Wherever Fownes Are Found

When she isn't busy fixing temporal errors, Yrlis Fowne spends her time in her home-era living on a houseboat, where she raises her twin children, Digital Fowne and Rotary Fowne.

On the morning of the twins' twelfth birthday in 1974, Yrlis gave them their first mission. She couldn't accompany them due to her own job, which often required her to leave the kids home alone, but she trusted them enough to do this on their own.

Their task was to explore the biggest of the Egyptian pyramids and find Napoleon Ampharos, the Czar of Africa. The children didn't know much about Ampharos, other than that he ruled Africa since the War of the World four years ago, which to them seemed like basically their entire lives. But Yrlis assured them that he would explain why when they found him. She had already sailed the houseboat up the Nile river, so the pyramids were only a short walk away. Digital and Rotary made their way over there and went in through the front entrance.

Meanwhile, in the same pyramid, a Human Frenchamn named Arthur Jones-Henry was frantically cleaning up the place, getting it ready for Ampharos' inspection (due to his OCD, the Czar inspected the state of the pyramid every day). Specifically, Jones-Henry was trying to find the Holy Grail, which was an item of fantastic power, but more importantly, great sentimental value to the Czar. He was a very high-ranking member of the pyramid, and was worried he might get demoted if he couldn't find the Grail.

The front hall was a long, dimly lit passageway with many identical statues of Napoleon Ampharos on either side. At the end of it was a glass case holding Ampharos' prized Flaming Armor from his adventure in Atlantis, but with pyramid-shaped insignias carved into it. They broke the case, and Rotary took the armor, since his power level was in more need of assistance than his sister's.

From there, there were two ways to go: one hall filled with creepy dolls on display, and another hall filled with miniature replicas of the pyramid they were in. They both agreed to walk down the pyramid hallway, but split up from there.

Digital opened a large vault door which, surprisingly, was not locked. Inside the vault was a large room filled with ghosts. Some of the ghosts fought her, but they had been locked in there for a reason, and most of them were more interested in escaping through the open door.

Rotary made his way up a very long staircase, ignoring traps and secret passageways. At the top was another long hallway, with wooden doors lining the walls. He entered the first one on the left, into a room that contained nothing but a single grave with "Miniature Slime Whale" written on it.

The cashier from the gift shop across the hall noticed that someone was entering the grave room, which no one was allowed to do. He got up and tried to get Rotary to leave the room, but he was really no match for the Flaming Armor. Rotary knocked out the cashier, and then realized he could now take anything he wanted from the gift shop without paying. He chose a shelf at random and took what was on it: the Holy Grail, and a locket that for some reason had a picture of his and Digital's father in it.

With his new loot in hand, Rotary went into another one of the wooden doors, which lead into a pyramid-shaped elevator. He pressed a random button and felt it move down. When the door opened again, he found himself in the Ghost Vault, where Digital was in the middle of fighting a ghost writer and ghost cyclops. Rotary pitched in to help, and with the twins working together, the fight was easy. The two of them picked up the ghosts' drops and then headed back into the elevator.

Jones-Henry still hadn't found the Holy Grail (which was now in the possession of Rotary Fowne) when he ran into a concerned mother. The woman, whose name was Lusolth Icebreath, had recognized Jones-Henry's pyramid uniform and asked him if he had seen her lost son Jimmy. He told her he hadn't, and then ignored her follow-up questions.

The Fowne twins rode the elevator high up the pyramid, into the royal kitchen, where they realized that the "elevator" had in fact been a dumbwaiter for this kitchen. They looked in the refrigerator, but found nothing they wanted to eat, so they left through the kitchen's exit, into the Final Hall before reaching Czar Napoleon Ampharos' quarters.

The Final Hall was really less of a hall and more of an indoor road, paved, with lines painted on it and everything. There were actual cars parked to either side, but luckily none were moving. There was one obstacle, though, the guardian of Ampharos' topmost room in the pyramid: the pyramidactyl.

Arthur Jones-Henry was at his wits' end trying and failing to locate the Holy Grail. He had found himself in a part of the pyramid he rarely visited, dedicated to searching literally everywhere until he found it. There was a man guarding the entrance to one of the rooms, claiming that he would only allow entrance if Jones-Henry could answer his three questions correctly. Jones-Henry declined at first, saying that since he worked here he should have a right to enter; but he played along eventually when the old man refused to move.

The first question was what the old man's favorite color was. Arthur guessed "Yellow?" based on the shirt the old man was wearing. But the answer was violet, so he hit Arthur over the head with his curled wooden staff for answering wrong.

The second question was about weather or not Arthur thought he could beat the old man's "evil monster" in a fight. Not a very skilled fighter, he answered no. This answer was also incorrect, as the old man revealed that his evil monster was just a sock puppet with angry eyebrows drawn on with marker; he hit Arthur with the staff again.

The final question was weather or not Arthur would like to be transformed into a Dwarf. Arthur Jones-Henry thought about this for a minute; if he claimed he aspired to be like the race of the Czar, he might get a promotion. But eventually he answered "no, I'm fine being a Human." The old man said "Wrong again," and with a third hit from the staff, Jones-Henry was transformed into a Dwarf. Also, he hadn't answered a single question correctly, and thusly was not allowed to enter the room.

Digital and Rotary Fowne had finally beat the pyramidactyl, and so proceeded into Napoleon Ampharos' bedroom. He was there, sitting at the foot of the bed. He told them that he'd been expecting them. Rotary suddenly realized why there had been a picture of their father in the locket he stole from the gift shop. He had recognized the image because of pictures of him Yrlis kept around the houseboat, but had never met their father in person. This was because their father was Napoleon Ampharos, Czar of Africa.

Ampharos explained to them how he and their mother had met on the Titanic. He explained that on that day, he had been cursed and contracted Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but whenever he was around Yrlis, with her magical witch's aura, the symptoms were much less severe. He explained the full scope of Yrlis Fowne's job, about how she travels around time making sure history happens as it's supposed to. And most importantly, he explained how the twins would also gain the ability to time travel, but with a catch: Digital could only go forward in time and Rotary could only go backwards in time.

In the end, the Holy Grail was never really lost, so Arthur Jones-Henry wasn't in danger of being demoted.