"YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT YOU RAN INTO MY CRUSH?!" I imagined Dez yelling into my ear if he ever found out about this....if I could even tell him. This was not London or the London that I knew. Penny and Cyrus did mention that London was very different when they were in the 8th grade. She was blond, annoying, and a bit on the dumber side. I only knew the London that was more goth-ish since I don't think I've seen London without her wearing something black on. This London was different since she had no black clothes on and only wore brighter colors. Something else that was off was that she went by London and not some other name like the last timelines I was in. Something was off and I was going to find out what it was. I then helped this London off the ground as I picked up the crystal piece that I had dropped. "Wait...is that our energy supply? How did you get it?" London asked quickly as she bombarded me with questions. "Energy supply? I haven't been in this town for five minutes, how would I have stolen it." I said in protest. "Then why do you have the energy supply?" London asked. "Wait...the power supply looks like this?" I asked with a lot of interest. "Yeah, but you should know that." London said. From what I've noticed, this London loves to jump to conclusions so far. That's going to be helpful I'm sure, he said in a sarcastic tone. "Then take me to this energy supply." I said. "Ugh, fine." London said as we began to walk along the freshly paved road. "Was I about to get my hands on another crystal piece that quickly?" I thought to myself over and over again. "No, I'm getting ahead of myself, somethings going to happen here and I won't be able to get the crystal." These thoughts continued to stain themselves into my brain as I noticed something odd. I saw tons of people out strolling around while I was keeping up with London. A few of them saw the crystal I was holding but thought nothing of it. "Maybe they thought it was some sort of replica?" Another thought of mine repeated itself. I mean it technically is since it's not this world's crystal but that's not important. What was important is that I couldn't help but overhear that the people talking to one another were cracking jokes every second that they got. Now as a jokester myself, I was liking this. I felt like I was at home with everyone around me cracking jokes every second they could. We then stopped at a certain house with London walking over to it. "I need to grab a few things, wait for me." London said as she headed inside the house. I stood outside, waiting to do her thing when someone then approached me. "Howdy good sir, tell me, what does a baby computer call his father?" The gentlemen asked me. I then remember back before the shattering, when I told the same joke to Jr to get his program up to date. "Data!" I said as I and the gentlemen started to crack up. "Now riddle me this: why don't oysters donate to charity?" The man asked. "Why?" I asked, not knowing the answer to his joke. "Because they're shellfish!" He said as we both burst out laughing. "Alright, what do you call a hippy's wife?" The man asked. "I know! Mississippi!" I said as we cracked up again. This continued for a good while as me and the man were cracking jokes like there was no tomorrow. It was so nice to have a conversation with another jokester like me. I thought I would never get tired of it... "What does a baby computer call his father?" The man asked as he tried to hold in his laughter. "You already made that joke." I said. "Data!" The man responded to himself as he burst out laughing. "Is that the only repeat joke?" I asked. "Why did the chicken cross the road?" The man said as London then came out of the house with a few other objects. "Sorry about that. Took longer than I thought to do my hair and such." London said as she handed me the objects. "Now can we please get going?" I asked with a little bit of annoyance in my voice. "Yeah." She said as we were off with the man still going on about his jokes. "Does everyone here like to crack jokes?" I asked London after we got a good distance away from that man. "It's called joke town, of course, everyone loves to crack jokes." London said in an annoyed voice. "But you don't." I then said as I picked up on her voice. "DON'T GO THERE!" London then snapped at me. I stayed silent after that. Something that I don't usually do on purpose. Clearly, there was more to this story than what I was being told for sure but I couldn't ask London about it. On another note, how in Boulder's name does cracking jokes become so...boring? I love to crack jokes! Heck, I wanted to be a comedian in the future at least for a while. It was something that I was good at so how does it become boring? Could...could I be losing my thing? If everything I was good at, my friends could do it better.....and the one thing I excelled at was becoming boring...what is there for me? I never thought of myself as comic relief even though I had some traits of it but now that I don't have anything else to offer...did I already accept a role that I never wanted in the first place? Was this going to be my new life? I swear, these thoughts along with the previous ones were covering my brain at this point. Everything else had turned into these thoughts. If I tried to think of my friends, I couldn't help but think of a bad question. If I tried to think of how to get out of here, I had a bad thought about replacing it. It was like my brain was shutting down and these very thoughts had seized control over this teenager's brain. Things couldn't get much worse...right? "Sorry." I could hear London mumble under her breath as I snapped back to reality. "What was that?" I asked her as she looked away from me and into the neighborhood. "Sorry, I snapped." I could hear her say a little bit louder but still under her breath. I was about to reply with forgiveness when she stopped walking. "What's the matter?" I asked her as she pointed to something. "There it is." London said as she pointed to...something alright. It was a grayish contraption with tubes and pipes connected to the ground but other than that, it was hard to explain what it looked like. "That's our generator. The reason this town has survived is in the middle of nowhere." "So you say a crystal is here?" I asked London. "Yeah...but I don't think you should take it." London replied with a nervous voice. "But I need it." I said. "Why do you even need our power source so badly?" London asked me. I knew I was going to regret saying it to someone who could only help so much but I knew that I needed to do it, so I explained the whole story to her, from destroying the transmitter, landing in two different worlds, and being from another world myself to need the crystals to get home and landing here as well as Ren and Adam, I told her the whole story. "So these crystals are how you get from world to world?" London asked with some interest in her voice. "From what I know. So that's why I need this crystal to get home." I said. "Hold on...I know how to open the hatch." London said before I could even respond, she jumped on top of the generator and started to open the hatch. I'm guessing she wanted me gone or something so that's why she wanted to get the crystal but I didn't think much of it. I just stood there patiently waiting for her to finish up when after a good while, she opened the hatch. "Got it!" London said as she held another piece of the crystal in her hand. "Nice one!" I said as she got off the generator and landed on the street. "Now I just need to touch it and I'll be on my way!" I said when something...happened. "If this crystal could power this entire neighborhood...imagine what two crystals could do!" London then said as I tried to grab the crystal from her. "Not so fast Austin!" London said as she took the crystal out of my reach and observed it with a smile I knew all too well. It looked like a smile that a villain would make when they have some sort of advantage at hand and from what Penny, Cyrus, and Sophia have said about when London was bad, she had that same face. "I'm afraid there's been a change of plans. I'm gonna need that crystal to do what I need to do!" London explained with that same....expression on her face as she lunged at me.