Disclaimer:I do not own Sky High, its setting, premise, or characters -or related characters named and unnamed. All is the property of Walt Disney Pictures, Buena Vista Pictures, Andrew Gunn, and Mark McCorkie.

Tumble Through Time

Chapter One: Fish Outta Time

Both Phoenix and the Lieutenant rubbed their eyes. Dizzy, confused, and a little disoriented. But otherwise unharmed.

"Urgh! What was that light?" Demanded the Lieutenant, rubbing his eyes that were still pinched shut tight.

"If I knew that, Stronghold, I would have avoided it!" Phoenix snarled back. He was glad he kept his hair so long. At the moment, his head bent down, the long straight locks were doing a better job of filtering out light than the lenses of his mask were.

Blinking to clear his vision, Phoenix looked up at their surroundings.

They were not where they were mere seconds ago.

Before the bright flash, they were in Mr. Medula's lab. They were both out of school, but it was Stronghold's first year as a superhero and he still hadn't built up a network of resources and allies to go to when he needed help on cases outside his expertise. When Stronghold –and the Lieutenant- came across a piece of technology he didn't understand, he brought it to their old Mad Science teacher from school, Mr. Medula.

Warren, that is, the superhero Phoenix, happened to be working the case with him and hadn't yet acquired a tech expert of his own. So, they both went to Medula together, hoping the older super could help them solve their case.

While Medula was tinkering with the evidence they brought him, Stronghold examined the lab.

It was Mr. Medula's personal lab, built in the garage of his private home. The mad scientist equivalent of a 'Secret Sanctum'. And it was full of all kinds of interesting tech and half-made inventions. Stronghold looked at a pair of teleporter booths, a robot nanny, a gargoyle-shaped exo-suit, several various 'doomsday devices', and one cobweb covered corner that was roped off with a note saying 'time traveler landing area, keep clear'.

Flanking the roped off corner, positioned at an odd angle and plugged into an independent power source, were two free-standing polls. Thick, wide polls that could almost be classified as 'pillars', they looked so thick. And each one was topped by some kind of radio dish. Both pointing down and angled at the roped off corner.

"Huh." Will looked at the machines curiously. "You think this is a real time machine?"

He reached a hand out to touch the device.

Phoenix, seeing this out of the corner of his eye, leapt across the room to stop his friend. Didn't anyone ever tell him never to touch weird tech in a mad scientist's lab!? That was like, rule number three on the list of superhero rules. Number one: Do Not Kill. Number two: don't do crimes. Number three: if a made scientist made it, don't touch it!

But Phoenix stumbled on a heavy cable running across the floor and collided with the other hero. They both went rolling into the corner, just as Will flicked the machine switch that read ON.

There was a flash of blinding light and then-

The two found themselves here.

In the corner of an empty room that looked like it might have been a vacant… garage. Okay, so they were still in a garage. But it was not Mr. Medula's mad-science-lab-garage. It was just a normal, mundane, empty garage.

His own eyes adjusting from the blinding flash, Stronghold walked over to the corrugated roll-up door of the garage and lifted it just enough to see outside.

They were, in fact, in the garage of a private home. A house on a wide residential street in a suburb of some kind. And on the lawn, was a For Sale sign with a bold sticker slapped across it that read 'SOLD'. (And it was not a Stronghold & Stronghold Realty sign.)

"You think that was a teleporter ray?" Will suggested.

Warren pinched the bridge of his nose. "Stronghold, didn't you read the sign?" He groaned. "It said something about time travel. Or whatever. Medula's lab is in his garage, and we're still in a garage. We didn't get teleported any 'where' we were teleported any 'when'."

Will just flashed him a skeptical frown. "Are you sure? I mean, time travel seems kinda…" He let the through trail off.

Letting go of his nose bridge and readjusting his mask, Phoenix fixed the younger man with a level glare. Putting all the severity he could muster into the expression. The villains in his own rogues gallery found the expression very intimidating and had dubbed it his 'Phoenix Glare'. The dark hero of flame could be very scary when he wanted to be.

But it was considerably less intimidating on a best friend and superhero partner.

"Keep in mind I've been doing this a whole year longer than you have." Phoenix reminded him.

Crossing his arms over his chest, the Lieutenant glared back at him. Unimpressed.

"It means I have more experience than you." Phoenix explained. "Isn't that why you partnered with me in the first place? Because you wanted to work with a more seasoned hero?"

Although, having only one extra year of experience did not exactly make Phoenix 'seasoned'.

"Actually…" Will had to admit, twiddling his fingers awkwardly. "It was because I didn't wanna work with my parents anymore, but my mom didn't feel comfortable with me working alone. So, I told her I'd partner up with one of my friends."

Phoenix just stared at him for a moment through the whited out eye-sockets of his mask. He didn't know what to say to that exactly. Stronghold only wanted to work with him because his mommy didn't want him to work as a superhero alone, he didn't actually partner up with Phoenix because he wanted to. On the other hand, out of their entire group of friends, the only one of them that Stronghold chose to work with was him. Phoenix had mixed feelings about that.

He decided not to think about the contradicting implications about how Will felt about him and focused on the matter at hand.

"Let's just assume I'm right –because I will be right when we step out of this garage- and try to find out what year it is." Phoenix announced.

"Okay, fine." Nodded the Lieutenant.

They slipped out of the empty garage, ducking under the roll-up door the Lieutenant had raised.

It was mid-day, so the majority of the driveways were empty. Adults being at work. Children being at school. The only people at home, the elderly that rarely left their homes at all, and a couple of stay-at-home wives here and there.

The street was a well landscaped and almost perfectly uniform suburb, ending in a cul-de-sac.

A few eyes peeked through their curtains, or from behind their blinds at the two strangers dressed in costumes dart out of the vacant house on the block.

One dressed in all black –like a supervillain- black body suit, black armor plates, black utility belt, black mask. The only color on his costume, a red bird on his chest, the wings rising up over his shoulders and turning into stripes that went all the way down his arms to end in stripes on his fingers. They did not recognize the costume. But then, he looked young. Some new supervillain the news hadn't caught wind of yet and reported on.

The other, however, looked more like a hero. Mostly white unitard. Red and blue stripes on his chest, torso, forearms, and thighs. White, red and blue, common colors for super heroes. Jetstream's colors were white, red, and blue. Sonic Boom's colors were navy blue, white, and red. The Commander's colors were also white, red, and royal blue. In fact, this other hero even had the same rampart symbol on his chest, same as the Commander. But this kid was not the Commander. The Commander didn't wear a mask, a person could always see his face. This kid wasn't wearing a mask either, and it was easy to tell that it was not the same face. The other stranger might be a hero, but they were not the Commander.

But, they were trailing after a villain.

Something was going down. And those nosy neighbors peeking out their windows did the only thing suburbanites did when there was someone suspicious lurking around the neighborhood. They picked up their phone.

Phoenix grabbed the first newspaper he found. Sticking out of someone's bushes, the paper guy having missed the front porch of the house they found it on.

The fact that newspapers were even a thing at all should have been proof enough that they had time traveled, but for good measure, Phoenix unrolled to paper to show the exact date.

June 9, 1988

1988

They had gone back in time twenty-two years.

Phoenix rolled the paper back up and set it on the porch where the resident of the house would find it. Then he looked back at the Lieutenant and tried not to look smug. He did tell him so, but he wasn't going to say it out loud.

"Alright. So, we time traveled." The Lieutenant crossed his arms over his chest. "Does that mean you know how to get us back home?"

Phoenix opened his mouth to speak. Then closed it again, realizing he did not actually know how to get them back to their own time. He crossed his arms over his chest and thought. When he and Winter (his now-ex-girlfriend with ice powers) were hurled forward in time last fall it was because they were caught up in a sorcerer's magic spell. Once they figured that out, it was just a matter of finding a super with magic-based powers to perform the same spell for them, only backwards.

This time, it was not magic that sent them careening through time. It was technology. Some kind of disused time machine in Mr. Medula's home lab. But the home lab was not here in 1988. Mr. Medula did not live in that house yet. In fact, Phoenix wasn't sure if Medula even lived in Maxville yet by that point. Rumor had it he was originally from out of town and only moved to Maxville when he was hired on as a teacher at Sky High. Before that, Phoenix had no idea where Medual lived or where he was from.

"We need to find someone who knows about time travel." Phoenix decided, more thinking out loud than forming anything resembling an actual 'plan'. Then he remembered something his dad told him years, and year, and years ago –back when his dad was still around and able to tell him things. About a super that matched other supers with jobs and jobs with supers. A sort of 'middle man' for the powered community in Maxville. A 'Broker', if you would. "Or, we go to someone who knows how to find someone who knows about time travel."

"Okay, but how do we-?"

The Lieutenant didn't get to finish the question.

A blast of sound came reverberating down the street and nocked both men off their feet. Both Phoenix and the Lieutenant fell back-flat on the sidewalk.

The Lieutenant was the first to recover. He climbed back to his feet and looked in the direction the sound-based attack had come from. He was not expecting to recognize who he saw.

The costume was something he'd only seen in pictures. Another variant on the blue, white, and red color scheme. But then, a lot of the heroes that were active in the seventies and eighties really liked to push the patriotic colors. There was a bit of a Cold War going on. But it was not the costume that gave away the identity of their attacker. It was the powers, and the face.

About twenty years younger than he looked when Will first met him in his freshman year. But still recognizable. That was Coach Boomer. If this really was 1988, then he was still active as the superhero Sonic Boom.

And he had just attacked them.

"Got a call about suspicious characters skulking around, causing trouble." Announced Sonic Boom. (Phoenix and the Lieutenant had caused no trouble, people in the suburbs just like the call the cops for bullshit reasons.) "And lookie what I find. An unknown super, and a brand new supervillain."

"Coach B-" Lieutenant was about to gasp. But Phoenix grabbed his hand, pulling the other man close and covering his mouth with his finger-striped glove.

"Shut-up, idiot!" Phoenix hissed in his ear. "He can't know we're from the future. Haven't you ever seen literally any movie!?"

The Lieutenant's eyes went wide with the sudden realization. They covered this in school. Going back in time and accidentally changing things. Creating paradoxes and breaking the universe. They had to be careful. The Lieutenant nodded his understanding.

Then grabbed Phoenix, sweeping the other man off his feet.

The Lieutenant leapt up into the air and flew away.

A rush of air. A blur of colors and motion. By this point in their friendship, Warren was kind used to being swept off his feet and jerked around by Stronghold. That still didn't mean he enjoyed it, and he was almost sick. It took every ounce of his self-control to not be sick all over his best friend.

When Phoenix was confident he wasn't about to puke all over his partner, he noticed where they were flying. "Stronghold!" He shouted to be heard over the rush of wind. "Will! You can't run home! Your parents don't know who you are, and they might not even live there yet! You could be barging in on some random stranger!"

Hearing that, and realizing it was true, the Lieutenant slowed, decelerating until they came to a full stop. Hovering in the air above the city.

"Where should we go?" He asked.

Before Phoenix could suggest an answer, another superhero came careening at them and almost collided with them.

"One-side rookie!" Shouted a woman flying up from the city. Wearing a tight, two-piece costume. A mid-rift top, long sleeved and high collared, but cut very, very high so that it threatened to expose her under-boob if she bent the wrong way. The flat plain of her belly was exposed. Even olive skin, no tan lines, no blemishes, only a gold belly ring set with a red stone that sparkled in the mid-day light. And short-shorts, so short, her butt cheeks hung out of the back.

She appeared to be dodging spears of ice being thrown at her from another female super on a roof below. The flying female super lit her arms on fire and threw fireballs of her own at the ice projectiles, each attack bursting into steam upon interception and collision.

This had to be Flamebird. A female superhero with the dual powers of flight and pyrokinesis. She was also the mother of Warren Peace.

Phoenix and the Lieutenant just stared at her.

"If you've already caught your villain, take him into the closest police precinct for booking!" Flamebird barked at them from over her shoulder. The majority of her attention was on her own villain she was fighting. "Don't just hover there gawking at my ass!"

Yup. That was Warren's mom alright.

The Lieutenant might have muttered something incomprehensible in response. But she wasn't paying attention to them anymore anyway. Will flew them out of the way of Flamebird's fight and down closer to the skyline of the city. Hoping to avoid running into anyone else they knew in their own time in the past (in the present?) by hiding between the buildings.

Will set Warren down on a low rooftop, feeling oddly short of breath. It took him longer than it should have to realize that he was nervous and scared. They really were in the past. 1988, that was before either of them were born. They could really mess things up if they did the wrong thing. They could really, really, really mess things up. Like, the erase one of both of them from existence so that they're never born kind of mess things up!

Will didn't realize just how bad he was freaking out until he felt Warren place one hand on his shoulder, and the other over his heart. Feeling the older man pressing some heat into his core.

"Easy there, Stronghold." He said, uncharacteristically soothingly for him. "Breath. Just breath. Deep breaths. In… and out… good, now another one, in…"

Finally, when he was calm enough to talk about, Will asked the same question for a third time. "What do we do?"

This time, before even beginning to answer, Warren first look side to side to see if any other supers whom were active in this decade were about to appear on the scene and interrupt them. He checked up and down too, just to cover his bases on flyers. Finally, Warren turned his attention back to his friend.

"My dad used to talk about a super that helped out other supers." He began. "He's not a superhero, but he's not a supervillain either. He works with both, and helps people with superpowers find jobs and stuff."

"How does that help us?" Will asked. If this was a person Barron Battle knew, could they really even be trusted? Barron Battle was supposed to be some big, awful, and terrifying supervillain. Warren could say some guy his dad used to know wasn't a supervillain, but that didn't mean it was true. Also, how good was Warren's memory of the things his dad used to tell him? Warren hadn't seen Barron Battle in ten years. Not since he was nine years old. Warren only had a child's memories of his father.

"It helps us because this guy could probably find us a Mad Scientist to make a forward time machine to send us home." Phoenix tried to explain. "Unless you wanna spend the rest of your life here in 1988. I mean, we could invest in Nokia or something and live a fairly comfortable life. But, we'd also run across our parents on a semi-regular basis."

They had already run into Warren's mother. Warren's father, and both Will's parents lived in this city too. And supers tended to intersect with other supers. One way or another, eventually, all people with superpowers –be they hero or villain- came to know each other. Superhumans might actually be the only community in the world in which everyone really did know everyone. (Partially because they all went to the same high school together.)

"Okay." Will nodded, realizing that Warren's plan was really the only one they had. "Did your dad tell you where to find this super match-maker guy?"