There was a poof of something like smoke, and during all the commotion she felt a jab in the thigh from and unknown opponent. 

"Dad!"

The white substance started to dissipate as everyone in the restaurant screamed and rushed around trying to figure out what to do. Elke felt a little disoriented though... it was clouding her judgment on the matter. What was going on? Why were people freaking out?

As soon as the fog vanished enough for her to see her surrounding she took in the who, what, and where of the situation.

She was in a booth, in some kinda fancy establishment if the decor was anything to go by. There were people running around in a confused manner, which she shrugged off for the moment. More important than that was why she was in this place in what appeared to be an extra large set of shorts and t-shirt. Her top was sagging clean off one shoulder and... was that a bra in there? What the hell? She didn't need a bra yet! She didn't have any F%#$@in boobs! Brown eyes traveled up and across the table to where someone else was sitting, and in one smooth motion she jumped to her feet, sucked in a deep breath of air, and pointed a small accusing finger at the person.

"PEDOPHILE! A PEDOPHILE IS TRYING TO GET IN MY PANTS!"

Curling her fingers under the rim of the china plate in front of her, she heaved it at his face with all her might and hopped out of the booth. A hasty escape was in the works- if only her shorts would stay on long enough for her to make it out of the building. 

"Get the #%^@ outta my way! There's a pervert behind me!"

The child headed for double doors to the kitchen, bursting in on a scene of a dozen teens and children causing chaos with cooking equipment. She hauled ass toward where she figured the back exit would be. 

It had been a nice afternoon. His daughter was visiting, and he'd taken the opportunity to take her to lunch, or rather, Shelby had pushed them out the door so he would stop trying to fold clothes, and Elke would stop taking off all of the caps to all of the paint tubes in the house in order to make them dry off just to get a rise out of her.

They'd just been finishing their meal at a nice place he'd gotten reservations for, and she'd just finished saying 'okay boomer' to him in response to something or other he'd said, when gas started to fill the room. Saphirus looked around in a nonplussed confusion as he heard his daughter call out.

And then he was Russel, and he didn't know what the @#$% was going on. The young man looked around confused for a moment, eying his fairly nice, but very loose clothing as if it were a dead skunk draped across his body. "Whaaaat the fuuu@#$?!" He looked up from his hands to see a little girl staring at him from across the table. Did he... Sort of... Recognize her? Where from?

She started screaming Pedo and running, and his jaws started flapping his shock as she ran off. "WHAT THE @#$^?!" He looked around as smoke started to clear, and it became evident that they were in a room full of children in clothes too big for them who were all looking around confused. "What. The. F@#$!" He said again as he stood up, and then felt the world shift around him suddenly... Like. All of the world. He could feel it, all around him. The room, the things moving in it. Everyone flapping around like muppets in shock. "What the f@#$?" He felt a wave of dizziness and nausea as he placed his palm over his face and steadied himself.

The familiar girl was running off. He could feel her. Something told him he shouldn't let her do that. Hopefully not because what she said was true, because that didn't seem right to him at all. He felt responsible for her, though... Was he babysitting?

He stumbled into the kitchen as a 6 year old ran past with a butcher knife laughing his patooty off. He shook off the sickening feeling in his head again as he pushed onward. She was heading toward the back. Why? "Hey, w-" He wanted to go after her, and the next thing he knew he was trading a tingling feeling in his arm for a huge leap across the room, landing right between her and the back door. "WHAT THE @#$^!" The shocked teen looked back to her, his eyes wide. He'd never been able to do that before! He just broke stuff.

"What the #$@%... is going on here?"

The dude dropped down in front of her like he had fallen from the goddamned sky. Elke debated for half a moment whether she should try and slide past him, or just throw herself headfirst into his stomach. She'd gotten dropped into some sort of poorly run pedo ring after all, she had no sympathy for him.

Instead, she jerked to a stop and grabbed at the waistband of her shorts to keep them up off the floor. He was asking her what the @%#$? She didn't know what the #%@^! "How the @^%$# am I supposed to know!? I don't even know how I got here!"

She hopped to the side like she was gonna go around him, before deciding @#%$ it and working on two clones to help her out. "I'm gettin' out though!" 

And thus began a short, awkward stare down as she gradually split into three Elke's.

"Get 'im!" Elke pointed at him. Once the fully formed but slightly dumb clones were ready, she'd sic them on him to use as a distraction for getting out that back door. There were often employee parking lots back there and she could make pretty quick work of hot wiring one of them into running as a getaway car.

This was insane. So many things were going on. The last thing he remembered, he was making the last deposit to Crig for their new home... He'd just said goodbye to Mosey... Then he was... With his daughter... Daughter? He didn't have a- and then the gas... He was still trying to make sense of it all as he stood here, blocking a young girl's way out of a building for... some reason?

She said she didn't know how she got here... Come to think of it. "Me neither..." He looked around... where the hell were they? A toddler ran past with a kitchen knife, and a teenager ran after him trying to wrangle him. This place was a circus, jesus. He turned his eyes back to her as she said she was getting out, and then watched with slowly widening eyes as she split into three.

Wut.

"Uh... Look, I'm not trying to-" Two of them pounced at him, grabbing either side of him and dragging him to the floor."Ack, Fuck!" He struggled with the clones as the girl rushed out the back. Considering his general strength, it wasn't long before he overcame the surprise and was up to his feet again, palms against the heads of two scrappy little delinquents. He looked out the door. Well, no sense hanging around here, and maybe the girl would have some answers? He had to at least explain he wasn't a Pedo. He didn't want that getting around.

Mosey would find it amusing, but he didn't. He stepped to the side and let his hands go, allowing the two identical girls to splay themselves forward as he speed hobbled out after the girl. She had a head start on him, so he looked around to quickly assess where she'd gone.

Haha, worked like a charm! Take that, Hippie!

The girl flew out the door and Stumbled to a stop in the back parking lot of the place as the metal door swung shut behind her. She could take off down the alleyway and out onto the street, sure, but she didn't wanna risk dropping her pants while booking it homeward.

Her eyes landed on the handful of cars littering the lot and she grinned.

By the time dude bro inside was finished with her twins, she was fast at work manually bypassing the need for a key on a Troyota bike. The cars had been locked, which normally wouldn't have been a problem if she had her normal stuff with her. Instead she was settling for a crappy bike with stupidly upgraded exhaust pipes.

She got the thing going with a jittery start, the motor puttering to life like someone was using butter for oil. With a cough from the plume of exhaust that puffed out and hiking her shorts back up, she struggled to throw a short leg over the seat just as the dude she was escaping came hobbling out looking for her.

The young native grinned and revved the crappy engine at him, before spotting someone else creeping up on her creeper from behind. It looked as though at least one adult within the place had remained an adult, and was both curious and furious about the chaos currently ensuing inside. It also happened that she was on his bike.

Boy was he piiiissed.

"Get on the F@#$ing bike, loser!"

The words flew out of her mouth before she could even really register what she was saying, and she sat there confused for a moment to allow him to do just that. Why... the HELL had she just called out to him? What was wrong with her brain?

Once he was on the bike, safely or no, she'd slam down on the accelerator and tear out of the parking lot with very minimal damage to the two cars that happened to be in her way.

"Hold on if you don't wanna die, Stupid!"

It was a short, terrifying trip from the lot onto the street where she cut off a taxi going full speed. She 'merged' with minimal effort due to most cars slamming on the breaks just from her speed alone. They went through several red lights, passed between lines of cars suck at said red lights, and drove on the sidewalk for a short distance when she couldn't get around a car in the road.

Eventually She'd pull them off the road and into a little side alley faaar away from the restaurant where they had left. Elke clambered down and busied herself with tying the laces from her shoes into a makeshift belt to keep her shorts up, and ditching her useless bra in the closest dumpster.

"Okay, so who the hell are you and why did I suddenly feel like saving your ass from the angry guy I borrowed the bike from?"

The ten year old crossed her arms and pinned her best unimpressed glare at him.

He heard the rev of a small engine as he walked out the back door.

Holy @#$^, tell me this barely not a toddler looking kid wasn't deadass hotwiring a Troyota. Seriously, she looked ten as @#$%. How did she even know how to do that?! I mean, he did, but he'd lived on the streets for years. If ever there was a chance to cut and run, it was now. He took a solid look left and right, and then paused as he felt an adult-sized form sprinting out the back of the kitchen after them.

Well, hell.

"Anyone ever tell you you're borderline verbally abusive?" He said as he hopped on the back of the bike. Jesus, he was insane for doing this. So was she. She was insane. He was finding this out very quickly, as they rocketed through the lot and onto the street. Oh man, what had he gotten himself into, now?

Funny, though, she drove a little like he did! Maybe Brick had taught her, too. Before too long they were at their destination, an alleyway he'd sold to a fence before on many occasions. Odd, though, when did they put in that dumpster enclosure? As he stepped off the bike, he looked around with a strange mixture of confusion and alarm on his face as she asked him a question. "M-me? I'm just some guy who lives on the streets... hey, when did Moes coffee shut down?" He was staring out of the alley at a sushi place across the street where Moes used to be.

He'd just been there last week. Moe hadn't said anything about moving out.

A beat hit him, and he reached into the back of his saggy pants to pull out his wallet... It was his same wallet, but jesus did it look worse for wear, like it had been opened and closed several thousand times. His eyes widened as he first noticed the 400 dollars in c-notes in it... and then his ID. He had an ID, and... a picture drew his eye. It looked like a family photo, with a tired looking woman with pink hair, in front of her a sour faced looking native american girl, and... Him? An older him.. Holding a small baby, wrapped in a blanket.

He stared for a moment, and then slowly turned the photo out to show her. "Is... Is that you?"

Verbally abusive? Her? "No s@#$%, sherlock."


She muttered about f-in hobo's under her breath while riffling through her own pockets. "What the hell are you talking about? That sushi place has always been there, since I was like.. in diapers." She turned to stare at it though, while pulling a phone out of her back pocket.

It did look a little different she supposed, but she still thought he was out of his damn mind.

The phone on the other hand... it was a model she had never seen before. Didn't have any buttons or flippy bits. Just a flat black screen with white back and edges. She fiddled with for a moment getting it on and staring down at a password request. Typing in a short expletive riddled quip at how she felt about needing to enter a password surprising worked at unlocking it.

Like any ten year old, she had already figured out how to load a game and was actively playing it when nameless hobo #1 pointed a wallet with a picture in it at her. "Does it look like me, dummy? Not all indigenous people look the same you @#$% waffle."

But, she took a second look after a beat and her eyebrows screwed together in confusion. "Wait a sec..." She moved to snatch the wallet right out of his hand so she could get a better look at it. The woman in the picture who vaguely looked like her was wearing an army print jacket with a patch on the left side over her hear. She recognized the patch instantly as the one her grandfather had given her, which only belonged with people in her clan.

Elke squinted at the picture of him and glanced between the dude in front of her and the little buff scruffy dude who looked under-slept in the picture. "..what the f-" She was getting weirded out now. She looked back up at the teen standing with her.

"Man, I don't know what the hell is going on, but if that's you in the picture it looks like you've gotten a serious downgrade."

"What the hell are you talking about? That sushi place has always been there, since I was like.. in diapers." He scoffed at the thought. "So, like, yesterday, then?" He looked back at her, and back out the alley. She couldn't be wrong, though... The place wasn't new. It had wear and tear. The sign had a layer of dirt that only came from being NYC street adjacent for years.

Weird.

All of this was weird, though. All of it. The wallet picture, which she snatched from him to look closer at after accusing him of racism, the familiar, yet different landscape. The... Phone? In his pocket. He was staring at that when she mentioned that he was downgraded. "Eh, I was about to say I didn't age gracefully." He pressed the one phone button, and a fingerprint sign appeared. Seriously? For real? He pressed it.

The thing unlocked. "Woah... No way. Look at this... Is this a phone? Jesus... Look at that... What the @#$% is this thing?" He poked at the screen, which had a background of him and... He looked down to the girl again. "Eh... I think we might be somewhat close... Family?" He turned the phone around and showed slightly younger older him, and her in a graduation gown.

He leaned against the wall of the alley, all of this dizzying his 1995 little mind. He was in the future. He had a family. A tense frown formed on his face. Mosey wasn't with him. Where was she? Where was... Anyone from the alley?

"I don't know what to do..."

She blinked at him as he marveled over the phone. What was so special about it? It didn't have buttons and junk, and felt a little more snappy than usual but it wasn't that far off from what she was used t-

...OOooohhh.

The guy was old as dust in the picture, so maybe if that really was her and it really was him, he wasn't used to phone like this in any sense. They still chiseled things into stone and used carrier pigeons back in his day, didn't they?

He showed her another picture, this time on his phone that seemed like slightly younger versions of them from the other picture. She also noticed that they seemed to have the same phone, though hers was a little smaller. "I mean, I guess we could be..." She trailed off as she watched him seemingly become overwhelmed by everything that was going on.

Frowning herself, she poked around in her phone a little more through the various contacts listed within. There were an awful lot of boy names in here. "Hey, don't start freaking out or anything. That won't help in figuring out what's going on dummy." Her tone was a little less
bombastic than before, mostly because she did kinda feel a little bad for him. She didn't wanna know what it felt like to be a fossil waking up in her day and age.

She still needed to figure out what they were to one another. Maybe this guy was a friend of her brother? Or like... a uncle she didn't know she had? Elke stopped scrolling when she spotted the name 'dad' pop up and stared at it. It was so out of place in her world that she wasn't sure what to make of it. Was she on talking terms with that man now? Enough to put him in her phone under Dad of all things?

There were messages attached to the number. A slew of them, with dates and times. "Holy @#$% it's 2019." That blew her little mind. "I'm supposed to me like, 20 years old right now if this is right." She glanced down at her very obviously a child body and then went back to the messages. Some of the messages were more recent... many of them were her harassing her dad and her harassing her back. It was weird, because she had never had that dynamic with him before.

Panicking slightly she decided to hit the call button and slapped the phone to her ear.

She was not prepared for the Hobo's phone to light up and the most hideous ringtone started playing. She physically jolted away from him. "WHAT?!"

He could tell she was trying to comfort him, which was a little bit odd, considering being called names was rarely comforting. Still, though, he had a feeling... He looked up from what was apparently his phone...he honestly had no idea how to work the thing, and had quickly grown weary of poking random symbols to see what they did.

He was afraid to break the dang thing.

She'd gone silent for a moment, and he just leaned against the wall, soaking things in, closing his eyes when she revealed it was 2019. Jesus... He tried to math out how long he'd been out. Long enough for Moes to go out of business... Hell, Moe had been getting on it years. He was probably dead by now.

Saph liften his phone again, looking at it. It looked like something off of a TV show... Science fiction. It lit up suddenly, and he received a message that his daughter was calling. He almost dropped it immediately, staring at it alarmed... There was a little phone symbol, green, and a name. Moose. He raised an eyebrow, and pressed the green phone. looking up as he heard a loud exclamation from the girl before him. He lifted the phone to his ear, and spoke.

"uhhhh, Hello?"

She was sitting there, staring at her phone in abject horror while trying to figure out why his had started immediately ringing... let alone why she had apparently been under the worlds worst ringtone. He was either a masochist, or a Sadist.

And then- get this- the block head looks at his phone like it's the world's biggest coincidence that she happens to be on the phone calling someone at the same time and HE ANSWERS IT

Elke finds herself standing there staring up at him with an astounded look on her face, eyes flitting from her phone to him and back while her tiny brain is trying to pluck through this new information.

"...what the @#$%... She took a step toward him and reached for his phone to forcefully turn it and show it to him with her side by side so he could see that they were connected.

"DO you have anything else on you to help figure this out because I refuse accept current events without more proof."


...Why did it feel like she knew more words? This was weird. She set about digging out the mens style wallet in her other pocket and try to figure out some more.

"Holy crap someone trusts me enough to give me a credit card!?"

There it was. You couldn't get more direct than that, He was dad in her phone. Unless there was some sort of terrible kink going on here, which he knew himself well enough to know that was not the case, he really hoped, he was honest as @#$% her dad.

Russel, or... Saphirus, N/A according to his ID, didn't have much more proof to provide the little girl than what was there already, but...

"I think it kinda speaks for itself. Other me is your dad. Somehow." He frowned, looking at his wallet, and then placing it back in it's place in his back pocket. "I've got cards in here, too... I wouldn't use em if I were you. Sounds like a good way to get into trouble."

He paused, and scratched the back of his head. "I mean, but... Do what ever, I guess... I ain't your dad. Not me."

What was he going to do, though? He had to go back. He had to find Mosey, find out what was going on. He just... He just couldn't see them falling out. It couldn't have happened like that.

"Look... I don't know how any of this works. I dunno if I was given a second chance, or what... But... All I know is I want to know if certain people are safe. If they are here... and that means I gotta go. I dunno if you are gonna come with me. That's up to you. I just... I have to see." He felt sick. He felt so unsure. It was like he was walking into that alleyway for the first time, after so many people said no to him. They said yes. He had to go back, even if he had a life here.

The young man turned and started walking toward the alleyway's entrance.

She scoffed at him loudly. A credit card was a credit card and it had her name on it. Of course she was gonna go spend it! What kinda lame ass loser wouldn't? Adults. Pfft.

He started moaning about this and that and she stared at him blank faced. He wanted to go off and find whatever? Whatever. He wasn't her dad right here and now? Fine. No skin off her nose. She couldn't fathom why older her would allow someone like him in her life anyway.

"Dude, anyone ever tell you to pull the stick out your butt?" She curled her lip at him, crossing her arms and tilting her head back condescendingly. "You ain't my blood. You go do whatever your little heart wants. I'm gonna go find my real family and get back to my life."

She turned without another word, heading back over to the stolen bike and scampering back on. "Hope you find your people and whatever!"

She saluted him shortly, before jerking the bike back toward the road and leaving him in her proverbial dust.