The rest of the meal was shared in relative silence.
Doppler ignored the mutt's pawings for as long as he could, glancing at his uncle every now and then, unable to parse by the man's expression whether or not he saw what the dog was doing...or knew what Doppler himself was up to.
Or if he was planning Doppler's imminent demise.

After the meal was through, there was a good amount of leftovers, which Doppler finally took the chance to offer a couple more omelets to the mutt, just before his uncle picked up the plate, wrapped it up in some plastic, and turned it into the almost-yellow fridge tucked away just across from the kitchen doorway.

Doppler stretched and yawned, tears flooding his eyes.
He knew perhaps he should be asking those questions, and was expecting his uncle to do so as well; but, watching his movements after the food, he could tell that his uncle must have been almost as tired as he.
...(SO WHAT, INDEED, HAD HE BEEN UP TO DOWN THERE, HMM--?)

Doppler wiped at his face, and heard no protest as he stood up from the table and walked out from the kitchen, stomping fast up the stairs.
One sharp turn and he was instantly through the door into the guest bedroom (which, he noted to himself, was somehow less cozy than its future version).
He'd give the wolf-dog a chance to follow up (not knowing that, downstairs, his uncle was now setting down a bowl of water), before closing the door partway, and hopping into a creaky, thin-sheeted bed.

He was ready to sleep off this bad dream and leave all the remaining problems to tomorrow's Doppler.

The night wore on, Doppler fast asleep in the guest bedroom, the mutt sleeping just outside the door.
In his dreams he ran through various scenarios; how to fuel up the time machine, how to avoid his SUPPOSED uncle, stop him from calling his parents, hide and run away when he turned into a mutant alien monster, lord of all demons and ghosts; how to approach his real uncle in the future, explain what was about to happen, keep him from going missing, or whatever the heck happened after he blacked out at the ice cream place.
Despite all the turmoil running through his mind, his body was relatively at ease in the bed, motionless and quiet; clearly zonked out from all the shit he'd just experienced.

He would have remained as such, till a bug started crawling over him.
A hand waved, slapping it away from his face, rolling away and off the bed, offering him a rude awakening only an hour or so before sunrise.

Doppler rubbed his nose and felt around his limbs, happy enough that no cracking could be heard.
Well, that was dumb; time to crawl back in "what tHE FUCK"

The door to the room slammed open, dim light pouring in from the hallway and across the bed, shining the light on a bug, indeed.
His uncle fell flat on the floor, tripping over the mutt that had been resting there, Doppler only able to give him the shortest of glances through the corner of his eye as he backpedaled away from the giant...THING skittering over the bed, a glowing blue goop oozing out from between sharp mandibles and hooked arms.

He was reminded of his first thoughts upon finding himself in that courtyard filled with ragged people and a clown shooting up some armed guards; this wasn't just a different point on the line that was time: it was a whole other universe.
That, or he's just tripping on some really messed up future ice cream.

Doppler clawed confusedly at his face while staring wide-eyed at the creature, while his uncle hopped to his feet; he heard a humming, saw a flash of light, and suddenly the insects-whatever exploded into a whole bunch of blue goo.
Some of it landed on Doppler's face, shocking him enough to stand up, throw it off, and give a longer look at that wasn't his uncle.
-HE KNEW IT-
It couldn't be --it had to be just some dude that sort of looked like him (most of what he could see was a silhouette against the light anyhow), holding a futuristic-looking gun and a who the fuCK CARES-- Doppler ran past him, scanning the hallway for the mutt, while likely tripping over the canine himself had it not already moved.

Actually, scratch that, he did, in fact, trip over something.
Feet going high, his face toppling head-long into the hard floor, Doppler sat up in bed and...blinked.

His head turned towards the guest room window, where weak rays of sunshine were streaming in through the thin curtains, spreading a bright square upon the shadows of the wooden floor.
He looked at the door, cracked open, the dog, perhaps, sleeping soundly just outside, or perhaps off exploring the household.

He could hear footsteps downstairs, surely his uncle was preparing breakfast now, or warming up the leftovers from last night.
If it wasn't for the sparseness of the guest bedroom now, and the grimy clothes he was still donning, he would have thought this to be the ol' ordinary future.

He felt a tickle down his neck...and instantly slapped at it, hopping out of bed as he examined his hand.
Just a mosquito.
"Aw, that's cheap!"


Foucault Fizeau, formerly known as Doppler's uncle, was, indeed, down in the kitchen, both preparing a new breakfast and warming up some of the leftovers.
A fresh bowl of water had been set out for the dog, and, once the omelets were warmed up in his crummy old microwave, he would be setting some of those down for the beast.

Pops and fizzles spat out of a pan as he pushed about it with a spatula, examining the bacon and sausage therein.
His free hand held something like a pamphlet, with the words "HAVE YOU HEARD THE WORD?" in bold lettering upon it, which he would look over to whenever the grease wasn't busy trying to burn his wrist.

Doppler came bounding into the room, popping down into a chair like absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary here.

"Doppler...," began his uncle, and Doppler's body immediately stiffened, waiting to hear the dreaded words, 'I'm not really your uncle.'
His uncle continued, "Did you know that disco is derived from an ancient satanic ritual?"

Doppler let out a breath, sliding deeper into the chair with relief.
"This is the eighties, uncle," he said, rolling his eyes.
"And I'm nine.
I barely even know what disco is!"
His hands flung up in an exagerrated gesture, one of his fingers accidentally flicking a fork to the floor.
"...Shit."

"What?" his uncle said, turning towards him.

"Um...sticks," Doppler quickly amended, lazily leaning from his chair in an attempt to pick up the fork by his fingertips.
"Fiddlesticks-- that's what I said."

"No," said Fizeau, and Doppler began to sweat, "what you said before.
The eighties?"

"Y...yes?"
Oh, shit.
Did he goof?
Did he input the wrong time?
Was it the nineties?
Oh, no...not the nineties!

His uncle pointed to something on the wall behind him, and Doppler turned to see a calendar...reading 1977!

Doppler swallowed.
"You, uh--you still haven't updated your calendar, huh?" he tried, and for a moment his uncle looked bewildered.

At last he said, "Oh, yeah, you're right," and turned back to scooping up some of the meat.
At the same time, the microwave beeped, and after dumping out the remaining bacon, he pulled out the plate of omelets and set it down on the kitchen counter.

Actually, wasn't there a clock there the last time?
Doppler took another look at the wall.
Well, that's wei-- he jumped as the plates were slammed down onto the table, Doppler finding himself looking into an all-too-serious gaze.

"You're real jumpy there, kiddo," his uncle said.

"Uhhh...."

Then a bowl of omelet was dropped onto the floor next to the bowl of water, his uncle stepping out of the kitchen to let the dog in through the front door.
Doppler let out a breath while he tried to think of an excuse.
Slipping some bacon down his throat, he decided sating his morning hunger would be the best way to run away.
As he chewed, it noted the familiar texture and spices he knew his uncle to use.
Well...so, it was a convincing clone--so what?
Anyone can burn bacon just a little and dump a load of pepper on it!

As the mutt bounded back into the kitchen, heading straight for the bowl with omelet in it, Doppler held out a strip of bacon and called to it.
Before it would have a chance to grab the bacon, however, his uncle would come swooping in, snatching the strip up and popping it in his mouth.

"Dogs don't eat meat," Fizeau said, licking the grease from his fingertips; "and children shouldn't play with time."

Doppler turned to stone.
'I can explain!' ran through his mind, but caught up in a tight throat.
He must have found the machine in the basement...cave-thing; somehow, he knew or had found out what it does.

Well, this was it:
The future was fucked.
Satan was going to rise from his grave at the bottom of the ocean, and everyone was going to be wearing horses for hats from now on.

Then a hand slapped him across the shoulder, his uncle sitting down at the table while chuckles racked his chest.
Doppler laughed too, nervously and in confusion.
A joke?

"Relax, Dop," his uncle said, grabbing a fork to put both bacon and sausage on his plate.
"I'm on vacation here."

Doppler, still sweating, mumbled, "What?"

There was a tense moment of silence while his uncle nonchalantly forked up a sausage, bit into it, and slowly chewed before swallowing.
"The other me, that is.
Thought I'd pop in for my own little visit while the capital city imploded.
Hope those two didn't give you any trouble."

Still not entirely comprehending what was being explained, even after taking a few seconds to try and put the pieces together, what Doppler could understand was that last sentence.
SO HE WAS EVIL!
AHA!
"Are you saying you're friends with those two dopes?"

Fizeau gave a careless shrug.
"'Acquaintances' is more like it.
We owed each other favors, so, after the attack, I let them stay in my basement, and--"

"W-wait-wait wait-- slow down!
Attack-- what?
Also, what is with that cave--"

"Cave's been there since I've had the house."
He added more sausage to his palate.
"Why don't I tell you more later?
Eat."

Doppler looked down at the half-eaten bacon in his hands.
He tossed it over his shoulder.
Suddenly, he didn't feel so hungry anymore; he was too perplexed to be.

Then something hit him.
If this was his uncle from the future, then....
Slamming his palms onto the table, he stood up with a shout of, "DID YOU JUST LEAVE ME BEHIND?"

His uncle stared at him for a moment, then ate a strip of bacon, saying nothing.
That silence was all Doppler needed.

"I-I-I can't believe you," Doppler stammered.
"I had no idea what was going on...I blinked and I was, like, in a refugee camp or something, and then there was this psychotic clown man--"

"Oh, that sounds interesting."

Doppler glared at him, but didn't stop.
"The point is, I've been looking for you-- w-well, I mean, a way to warn you...."

"And what do you think I've been doing?" his uncle said.

Doppler flung up his hands and pointed accusingly at his uncle.
"Well, obviously, just sittin' on yer ass, shoving bacon down yer gullet!
I don't know, uncle, what HAVE you been doing?"

"Nothin' much."

Doppler stared at him.
Unbelievable.
For a while, the child just stood there, his eyes unfocused in disbelief, while his uncle continued to eat.

After a while, his uncle sighed and put down his fork, offering up a consolatory hand.
"Look, why don't you sit down, Doppler?
I'll explain it to you, and then maybe you can explain some things to me."

Doppler remained silent for a few moments, fuming too hard to really care; finally, he grumbled, "Like what?" but still slowly taking his seat, arms crossed.

His uncle stared at him as though he'd just asked the dumbest question imaginable.
His eyes flickered, and Doppler followed them to the mutt, which had now lain down, legs sprawled out on the floor.
The boy weakly suppressed a smile, mildly amused by the dog's posture, before turning back to his uncle.

"What?
I take Pop Rocks through the machine all the time," he said with a shrug, casually wiping a hand across the back of his neck, then onto his pants.
Stupid sweat.

There was a moment of silence, until his uncle finally said, "We'll get to that."
With a sigh, his uncle sat back in his chair, leaning one arm across the back, and resting the other on the kitchen table.
"As I said, I came here after the attack--EH--!" his uncle raised the palm of one hand, leaning forward for a moment when Doppler's mouth opened, clearly ready to either argue again, or ask another question which might lead to such an occurrence.
Doppler shut it with a grimace, leaning back himself, arms crossing tighter.
Harumph.
"I was at the house prepping the machine"--tossing all of Doppler's shit out of the small part (the actual time traveling part that he had just used) into the big part (where Doppler did all the examinations of his paranormal-related equipment, tended to leave a bunch of junk laying around, and components related to spatial travel and safety were also stored)--"when 'those two' showed up.
Y'see, way back when, we...."

As he explained, Doppler's ears began to hum, and as his attention quickly waned, his eyes fell upon the dog.
'Dogs don't eat meat', his uncle had said.
The boy could scoff.
Casually, as his uncle droned on, Doppler's hand slowly began to inch forward, wrapping around a strip of bacon, and dragging it back towards him while Fizeau was distracted by the sound of his own voice.
After a few moments until he was sure his uncle wasn't looking, he tossed the bacon-- or, well, tried to.
He meant to it throw it at the mutt's face, but instead his hand fell back, the bacon's grease causing it to stick to his fingers, and as his grip relaxed, the bacon dropped to a position underneath the table, not far from his uncle's feet.

Doppler held his breath, although his uncle still hadn't seemed to notice.

The mutt was a bit big for the table -- although it could easily squeeze under there, with the manner of noisy carelessness it held at the moment, it wasn't without tipping the structure itself, its shoulders pressing into the table's ledge in doing so.

Doppler's hands immediately flung forward, holding down what dishes he could, while two forks and three sausages went sliding off.
Still caught up in talking, his uncle didn't have a chance to react until the dog had slid right under his own feet, pushing the tall man back on his chair while it snatched up the curling piece of meat.

"...And so...," he was saying, just before his own arms started pinwheeling through the air.
And then, seconds before his chair toppled over: "Doppler!
CONTROL YOUR MUTT!"
Then the back of his chair hit the wall, stopping it a third of the way through its fall, and his uncle fell limp against it, as though his head had cracked against the kitchen linoleum.
Which it hadn't.

Doppler was fairly sure his uncle was exaggerating.

Doppler watched as his uncle continued to feign death, the dog moving out from the table, setting all a-right once more, and snapping up the sausages.
He took the opportunity to grab up a couple of sausages of his own, before his uncle woke and decided he'd stuff down the remaining breakfast.
Or the dog got the bright idea to just jump up and grab them itself.

As he chewed, his brow went up as he saw the dog move over to his uncle, body tensing.
It wasn't going to try and eat him, now was it?
What it did instead, however, surprised him even more.
Righting his uncle's chair!
The licking the fingers part was hardly astonishing...(even though his uncle had used a fork, maybe some grease had still gotten on them)--but pushing the chair back into place!

Shit, man, could he adopt this mutt?
It had to be a stray, right?
Fuck Pop Rocks: this dog was SMART.

Fizeau remained limp for a short duration of his fingers being licked, though his eyebrows quirked noticeably in annoyance.
Finally, he couldn't take it anymore, and pulled away in disgust, wiping his fingers down on his pants.

"Okay, okay," his uncle said, shooting a nonchalant glare towards the mutt.
"Enough fooling around."

Doppler lifted his other brow.
Was his uncle actually about to get serious?
By golly gee--!

Just as Doppler predicted, his uncle stabbed the remaining breakfast on the table, gulping them down.
The child tapped his foot impatiently as Fizeau daintily wiped at his mouth, before finally pushing himself to his feet.
He began to gather up the dishes, FINALLY continuing: "I'm going to clean up, and then we can head back."

"But the machine's fuel...," Doppler began, his uncle casting him an eye roll as he dumped the dishes into the sink.

"You think I came here without fuel?
Stupid boy...."

Doppler grimaced, while his uncle turned on the tap and began washing the dishes.
What a way for an uncle to talk to his nephew!
Moreover....

"You know, it's actually pretty risky what you did, leaving the machine back there like that," Doppler said, standing up himself.
"I coulda inserted a different time, and then you'd be stuck here!"

"Eh...," grumbled his uncle.
"1984 is hardly a bad time to be.
Even if I'd have to chill with myself."
He was drying the dishes now, while Doppler eyed the dog in the silence.
Lazy kid.
"Besides, those two were there to help ya."
Yeah, right, sure.

After his uncle began stacking the dishes back in their place, Doppler continued, "So, you told me your life history with those FIENDS...but really nothing else.
How about this 'attack'?"

"Later," said his uncle, closing the cupboards.
Seriously...Doppler held his face in his hands, groaning loudly while his uncle turned around, wiping his wet hands dry on his shirt.
"You haven't told me your side of the story yet.
Come on; let's get to refueling."

Waving Doppler forward, the duo began to start down the basement.
Doppler kept an eye on the mutt as they moved, making sure it didn't run off anywhere, not that he thought it would; it had stayed with him this long, why would it leave?
...Other than the fact that it was still just a dumb dog, and it already got all the food it could have wanted.

"I already told you about the freaky clown," Doppler started.
He squinted as they paused in the basement, watching as his uncle rifled around in some of the junk down there.
He pulled out a red gas canister.
"That's it?" Doppler said, disbelieving.

"Yeah," said his uncle.
"What?
Why?
Did you think it was going to be plutonium or something?"

Doppler rubbed his head, wondering if it was just gasoline in the canister, or something else.
He had expected some sort of glowing radioactive material in glass cylinders...or, well, y'know.
Not a friggin' gas canister.

"Uhh...SO ANYWAYS," Doppler continued, as the two started down the long underground hallway.
"After I got away from...THAT, I got lost in the city until I found the road to your shack."
He paused here, watching for a reaction from his uncle.
Nothing that was funny or interesting in the least arose from the man.
"Got there, collapsed, woke up by th-- I mean, Pop Rocks...after his bout of mange."

"Uh-huh," said his uncle, sounding unconvinced.
Doppler glared at the back of his uncle's head.
If he knew, why didn't he just say so?
Did he mean to make Doppler look like a fool without him even knowing about it?

They were moving through the cavern now.
"Found this cave," he said, "and the place after.
Got ATTACKED by your FRIENDS, escaped by the skin of our hairs here.
And that's it."

In the next long hallway, his uncle paused, finally glancing back at Doppler.
"Attacked?" he said.
"No, they were probably just playing around."

"What the--WHAT?!"
Doppler's hands flung up into the air as he began gesturing wildly, his uncle already turning to continue their walk.
"I got KNOCKED OUT!
The mutt--Pop Rocks...fudge...," he amended his curse under his breath, "even shredded one of their arms!"

"Eh?
Which one?"

"McSkinhead," Doppler said, his uncle apparently immediately understanding just who he meant.

"Ah...he'll be fine.
Maybe."
His uncle seemed to pause in thought.
"Maybe we should go check up on them."

Doppler's mouth dropped, and he quickly ran ahead to block his uncle's path, arms spread wide.
"UM.
I DON'T THINK SO."
His uncle stared at him, then walked around him.

"A man apologizes for his misdeeds," his uncle stated.

For a moment, Doppler stood in the hall.
God...damn it.
Why did he mention that.
Why.
After (not) hearing his uncle's long, droning, (probably) sob story about the pair.
StupidstupidSTUPID!

"It wasn't me!" Doppler finally shouted, jogging after him.
"It was the dog!
And not my fault!
Theirs!
THEY should apologize!"
Or, if not both of them, then at least blue jeans back there.
"No-- wait, scratch that.
Everyone should avoid everyone.
In fact, I'm pretty sure he wasn't about to bleed out on the flo--" FUCK.

The spotlight came into view as the final cave opened up before them, Doppler dragging his legs as he followed after his uncle.
Remembering the mutt, he glanced back to check that it was still there.
He hoped it wouldn't instantly pounce on the two when they arrived.

...Assuming he still couldn't convince his uncle otherwise.
Which didn't seem bound to happen.