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Hope you guys are still enjoying! Thanks for all your reviews and messages, @forkanna​ and I definitely appreciate them! Next chapter, Anna finally meets the younger version of her mother!



Within seconds, it was all over, and the unintentional time traveller was bouncing across the blacktop toward a small, squarish building. For some reason, the image of a fox on the roof and a taped-up sign that said “FILM SALE” caught her attention, and then she was swerving to one side, just barely missing the side of the building by a hair’s breadth.

“AAH!” Anna screamed, trying to regain control of the vehicle, peeling out of the lot toward the road. She glanced into the mirrors…

Doc was gone. The truck was gone, the terrorists were gone. Everything… the only thing in the entire parking lot was that photo hut, which was closed for business.

She only managed to get a few hundred yards down the road before the roiling in her stomach really caught up with her. Pulling to the side, she stopped the car and got out. Legs like jelly, she opened up the rad-suit a little.

“This is fine,” she said to herself, even if her tone said it most assuredly wasn’t fine. “You just blacked out. And woke up here. Doc is safe – or as safe as he could be, it is Doc. You just uh… lost consciousness or something, wanted to forget this shitty day so you took a really long walk and this mall is like, five miles from home, so there’s that. A super long walk.” She turned around and caught sight of the car. “And apparently you stole a DeLorean. Fuck.”

It must have been a long walk because Anna felt vaguely sick. She really wanted to just lie down. But despite how weird that…. nightmare? Hallucination? Despite how weird it was, whatever it was, she still remembered making a promise to be home after Doc’s experiment. Her mind was clear on that matter, even if everything else was some kind of fever dream. Returning to the car, she plopped down in the driver’s seat.

And then her mind got even clearer and she realised that it in fact was not a hallucination, she did not steal a car or do some Tolkien-esque amount of walking, and this was definitely not 2015 because the last one-hour photo booth anywhere was removed at least a decade beforehand.

Also, she couldn’t see at least one Starbucks from where she was parked. Nobody could ignore that kind of evidence.

“No,” she breathed, shaking her head as she started the car back up. “Can’t be. Time travel? No, I'm… losing it. Back home and to sleep like I promised Mom.”

But when she got home, her house looked… different. Nicer. Maybe Hans felt sorry for wrecking the car and acting like an ass and had paid for a really, really fast paint job. Probably not, but stranger things had happened.

‘Like disappearing DeLoreans?’ a corner of her mind whispered. Shaking that off, she hopped out to thumb the secret pad that would activate the garage door, in case they had to get in without the clicker.

It was gone. What the hell? Shaking her head, she grasped the handle for the rolling door and slid it up… only to find the garage was empty. Not missing-a-car empty. NOTHING empty. No boxes of old photos, no tools, no Christmas decorations… nothing.

“I… well, okay then,” Anna muttered to herself before pulling the DeLorean into the garage and tucking it in for the night. This was all pretty Twilight Zone, but she didn’t have the power to think of anything anymore. It was way past her bedtime.

Except the door didn’t open when she went up to the back. They never locked the back door! No key on top of the doorframe, either. What the hell was up with this?!

Although… this could be punishment. Her mother hiding the key and actually locking the door. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities. Maybe she could try and sneak in through a window – undeniably the best course of action. Her dad had work the next day, as did her brother and sister. And her mother… well, judging by the time, she’d probably just finished her last bottle and was on the verge of falling asleep.

Gritting her teeth, she glanced over at the drain pipe leading up the side of the garage. Well, her bedroom window shouldn’t be locked at least. Her progress was slow – people always made climbing a drainpipe look so easy in the movies, but climbing things in real life was always so hard. Anna had only almost-fallen off twice before she finally made it to the garage roof and scooted over to her bedroom window.

Her jaw fell and her heart sank as she looked inside.

It was completely empty. Well, that wasn’t strictly true; there was a bed, and a dresser, but that was it. The setting reminded her more of a hotel room than any room someone actually lived in.

“Ohhhhh-kay,” she grunted, nearly losing her grip and falling to the ground. Again. “Nope! No, that's… bad, Anna.” She pushed at the windowsill, but the window was locked tight. “Damn…”

Having no other option, she climbed back down meticulously. Then she jumped in the DeLorean and started it so she could head somewhere else and figure this out.

Except she didn’t.

“Come on, what the…?” But no matter how often she turned the key, the engine remained stubbornly un-started. Groaning, she smacked the dashboard and nothing came of that, so she finally gave it up as a lost cause.

Because of course. The stupid thing just had to run on nuclear power instead of something normal, like… literally anything other than plutonium.

Once she began walking toward Doc’s place, she found herself wishing that she had her skateboard. That would sure as hell make it easier to get around, but it was still next to Doc’s truck somewhere. Or was it? The last she had looked, everything had vanished. It didn’t bode well… but she swore at herself that she would calm down, approach the situation as rationally as was possible under the circumstances.

“Doc can fix this,” she muttered to herself as she left the empty shell that was supposed to be her home behind. “He has to be able to.”

~ o ~

The more she walked, the less sure Anna was that this really was her town. It was obviously not a hallucination – she managed to trip spectacularly over a pothole and twist her ankle. Not bad, but enough to have her hopping in place and groaning. If her ankle hadn’t been so sore, she probably would have kicked something out of spite.

By the time she arrived at Doc’s place, it was nearing three-thirty in the morning. The night wasn’t cold, but the soft wind that had picked up nipped at her skin, working its way through the holes in the knees of her jeans. She was more than ready to snuggle up to Olaf in front of Doc’s not-quite-marketable heater.

As his house came into sight, she found her heart lifting a little. The same dilapidated, half-finished additional wing stuck out like a sore thumb. It shouldn’t have made her as happy as it did – the fact that his house was exactly the same as she could remember it. Maybe she was going crazy… and honestly, that was almost preferable to the alternative. Even better, there was a light shining through the first-floor windows.

But when she looked for the key under the doormat, it wasn’t there. In fact, the mat was different, but that was such a minor detail that it didn’t seem terribly important.

“Doc?!” she called out, pounding on the door. “Hey! Did you make it home okay? Boy, do I have some questions!”

It took a few minutes for the door to click open. Then a groggy face – one most certainly not Doc Pabbie’s – glared down at her from sunken eyes. The man was clad in a white tank top and striped boxers, at least a full head taller than her, nearly as wide, and did not look the least bit amused.

“A-ah. Do you, um…” What could she say? “Is this Emmett Pabbie’s house? Does he live here?” The man grunted. “Does he even live on this block?”

Just when Anna was about to bolt, a teenage girl poked her head past the man’s bulk. “Hello? Oh… hey, isn’t it kind of late for a house-call?”

“What? House-call? I'm… what are you talking about?”

“Thought I heard you say something about a doctor.” Shrugging, she tucked a stray strand of auburn hair behind her ear as she yawned widely. She was cute, and her rounded button nose was to die for, but that was neither here nor there when she had bigger problems. “Anyway, nobody named Pabbie lives here.”

“Okay! Okay, cool, I"m… yeah. My bad.”

“Your what?” That seemed to confuse her, but she shook it off. “Nevermind, it’s totally late. Sorry we couldn’t help.”

“No problem! Sorry to… wake you up, or whatever! Goodnight!”

Well crud. That was pretty much Anna’s whole plan. Now where was she supposed to go?

The familiar-yet-unfamiliar house left behind, Anna found herself wandering the streets aimlessly, heading in the direction of the town but not really intending on going anywhere. It wasn’t the first time she’d roamed the streets – when the house got too suffocating to stand, she used to go to the local park and just hang there for an hour or two.

With that thought came another guilty one: she’d told her mother she’d be home before long but it had been hours. She wondered, briefly, whether she would be angry or disappointed.

Instead of an answer, Anna felt herself feeling those same emotions herself. They gave her the fuel to keep walking until she found a 24-hour laundromat with a vending machine. At least it was food. Putting in a couple of coins, she punched the number for a Whatchamacallit bar. It tasted a little different, but it was probably just really old; who knew how long it had been in there. Sitting down on one of the courtesy chairs, she ripped into the bar, hoping the sugar could give her just a little energy.

No such luck. Before long, she felt her eyes drifting closed. She didn’t even try to fight it; her exhaustion was too bone-deep.

~ o ~

“Move it!”

The harsh voice pierced through her veil of sleep effortlessly. It still took a moment for Anna to be able to peel her eyelids open enough to look up into an unfamiliar face. Asian woman, and one who looked less than thrilled with her.

“Wha…?”

“This is a laundromat, not a hotel!” she snapped as she kicked one of Anna’s shoes. “And either way, you haven’t paid to be here, so either wash some clothes or get out of here!”

Standing, she scrubbed at her face. “Alright, alright.” Then she woke up just enough to add on, “Sorry, I didn't…” But she couldn’t completely string together her thoughts enough as sleepy as they were. Instead, she just hopped away from another kick and headed outside.

And she gaped in complete shock.

The Dell Valley Courthouse Square was packed with people, the way it usually was. But the people were… different. She saw more shoulderpads, flashy colours, a few multicoloured mohawks than she tended to encounter. Plus, an absence of cell phones in hands. And there were more of them; by now, a lot of those people would be a little further uptown in the business district instead. Why were they all hanging around there?

And then there were the stores. That toy shop was a GameStop now, that deli was a Verizon store. She knew for absolute certainty that Burger King had a much newer sign, it had been replaced years ago. Plus the slogan on the marquee, “Aren’t You Hungry?” was unfamiliar…

“No,” she breathed as she stumbled across the street. A car had to slam on its breaks to keep from running over her – and she gaped as she saw it was a bright red Ferrari.

A guy with a mullet leaned out the window and shouted, “WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING, BIMBETTE!”

She was almost too shocked to even respond. “Bimbette? Seriously?” she breathed, eyebrows drawn together. But he honked again, so she hurled herself the rest of the way across toward the square in front of the courthouse-

Which suddenly rang out with loud, echoing chimes. Nine o'clock.

“What the fuck is going on?” she breathed, crumpling to the sidewalk. She was used to that courthouse clock never having worked in her entire life. Either someone had done some major renovations while she was asleep, or…

It was real. Everything was; the Doc’s invention, time travel, all of it. She had been sent back to the past.

She sat there for God-only-knew how long. Well, actually, she did know for how long because the clock tower was working! Eventually, she roused herself, but not until she gave herself a moment to panic. It was a big deal, and even considering the night before-

Oh. If this really was the past, then that meant that she’d really been at the mall last night. That Olaf had been sent two minutes into the future. Her mother had cried.

Doc was dead.

Feeling the tears threaten to overflow again, Anna pulled herself to her feet. That was, technically, thirty years away. Right now, she just had one priority: find Doc. If this really was the past, then Doc wouldn’t be dead yet, right? So all she had to do was figure out where he was instead. But how was she supposed to do that without any internet? How did people of the past Google other people?

Walking up to the nearest person who seemed like they wouldn’t bite her head off like certain irate laundromat owners, she bit her lip and gathered her courage. “Excuse me,” she began. “You don’t have like… a people directory or anything, do you?”

They gave her an odd look. “You mean the… phone book?”

“Yeah, that!”

“Do I look like I’m carrying one? Try the café over there.” They pointed, and Anna turned her head. When she looked back, to thank them, she could see their rhinestone-covered back as they walked away.

“Rude.” But that didn’t matter. Now she had a goal. This time carefully checking for traffic, she crossed the road.

The little cafe was roughly where the Cafe 80s was now. Or, well, 'now’ being the time period Anna was used to. Which she supposed was the future, to their way of thinking. The inside of the place was pretty run down. It looked as if it had been open since the 50s and gone through multiple owners. The young woman behind the counter had a beehive, but it looked as if she put it on and took it off for work.

“Yes?” she asked with a sigh.

“Um… do you have a, uh, phone book?” She just barely didn’t ask for a 'people directory’ a second time. “Like, somewhere? Or know where there’s one I can buy?”

“You don’t buy a phone book,” she scoffed, looking at Anna as if she was an alien. “They give them away at your house. Can’t you go home?”

Nope, sure can’t, she thought to herself. “Sorry. I just need to find somebody.”

Nodding, the woman thumbed over her shoulder toward the pay phone on the wall in the back, and the book dangling from it by a metal chain. As she moved toward it, she caught the name “Tiana” on her plastic nametag. Why did that sound so familiar?

The next trick was figuring out how to actually use the damned thing. Anna resolved to never ever make fun of the older generations for having difficulty with technology – she couldn’t even figure out a book. Eventually she did – or so she thought. There was another moment of panic when she couldn’t find any Pabbies in there at all. And then realised she was looking in the wrong section anyway; he wasn’t a “business”. After that little mishap, she finally managed to find him. There was only one Emmett Pabbie in the entire book.

Ripping out the page – they probably weren’t going to miss it, she hoped – she walked back over to the counter. “Hey, d'you know where Knope Avenue is?”

“Nope. Are you gonna order or what?”

“Nope for Knope, huh?” Sighing, she ran her hand up and down her face. “Um… fine, gimme a Monster.” She really needed to wake up.

“Uh, Halloween was last month,” Tiana laughed, shaking her head. She looked like she was running out of patience, but at least she wasn’t as irate as the owner of the laundromat.

“An Amp?”

“Do I look like a music store? Now unless you’re done messing around, I got dishes to do.”

Right; this was the Eighties. Energy drinks didn’t exist, and they probably wouldn’t be selling them in a diner like that, anyway. “Um… I don’t know, a Coke?”

“New Coke, Old Coke, Cherry Coke, or Diet Coke?”

“What the hell is New Coke?” Shaking out her head, she then said, “Okay, okay. Is Pepsi still the same or do I have to pick an age of Pepsi?”

Laughing even more at Anna, the woman turned back toward the fountain and reached into the cooler, bringing up a can of Pepsi. “Sorry, I don’t have it from the fountain. But the canned stuff is still good.”

As she was staring openly at the can, with its design completely alien to her, she happened to look up and catch the waitress in just the right light. Unable to help herself, she whispered, “Wait… Tiana Rose-Wilson?”

Fortunately for Anna, she seemed not to have noticed – in fact, she’d already moved on to the next customer, bringing them out a bowl of something. Picking up her Pepsi, Anna took a cautionary sip. It tasted weird. Not bad, just… different. She was about to take another one to figure out just what had changed, when the little bell above the cafe dinged.

“Hey, McFly!”

The voice was loud and rude and sounded really familiar. Anna was more surprised that someone had recognised her. She turned around, the boy standing in the door tickling her memory. Just as his voice was familiar, so too was his face. Her mind just couldn’t make the connection.

“McFly! I’m talking to you!” The boy took a few steps forward. Anna shrunk back. What did he want?

Not her. Much to her surprise, he walked right past her to stand in the personal space bubble of the boy sitting next to her.

“Oh, uh, hi, Hans,” the boy said. God, he looked pretty pathetic. A greasy combover, his shirt dirty and unbuttoned. He’d been eating some sort of porridge-gloop that had, unfortunately, dribbled down his front.

But no amount of small changes would throw her off recognising someone who played such a big role in her life. Anna couldn’t help but stare – he, she most certainly knew. However, her quiet little squeak of, “Dad?” went entirely ignored, just as her recognition of Tiana had.

“Yeah, butthead! Thought I told you never to come in here!”

“Sorry, Hans,” he sighed, looking sincerely apologetic. Why? He had done nothing wrong, he was only sitting there, eating his gloppy breakfast so unobtrusively that Anna hadn’t even noticed. Her own father, thirty years younger and right in front of her, and she hadn’t noticed! What kind of ghost was he?

“Yeah, well this is gonna cost you. I want that book report back shinier than ever.”

Squirming on his barstool, Kristoff McFly cleared his throat before he tried to answer. “About that; I figured tomorrow is Sunday anyway, so I’d have until tomorrow night to finish it up and-”

“McFly, McFly,” the younger version of Hans Tannen tutted as he reached up to pat her dad on the shoulder. His black leather jacket creaked from the effort of holding in his muscles; they were pretty impressive, even if the owner wasn’t anything like a decent human being. “I gotta take tomorrow night to rewrite it, or the teach can tell I didn’t do it. You know what happens if I hand in a report in your handwriting? I’ll get kicked outta school. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

When there was no immediate answer, his hand fisted in the front of Kristoff’s shirt. “WOULD YOU?!”

“N-now, of course, Hans, I wouldn’t want that to happen!” As he was dropped back onto his stool, Anna had to white knuckle on the counter to keep from flinging herself at the asshole. “I promise, I’ll get it done tonight and run it over to you before lunch.”

“Gnarly. Much better, much better.” Then he patted him roughly on the cheek. “Knew you’d see it my way. Later, dweeb.”

Once Hans had left, the anger Anna felt went with him. She slumped a little, staring at Kristoff McFly. He just went back to his breakfast, scooping it into his mouth no neater than a five-year old.

All she could do was stare. It was so weird, seeing him so young but knowing she wasn’t hallucinating, and he wasn’t an impostor, or some distant cousin. She would know her own father anywhere. The longer she spent in the past, the harder it was for her to pretend none of this was real.

Her staring was interrupted when he flung he spoon down. Anna flinched as some porridge went flying with it, but Kristoff ignored that.

“What?” he demanded. There was the fire! Where had it been when he was being terrorised?

“You- you’re Kristoff McFly!”

“Yeah? So what?”

But Anna couldn’t tell him 'so what’. Even as she fumbled for an excuse – a reason that wasn’t crazy – to talk to him, Tiana slid back up to them again from where she had been watching.

“Why you gotta let him push you around, boy?”

Suddenly, Kristoff seemed very small. “Oh. I mean… well… it’s not worth it, and there’s more of them than of me… doesn’t matter.”

Tiana just sighed. “No good is gonna come from you listening to that sad little voice in your head,” she said. “You gotta stick up for yourself. If you don’t, who will? My motto has always been, 'Stand on your own two feet and face the world’. Or boys like him will run roughshod over you. Take it from me.”

And that really was her motto. Crazy as it was, Anna had figured out who she was, and couldn’t believe she was sitting here in a cafe, watching her serve Pepsi and oatmeal. But she had been hearing that particular phrase all her life, in political ads on TV and radio every other Autumn like clockwork – ironic, since she wanted to have the Clocktower renovated.

Meanwhile, Kristoff snorted. “From you? I know you’re trying to help, but like… you’re a waitress, and a girl. What would you know about dealing with bullies?”

Even as Anna’s eyes widened at how rude he was being, Tiana clipped him around the ear. “Yes, from me, turkey! Just because I ain’t some kinda hotshot executive don’t mean I’m gonna be a waitress forever. I’m going to night school. I’m gonna be someone, just you wait!”

“Mayor!” Anna crowed, unable to keep from interrupting “You’re gonna be mayor!”

Poking her finger at Anna, Tiana grinned. “Exactly!” She danced around to the other side of the little cafe. “Like the way you think, girl! I’m gonna be mayor and clean up this town! I’ll-”

Whatever she had planned was cut off when the old woman in another matching beehive shoved a broom into her hands. “You can start by cleaning up the floor.”

But even as Tiana was grumbling in annoyance, Anna found herself distracted by something else. Already, Kristoff had left a few bucks on the counter and silently excused himself from the diner while nobody was looking. Anna did the same; she shuffled some change loose from her pocket and grabbed the Pepsi on her way out.

“Dad! Kristoff! Hey, McFly!”

Just barely, Anna managed to keep his bicycle in sight by chasing after him, until she got to a familiar street. That was when she lost him. Turning on the spot, she drained the rest of her soda and tossed it into someone’s bin as she ran a hand through her fringe. This sucked; her only lead to something familiar besides the address folded up in her pocket, and he was gone.

Or wait – that was his bike, wasn’t it? Propped up against the tree. Sighing, she ambled over and tried to figure out where the owner had gone.

Until a leaf fluttered to land on her shoulder. Glancing down at it as if it were going to bite, she then looked up into the branches… and there was her father.

There was her father with a pair of binoculars.

There was her father, focusing a pair of binoculars on a window across the street so he could get a better look at what was inside. And when Anna followed his gaze, she had a hard time blaming him.

'That girl has some nice tits,’ she marvelled to herself. But then she closed her eyes and shook her head out. What were they doing?! This wasn’t right! Sure, she would never have looked if not for him looking, but that didn’t mean she should keep looking. And Kristoff should stop, too. As little as she thought of him for not standing up for himself against Hans, this was a new low. On top of everything else, did she have to find out she had a perv for a father?

Unfortunately, it seemed he was about to be even lower. Even as she turned away from the tempting flesh in the window, she saw Kristoff slipping. His hands scrabbled for the bark, but after a few seconds, he was crumpling in the middle of the road with a slight scuffle and a grunt of pain, impact slightly cushioned by his huge backpack.

'Shit.’

On the one hand, he probably deserved that. Scratch that- he definitely deserved it. Spying on someone without their knowledge was a whole other level of disgusting and Anna felt a little bit of shame taking root in her heart. On top of that, why couldn’t he be as interested in himself, and in not getting walked all over, as he was in that girl’s boobs?

But just as Anna was about to sit on a fire hydrant to wait for him to recover, she noticed something. Something that he obviously hadn’t, because he was still moping and groaning on the road like the wuss he most definitely was.

There was a light blue car hurtling along the road. The driver wasn’t looking – even from the distance, Anna could see him looking down towards the centre console. It wouldn’t have been a phone, so he was either fiddling with the radio or tapping out a cigarette.

But he wasn’t going to notice Kristoff. Not in time. There was no time for her to think.

“LOOK OUT!”

Kristoff had risen to his feet, just barely, but enough for Anna to have plenty to grab as she pushed him entirely out of the way. A telltale screech of tires filled the air – the driver finally noticing, just a tiny bit too late – as a thudding pain exploded along her side. Pain in her head quickly joined in, and just before everything went black, she found herself longing for a comfy bed and her mother’s voice.

To Be Continued…