Chapter 4: All's Well That Ends Unexpectedly

Well, nine other cyborgs that are a destructive fighting force like no other.

It was thought that one could save the universe.

July 4th, 2442, and everything was just like every other day on the planet earth in the year 2442. That is, to say, it was chaotic. People mobbed the streets in a very mobbish sort of way; they'd just found out that the universe would be destroyed in fifteen years.

"That's right, folks, the world will be destroyed in fifteen years! Sell your stocks! Buy the... somethingwhatsis! It's... er... uh..." said the cartoonish-llama-like avatar of a sales AI housed in an ordinary-looking computer terminal.

"What? It's a what?" asked some guy.

"Um... uh... Buy the thingy!" replied the little llama thing, having long since completely forgotten what it was selling in all the confusion.

"All right! Put me down for fifteen!"

Er... elsewhere, where the actual story was happening...

A crack team of scientists were putting the finishing touches on the design for the last of the cyborgs when a messenger ran up. Huffing and puffing, he related the latest news of the imminent end of the universe in fifteen years.

Given a short time of thinking about the problem, they resolved to slightly redesign cyborgs to be different from the others--with the mind of a child, and a body to match. It would be nearly indistinguishable from humans, as it would be more human than its brethren--human ingenuity would be necessary if it was to save the universe. So, they created, for the first time, ever... the newborn cyborg.

Then the building exploded as a gigantic can of spam fell from a hole in the time continuum and smashed the central generator unit.

"Did I buy THAT?" asked the man.

"Er... uh... I... um..." stammered the salescomputer, still not knowing what it was selling.

When the smoke cleared, the scientists looked around. And saw nothing. Nothing at all.

Well, excepting one another.

...

"Buy it! Buy it! Buy the howsawhat... something... er..."

Then, nothing happened. It took them three years to rebuild the facility. Then, they created a second tenth cyborg, designed to take the place of its lost brother in saving the universe twelve years in the future, relative to its birth.

For transportation, they bought a brand-spanking-new Corellian YT-1300 space frieghter, codenamed the Quirk of Ingenuity.

Five years after that, research in the field of timefield electosynopsis led to a breakthrough that opened up a time portal to 2457... the year that the universe was supposed to be destroyed.

They then sent the child cyborg through the portal (it already had the brain of a fully-developed adult... it was thought that no self-respecting evil would suspect that they'd send an kid to destroy it) to hopefully carry out its mission--the only oversight of this is that they'd have to wait until their original fifteen years were up to see if the universe ended or not.

Earth. 1983. A hole in time opens in the middle of Kentucky.

A gigantic can of spam falls out of it, killing Elvis Presley.

It closes.

Earth. 1983. Another hole in time opens in the middle of nowhere (a.k.a. Nebraska). A newborn in a specialized capsule falls out of it. The capsule shatters, and the infant spills out onto its head. It also has the intellect of a highly developed adult, and the combat skills of a trained warrior.

Unfortunately, the kid's brain has been turned upside-down by his misadventure through time and space.

But it still works... well, kind of.

"Frog the dry widget, man!" exclaimed the child, his first words displaying his tries to sort out the jumbled signals coming from his nervous system.

That alone took him a couple of years, at which point he was found by an old man named Mr. Bojangles who missed his dog.

Four years later, after he and Mr. Bojangles had parted ways, the young boy, so-called Insano in relation to his random outbursts by his friend, mentor, and favorite fictional figure in a song, Mr. Bojangles, found himself in the swamps of Louisiana. Alone. Once again. He was six years old, and hungry. His finely-tuned cyborg senses told him one thing--that he was indeed very hungry.

Another super day.

There was another creature in these swamps, aside from the aforementioned cyborg child and the inevitable alligators that proliferate in such environments. It, too, had popped out of a time portal and had landed on a strange world in a strange time at a young age.

It also was hungry.

It was... a metroid.

Yeah, a metroid.

The boy ran into this metroid one day, as that would make sense for the purposes of the story (otherwise, why would I have mentioned it?). And, as Metroids often do, it latched onto his head in an attempt to consume him. Now, this would work exceptionally well with any normal entity, which the boy wasn't, as the metroid would simply drain the life out of him and be done with this haphazard meeting in the swamp. However, the cyborg combat reflexes in this particular six-year-old boy suddenly kicked in, as well as the self-preservation instinct that had been bred into him.

With his instincts kicking in at just that moment, he did what any self-respecting warrior would have done...

"Get it off! Get it off! The talisman's trying the worchestire sauce!" screamed the boy, batting at the metroid with his arms and bashing his head (with the metroid on it) into every tree or rock that he could see through the creature's semi-transparent body. Suddenly, and inexplicably, a blaster bolt came tearing through the trees, over the muck, and through the metroid... or was that over the river and through the woods?... er... um... (buy the whatchamacallit)... and hit the metroid. The creature instantly detached, and swarmed toward the foe it knew to be out there, somewhere.

A bounty hunter.

A bounty hunter personally responsible for the deaths of the greater part of its race.

Meaning, Samus Aran herself.

Dodging this blaster bolt and that odd rocket (both of which went screaming off to the dismay of both tree and alligator out there somewhere in the swamp... the tree, because it was hit by the attack and its trunk was shattered, and the alligator whom the tree fell on after the greater part of its trunk had been blown away by a distant random firefight), the metroid zipped off toward the armored bounty hunter. Samus dodged the metroid's attempt to latch onto her, rolling out of the way and firing backward at the careening creature while upside down. Her bolt struck home, and the metroid wobbled a bit before crashing into a tree.

At this point, Samus leapt to her feet and armed her rockets, the color change of her suit denoting her intent to destroy the loathsome creature (not to say that ALL metroids are loathsome, mind you) once and for all. She aimed, and was about to launch the rocket when that boy the metroid had been attacking suddenly ran out in front of her at a pace much greater than that of your average six-year-old, jumped into the air while spinning, and landed a solid kick across the metroid (still plastered against the tree) while sideways in the air. Coming down once again, the boy landed on his feet and jumped upward and backward, flipping in the air as the newly enraged (and wounded) metroid flew toward his seemingly unguarded backside. The timing couldn't have been more perfect as he executed a standing moonsault (backflip body splash) and landed right on top of the metroid, pinning it to the ground with a sizeable impact.

"What's up with this kid? I've never seen... well, anybody do that to a metroid before..." thought Samus, seeing this unique spectacle. However, the boy, not realizing that a metroid can take a lot of punishment before it finally goes out got up just as the metroid rose into the air once more. Samus took careful aim and blasted it out of the sky as the boy had turned away from it and back toward her.

"Heya, lady." the boy said, entirely oblivious of the smoking remains of a metroid that had been dashed against a tree for the second time, dropping the tree on yet another random alligator. Wondering how he could have completely missed the loud crash behind him, she replied.

"Uh... hi. Who are you, little boy?" Samus asked. Never had she seen anyone engage in mortal combat with a space entity and be entirely cool and happy afterward. Of course, she'd never seen a six-year-old engage a space entity in a hand-to-proboscis brawl before, or any six-year-old ever fight a space entity in any way, for that matter. Nor had she run into such a friendly little boy that answered to 'who are you?' with a shrug and a smirk.

Which this boy did.

"Er... you don't know your name?" asked Samus, not expecting that reply.

"Nope. Mr. Bojangles, he called me Insano, but I don't really know who I am." replied the boy in his sing-songish child's voice, oddly devoid of any accent (especially when you consider the fact that he was currently living in Louisiana).

"Do you... have any parents? Family? Where are you from?"

"Not that I know of. There was Mr. Bojangles, he was an old guy that missed his dog, and some people I stayed with a couple of nights back, but all I remember is popping out of some sort of capsule when I was just born and wondering why my head didn't hurt so much."

Samus raised an eyebrow beneath her helmet. "O... kay. How... who... a capsule, you say?"

"Yeah. A capsule. I was born, I woke up, I was hungry. Something like that."

"All right. Er... how... did you fight that metroid like that? That's, like... suicide!"

"Er... no, more like the ripe smack of vine-ripened tomatoes home-grown in large spreads of plant life called large spreads of plant life."

"WHAT?"

"Huh?

"What?

"Who?"

"No, 'what,' not 'who!'"

"Sorry, I don't know anybody named Nowhat Notwho. Maybe you can look him up in the polka-dot pages."

"Are... are you okay, kid?"

"Er... I dunno."

"Look. You don't have any parents or family... you're wandering some desolate swamps, alone... what's gonna happen to you?"

"I dunno."

"Can you say anything besides 'I dunno?' now?" said Samus with a smirk.

"Turkey necks in the great white north, si?"

"I... had to ask..."

"Um... can you take me with you?"

"Wh... what are you talking about?" asked Samus, really confused this time.

"Up there." said the boy, pointing to the sky. "You come from... up there. I think I do, too... but I don't know. Maybe I can find out." Samus was about to reply when he continued, looking down at the ground once again. "Besides, I'm... lost in this swamp, and... I really want to visit the stars."

"Sure, kid." the hunter replied, looking at this small boy that seemed to radiate... well, other than that blind joy that all children have before they start inexplicably crying (usually in the middle of the night, just ask anyone's parent), he seemed to radiate a talent for... something... far, far beyond his years. "One thing's for sure... you don't seem to belong here."

Elsewhere, in another time, a five-year-old kid popped out of hyperspace... wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. More on that later.

Samus Aran, having brought up young Insano to be a space hunter like she was (which he wanted to be, to see the world... er... universe... and all that), was letting the boy (now fifteen) pilot her ship. They had returned to Samus' timeframe by slingshoting themselves around Earth's sun from the timeline the Metroid Samus was chasing--there wasn't much work for interstellar bounty hunters in 1989. This particular event took place during a chase--you know, one of those great scenes where there's lots of lasers flashing, hyperspace jumps, and all those stars that fly by as lines because the chaser and the chasee are going so fast. This was no different, except for the fact that Samus usually handled the odd bits like this where everything could get exceptionally dangerous if there wasn't a master pilot at the controls.

Which was odd, because she didn't remember Insano being that much of a master pilot.

It seemed now that he was just such a pilot, however, as the ship dipped and turned as his hands flew across the controls. It was her ship, and even she could'n't pilot it quite like that. Actually, she didn't know anyone that could. Especially Insano, up until this point.

"Well, now, this is all well and good for the chase, but how do you plan on firing the weapons with any accuracy while you're piloting like that?" asked Samus, thinking she saw an oversight in his flying style.

"Hmm. Good point." he replied, one hand dancing over to the weapon controls while the other double-timed it across the controls he'd just been using two hands to use. The ship continued to zip and slide around just as before, but every few seconds the report of the blaster cannons sounded through the ship and the brilliant bolts of energy scored a direct hit on the same point on the other ship's rear deflectors. "It's my horse!" called Insano as one bolt broke through, directly over the service tube leading to the ship's engines. Energy couplers and control cables melded with tons of metal as that particular small section of the ship fused with oblivion. The chasee, at this point, simply stopped dead in space.

"How... how did you do that?"

"Like this." said Insano, whipping his hands over the controls again, causing the ship to once more spin through space as he began boring a hole through the other ship's shields above a critical weapons systems juncture. With the same result; matter was blown to carbonic nonsense as another one of the other ship's systems shut down.

"Insa-a-neeey!" yelled Samus, being bucked about the cabin after having stood up to look over his shoulder after he'd completed the previous series of maneuvers that led to the destruction of the other ship's engine control couplings.

"What?" asked Insano, responding to his sometime nickname (but only Samus could call him by it) by turning away from the controls. The ship simply glided up to the side of the other ship, in perfect position for boarding.

"Did... did he do that on purpose? Or is he just entirely zoned out?" thought Samus. "Er... that'll be good."

"Oh... okay."

"Git offa my ship!" screamed their quarry following the haphazard 'docking' procedures that involved Insano egressing the boarding chute directly into the other ship's hull in a place entirely devoid of docking clamps. After clambering aboard through the new portal they had bored, a firefight ensued (though the other man was caught off guard by the fact that they'd blasted in through his hull behind where he was lying in wait), and they'd ended up around a corner from him, both parties entirely unable to move. Samus had been in tighter situations and come out on top, but now, she had to teach Insano how to deal with them.

"Okay, Insano, what we need to do is... Insano?" started Samus, right as she noticed Insano walking away down the hallway. "Where are you going?"

"Over, under, around and through. Or something like that, eh?" said Insano, suddenly wheeling about and hot-footing it down the hallway like his socks were on fire. Pulling another one of his trademarked randomly effective maneuvers, he ran up one wall sideways, in full view of their quarry (who began firing), and, hitting the outside edge of the stalemated corner, flipped backward off the wall, wrapped his legs around the man's head, and spun through the air, leg scissorwhipping the man into the floor directly in front of Samus. The man's blaster clattered across the polysteel deck plating, it's energy gauge reading 'empty.' Samus covered the newly-stunned bounty head while Insano got up and took off his helmet.

"What was that?" asked Samus angrily, seeing that Insano had just ridiculously risked his life and come out on the lucky side because their opponent had run out of blaster charge. "You could've been killed!"

"No, I couldn't've." replied the young man.

"What?"

"What?" asked the other man, still staring up in disbelief at the ceiling lights that flickered annoyingly overhead. Realizing that he should have fixed them long ago and didn't, he wondered what else he'd left undone prior to his capture.

"He couldn't have killed me; he only had one shot left, and my armor would have neatly sewn up that little hole stitched in the fabric of time... er... it wouldn't have gotten through."

"Aha." said Samus, smirking. "You know, there's something you forgot... pur..."

"And that's not all! It also slices, freezes when the network server goes down, and annoyingly prints Purple Monkey Dishwasher on the screen when glitched." finished Insano.

"ple monkey dishwa... um..." stammered Samus, having lost her thought in Insano's latest random spout of... well, whatever it was he spouted. "How did you know?"

"Look at the lights!" he responded, directing their attention to where the other guy's had ended up anway. "Long blink, short blink, short blink, long, short, middle, short, short, short, short, long, short, middle..."

"O...kay..."

"Can't you see the message? It's from the ship's computer! 'Weapon low, hit him now' is what it's saying, over and over."

Suddenly unable to say anything in response, Samus and the man (still on the floor) glanced between Insano and the blinking lights, which still made no sense. Especially when you coupled the young man, grinning at the thought that he'd taught his teacher something she didn't know, with a blinking set of lights and an inane rambling that the ship's computer was talking to him.

"Great. Hundreds of people could have gone after me, and I get the insane space hunter. Just my luck, just like this ship."

"Insane space hunter..." said Insano.

"The ship?" asked Samus, oblivious to the thoughtful look on Insano's face.

"Yeah... I found it a hundred lightyears from here, an old derelict. It's got a weird computer that's always spouting stuff nobody ought to know, and the systems are... well... Corellian."

"Meaning...?"

"Meaning that the whole ship is built off-side, all the systems are scattered about in random positions, and the thing sounds like a rontar trapped in a four-foot cube of tin cans that it can't get out of but tries anyway." replied Insano. The man nodded in agreement.

"Oh."

Well, they turned in the guy for the bounty and left Insano with the ship, as they were finally at the point where Samus figured that they could part ways. This is a ridiculous part of the story, filled with tearful see-you-laters and hopeful exchanges of mathoms (objects that are currently of no use to the owner that they are, for some reason, reluctant to part with), as well as a lot of paperwork pertaining to the bounty. So, I'll skip over it, and get back to the part I said I'd get back to ahead of when I'm getting back to it.

Elsewhere, a five-year-old kid popped out of hyperspace, armed to the teeth with the latest array of devices with which one man can kill an army of deranged zombie clones (given that he has the ammo and patience... or an itchy trigger finger and a can of soda), ready to take on whatever intergalactic evil threatened the universe's existence. With the space combat senses of a highly trained astronaut, he looked back and forth across the reaches of space, eyeing the cosmos, trying to figure out where he was.

All this figuring out of everything could have been easily avoided if he'd simply stopped and asked directions while he was at the Restauraunt at the End of the Universe, but hey, he'd been more interested in the color-your-own-menu-while-you-wait menus. Most five-year-old kids are, you see.

Just ask one sometime. He'll tell you what's up, what's down, and fifty other things you never really wanted to know (yet somehow you benefit from knowing them all the same).

Okay, that was a little off-topic.

Getting back into the swing of things...

The kid was surprised when, for no apparent reason, a ship exactly like his own popped out of hyperspace due to a photonic fluctuation in the hyperspace manifold. From that ship came an interesting, off-key song...

"Skittle-ma-renky-dinky-dink, skittle-ma-renky-do; my voice is blue..."

"Who goes there?" queried the kid.

"Um... Insa... er... The Insane Space Hunter, at your service."

"Who is The Insane Space Hunter?"

"Me."

"Oh. Well, what are you doing here?"

"Well, my ship was blasted out of hyperspace when a photonic fluctuation in the hyperspace manifold caused my ship to attempt to recalculate pi to the twenty-seventh digit without first recalculating the radius of the galaxial portal, thus coming up with the same..."

"Just the details, please."

"Oh, okay. My ship was blasted out of hyperspace when a fluctuation involving supercharged photonic particles in my hyperspace manifold created an inverse feedback loop during which my ship attempted to recalculate..."

"I said the details! Not the long hairy explanation!" said the kid, getting impatient.

"Very well. I got blasted out of hyperspace when a photonic buildup in the..." continued the Hunter for a third time.

"No! Never mind! Why are you... no... who... no... argh! What was I talking about?"

"You wanted to find out, evidently, that I got kicked out of hyperspace because you're flying my ship."

"What?"

"My ship. Well, according to my calculations, it WILL be my ship. And is my ship. Which is the whole problem."

Like all five-year-olds, the kid was very possessive of his things. "It's MY ship!"

"Right. Right then it is. Now it isn't, and in the middle it won't be, it'll belong to some guy that doesn't understand the light patterns whatsoever."

Looking up at the now-and-for-no-apparently-good-reason-flickering lights, the kid raised an eyebrow. "Right. Sure."

"Exactly. That's why, with all the photonic fluctuations, we're gonna have to do something about this little situation."

"Like what?"

"Like this." said the Hunter, triggering yet another photonic inverse feedback loop by building up static electricity with a balloon and rubbing it up against the hyperspace jump calculation unit. A stream of photons suddenly sprang from his engines, wrapping around his ship until they faced the other ship, at which point they encapsulated it and it disappeared from the timeframe, hurled backward in time to where it needed to be to have causality be what it is.

Now that there was only one ship, the Hunter flew off.

Sixteen years before the last entry, the kid popped out of hyperspace, confused. How was he supposed to save the universe now that he'd been catapulted back to a time four years before he was born? Why had the letters that said "Quirk of Ingenuity" on the side of his vessel now say "Qu   Of In   y?" Why did that guy say that the ship that obviously wasn't his was his? Why were the lights flickering again? What's that big monster sneaking up behind...

Then, the kid realized what had happened. He hadn't found the evil entity when he popped out of hyperspace in the now-relative future because he'd warped in on top of it, and it had ended up on his ship. Probably in the refrigeration unit behind the non-alcoholic beer.

Without thinking, his life's goal now about to be achieved, he grabbed the weapon nearest him--a large-caliber assault rifle--and proceeded to blow the bejeezus out of the evil entity. The entity staggered back, wounded, but not out--then leapt forward in a feat of rage and threw the kid into the freezer out of which it had come, where he landed behind the non-alcoholic beer. Slamming the door, it thought about its situation and decided to duplicate the starship so that it could later use it for its own evil purposes. Leaving the boy to his fate, it used a large part of its remaining energy to duplicate the entire ship, computer and all, and went into hibernation behind the non-alcoholic beer for a while--it had a big date with the end of the universe.

Four years later, a space pirate happened upon the two identical ships, and, sending his best pilot to board one, made off with the very duplicate ship that housed the slumbering monster that would eventually destroy the universe.

Three years after Insano had sent the kid (whom nobody knew was his younger brother) into the past, his own ship that he had obtained from a space pirate was destroyed in a planet-rocking explosion on the MDb World. The computer he'd grown to know so well ended up loading itself into his head (which was part computer, and a compatible platform, incidentally), as well as a sentient computer glitch. Insano himself had been destroyed in the battle, but he was brought back by a wish from the Dragon Balls of the MDb World. Then, he/they hitched a ride to the cosmos with Samus Aran, who had returned to the MDb World around that time. Meanwhile, the evil housed in his spaceship had been destroyed along with the ship, and that chapter of malformed galactic history was over.

"Hey, Insaney..." said Samus, looking out at the cosmos flying by as they shot through hyperspace. "What are you gonna do about a ship now that yours was blown up?"

"Not sure yet, but something will probably pop..." was all he got out before a non-unique glitch in the hyperspace manifold involving photonic particles dropped them out of hyperspace. "out."

"What the...?" said Samus.

"What the...?" said DamnGlitch from inside the Insane Space Hunter, where he'd been relatively stuck for the better part of a year now. "Why do we always Oh, again?" said the Glitched Hunter, named so here because DamnGlitch had begun the sentence and Insano had finished it.

"What do you mean 'again?'" asked Samus.

"Oh. The hyperspace manifold..."

"In English."

"Ship fall from hyperspace, bad photons, it's my ship again."

"Oh."

The Glitched Hunter waved farewell to Samus as she closed the boarding hatch in the tube that connected their two ships, having crossed over to the "Qu   Of In   y." Of course, on the original ship, he'd filled in the blanks and gotten "Quest of Insanity" out of the deal. The ship's original name had actually been the Quirk of Ingenuity, but that made little difference to anyone currently relating to the story as the Hunter made his way to the haphazard cockpit of the craft. Tuning up the engines, he watched as Samus' ship flew away from his... this, of course, being the second time he'd seen that sight from the bridge of the same ship, though his own ship had actually been destroyed. How an exact duplicate (though yes, he was originally in the duplicate) had gotten to where it was didn't really matter to him; it was just comforting to know that he once again had the ability to galavant about the stars in a manner so haphazard that it matched the configuration of his ship.

"I'm thirsty. Then let's get something to drink, shall we? Why not? Now, where was the fridge again?..." said the Hunter in two voices. Making their way to the back compartment, they opened up the door to the refrigeration unit... and were interested by what they found there.

"Who are you?" said a voice from behind the non-alcoholic beer.

"The Insane Space Glitch... no, Hunter! And company! No! Insane Space Glitch!" the Glitched Hunter responded, arguing amongst themselves.

"Y... you! You're the one who sent me back in time, where I lost and didn't defeat the big evil thing!"

"I am?" said DamnGlitch. "Yeah, I am." answered the Hunter. "Don't worry--I saw that evil thing at the Meeting of Guys who Died during the Third Battle of the Posters. He won't be bothering anyone."

"What? He's been defeated?"

"Dude, it's been four years since you got sent back. At least, by our timeframe. You were just a kid then, though. How old are you now?"

"25."

"Cool! He's older than you are!" said DamnGlitch. "And you, Mr. I'm a Computer Glitch from '93. Oh, yeah. What's your name, bud?"

More than slightly confused at the way the Glitched Hunter talked to... himself?, the still-nameless man replied "Er... I don't remember..."

"Oh, heck, you gotta..."

"Heck! Oh Heck! That's my name!"

"It is?"

"May as well be."

"O...kay. Is he your brother or something, Hunter?" asked DamnGlitch.

"Could be. Are you a cyborg?"

"Um... yeah... so?"

"Yup. Definitely brothers of one kind or the other."

"Mjolnir Mark IX is my type, my designation number is..."

"Mjolnir? Boy, you got more brothers than you thought. The Hunter here is a Mark IX, as are two other guys--one dead, and one previously dead."

"Mj... what? You're a Mjolnir Mark IX? Are you SimBen?" asked the once-again-confused Oh Heck.

"Nope. Don't have a name, really. Most just call me The Insane Space Hunter, Insano, or That Crazy Guy. For obvious reasons." added Glitch.

"Uh... er... you're... you're him! You're the reason I was created!"

Following this revalation, there was much debate as to how everything actually played out to get everybody to where they were. Causality was brought up, as was creation of cyborgs to do the work of other missing-in-action cyborgs that end up mistakenly doing the job anyway by leaving their ship lying around. Other topics of discussion also included bibliographical references to the Battles of the Posters and an interesting-looking potato shaped like a ram's head.

This is to say that they sorted out the whole mess without me having to write a lot of messy dialogue.

Such as "That potato looks like a ram's head. I died during every Battle of the Posters. Really, that potato looks like the head of a ram. Why causality, again?"

And so on. So, to sum it all up, here is a linear timeline of the events that happened--note that the order does not make sense, because that would be stupid.

RT=Relative Timeline (relative to Hunter's birth)

-1, 5, 18, etc.=What Year on Relative Timeline

#1, #2, etc.=What Number of Event in Relative Storyline Timeline

RT -1-(#6) Heck and original Quest arrive, awaken sleeping evil. Heck, knowing the evil, and after fighting the evil and nearly destroying it, ends up in freezer. Evil puts itself aboard a duplicate of the Quest it creates, sealed away in freezer to regain strength.

RT 0-(#1) Hunter Born, it is thought that he can save universe from evil awakened a year before that is known to destroy the universe in RT 15.1 (-1)

RT 0-(#2) Hunter gets lost

RT 3-(#3) Heck Born, chosen to save universe since his brother is missing

RT 8-(#4) Heck sent into future to save universe in Quest of Insanity at age 5

RT 15-(#7) still-aging Heck still in freezer of Quest; duplicate Quest found by Hunter RT 15.1(-1) Evil, sealed in duplicate Quest, still too weak to destroy universe, has to wait until RT 18.1 (three extra years)

RT 16-(#5) Heck arrives in future, Hunter meets him, sends Heck and original Quest back to RT -1

RT 17-(#8) BOTP1 occurs. Dragon balls of MDb World used for first time. SimBen dies.

RT 17.5-#(9) BOTP2 occurs. Hunter and SimBen 2 blown up by selfdestruct. SimBen 2 passed into Real World.

RT 18-(#10) BOTP3 occurs. Glitched Hunter blown up by selfdestruct. Hunter passed into Real World. Duplicate Quest destroyed, along with the evil entity that lived on it (universe saved). Hunter restored with Dragon Balls found by Super Joe and Sword Bearer, along with SimBen 2

RT 19-(#11) Hunter finds original Quest, complete with sleeping Oh Heck, now 25

RT 23-(11) BOTP4 occurs... Hunter is 23, Oh Heck is 29; somehow, the duplicate Quest of Insanity that had housed the evil entity is found by Sam & Max, the Freelance Police. The entity remains dead and the universe is still safe. The only theory as to how this would happen is that the Quest's computer qualified to be wished back by the Dragon Balls, because its 'body,' the Quest of Insanity, was destroyed during the MDb World's overthrow of Darvos' corrupt empire during the fourth Battle of the Posters. So, the ship was restored, but, because its computer was uploaded into the Hunter's cybernetic brain, it was devoid of the computer enity that qualified it to be wished back. I didn't say it was an infallible theory. Blame Sam & Max for this little causality snafu.

Next comes the fourth Battle of the MDbMB Posters. Once again, the Hunter was blown up, but for all his efforts in this and past BOTPs, he was awarded a keg, with which he held the largest party Planet 70 has ever seen.