New World Disorder

Chapter Seventeen

Unknown Date

"Any idea how long we've been in these?" Pope asked, rattling his box.

Royale smiled. "You really don't know who I am do you?

Information started forming from Oran's memories. Pope again chose to stop them. He was tired of living though another person's mind. I just need to be myself for one day. Alone in my own head, or at least in this one.

"Assume that I don't." Pope replied. "What does that have to do with how long we've been here?"

"I'm known for my timekeeping," Royale said.

"What does that mean?"

"We were attacked on the moon twelve hours, thirty-six minutes, and eighteen seconds ago, Naomi time."

"Naomi time?"

"Given that we're in hyperspace, which really plays havoc with the time stream, I can only use my own personal time frame as a reference. My powers mostly involve time. One of them is a near infallible internal clock."

Time manipulation? That's quite the ability," Pope commented. "Any chance you can rewind time to take is back to before we were captured?"

She chuckled. "Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work like that."

"So, we wait?" Pope sighed. He glanced over at his fellow prisoner. She was looking at him curiously. Both his helmet and mask were gone, but he could see his skin was still blue. He knew his eyes looked like pits of white energy, but she had no problem meeting them.

He smiled at her. "As you seem surprised I don't recognize your name, perhaps you could tell me a little about yourself. Just to pass the time."

"I get the feeling your 'not from these parts', are you?" It was obvious she was quoting from something.

"Given that I have no idea where we are, I can't really answer that question."

"Fair enough." She looked away, staring into the distance. "I was born in 1952 ..."

"What!"

She laughed, an earthy sound with a slight snort. "I thought that might get your attention."

"1952?"

"Indeed. As a third generation Royale, I was born to a family of science adventurers and masked heroes. All of which meant I grew up weird. I got my first doctorate at sixteen. More followed. And when I finally convinced my parents I was old enough I went into the family business."

"Third generation?"

"Out of six, now that Gabriel has joined the biz. Now are you going to let me tell this?"

"Right. Sorry. Please continue." Being third generation super is something she has in common with Oran.

"I spent a few years tagging along with my uncles and older cousins as they faced mad scientists, mutants, and the occasional wannabe world conqueror. At first, I was mostly in a science and technical support role. Then, in 1978 we were trying to stop one of Overlord's early forays into our dimension, it all changed for me."

"The Trans-dimensional Tyrant had built a temporal destabilizer in an attempt to bring our dimension into phase with his. But something had gone wrong and it was opening all these little temporal portals throughout the time stream but localized geographically. Dinosaurs, neanderthals, Vikings, buccaneers, and old west desperados were appearing all over Chicago. It was chaos and it was spiraling towards a complete temporal fragmentation."