* * *

    "Did you see that down there?"
    "What?"
    "I think we just flew over some hikers."
    "Aw, bloody hell."
    "Do you have him on sensors yet?"
    "Yeah, we're reading him, he's a quarter mile away from here."
    "We're just going to have to hope that they don't get too close to this."

    * * *

    The shadowy figure from Worcester perched in a tree where he could listen to the conversation of the people from the flash. It didn't make much sense. One of the women—the hot one—was wearing a skin-tight cat-suit complete with tail, the man was in commando gear, and the other woman mostly black and red. He concluded that these were not hikers.

    * * *

    The ship circled.
    "Okay, flyers get out here."
    The doors slid open; Patriot and American hopped out. Ezra let himself pass through the back of the ship and looked around. There was a clearing a little ways away, where it looked like they were going to land the ship. He could see an intermittent blue glow heading in that direction; Power. The two in the air looked like they were paralleling the blue light, getting into position to attack it. He couldn't see the hikers, so he went to look for them. A poem was coming to mind... Power as the scream of the people.... An actual scream helped him pinpoint the hikers' location.

    * * *

    "Okay, um," Stephanie said, "I was a cat."
    He shrugged. "I was a sorcerer."
    "No, you don't understand." She was shaking.
    Paul sighed. "I can sympathize...."
    "I think we're going to have to have a rain check on the hysterics," I warned.
    "Now is not the time," Paul told her as soothingly as he could. "We don't know where we are, we don't know what's going on. Be calm."
    "Okay," she whimpered.
    "Deep breath," I encouraged. "Come on. Inhale... hold it."
    "You're about three miles outside the ruins of Worcester," a voice said from the trees.
    Stephanie screamed and disappeared, assuming cat form and all but teleporting onto Thunderbolt's shoulder, where she clung with all four sets of claws. I put up a dome over all of us, vaguely illuminating an oddly familiar-looking figure in the trees.
    "This is a joke," Thunderbolt said firmly, looking at him skeptically.
    "It's Toy Man again," I theorized. "Right? This is H0 scale New England we're in." Yet another figure appeared out of nowhere, this one a glowing bluish outline filled with smoke and tiny moving sparks. "Okay," I said cheerfully, feeling a bit like having some hysterics of my own. "We're lost. Did you just say the ruins of Worcester?"
    "Yes."
    "Okay."
    "Good evening folks," the new arrival said. "Gonna have to get out of here 'cause the fascists are going to have a fight back there and it's probably gonna get pretty nasty. Have you heard of Power?"
    "No," Thunderbolt and I said.
    "Yes," said the figure in the trees.
    "Where are we?" Thunderbolt muttered.
    "Three miles outside the ruins of Worcester," I reminded him. "So we're on Earth, or a Earth. This is a good start."
    "Um," Stephanie said. "He's the Worcester Rooster."
    "No, I'm not." The stranger paused dramatically. "But my great-grandfather was."
    "That clears up a lot of things right there," I nodded. "What year is this?"
    "2086," they said simultaneously. "How long have you been lost?" the floating man asked.
    "We're from 1986 ourselves," I told him.
    "Boston," Stephanie put in. "You're familiar with...?"
    "Large city, that way, yeah, other side of the monorail line."
    "It's still there, though?"
    "Oh yeah."
    Catwoman, lost in time, lost in the jungle... forest, no jungle sounds better, Ezra was thinking, staring at Stephanie. And her big fascist boyfriend. Though she had climbed down from his shoulder and turned back into a woman, she was still hanging onto his arm. Ezra considered suggesting that he go join the fight they could now hear breaking out.
    There were shouts, crashes, and explosions in the near distance, and someone shouted Oh my god!
    The floating man began herding us away from the fight. "See what's going on here is that Force Industries, you know—"
    "Assume we don't," Thunderbolt told him.
    "The company that was responsible for all those atrocities in Central America?"
    "In 1986?"
    "I don't think they were around in 1986," he said uncertainly.
    "Bingo," Thunderbolt commented.
    The floating man paused and seemed to look at us. "You guys are serious?"
    "Yes."
    The fight was moving in our direction. "We should leave."
    We all agreed, not terribly concerned but very aware that we had no real idea what was going on, and kept walking. I kept the shield up over the three of us, just in case.
    "This way, then," the not-Rooster said, taking the lead.
    "So, what're your names?"
    "I'm Needle, this is Thunderbolt."
    "Cait Sidhe."
    "Pleased to meet you." The floating man bowed to her.
    "Uh, hi."
    "And what do you call yourself, then?" I asked our guide.
    "Cockatrice."
    "I see."
    Ezra had heard rumors of a mysterious figure defending hikers in the New England forest area. "Dude, you're real! I am so down with what you do! You're defying the system, you're out there helping people! My name is, uh, Benson. Call me Ezra. I am the Bosonic Man." It was a title he had hitherto reserved for the book he was working on.
    "Okay. Cockatrice, Bosonic Man. Pleased to meet you," I nodded.
    A moment later a figure came hurtling through the woods, taking out a mid-sized pine tree with the back of his neck. The tree shattered, sending shrapnel bouncing harmless off the shield, the man bounced a few times and came to rest. I checked him for signs of life.
    "Ookay," Powerhouse groaned, getting back to his feet, and looked at us. "Uh, there's a fight going on over there, you want to do something about this." He grabbed a section of fallen tree and hurled it back in the direction he had come from; a flash of blue light shattered it. "Oh, crap, he's getting closer. Well c'mon, let's go!"
    We looked at each other uncertainly. "Fascists?"
    "This is such a great metaphor, because they're like American society destroying itself—"
    I pointed at him. "You. What is going on? No metaphor."
    "Well, like I said Force industries created all of them and now they're destroying each other because they were made for money. This is the only way it could end."
    "Let's go!" Thunderbolt yelled, hearing the approaching whistle of something incoming. I picked them up and we took off, following the now-flying Cockatrice, while Ezra floated along beside and talked to Stephanie.
    "So, you guys got a place to stay?"
    "No, we just got here from uh 1986 by way of the fourth century."
    "I don't either, maybe we could look together. I've got some friends in Boston."
    "If you have friends in Boston we'll talk later, because we need to get back to Boston. Just Boston a hundred years ago!"

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