=== Jambreaker ===

Prolog

"This isn't my bed! Mom? Dad? Anyone?" Bare feet slap to the cold floor of a room far more sterile than the carved stone & wood of the room where he laid his head the night before. In place of the home-woven curtain hangs a decidedly solid door with a reinforced window. A face peers in from the other side of that window with a smirking "Well, well, well! Good morning, there!" before leaving with the sound of footsteps and laughter.

The kid, maybe six years old by the Tellurian measure, examines the door, and forms a construct "wand" in one hand and a darkened face shield in the other, like how his father taught him. Looking through the shield, he points the wand at the thick plate between the knob and the edge of door, and sends energy through it. He feels the heat even through the shield as he torches a jagged groove in the door, which then swings open with the "ping" of small metal parts clanging to the floor, and the hiss of molten metal cooling.

An angry "Hey! What's going on there?!?" emanates from the same man who had passed the cell door moments earlier, and two guards in amber uniforms and helmets pass him and run towards the escapee, sandwiching him between them and two other guards from the other end of the corridor. Boots step on bare toes and large hands pull & twist on skinny arms. Another energy blast shoots from the wand, still in hand, cutting a burn scar in the floor, narrowly missing a boot. The kid continues to fire, while also forming a momentary "electric skin" around him to force the guards to loosen their grips on him.

The zapping continues, only now as "nerve-wrackers" rather than the more taxing "cutting blasts". They prove effective in keeping all four guards at bay, but the leader approaches, activating a personal energy shield which blunt even an attempted cutting blast. With no way out, instincts kick in, and the wand re-forms into a larger version of itself (he has seen these formed by tunnellers to hew living rock) along with a mate in his other hand. He points one at the guards to warn them off, but needs to focus on his new assailant, who grabs his wrist with the numbing effect of the energy shield. He fires a blast like he never did before, and his assailant reels and covers the smoldering left side of his face!

A tiny disc rattles on the floor beneath the kid's feet, and before he realizes it, he finds himself hurtling through a "rift tunnel".

== 1965 ==

To Another World

"Everything's locked down!" Hatches close and seal as the saucer's lift engines boost the ship away from the Futurian space station. "Attention Zakarian saucer! You will remain where you are and turn yourselves over to our authority!" whines from the officious face on a screen. No one pays attention to it, other than Mr. Max who flashes a vulgar "salute" to it while Slider throttles the saucer's engines on a vector away from the source of the annoyance.

Futurian Scarab ships pursue and try to cripple the saucer without totally destroying it (actually they're after the equipment that the Zakarians had recovered). Feedback doesn't have that limitation, though, and reaches for the controls for the railgun turret, extending it from its armored shell and powering the coils.

The lead scarab moves in closer to the saucer when suddenly the viewport shatters and the entire command bridge explodes. The railgun bolt drills its way through to the scarab's reactor casing; the explosion obliterates the scarab and burns almost completely through the two on either side!

The sounds of a fight in the lower deck put an end to the triumph, as Feedback drops down to the lower deck to grapple with an intruder trying to wreak havoc with the saucer's main drive. Hanover trades blows while sending energy bolts into an opened equipment bay, until suddenly his "fractal exoskeleton" freezes up on him, and he hurtles face-first into a bulkhead thanks to Feedback giving a "helping hand". A small disc clatters to the deck and Feedback backs away just in time to avoid having his arm teleported away with Hanover. He spies a tracking device left behind and forms a "construct" around it to crush it.

Slider and Mr. Max struggle to restore control of the saucer despite the damage to the drive system; the tracking device has done its work before getting crushed, though, as a "star portal" sphere grows around the saucer and sends it through a Futurian "Star Portal".

Arrival

A clap of thunder over the hills jars an overcast morning in the town of North Harbor, followed by what could be best described as an imperiled aircraft! Suddenly, a flying saucer bounces off the mélange of antennae on the rooftop of the mysterious Consortium HQ building in a symphony of twisted aluminum and steel with the percussion of exploding equipment and electrical arcs, before disappearing into the overcast once again.

"There's a signal coming in from one of the islands up ahead!" reports Mr. Max as he tunes in. "This is Grimaldi Island Home Guard -- please come in!" Feedback recognizes the "futurian language" being used, but his instincts and experience tell him to pick up the microphone and respond and accept the invitation to land. The saucer needs to set down very soon, and certainly if this "Grimaldi Island Home Guard" turns out to be Futurians after all, the five crewmembers have plenty of dogs for any fight.

The saucer descends into a yard behind a building sporting a sign reading "Breaker Brothers' Fabulous Fab Shop". Eight landing legs swivel down from hinges around the center of the saucer while four glowing domes coruscate with energy as they struggle to keep the saucer from dropping out of the sky altogether. The saucer seems to relax as it settles on the landing legs, and a hatch opens with a mesh metal ramp extending from it with aa metallic clang as it reaches the ground.

Mr. Max, Feedback, and Slider emerge from the saucer onto a world that had only been theorized until now. Fortunately, their first encounter with Tellurians would turn out to be friendly, and provide a refuge while they can make repairs on the saucer and try to figure out the connections between the Star Portal and the Consortium, whose building they "belly-whomped" on the way in.

The Lair

The "Grimaldi Island Gang" consists of three couples (with kids on the way) and the fraternal triplet Breaker Brothers Jake, Blake, and Drake, who, with the Ashburns, run the Fab Shop and fix or build anything that needs to fixed or built. The Baxters are more of the "business side" of things, while the Hollisters run a medical clinic on half of the ground floor of the "lair" as the building that they share is known.

The Hollisters (both doctors) take a keen interest in the Medical Regenerator, among the equipment that the saucer crew had recovered from Futurian thieves. The regenerator becomes an integral part of the medical clinic, with many of its functions able to be used on Tellurians. Most of the patients are there for such things as sunburns or accidents on the beaches or the roads that connect many of the islands, with urchin and jellyfish stings, glass or metal into feet, wrenched or sprained limbs, or wounds from the Consortium's "Masked Marauder" raiders, including gunshots and fractures. North Harbor and the Outer Islands is indeed a battleground, with the Consortium trying to rid the area of anyone who doesn't march to their drums.

The Lair is one bone of contention, as the building had been intended to be a satellite HQ and barracks. The Consortium stonewalled and used other tactics to get the building built, until on the day of its completion, the Breaker Brothers, the County Marshal, and the District Attorney presented an eviction notice. The entire block is the property of the Breaker Brothers' family, and now the building had become an expansion of the Fab Shop with living quarters on the upper floors. The locals of Grimaldi Island cheered when the keys were handed over.

Numerous attempts by "Masked Marauders" continue to be made to harass the residents of the Lair, with one particular raid taking the form of a small convoy of vehicles let by a "borrowed" work truck loaded with marauders. A figure in a black & grey uniform with blue highlights steps out ahead of the lead truck. Large hurdle-shaped constructs form in front of the truck; these are run over, causing the sharp ends of the legs to impale the engine and other contents of the engine compartment!

"My dad is gonna kill me!" laments the masked marauder at the wheel of the lead truck, while dozens of his comrades pour out from the assorted vehicles with guns blazing. Feedback forms a construct shield in front of him, absorbing the incoming slugs while he also forms a weapon of his own!

Masked Marauders!

The truck erupts in metal shards and slag under the barrage of energy blasts emanating from Feedback's construct weapon, resembling a battle stave with the "front" end glowing in a fiery red "lightning"; however this isn't the only Zakarian "power effect". Mr. Max covers one flank with a construct "ray gun" with plasma pulses from the upper barrel and stream of flame from the lower while Slider runs the other flank with a pair of "blaster glove weapons" sending streams of "sonic energy" that have an almost musical quality to the sound frequencies.

Police cars arrive, and the Zakarians cease fire as the police arrive to arrest the cowering marauders. Guns and helmets clatter to the street, and the carcasses of vehicles squeak and groan as they're hauled to the fab shop for scrap.

An official-looking car pulls up, almost driving into Feedback, and both doors pop open as two people, wearing uniforms similar to the masked marauders' uniforms, but more "officer-like". They approach Feedback as if to try to issue commands to him, but his "contempt stare" is his only response. They start another officious barrage, but he interrupts them: "You're addressing a Force Captain in the Zakarian Battle Force, and have supported an assault on this residence. Leave this place, and keep your vermin caged!!!"

Mr. Max and Slider, each grab an "officer" and hustle them back into the car; Feedback then forms a construct "turntable" to rotate the car towards the road back to the mainland, and steps behind the vehicle with an energy spark growing in each hand. The car burns rubber out of there, nearly clipping a police officer loading masked marauders into a waiting "jail van".

The police sergeant remarks "I wish that we had more of you around -- these masked marauders are just running rampant!" to which Feedback replies "We'll help break their siege however we can."

== 1971 ==

The sizzle of welding in the Fab Shop is interrupted by a buzzing klaxon emanating from a "Frankenstein Machine" in a corner. Mr. Max attends to the machine, setting switched and turning dials, as a green glow grows above the platform in the middle of the device. Feedback arrives to see the "Portal Cage" in action for the first time, as the glow coalesces until Mr. Max pulls one last lever as if in tune with the changing glow, until a form appears as the glow subsides! The form is a kid, maybe six years old, wielding a sizable "construct wand" in each hand as if he had just blasted someone.

Realizing that he is among friends now, Jambreaker lowers and "deconstructs" his weapons just as the rest of the household comes running in to investigate the source of the urgency. "Did we catch a Masked Marauder?" asks Fritz as he and the other kids look in from behind the doorway.