Chapter 4 - Better Than Worse by Gaspar

            Marshall, Marle, Lucca, and Lucca’s mother appeared at the End of Time.  Instead of just Gaspar under his street lamp, they found Gaspar lying extremely hurt near the vase that had a teleporter to Lavos, and Spekkio there, doing what he could.  Marle and Lucca ran towards Gaspar, and Marshall quickly ran, and Lucca’s mother was still in shock from time travel.  She passed out on the floor.  Gaspar was breathing heavily, and blood was trickling down from his mouth.  He was half-smiling at the group, half-writhing in pain.

            “What’s wrong?  What’s happening?” asked Lucca.

            “Remember that vase, right?” said Gaspar.  Lucca and Marle nodded.  “A power much different from anything you have been through before has come to our world.  I will be alright, but you must not touch that vase!”  Everyone, even the god of war, Spekkio, went pale.  The look on Gaspar’s face, the guru of time scared, horrified out of his mind, when even in the middle of death he would just smoke his pipe in his corner of the world, was horrible.  Marle started to heal Gaspar.  It seemed a miracle that he was even alive.  Lucca started thinking about what it could have been.  Gaspar must have read her mind.

            “That power, it was time itself,” stated Gaspar.  “It was the defective part of time united as one being attacking, and it has joined with Lavos,” said Gaspar.  Lucca got the idea, somewhat.

            “You mean, time is a living thing, with cells?” asked Lucca.

            “It very well is.  I have never heard of defective time before.  But, I heard something tell me it.”

            “Where?” asked Marshall, suddenly.

            “In the field of life,” answered Gaspar.  “The never-ending energy field, where time gets its energy to move all of us.  It seems someone has genetically altered the DNA of a time cell, and spread it out to make enough cells to make, what seems to be an anti-time organisms.”  Again, only Lucca really grasped the concept.

            “So, with the opposite of time, someone is altering time to his own will?” asked Lucca.

            “Yes, and it seems to be something like Lavos.  And there seems to be a universe full of Lavos like creatures.  He is only one of many.  He is weak compared to the normal of his kind.  I had been doing some research on Lavos through a time mirror I had constructed.  It seems to have been dropped off by a creature of its kind.  And, just now, I have been told he was dropped to Earth because he was too weak to live in their world.”

            Gaspar was feeling much better, thanks to Marle.  Everyone was terrified, and they were lost.

            “Umm, sir, my name is Marshall, sorry for the lack of introduction,” said Marshall.  Gaspar smiled, and laid his head back.

            “Gaspar, we forgot to tell you, one thing,” said Marle.

            “What is it Marle?” asked Gaspar.

            “Crono’s lost, and he was swallowed up by this huge blue dome thing at the fair.”