TW: for guns, someone getting shot and stalking

Tessa jumped up from the armchair and made her way towards the door. She was expecting her uncle to walk through the door. To her surprise, it was actually Marty, of all people.

"What are you doing here?" The two of them asked at the same time.

"I'm here to pick up a camera for Doc. What about you?"

Tessa felt the hair on the back of her head shoot up.

"Is it illegal to visit family?" She didn't mean to sound annoyed, but she didn't want to tell Marty the real reason she was hiding out there.

"Sorry!" Marty panicked. "I didn't seem to make it seem... Let's start over."

"Right, sorry," Tessa unfolded her arms. "It's been a long night."

"You're all good," Marty smiled, then pointed his thumb to the door. "You can come with me if you wanna see Doc?"

Tessa thought about it for a second. "Are you sure?"

"I don't see why not," Marty said as he walked over to the camera.

"Let me just... Do you know where the key to the bike lock is?" Tessa asked.

"I think," Marty hummed in thought. He moved over to a desk and looked through a drawer filled with various papers and photos. Tessa couldn't quite get a good look before Marty found the small key, but did notice a few family photos. "Here you go."

Tessa thanked him, and the two teens made their way outside. Making sure to lock the door behind them.

Marty hopped onto the skateboard he seemed to carry everywhere and pushed off. Tessa started following him to wherever the heck they were going.

Little did they know they were being watched by a pair of steely blue eyes from a car across the street.

It turns out the heck they were going to was the Twin Pines Mall.

"Do you have any idea about what's going on?" Tessa questioned as they both slid down the small hill into the parking lot.

"Nope, no idea," Marty shrugged.

The two teens moved towards the middle of the empty parking lot, where a van marked 'Dr. E. Brown Enterprises' was parked. Tessa looked around for a second before spotting Einstein sitting near the van.

"Hey, Einstein. How's it going, beautiful boy?" Tessa said as she rushed over and started scratching Einstein behind the ears.

"Where's the Doc, boy, huh? Doc?" Marty said as he leaned down next to Tessa to pet Einstein.

His question was immediately answered when a loud sound coming from the van caught their attention.

Tessa and Marty both rose to their feet and watched as a smoking sports car rolled out of the van.

Marty and Tessa glanced at each other for a second before looking back to the car.

To be completely honest, Tessa didn't get it. What could her uncle possibly be doing with a second-hand DeLorean and video camera? The two teens rushed around the car to see an old man hopping out of the front seat.

Marty tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. "Doc?!"

"Marty!" He said in an excited tone. He then noticed Tessa standing behind his assistant.

"Tessa! I'm so glad you both of you made it!" Her uncle said while patting them both on the shoulders. "Welcome to my latest experiment. It's the one I've been waiting for all my life."

"Um, well, it's a Delorean, right?" Marty asked. He seemed to be just as confused as Tessa was.

"Bare with me, Marty, all of your questions will be answered. Roll tape, we'll proceed." Doc said while pushing Marty over to the left of the car.

"What's with the haz-" Tessa asked while crossing in front of the camera to stand next to Marty.

"Never mind that now, never mind that now." Her uncle interrupted.

"Alright, I'm ready," Marty said as he pointed the camera.

"Good evening, I'm Doctor Emmett Brown. I'm standing on the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall. It's Saturday morning, October 26, 1985, 1:18 a.m., and this is temporal experiment number one."

Marty lifted his hand to check his watch, and Tessa leaned over to do the same. Only to lean back when Marty shook his wrist.

Doc called Einstein over. He got the dog to jump into the driver's seat of the car. "C'mon, Einy, get in there, that a boy, in you go, get down, that's it."

"I don't like where this is going..." Tessa said while nervously fiddling with her hands.

"Please note that Einstein's clock is in complete synchronisation with my control watch."

"Right check, Doc," Marty said while moving to get a better shot of the two clocks.

"Good. Have a good trip, Einstein; watch your head." Doc closed the door and started backing away.

"You have this thing hooked up to the car?" Marty asked.

"Watch this. Not me, the car, the car," Doc told him as he held up a remote RC-style controller.

"That's not it, is it?" Tessa questioned. Surely the experiment her uncle 'been waiting for all his life' isn't just connecting a car to a remote?

Doc suddenly pulled them away from the van to stand in better sight of the car. "If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour, we're gonna see some serious shit."

Tessa just gave her uncle another confused look and watched as he started revving the vehicle.

She felt her body freeze up as she watched the car start speeding towards them. Tessa knew that she should have moved out of the way, but it was like one of those moments where your brain doesn't react fast enough, and you just don't know why.

The Delorean got closer and closer. Before Tessa could process it, there was a blinding flash. The bright light caused Tessa to cover her eyes with her arms. She waited for the car to hit, but there was just nothing.

Tessa slowly lowered her arms back to her sides.

"HA, what did I tell you, eighty-eight miles per hour!" Doc shouted gleefully. The temporal displacement occurred at exactly 1:20 a.m. and zero seconds!"

"What the hell? What the hell? WHAT the HELL?!" Tessa started shouting.

"Ah, Jesus!" Marty said as he tried picking up the licence plate that fell off the Delorean. "Doc, you disintegrated Einstein!"

"You murdered him?!" Tessa yelled angrily.

"Calm down, you two, I didn't disintegrate or murder anything. The molecular structure of Einstein and the car are completely intact." Doc said while pulling a pen out of his pocket to jot down some notes.

"Where the heck are they?" Marty asked in a panicked tone.

"The appropriate question is when the heck are they? Einstein has just become the world's first-time traveller. I sent him into the future. One minute into the future, to be exact. And at exactly 1:21 am we should catch up with him and the time machine!"

"What the hell are you talking about?!" Tessa could feel her anger rising. She was having trouble processing what was going on and her uncle acting so cheery about it wasn't helping.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, Doc, are you telling me that you built a time machine... out of a Delorean?" Marty asked in disbelief.

"Oh my god! I feel like I'm losing my damn mind!" Tessa shouted and gripped the sides of her head.

"The way I see it if you're gonna build a time machine into a car why not do it with some style? Besides, the stainless steel construction made the flux dispersal-" Doc's watch suddenly started beeping.

"Look out!" Doc once again pulled the two teens along with him, and the Delorean reappeared in a similar flash of light.

For the second time that night, Tessa felt her whole body freeze up. The three of them just stood there for a while. Staring at the time machine. Doc was the first to start moving towards it. He reached towards the door handle but pulled back and hissed with pain when touching it.

"What, what is it hot?" Marty asked.

"It's cold, cold." Doc used his foot to open the door.

"Ha! Einstein, you little devil. Einstein's clock is exactly one minute behind mine, it's still ticking." Doc undid the seat belt, and Einstein rushed over to Tessa and Marty.

"Hey Einy, it's okay, boy," Tessa started to check and see if Einstein did have any injuries. You can never be too careful when it comes to this kind of thing.

"He's alright," Marty said, a little shocked.

"He's fine, and he's completely unaware that anything happened. As far as he's concerned, the trip was instantaneous. That's why Einstein's watch is exactly one minute behind mine. He skipped over that minute to instantly arrive at this moment in time. Come here, I'll show you how it works."

Tessa and Marty followed Doc over to the car while the scientist started talking like a little kid, explaining their new favourite hobby. Einstein decided to run back to the safety of the van. He had enough adventure for one day.

While pressing some buttons, Doc explained how the machine worked. He went through the most vital parts and explained how to tell where you're going, where you are and where you were. He continued on giving examples of where you could go.

"Here's a red-letter date in the history of science: November 5, 1955," Doc said wistfully. "Yes, of course, November 5, 1955."

"What's so special about that day?" Tessa asked.

"That was the day I invented time travel. I remember it vividly. I was standing on the edge of my toilet hanging a clock, the porcelain was wet; I slipped, hit my head on the edge of the sink. I scared the living daylights out of your mother."

Tessa vaguely remembers her mother telling her the story of when she came home from school to find her older brother lying on the floor, bleeding from the head. Fortunately, she didn't find anything significant enough to rush Doc to the hospital.

Doc nodded his head, indicating that what Tessa said was true. "When I came to, I had a revelation, a picture, a picture in my head, a picture of this. This is what makes time travel possible. The flux capacitor."

"The flux capacitor?" Marty and Tessa asked at the same time.

"It's taken me almost thirty years and my entire half of the family fortune to realise the vision of that day, my god, has it been that long? Things have certainly changed around here. I remember when this was all farmland as far as the eye could see."

Doc gestured out to the parking lot. Looking it over, then up to the night sky.

"Old man Peabody owned all of this. He had this crazy idea about breeding pine trees."

"I don't think you have any right to call someone else old." Tessa joked.

"This is uh, this is heavy-duty, Doc, this is great. Uh, does it run on regular unleaded gasoline?"

"There's no way. Gasoline wouldn't have enough power," Tessa pointed out.

"Tessa's right; it requires something with a little more kick, plutonium."

"Say what now?" Tessa blanked.

"Uh, plutonium, wait a minute, are you telling me that this sucker's nuclear?" Marty gasped, nearly dropping the camera.

"Hey, hey, keep rolling, keep rolling there. No, no, no, no, this sucker's electrical. But I need a nuclear reaction to generate the one point twenty-one gigawatts of electricity that I need."

Okay, Tessa was getting lost again. "Uncle Emmett, you don't just walk into a store and ask for plutonium. Did you rip this off?!"

"No, no," Doc shook his head.

"Who did you rip it from?" Marty added on.

"Kids! I didn't rip off anyone," Doc informed them. "An old colleague organised it for me. I think he's living in Florida these days."

"You just have a guy," Tessa took a deep breath. "A Florida guy got you plutonium!?"

"Well, he wasn't born in Florida. He just retired there recently. Why does that bother you?"

"It's not just the Florida-" Tessa took an even deeper breath. "Can you just tell me if you're like indebted to some mob or something now?"

"No, nothing like that," Doc waved casually. It didn't put Tessa totally at ease, but hopefully, some kind of Florida mob wasn't coming to stuff her uncle in a barrel anytime soon.

"Let's get you two into radiation suits," Doc clapped his hands togather. "We must prepare to reload."

After a quick change, Marty and Tessa watched Doc load the next tube of plutonium in the Delorean. It dropped into the fuel tank with a surprisingly loud thunk.

"Safe now, everything's led lined. Don't you lose those tapes now, we'll need a record." Doc said to Marty while putting the empty tube back in a yellow box.

Tessa pulled the top of her suit off her head and breathed. It was stuffy in that thing, she guessed that was better than having her face melted off or whatever plutonium does to you.

"Whoop! I almost forgot my luggage. Who knows if they'll got cotton underwear in the future? I'm allergic to all synthetics."

"The future, it's where you're going?" Marty asked.

"What's the matter, Einy?" Tessa asked. As she said it, Tessa saw a Camaro driving into the parking lot. Tessa gulped. She knew that car.

"Who's this now?" Doc squinted his eyes in confusion.

"We should leave-" Tessa grabbed her uncle's arm. Doc gave her a concerned look.

"What the hell is this jerk doing here?" Marty said with a frown.

Much to Tessa's dismay, Johnny stepped out of the car with a vindictive look on his face.

"Well, well-"

"What do you want now!?" Tessa shouted suddenly. Not giving Johnny a chance to do that annoying cocky attitude thing he does.

"Oh, so you're a tough guy all of a sudden!" Johnny shouted as he slammed the car door. Tessa vaguely heard the sound of bottles clanging around as he did so.

Tessa, Marty and Doc all stayed close to Doc's truck. Staring at him from a safe distance away.

Tessa felt like she was gonna throw up. She clung to her uncle like a lifeline. Doc glanced back and forth between his niece and the newcomer. How she was reacting was more than enough evidence to tell him this kid was bad news, but Marty's less-than-sunny reaction was a bit of a tip-off, too.

"Listen... young man," Doc started to say. Stumbling when he didn't have anything to call the kid. "We don't want any trouble, so why don't you just head home."

Johnny let out a laugh. Sounding like a mix between a bark and an air horn. "Listen, old man, she has caused me enough trouble lately. And I'm sick of seeing her with bodyguards stuck to her everywhere she goes." He pointed aggressively at each of them.

"Would you just leave me alone!" Tessa yelled at him. "I accidentally messed with you one time! Lesson learnt, okay!? I'll keep-"

"One time!? You ruined my life!" Johnny hissed.

"I didn't! Stop saying that!" Tessa insisted.

"You're girlfriend broke up with you, and your dad is mad at you, dude," Marty reasoned. "That's not the end of the world."

"Shut up, McFly!" Johnny said with a twitching eye. "If she had just kept her mouth shut-"

"Have you been drinking!?" Tessa asked. Connecting the dots between the bottles and Johnny's slurred speech.

"That's none of your business," Johnny rolled his eyes with the causality of someone who just got asked if they left the oven on. He snapped around back to his car and opened up the backseat.

"What are you doing, Johnny?" Marty asked as the three of them started backing towards the truck. They all tensed up as the guy pulled out a gun.

"Listen," Johnny huffed as he paced back and forth. "I got no girlfriend, my grades have gone to shit cuz I don't have her to do the boring crap for me. So, no college, and Dad refuses to look me in the eye because of it."

The three of them stared blankly at the kid.

"What is he talking about?" Doc muttered to Tessa and Marty. They just gave him uncomfortable looks.

"Listen..." Doc looked to Tessa.

"Johnny," She whispered to him.

"Johnny, just put the gun down, and we can just pretend this didn't happen."

Doc was lying through his teeth. The moment he got the kids safely away from the confusing teen, he was gonna call someone. He didn't know who. The cops most likely won't listen to the local mad scientist. Maybe his parents? That was a concern for later. The priority was getting this kid to put down the gun.

"What is with people always telling me what to do?" Johnny sighed. "Relax the safety on... I think."

"Ah, so, Marty, Tessa," Doc whispered to them. "Get to the truck the second you have a chance-"

"Are you crazy?" Tessa hissed.

"Doc, the guy's out of his mind," Marty said at the same time.

"I know, I know," Doc gulped as Johnny was distracted, fiddling with the gun. "Just back away while he's distracted."

The two of them reluctantly did as they were told. Doc made sure to continue shielding them as they moved back.

Everything was quiet for a moment. Tessa foolish thought they were gonna get out of this unscathed. That was when Johnny looked up from the gun and let out a yell. There was a loud gunshot. Tessa closed her eyes, and when she reopened them, she was met with a horrible sight.

Doc was lying on the ground and wasn't moving.

"What have you done!?" Tessa screamed at Johnny in horror.

"You bastard!" Marty started throwing curses at Johnny.

Tessa quickly rolled around the Delorean for cover. Her vision slightly blurred from the tears in her eyes. Marty headed towards the van, but after a couple of seconds, ran towards the Delorean instead and jumped into the driver's seat. Tessa followed suit. Not wanting to get run over if he drove off.

"We have to get to the hospital! No phone! We need to find a phone!"

"Oh my god!" Marty shouted before slamming his foot on the gas.

"What the hell are you doing!?" Tessa showed as she was forced back into the seat.

"He's gonna ram us!" Marty explained.

Sure enough, Tessa looked back and saw that Johnny had gotten back in his car and was reversing back to try and hit them again.

Tessa closed her eyes and tried to bring her breathing back to normal. This wasn't easy due to how hard her heart was beating. Along with Marty was driving like a total manic. Tessa started gripping the edges of her seat as Marty started making sharper turns around the parking lot.

"Head for the hospital!" Tessa managed to shout.

"Right, right!" Marty repeated over and over.

Tessa just closed her eyes and gripped the seat even harder. She was probably going to leave marks, but that wasn't high on her list of problems.

"Let's see if you can do ninety, you bastard." This caused Tessa to open her eyes again only to see everything start flashing around her. Followed by something made out of hay crashing into the car.

Tessa would later deny ever doing so, but the sight of the poorly made scarecrow combined with Marty's screaming was the last nail in the coffin. Tessa completely blacked out.

Sorry for the late upload. My internet was out pretty all of Thursday and yesterday.