Scorpius Blackferne III had ventured to the cave of one of the mythical Time gurus to learn something that could prove useful in the future. He was never told about something great he would accomplish. Instead, he was told something great about his grandson… Ceige Blackferne grew up as a poor boy in rich boy’s surroundings. If he had wanted, he could have his parents buy him the latest hovercraft or the best in virtual reality technology. But Ceige always felt he had to earn what was handed to him. In school, he was an overachiever, constantly trying to make impossible deadlines and goals that no person of a higher caliber could possibly make. That would be a good reason he was forced to stay back in high school. He would sometimes make these impossible deadlines, but usually, he, well, didn’t. His parents told him that he could have anything he wanted, but Ceige only took up their offers when he really needed the help. His friend, wiz hacker and notorious underachiever Sidious Calhoun (always, always Sid for short) always berated Ceige for not seizing these marvelous opportunities, but his parents had barely ever let him earn anything in his life. But, soon enough, he dropped his overachiever shtick, and became a devil-may-care, opportunistic freeloader. But he never ever attempted to leech off anybody else, unless it served a purpose. One day, while examining the cool boots his grandpa had made him before finally taking that permanent trip to Cancun, Ceige found a hidden compartment. It contained a piece of paper with a date, a numerical sequence, and surprisingly, the name of a long-obsolete lottery. It had a map of some building, but Ceige wasn’t sure what it was for. So he called Sid over. After a few minutes of investigating the map, Sid realized exactly what it was. It was a map to an old storage building; A storage building over a century-and-a-half old. A storage building owned by the ancient protectors of the galaxy, the R. Force. That certain storage building housed the first-ever Viper Model III Fighter Craft. Model III’s were capable of traveling through time. Ceige and Sid pieced together what to do from there. Ceige was to break into the storehouse, evade the roving Cambots and Brigands, find the Viper Model III, hotwire it, then blast to the past, where he’d enter the lottery. He’d put his winnings in a savings account, where it would sit and build up for over 170 years. Ceige would come back, and both he and Sid would live the lives of rich men. And Ceige would’ve earned it. Everything went exactly according to plan. Except that Ceige walked directly into a Cambot’s point of view in a moment of cockiness. Ceige was forced to quickly hotwire the Model III, blast his way through the building, and fly out of there as fast as he could. He came pretty close to making it, until Protocol came after him in a Viper Model IV. Those are notoriously fast, and gratuitously strong. After a brief dogfight, which Ceige came close to losing, the Model III slipped into the past through a gateway. Protocol couldn’t necessarily follow him, but he could shoot a few mini-missiles after him. Some 170-odd years in the past, a gateway opens a few hundred meters above solid ground. Ceige, riding the Model III, spits out of it. He thought he was scot-free, except that four missiles came right after him, and blew up the Model III pretty good. Surprisingly, Ceige survived the crash (it wasn’t an instant descent; it was more like a speeding-airplane-about-to-make-an-emergency

(to be finished)