The first chapter has arrived! Enjoy!
My name is Aznavorian, and I’m the Tinkerer of Gallifrey.
I’m a Time Lord – a humanoid species that went by many names: Lords of the Morning Star, Lords of the Universe, and sometimes even Gods.
But I see myself as none of those.
I come from a different society on Gallifrey that was a far cry from Time Lord.
I digress, of course. This story isn’t about
me, but the race of beings that I once protected from a danger in the multiverse. Poor little creatures that no longer had a world to call home.
The Fraggles.
In my current third body, a twentysomething Japanese-American woman who I named ‘Miya,’ I was
much happier than I was in my previous body – a bald, middle-aged African-American man named Skeeta Jenkins. While poor Skeeta had his bouts of frustration and grimness at times, I tended to look on the brighter side of things as Miya, even if I still hated being a lonely traveler.
Case in point, I was shaking my new and more ample booty to the tune ‘Caught Up in the Rapture’ by my favorite Earth singer, Anita Baker. While Kristin (my wife from my original incarnation) admired to soulful voice of Whitney Houston, I adored the jazzy, soothing vocals of Miss Baker.
I even caught myself singing along to the tune. Miya had quite the voice herself.
I was in the kitchen of my Type-X TARDIS – a model of my own design – and baking as I always did when I was in a good mood…and I was
in the mood for teriyaki salmon. Perhaps it was the Japanese in this regeneration that gave me a hankering for it.
But I couldn’t quite cook my meal without my ladle and eggbeater.
The utensils were missing, even though I could have sworn that I’d taken them out, shortly before I started. It was
really weird.
So, as I checked the kitchen cupboards, I heard what sounded like little voices arguing nearby. “What’re you doing, Gobo?! Put that thing back!” One voice demanded. “I wonder what it is or what it does,” the other voice pondered. They came from one of the lower cupboards, which prompted me to open its doors.
To my surprise and wonderment, I discovered two of the Fraggles:
Gobo – a dark orange Fraggle with short purple hair, adorned in a brown vest and a yellow sweater with red stripes.
Red – a yellow Fraggle with red hair in pigtails and a red sweater.
“Oh!” I gingerly gasped upon seeing the wonderous creatures. “Hello there!”
“Please don’t hurt us!” Red begged me. “G-Gobo was just about to put your things right back where he found them!” Sharply turning to Gobo, she convincingly gritted, “Weren’t you,
Gobo?!”
“S-Sure!” Gobo agreed in quivering obedience, holding my missing utensils.
I immediately reassured my little stowaways, “Nah, it’s all good, Red. Gobo can keep them if he wants.”
Gobo exhaled in respite. “Oh, what a relief.”
“Hey, wait a sec!” Red exclaimed, looking straight at me. “I don’t remember ever telling you
my name! How does a Silly Creature like you know who I am?”
“I’ve been to your world once or twice before,” I admitted. “It’d always been my hope to see one of you up close, but I never had much luck…until now.” I allowed them to step out of the cupboard and take a seat at the kitchen table, all while I asked, “How did you two manage to come aboard my ship?”
Gobo looked all around, curiously. “This is a ship?”
“Yep, it’s called a TARDIS – short for ‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space’,” I told him. “It can travel anywhere in the multiverse.”
“Multiverse?!” Red beamed with inspiration. “As in multiple universes?!”
I confirmed with a gentle nod. “That’s right.”
Looking to Gobo, the inspired Red consulted, “Maybe
she’s the one who can help us!”
“Help with what?” I asked with a frown.
Gobo answered by setting the kitchen utensils down on the table and reaching into one of the pockets on his vest. He pulled out something that I recognized to be a Temporal Access Device (‘TemPad’ for short). It was a device commonly used by the Time Variance Authority, a bureaucratic organization located outside of time and space.
I had heard stories of the TVA from other interdimensional travelers. They were usually believed to be a myth but, if the TemPad that Gobo held in his little hands was any proof, they were more real than the Protectorate and the Spartans. Rumor has it that they watch over a singular timeline that they refer as the ‘Sacred Timeline’.
Of the TemPad in his hands, Gobo told me, “Red swiped this from one of those dangerous Silly Creatures that came to our world one day and wiped out everything and everyone in it – Fraggles and Silly Creatures alike.”
This news mortified me. “You poor things,” I pitied them. “How could the TVA do such a thing?”
“TVA?” Red questioned. “Even their name sounds
ridiculous.”
Ignoring Red, Gobo continued, “We don’t know why exactly they did it, but they did it with these things…” He waved the TemPad. “…and a bunch of those glowing sticks, eh.”
“Mokey, Wembley, and Boober got struck by those glowing sticks and every bit of them burned down to ashes,” Red added, the anger and sadness evident in her tone. “They were our friends…and we’ll never see them again!”
Thankfully, I had just the good news to cheer up the Fraggle in mourning: “If those ‘glowing sticks’ are what I believe they are, then your friends
aren’t dead. They’ve been sent to a point at the end of time called the ‘Void’. My TARDIS should be able to get us there with no problem at all.”
My reassurance was cluttered with exposition, but the biggest thing that Gobo and Red took away from it was, “Wembley, Mokey, and Boober are still alive!” I was happy to see
them so happy from this revelation, cheering and singing as I led them out of the kitchen and to the console room.
Hip, hip, hip, hip, hip, hip, hip, hip hooray!
We're gonna dance and sing all day.
Our friends are alive and will be found,
and all will be okay!
Hip, hip hooree!
Let's shout for you and me
We’ll do our best to meet the test,
just wait and you will see!
Hip, hip, hip, hip, hip, hip, hip, hip hooray!
We're gonna dance and sing all day.
Our friends are alive and will be found,
and all will be okay!
And all will be okay!
Hip, hip, hip, hip hooray!
It was a catchy and classic tune from their home down in Fraggle Rock that I couldn’t help but to march along to. We were in such good spirits until we arrived at the console room…
…where a group of TVA Minutemen stood waiting for us.
They emerged from a few Timedoors that opened along one corner of the room and closed shortly after the sixth member of their group walked through. These Minutemen looked more aggressive than the ones I had seen around the multiverse before. Their leader, a young African-American man, particularly seemed threatening.
“Prince Aznavorian,” he addressed me specifically. How he knew my birth name and royal background was a total mystery to me. “You are harboring two fugitives of a pruned timeline. I must ask that you hand them over
immediately or else.” He and his squad had their glowing sticks primed and ready in the event of a scuffle.
But I attempted a more diplomatic approach. “Gentlemen, there’s no need for violence. I’m sure there’s a way we can talk about this. Perhaps we can start with
why the TVA deemed it necessary to prune the world these Fraggles belonged to?”
Unfortunately, these Minutemen weren’t the type that saw reason.
One way or another, they were going to take Gobo and Red.
But I wasn’t going to let them.
Now, I should mention that I am
not a violent person – not in this incarnation or any of the two before me. I only use violence as a last resort or when I’m left with no other choice. I blame being a prisoner of war to a bunch of Daleks during the Great Time War on Gallifrey. Regardless, I
am a fighter.
And these TVA Minutemen found that out the hard way.
I gotta say, these fellas moved
fast! Thankfully, as Miya, I was nimbler than I was when I was the mountain-sized Skeeta. I did some flips and kicks with a few lefts and rights. Side note: I wouldn’t recommend punching TVA armor with a bare fist, not without using Busoshoku Haki – a technique that I learned from a young friend I made in one of my past journeys. Basically, I used my own spiritual energy to essentially create an invisible piece of armor around me.
In a single punch, I shattered their helmets and chest plates.
I was crafty in my momentum, weaving in-between the Minutemen like a needle and thread. In this way, I avoided getting pruned by their Time Sticks, even making them use them on each other. Their number thinned down to three men, including their leader.
Soon I had my work cut out for me when the biggest one in the bunch lunged at me. He swung his Time Stick towards my head, its orange glowing tip nearly striking my left temple had I not blocked it in time. However, my brutish opponent was
a lot stronger than me, and the tip of the stick inched closer to my head by the second.
I was about to be pruned right out of my own TARDIS…
…until a big, foamy yellow fist clashed against the Minuteman’s body, smacking him against the wall like a bug.
My colossal savior was none other than Red, who had somehow grown in size to an astounding fourteen feet tall – roughly the size of the console room itself! I never knew Fraggles were capable of such a feat…and then I realized that they
weren’t.
Things got even
more confusing when Gobo used telepathy to bring the remaining two Minutemen on their knees, forcing them to experience their worst fears. With them incapacitated, Gobo used the TemPad in his possession to open a Timedoor that was wide enough for the colossal Red to sweep away the leftover Minutemen, returning them to the TVA headquarters.
I was left standing quite stunned after the fracas.
Not because of the Minutemen that had attacked, but the superpowers that my two new Fraggle friends possessed. “You aren’t any ordinary Fraggles, are you?” I asked them.
“We’re mutants,” Gobo told me.
“We were once part of a team – the X-Men,” Red added.
In that moment, it dawned on me that these variants of Gobo and Red were from a converged realm.
The TVA had always looked down on dimensions like that.
It explained why they had pruned it out of existence.
Still, it seemed right to me, and I intended to get to the bottom of it all, once I reunited Gobo and Red with their friends trapped in the Void.
END OF CHAPTER ONE
Welcome to the Muppet Central Forum!
Jim Henson Idea Man
Back to the Rock Season 2
Bear arrives on Disney+
Sam and Friends Book
