at the man, hoping to flatten him and keep him away from Cuckoo, the younger.

"GAH!" the two cuckoos scream, as one lands on his back on the hard dirt. It knocks the wind out of Old Cuckoo, and he struggles for air, as Andy clambers around on top of him, desperate to keep him down.

The younger man, by the bunker, clutches his back, and gulps air too.

But they don’t touch. There’s that at least…

Kim’s eyes go wide, as the two men let out a scream. Disbelief, and then mischief.

"Ooooh, now this is… interesting!, isn’t it?" she smirks at Em-Robin.

"WHAT did I do? Well, I thought it was obvious. I sent you, and the rest of these losers, back in time. Well, I say I… wait, no… I is fair. It just took me a few more years to figure it all out. About 20 years from now…" she begins pacing. Like some villain spilling his guts before, ultimately, being foiled by the hero.

"WHY did I do it? Well… to see if I could." she laughs, drowning out the groans of the two men on the floor.

"And money. Ooooh, can you imagine how much money some fat, balding, sad little man would pay to relive the glory years?!" she paces around Robin, watching the gun. She passes between the girl and the bunker door.

"How much some twee old professor would pay to see the Great War first hand?!" she stops in her tracks.

"You’ve experienced it for yourself. Wouldn’t you agree?"