"I HAVE CO𝐌E TO THE CONCLUSION THAT I HATE YOUR BROTHER, FIVE," Elliana detested. "I can't believe he's done this." The girl then lifted up the wrist that was conjoined with Fives and then let it rest back at the side.

"Yeah, not such a big fan of him either," the man spoke in agreement.

They were passing by a street that led to a crosswalk. As they both came to a stop, waiting for the light to turn green for the walkers to walk, silence laid out between the two. It wasn't an awkward silence, there was just nothing the two could talk about.

Well—there was, but now just wasn't the time.

Five could feel the thick layer of sweat going down his back and he could feel the itchiness travel up his body, but he kept it to a cool. He couldn't have his other self knowing that the Paradox Psychosis was getting to him.

Though, Five was very smart and clever, noticing that his other self wasn't taking it easy. He watched as the older man walked with a pep in his step—distinctively tripping over his own feet as Luther gave him a look.

He felt a tug at his wrist and noticed Elliana motioning him that it was now their turn to walk the crosswalk. With a quick nod, he followed suit, glaring at passers as they looked at him and the girl who were tied together weirdly.

"The hell you lookin' at, asshole?" Five yelled suddenly to a woman who then jumped and began to speed walk away.

Elliana looked at Five, seeing the look on his face was one where the shouting even shocked himself. "You good in there?" she pointed her left pointer finger to her forehead.

He nodded fast. "Yeah. People just can't mind their business." he rolled his eyes and started to walk faster.

"Oh . . . 'Kay," she spoke.

Luther watched Elliana's mouth move as she spoke that sentence and he turned back to older Five as they now finally reached the top of the stairs, leading to an overpass that went over a pair of train tracks.

"All right, just be cool till I finish the job on the grassy knoll," the older looking Five spoke to Luther. "We'll get the time math and I'll ice the squirt."

Luther thought for a moment: "I just wish there was another way, you know?"

"There isn't," the older Five was quick to cut off. "Look at him." Their eye-line traveled behind them to see Five marching up the stairs.

"What are you looking at?" Five shouted to an ongoing person. "Asshole!" The person jolted and quickly moved away. Elliana was being dragged by the boy as he made his way across the bridge.

"Sorry!" Elliana pardoned, and put a hand up to the man.

"See something funny?" Five shouted once more to someone who passed by the pair. "Just two people tied together. What's the problem with that, huh?" Elliana wanted to evaporate into thin air.

"Worst case of paradox psychosis I've ever seen." Older Five gave a look to Luther. Upon closer inspection, the man noticed that Luther had a solemn look on his face. That lead him to ask, "What's wrong?"

"Well, I . . . feel bad for him. You know?"

"Mind your business!" Five shouted from behind. "Or I'll give you something to stare at."

"—He's just a little guy," spoke his brother. There was a moment of silence before a loud smack was heard from behind them.

"Ow!" Five held his right cheek. "What was that for?" Five looked at the brown skinned girl who was wrist tied to him.

"Snap out of it!" Elliana hissed. "You look like a fool and if you keep acting this way, your other self is going to know that your suffering worse than he is. I mean—he looks as cool as a cucumber and—"

"You wish you could pull off these shorts!" Five soon yelled which made the girl groan out in frustration and loose all hope to the boy.

"Can I count on you to keep him under control?" Older Five asked Luther.

"Yeah, I'll do my best, yeah," spoke Luther.

"All right." The older one moved forward and began to take the lead as Luther slowed his pace down a bit so he could be side by side with Elliana and Five.

"Hey, brother, Elliana. How you doing?" He kindly asked.

"Undo us. Now." Elliana gave a menacing grin.

"No." She rolled her eyes.

"He's gonna kill me, isn't he?" Five questioned.

"What?" Luther scoffed. "What, him?" He looked towards Five's doppelgänger. "He's gonna kill you? Yeah, right. That's ridiculous."

"You know, you're a terrible liar, Luther," confirmed Five.

"You really are. That was pathetic," backed up the girl.

"You're a worse liar than you are a spotter."

"Okay, whose fault is that?" Luther spat. "What good is having a spotter if you won't even listen to him?"

"So you admit you're conspiring against me?" Five said.

"Do—Do you admit that you're suffering from paradox psychosis?" He stuttered.

"All I'm suffering from is bracing clarity about you and your murderous intentions." The boy itched himself.

"Look, it's not like he's gonna "kill you" kill you. He just wants to kill a, um . . . version of you," Luther spoke and Fives eyes went wide.

"But I am that version of me," he pointed out.

"Hey, I don't love it, either, but he's actually got a pretty good plan." Luther nodded.

"What? The one where you guys off me and then jump to 2019 to save the world?" Five spoke.

"Wait, what?" Elliana finally spoke again.

"Yeah, wait, how did you know that?" Luther asked.

"Because I'm him, and that is exactly what I would do if I were trying to kill me!"

"Okay, as your spotter, I think the best thing I can do for you right now is put you out of your misery," Luther confirmed.

"Luther, you are already putting him out of his misery by tying his wrist to mine!" Elliana shouted near the end of the sentence.

"Fine! You want to be untied so bad, apologize to each other!"

"We have!" The two spoke.

"No, a real apology. I've seen you both pin the blame on each other all day. The conflict ends now." The two took a breath and look towards each other, then away from one another. "Elliana—no, Five, you first."

"How many times are we going to have to apologize to each other?" Five asked aloud.

"Until the author finds something better to fill the time until something else happens in the book," Elliana looked towards a dark skinned woman who stood watching from afar.

She lifted an eyebrow and spoke, "You're not supposed to acknowledge me. Now, do the scene. Chop chop." Lux clapped her hands.

The boy sighed. "I'm sorry. For everything. Killing your parents, giving you trauma, watching you cry out for help after I killed your father and not doing anything, I'm sorry for all of that. If I could go back in time and change it I would. I swear."

Elliana nodded. "Well . . . " she huffed. "I'm sorry for slicing you in the stomach, and punching the living daylights out of you . . . That's it."

Luther sighed. "Now, do you both forgive each other?"

"I forgive you," spoke Five.

Elliana hesitated. " . . . I can't let it go forever. I know I won't forget it, obviously. But, perhaps I'm getting mad at the wrong person." Five quirked an eyebrow. "You said that it wasn't your choice. And I know if you could've, you would've denied going on any missions. So, I guess so." She nodded.

Luther gave a satisfied nod. "Great." He undid their worsts from each other and the grabbed their wrist and started to roll it around their opposite hand.

"Back to what I was saying: all I know is we've got one Five too many, and you're the one acting like a maniac," said Luther to the mental boy who stood near him.

"Maniac?" Five lifted an eyebrow. "Luther, you have seen nothing. If you want a maniac, I will show you maniac."

"Okay, Luther, listen," Five turned him back to the large man. "I know your feeble mind only responds to age and authority, so listen very closely. Yet again, you are experiencing daddy issues, this time with your own brother, which honestly is making me a bit crazy."

"Clearly," Elli stated the obvious.

"But remember this: I'm 14 days older than him. I have seniority here. So it is me you should be listening to, Luther. I'm the daddy here!" He bluntly shouted; on goers looked their way.

"Thank you so much, Five, for putting that image into my head that I now want to erase by drinking a gallon of bleach," Elliana yucks.

"How's it going?" Luther states calmly to a person who looked at the three of them weird.

"Five, please, you're being unseemly. Look at you."

Five took a moment to realize that the overgrown man wasn't lying. "I admit there is a possibility that I may not be in my fully . . . right mind right now."

"Okay, good."

"—But whatever I've got, he's got it too," he was quick to add.

"What?" Luther ripped his head around and looked towards the younger man.

"You two quit grab-assing. We're here," older Five announced.

"Yeah, you two quit grab—" Elliana stopped her sentence. "—yeah, what he said," she ended awkwardly.

As they all now arrived at the grassy knoll, Five fidgeted tremendously and he couldn't keep it under wraps. As the older Five set down his briefcase, he left out a fart that made Elliana and Luther scrunch their faces in disgust.

Luther took that as a sign: "Flatulence. Stage four."

"See?" Five reached. "What's your plan now, bucko?" He placed his hands together and grinned. Not before he left out a fart himself. "That was just lunch, all right? Shut up." Elliana snickered as she looked away.

"This is the Dallas-Fort Worth area broadcast, here to bring you a special description of the arrival of President John F. Kennedy," the man on radio spoke out. "At this moment, three special . . ." He went on.

"—This is my favorite part," older Five let out a word. "The calm before the storm." He prepared his gun.

"Look," Five called to the two who stood beside him. "The briefcase."

Luther immediately disagreed, "No, don't. You won't be able to get there in time."

"Of course I will," Five spoke. "This is our only chance."

"It does look like a clean shot," agreed Elliana.

"Hey, uh, just remind me . . . what was the final stage of paradox psychosis again?" asked Luther.

"Homicidal rage." Five quirked his neck to the side as his eyes were wide.

"Right. That's . . . great," Luther realized. "Five, listen to me. I—" The young boy, despite his older brothers words, began to move forward to his first target: his older self. "No. No!"

As Five was so close to the target, older Five looked through his rifle scope and saw his duplicate sneaking up on him. Right as Five was about to grab his older self, old Five spacial jumped away and appeared behind him, aiming the rifle to his head.

"Oh . . . shit," Luther let out.

"Bad idea, shit-heel," Older Five announced. His beard muffling the sentence a bit.

Luther then stood his ground; walking up to Older Five and snatching the gun away like it was a toy. "Stop it! All right? The both of you. Pull it together."

The two looked at each other with glares. "Now, Kennedy is gonna be coming around that corner any minute. Okay? So, everyone, let's just take a deep breath . . ." He took a deep breath in and instructed everyone else to do so as well; which they did.

"Now, we're all family here, okay? So can we all just try to get along for a few more minutes?"

Five looked over to his older self. "You want it?"

"Go ahead," his older self pardoned.

"What's that?" Luther caught the last wind of the convo, but he was too late. Five had kicked him in the balls.

"Oh!" Elliana shouted in shock.

"—Shit," Luther grabbed his jewels and fell to the ground.

"Now . . ." Older Five looked back at his younger self.

"Where were we?" Five asked. He look at Elliana. "You want to team up?"

Her eyes widened. "Nope." she smiled. "I'm good. You know what, I'm just gonna—" She moved away to the area where all the cars resided.

With that, they started fighting. They spacial jumped all over the place. Throwing punches, kicks, anything of the sort. By this time Luther finally got to his feet.

"Would you please—Hey!" He shouted to the two. The two then spacial jumped near him and kicked him in the stomach before spacial jumping away. "I'm getting really sick of this!"

"Getting tired yet?" Older Five asked himself.

"I can do this all day." smiled Five.

"Guys, this has to stop," Luther shouted.

"Eat shit, Ape Man," the two Fives spoke at the same time in an identical pose with their fists in front of their bodies, ready to fight at any moment.

"Hey! Assholes!" Luther interrupted as he bent down and grabbed the rifle that was just lying carelessly on the grass. "I'm done listening to you both. I'm in charge now."

Elliana was sat on the ground as she had a caterpillar on her finger and watched as it crawled around, moving in a circular motion around her body part as if it were a branch. "I think you'd make a good friend to my rabbit," she thought aloud. "Well . . . If she doesn't eat you."

She looked up to Luther and Five to see how the situation was going and saw how Luther held up the weapon to his brother and speed over in a hurry.

"Now, Luther! Shoot him!" Older Five yelled.

"No! Luther, shoot him!" Five backed.

"Shoot the older one," yelled Elliana and Luther gave him a look.

"Shoot him!" Older Five shouted.

This went on for a bit.

"No, Luther, shoot him."

"Luther, shoot him!"

"Luther, shoot him."

"Now, Luther!" The gun stopped on Five.

"Luther . . ." Five took a breath as he began to fear that his own brother was going to shoot him.

"I'm sorry, buddy," Luther forgave. But a second later, Luther hit the butt of the gun onto older Fives head and knocked him out into the ground. "Now! Open the portal!"

Five, who was still in shock, quickly got a hold of himself. "Right." He moved to quickly open the portal. Five moved to the side and began to close his fists and light blue started to gleam through his hands.

A familiar portal then began to form as Five powered up. As the portal opened up more, older Five tried to crawl towards the briefcase, but Luther caught him from the corner of his eye. "Don't even think about it." He aimed the gun at him.

"Into the vortex you go, asshole," Five said as his older self got up and stood opposite side of him.

"Fine! But give me the math. So I don't end up looking like Tiger Beat over here."

Five shouted back over the loud whooshing noise of the vortex, "You stand next to the vortex and I'll tell ya."

He didn't move so Luther shouted, "Go!" to give him a boost.

"Closer!" Five insisted.

"This is close enough! Now give it to me!"

"It was a typo."

Older Five had a confused look cross his face. "Typo?"

"We put the decimal in the wrong spot in our proof of the existence of a bound for the number of limit cycles of planar polynomial vector fields of fixed degree." Luther and Elliana were so confused with what Five just said but they kept it to themselves.

"We wrote down five-point-seven. It should be—"

". . . zero-point-five-seven," the two Fives finished together.

"Son of a bitch. I knew that didn't look right. All right . . . I guess this is it," Older Five said softly as he tried to spare time.

"This is it. Go," Five straightened his jacket.

Older Five took small steps forward, but changed his direction midway and headed for the briefcase. He got a good hold on it before Five noticed. "No!" He shouted.

"Five! It's shrinking!" Luther shouted to the two who were battling over the item.

Elliana moved over to help Five pull the briefcase from himself. "Wow! As an old person, you have a very strong grip," she spoke as she strained her muscles.

"The crowd yells. And there's the president of the United States," the commentator on the radio says as the grand game of tug-a-war was being played.

With a mighty pull, Elliana and Five lost grip of the briefcase and Older Five fell back into the portal. As the vortex came to a close, the briefcase connected with it before landing onto the ground with a clunk.

Elliana and Five fell backwards from flying back and sat back up as they realized the altercation was finally over.

"We did it!" Luther cheered as the vortex was now closed.

"I can see his suntan all the way from here," the commentator from the radio spoke out and Elliana scrunched her face.

"That's . . . a weird thing to say over live broadcast." She quirked her lip down.

As Five was up to his feet in a quick second, he reached a hand out for Elliana to take, which she did, and she gave a quick thank you. As the boy searched the ground, he was met with the object he set on a mission to obtain. He let out a discouraged sigh, and spoke to his brother, "The briefcase, you idiot."

"What?" Elliana and Luther asked in sync as they both moved to the briefcase.

It was singed in half.

"So, what? That's it? No getting back?" Elliana looked up at Five. He paused for a moment before meeting eyes with her and gave her a soft nod.

"Hey, you know what?" Luther was quick to say. "A thank-you for preserving your existence would be nice."

Five wrung his head around to his brother as quick as possible and said quickly, " "A thank-you." Really?"

Just as Luther was about to say something smart, the man over the radio spoke up, "And here they come. The presidential car is moving out . . ." He continued.

"Luther! Luther! Here he comes!" Five moved quickly and hurried to the fence. "Kennedy's turning." As he said that, Elliana looked the fence and saw as people lined the street, laying, sitting or standing on the grass.

As she searched for the vehicle, she saw two someone's that she recognized. With that, she moved from the fence and hopped quickly to the other side.

"Elliana! What are you doing?" Luther asked.

She looked back to him. "Hold on a minute. I'll be back." She pardoned and made her way down the grass to where the married couple resided.

"Look, there's Dad," Luther said to Five as he pointed a finger. "What do we do?"

Five looked slightly to the right and saw something or someone else enter his eye line. "Uh-oh."

"Yeah," answered Luther as he thought he was talking about their father. But soon enough, Luther followed his way of view to see what he saw too.

Diego running full speed at Hargreeves.

"Agh."

"Oh, shit," Luther cursed.

"Diego," Five hissed.

Luther and Five watched as Diego kept running full speed at the older man. But, on the near left side, Elliana approached the two people she thought she'd noticed.

"Mr. Morris," she tapped on his shoulder.

With a jump he turned around and looked towards the girl. "Elliana. What on earth are you doing here?"

"Came to watch Kennedy come through. Assuming you're doing the same," she said and offered a smile at the end.

He scoffed. "Yeah. I'm actually surprised that you even know of a president. Considering you're not even going to school anymore."

This caused the woman beside him to chuckle. Elliana looked beside to whom she thought was Lizzie, but, oh, was she wrong. The woman had bleached blonde hair and bright red lipstick that covered more of her face then her lips. Her hair was in perfect curls and she had on a skin tight dress that fit all of her curves.

"Where's