By back in time, I meant a repeat of the other Earth's timeline. Remember the one where he went to the mental asylum multiple times and got drafted into the Vietnam War? That one, as the same person.
He dodged most of the nonsense and triple timed his accomplishments. He got more done and took less shit, imagine high end toilet paper versus the stuff that you get in a US truck stop, that John Wayne toilet paper. It's rough, it's tough, and it don't take shit off anybody with extra abrasion for any asshole it comes across.
He didn't give the orphanage time to screw him over by adopting him out when they weren't supposed to, being the last of the family and entitled to monthly payments and all. As soon as he could properly walk, talk, and use his hands, he stole his paperwork and dipped. He ran away, but not too far. He needed to stay close enough to strategically transfer equipment to alternative locations, steal his government checks from the orphanage mailbox.
He began cashing his own checks at a bank on the other side of the city. It only took two months for the corrupt priest to start monitoring the mail for thievery and getting the mail from directly from the mailman. Jameson Sergeant Colbert started stealing it from his office and cashed them in other places. Eventually he had to swipe it straight from the bastards jacket pocket and almost got arrested at a bank. It was strange that nobody questioned a two year old cashing checks from the government until said checks were reported stolen.
The priest had reported the check theft and the banks had been alerted. James knew something was up when the teller told him that it would be a while and to wait in a side room. He was gone as soon as they turned the lock on the door, hard to detain someone that can set up magical waypoints and stuff straight out of science fiction.
James started to just take it from mail before it was delivered. He couldn't cash it anymore, and any accounts would be taken over by the orphanage, but he wasn't letting them have it. The postal service was put on alert for the thief. The orphanage denied that James was missing or could be the culprit, so they had a handicap on top of trying to stop someone that would fit the role of a brokenly powerful main character.
Jameson Sergeant Colbert had all of it at the ready, but his senses of morality and empathy would not permit wrongful thievery or the miss use of his powers. It was kinda like the last time, but he didn't resist the urge to go ahead and lay a beat down on the evils of the closely linked Earth 2077 and 2076. He eventually abandoned the thefts of checks with a condemnation before striking up adventure westward.
The State Police were understandably shocked at the container that had appeared in their motor pool. It was a good day and a half before they opened it with the aid of the US Army, but the ordinance guys were sure that nothing within could explode without exceptional circumstances (it was checks, paperwork, photographs, and some film reels). The State Police were still extra cautious of the mystery Connex Box and documented everything.
The orphanage got an all new staff after most of the people running it were arrested and those who didn't were implicated. An entire network of embezzlement, theft, abuse and more unspeakable actions was completely uprooted. They had changed names, swapped children, hidden deaths, and an encyclopedia of other horrible things. They got their comeuppance.
James pawned off some gold and silver before he left town, with the money from the checks, he was doing alright on cash. He wasn't having to actually spend any of it, having all kinds of stuff in storage. He went all the way out to Los Angeles and started turning stuff into pure profit.
He had become a rather successful drug dealer by the age of four. Celebrities frequented his disused props warehouse in the old, ran down, film studios for a wide range of stuff. Gangsters frequented for similar reasons, but there were a few doctors and psychiatrists who came to him for special products. The cops raided the place at least once a week, but he never got caught. Until one day.
James never left product out and never had weapons out. Every time the cops showed up, there was nothing there and no dealers. He was five when a new client walked in, a supposed friend of a former client. The former client was dead and James knew it, killed by officers who shot first and questioned later. Alarm bells were on in the back of his mind.
The new guy was an undercover cop and radiated "I hate you and am here to make your life hard". James was wearing an outfit that looked like a dollar store SS Halloween costume with a gas mask and a voice changer. He wasn't having anything of the newby. Noob wanted to know what a certain package of pills were.
It was a modernized blister package of de-addictive medicine that allowed people to go cold turkey off of anything without withdrawals. James wasn't about to tell him, asking what they were as well. Noob accused him of selling it, but James pretended to have just gone to ground there. Noob threatened that it being there was proof enough and drew a gun, but James already had a Luger pointed straight between the Noobs eyebrows.
The Noob pretended to be dropping his revolver, but James had already moved from there. A two bit, half corrupt cop versus a five year old that used training and technology to the degree of super human, yes, James was way faster than the Noob. The cop hit nothing and a black smoke quickly filled the warehouse with its self, and a stench of blood and burning metal.
The Noob bolted through the door, not wanting to be exposed to whatever that was for too long. It wasn't until he looked back that he found that he went through a metal wall and the whole place was being eaten by the smoke. The revolver in his hand was nothing but a pair of grips and a few flakes of loose gun powder, all of the metal had been eaten away from everything exposed, even his car was half eaten.
James was well away from there, with the blister package. Funny thing about the Nanorobotic Stealth Screen is that it eats metal, destroys scent molecules, and decays surface oils. It's the perfect "you'll never know" device that destroys itself, all in a small grenade like package on top of jamming or destroying even the most robust electronics and blocking sight, heat, radar, radio scope, vision, night vision, audio scope, and more.
James dropped by some of his customers places and cut final deals. He explained that his business was finally busted and he was getting out of dodge before it was too late. Most of them were very understanding, but the gangsters weren't too happy. A couple of gangs had to be ended, no surprise that it was the two that only ever bought narcotics.
James pawned off whatever guns, gold, and valuables he could and finally got out of LA. He ditched his disguise and hitched a ride with trucker bound for Seattle. The dude stopped to report a bad accident, no fatalities, that they had passed right before a town in north California. The small Sheriffs office had a poster board.
James waved over the trucker and asked if he was reading one correctly. The trucker read it over a couple of times. In a scruffy voice "a Nazi midget?" The deputy on duty confirmed that "Boys in Los Angeles believe that a midget Nazi SS officer was slinging dope and chemical weapons. I think they need to stop doing dope before it finishes rotting their brains because nobody believes that. How is anyone going to believe that an entire warehouse melted in a black fog that didn't harm anyone?"
The deputy asked if James was the trucker's kid, but James set him straight. The deputy really didn't want to believe it, but James had just the lines for him. "Listen, I'm an orphan, but a smart one. I saw what was happening at the orphanage and left when I was two. I've been traveling ever since because I'll be damned if I am going to be the next one that priest molests or murders. To further my point, I refuse to be forced into giving up any of my freedoms for any perceived safety at the hands of strangers."
The deputy called to check with the police near the orphanage mentioned. He found it to be a harrowing experience. He eventually mustered the wherewithal to mention meeting a blonde five year old boy going by the name Jameson Colbert and how he's north bound with a trucker. He hadn't tried to stop them because the kid had an air of danger about him, and the trucker looked like more than he could handle.
Back on the road, James handed Earl a big bundle of twenties and told him to speed up. Earl, the trucker, didn't think his old rig would make it to Seattle if they pushed it like that, but James handed him another bundle and told him about a shop ten miles past the California State line. "They can fix it or I'll buy you a new one. I'm not going back to that damned orphanage."
Earl put some extra speed on and they made it there, barely. The secondary gearbox and the turbo were toast. It was about noon, and they had to use a clipboard to kill the engine. Earl was not happy, the pay from that load was going to get his rig the needed repairs but it was not going to happen now. Hopes on the kid having the cash.
To no surprise, James went to work on it and had it fixed up in a few hours. Earl was still arguing with the mechanic on duty about parts availability when James came in covered in grease. "Already done, got her set up with a new engine, trannies, rears, full suspension, brakes, tires, climate control, radio, power steering, and about every damned thing else."
Earl and the mechanic just looked at him. "No way, there's no way. I gotta see this." A few moments later had them standing slack jawed looking at an engine that wasn't supposed to be available for order, even in a new truck, for at least another year. The mechanic went over the truck, inside and out, but found everything to be in order and gave them the green light. Then Earl noticed a friend's truck and asked if Cleatis was around.
Sure enough, he was over at the diner or motel. He was harassing some poor bastard about his choice in cars outside of the diner. "Hey hill billy, that yella Mack yorn?" Earl couldn't believe his ears, the well spoken James just went from news anchor to backwoods hick like it was nothing. The yellow Mack was in need of the same gearbox, that Earls truck no longer used.
Some smack talk and nonsensical statements were made, then introductions. James was going to go East with Cleatis, because the law would be expecting him to carry on North. Cleatis was headed to Tulsa and then to Miami. James was hopping off in Mississippi, said something about unfortunate business affairs. The police did pull Earl over, but by the time they caught up with him and learned about Miami, James was in Jackson.
They eventually caught the wild child peddling heavy machinery, generators, and bunkers out of Lumberton. The machinery was top of the line, but the serial numbers didn't exist. The manufacturing of knock off equipment was illegal because he didn't have the permits for any of it. He was six by then and the judge let the minor off with a warning and sent him back to the orphanage.
The orphanage had changed a lot, but he still ended up with the mechanic and his wife. He got to keep his legal name and everything was done by the book, even though the government told them not to, the people who were told were gone. James didn't dillydally at all. His adoptive father tried to occupy all of his spare time with mechanic work, but that just left the old man feeling like an extra wheel.
Combining the workloads and everything else left the shop with an odd signage. "Open 4 AM to 7 AM and 9 AM to 5 PM Monday through Saturday. Drop off at any time with dedication to payment for services." James still had to sleep and go to school, hence the weirdness. He didn't focus on being the perfect kid this time, but focused on what was important.
He already had businesses going, so he could have rested on his laurels. He didn't rest, there were avenues of interest that he should have pursued the first time. Avenues like Tanya, two ton Tanya was her knick name, but James was purrrrfectly capable of conquering that in all capacities. She was on her way out of ballet when he was forced into it, this time he was going for broke. Petal to the floor board, full tilt, maximum velostic acceleration, hammer down, and balls out.
He didn't bother with Jenny the disloyal, who went with someone else every time he was sent away. His parents tried putting him in everything again, just to have the instructors inform them that there was nothing to be taught. This happened when he was just eight this time. His mom won over the mechanic and he was put in ballet class where he pretended to not know anything past partner dancing.
James was a muscly one and quickly proved that Tanya was well within his weight limit. It was quite the show, a boy being able to lift and spin almost two hundred pounds of girl. His parents and hers both wanted to have him checked out by a psychiatrist. This was the first time for such, this go around, he'd avoided most of the pitfalls.
They were surprised by what the shrink concluded after a lengthy interview and a bunch of tests, mostly subsequently more difficult IQ tests. It was nothing to worry about, but something to keep an eye on. He related James desire to be Tanya's dancing partner with the interests of a big game hunter. The "doctor" was more concerned about if James parents were properly advancing his education. "Nothing is as loathsome as parents not properly harnessing a genius childs intellect."
They pushed him to take advancement tests and he ended up in college before the age of twelve, US college mind you. It was not like France where high school is called a college. He was attending classes on physics, medicine, everything they had to offer.
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It was not enough to even slow him down. Jameson vs Education, James won with an incalculable score to educations zero. No college was willing to just admit that he knew more than them and insisted that he physically attend each class, he still had to finish high school though. So no shit, there he was at twelve attending high school, college, ballet class, and managing dozens of businesses.
Thirteen years revealed that again, he was a very late bloomer. Tanya started dating someone else. When James pointed out that he only tolerated ballet because he wanted to be with her, Tanya called him a homosexual. James corrected her on that, but she refused his love. He told her that she could find a different dance partner then and quit ballet.
James' mom wasn't happy about that, but accepted that he was only after a girl and was relieved that he was just late and not gay. These were times before the realization that gay people weren't evil or corrupted by the devil. James found out that despite Tanya living in Little Rock, the bastard that stole her from him was the same asshole that took Jenny from him multiple times the last go around.
James had a counter strategy for this type of bull shit. The little shit son of the corrupt mayor wouldn't get far this time. The ballet instructors were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Their center stage boy quit because Tanya fell for someone else. They hatched a plan based off the fact that James had never really even looked at anyone other than Tanya and the instructors.
They got all of the single girls of the ballet school that were near his age and had them try and get his interest. They went to his town and did their best to land him while not looking too suspicious. They had a full year of shows planned with him on the books, they could easily replace Tanya because she was a hack being carried by James. James was one of the best at the school and the only good ballerino that could reliably carry a partner through a grand jete.
It wasn't hard to get the girls to agree, most were jealous of "the cow" and now angry that she just dumped James like that. Every single girl and about half of the boys would have given up on their dreams to land "The Greek God". Out of the now sixty three students of the ballet school, only nine were male, it was ten, and five were very certainly gay. The headmaster of the school was livid and demanded that someone get the prodigy back, bedamned of cost or sexual orientation.
They failed to get James to start back in ballet, finding out that he was deep in some entrepreneural pursuits and dating a gal named Ellie. James was waiting for just the right time. Ellie was raised by a pig farmer who didn't speak English and went by Ho Dun Kun despite being Japanese. Ellie was a very heavy lady and quite ruff around the edges.
They did get into a brawl with the Mayor, his son, and friends of his son. James and Ellie found it rather amusing to watch five gay guys absolutely wreck the wannabe tough and rich bastards. The ballet director got arrested because she decked the sheriff with a roundhouse kick. James almost got arrested for wanting to buy the now destroyed malt shop and turn it into a roadhouse style diner called Roadhouse.
Nobody expected James to post their bail, but the video evidence submitted to the Governor's Office forced real justice. The State Police arrested the Sheriff and Mayor. Everyone that wasn't arrested at the beginning was arrested and charged, only the ballet folks got off easy. Something about recordings of active conspiracy, corruption, embezzlement, collusion, foreign deals, and blatant abuse kinda took all credibility from "the authority".
James was proud of himself this go around. He managed to deal with those assholes without being sent away. No Frankenstein's Phallus for him, not this time. He did rejoin after the incident settled out and ballet started to catch back on in the south, something was oddly curious about someone able to lift and handle a girl that put Rosie the Riveter to shame.
James danced with the now very muscular and still very heavy Tanya, but he was romantically involved with a different girl at the ballet school. Ellie dumped him because he was "too much a perty boy" and "got termuch gone on". That girl also left him because she wanted it before marriage, but James mom made him promise not to until after marriage. His love life was not good.
James was far more aggressive with business and finance this time. By sixteen, he had multiple factories, foundries, forges, corporations, farms, everything. His net worth had broken a billion US dollars and he was on the wealthiest people list. Not a big achievement when you push technology every day and start dealing with the military, like better planes and tanks.
The Vietnam War still happened. James was long out of highschool and had a fresh Masters Degree of many things. Luckily, the war was not so bad this time despite the draft still happening. James had donated thousands of armored suits with superior medical technology and medications built in expressly for the medics and Red Cross because he knew that they didn't sign the Geneva Convention.
The higher end gear, guns, armor, and vehicles made the war shorter and quicker paced. He still got drafted at eighteen, but the enhanced drug screening and equipment led to an expedited victory. The Vietnamese didn't turn around and say that they'd won, because they hands down didn't have anyone left supporting the Warsaw nonsense and accepted Democracy to get the Americans to stop shooting anyone with a gun, blade, or similarly shaped object.
Vietnam had lost a large portion of it's population, strength, forests, and wildlife. The hippies weren't happy, but they encouraged to envoke the right to freedom of speech. Then they were arrested for descent and given the right to remain silent.
James continued to build his economic powerhouse after the war, gaining much traction both domestically and abroad. Vietnam was in the perfect position for prime development, James started a bank chain and a bunch of stuff there. He preempted the microchip production and they quickly joined NATO because the production of microchips put a target on their back.
James economic expansion was so extreme that the USA gained states and territories. People wanted what he had to offer and the safety that came with it. Many countries refused to export anything that could offer any kind of military edge or espionage opportunities, especially the now way more advanced US. All of North America wanted in on that sweet sweet advanced defense tech, so they petitioned to become states.
A large part of South America quickly followed, excluding the Communists. It put the US in the position to deal with them proportionally. They didn't last long. James celebrated his twenty-first birthday with a bottle of Champagne on a beach in the State of Jamaica with his new girlfriend. She was gold digger and left as soon as she asked to sign a prenuptial agreement.
James was still on the search for a wife into his forties, when he gave up and was glad that he donated to a bunch of sperm banks back in his twenties. No good comes from good genetic mutations if the bearer has no offspring. He eventually hit his limits and his estate was left waiting for someone to show up with a certain phrase written in an alien language and a correct pronunciation with a translation. If someone wrote it, said it, and translated it, then that person would be the inheritor, a strange heirship of a strange man.
He got reincarnated in the same time line as a Chinese baby, but was killed for being the one child too many. The cursed population control made Costan swear to end China and the bastard Russian backers. He got reborn in 1991, when he was still alive, as a poor kid in Japan to a single mother that had partaken of some experiment.
He was doing good until the year 2000 and monsters started showing up through gates. God moved his timelines and Costan hated that. He was forced to join a Hunters organization at the age of ten because he slapped a kaiju to death. He was not pleased with that, "it was causing a scene" he said, "anyone can do it with training".
They didn't believe him, even after some of his friends followed his training and achieved super human results. They constantly called for meetings and briefings and schedules, interrupting his life and time with his mother. He called them out for that, then they were worse with it. His mother eventually gave up and signed him over to the government.
This did not work out like the government intended. It actually backfired badly. The next attack happened and he hit the thing so hard that it damaged half of the city, from ten kilometers away. Kaiju chunks weighing tons rained down many kilometers from the impact, some smaller bits making it to China and blood droplets going as far as Vietnam.
The anger management class hadn't worked, and a counselor almost got what the Kaiju was having. They even tried a foster family before the exploding Kaiju incident . The kid was pissed at everything, and despite knowing the truth about his condition, they thought it was too dangerous to just let him pretend to be normal and kept trying things that made it worse because of the chance of success.
After the very messy incident, they put him in isolation as a punishment. He was unaffected. They took note of this, it was like nothing changed for him. They tried a different tactic the next time.
The gates were all over the world. Most of the gates were small and things that could be shot down with regular small arms were the norm. Occasionally worse things would come through, but only West Coast USA, Columbia, and Japan had to cope with the supermassive stuff.
The biggest gate was just off the coast of Japan and it only spawned something every month or three. Nukes were needed to deal with the ones near Japan if they didn't want to use "the kid". They stopped using his name and covered up everything about him, going as far as to pay off everyone that knew him and erasing him from all records, this was all a mistake.
The next time rolled around and they bribed him with KFC. If he dealt with it with no collateral, they would get him KFC. He wanted it in writing and concluded with consequences for breaking it. They refused consequences, so he refused to go until they accepted. They eventually agreed, so he killed it with no collateral damage or casualties.
They screwed up and didn't honor their end of the deal. They didn't put him back in isolation, but quickly realized the fast downturn in his attitude. He reminded them about the fried chicken, but they had altered the contract after the signing. He told them "take me to KFC or I'll be gone before nightfall."
They didn't take it seriously and he disappeared just as the sun graced the western horizon. They immediately started going through the motions and red tape to issue a missing persons report, but it was too late. It took five days to issue that report.
As the sun rose in America, he was breathing that fresh Appalachian air. It didn't take him a second to teleport to Four Peaks from Japan, but he waited for the sun to rise. He missed watching the sun rise between the mountains. The mansion was just the way he left it, including having mere seconds to put in the code before turrets tore him to shreds.
Japan was in panic trying to issue the report. He called the big three of the Estate for a meeting. The big three hadn't seen that phone number in years, so they were obliged to attend. They didn't expect an eleven year old to be waiting to hit them with the secrets.
Each of the major companies of Jameson Sergeant Colbert had a secret. These were separate and no one was allowed to tell the others what theirs was, limiting the knowledge to the CEO only. This kid produced the calligraphy, the sentence, and the translation.
The Estate manager produced the list of possible genetic relatives, but one had gone missing. Many were dead or missing, but one was on the list until a two years before. Everything about him was scrubbed, but his mother partook of some old frozen sperm and had him. It's suspected that he's the one that had been killing the monsters in Japan.
He quickly confirmed his name, age, mother and all of that, but asked to go by Junior. The Japanese had disappeared him, so they were in the perfect position to falsify some paperwork and him be a US citizen again. They didn't want to do that, so he did it himself.
A quick set of printouts from the Four Peaks Embassy and a call to a few offices in Arkansas left him with a brand new identity. The feds were suspicious, but who's going to argue with "back in the day, my father had set up an artificial womb in his bunker and things happened." They just accepted it, but kept surveillance on him.
He was named heir to the estate and things got back moving. They hadn't stopped moving forward, but had slowed to a crawl without James. They had Junior now, so the stuff with the monsters quickly became childs play and places like Japan was forced to accept the big three. China and Russia were told "go fuck yourselves" for reasons that only James Colbert Junior understood.
That incident of world wide big dickery gained him a lot of enemies, but for every enemy he had a thousand things waiting to strike them down. The Red Cross didn't even dare say anything about it. He'd already told them what would happen if they tried to tinker with or taken any of his companies machines within a hundred miles of Russia, China, North Korea, or any Warsaw Pact nation. Detonation of multistage atomic reactors and batteries sounds less dangerous than they are, but everyone got the point.
The point was reinforced when some dumb bastards in France tried to steal a battery from a area shield generator. The thing kept the monsters contained where they just had to go in and mop up once every couple of days. It blew up with enough force that the monster gate collapsed. The video from it went international with the morons picking the lock and yanking some wires before it cut to the satellite video of them yank the wires and kaboom.
France wanted to blame the Big Three, but James had warned them. He warned the whole world not to tinker with his products. A lot of countries were doing their best to avoid his products after that, but they had been using the stuff for years without issues, kinda just slapped some extra warning stickers on stuff and kept using it.
Then the conspiracy happened. Big thing where lots of people got together in isolated places where there was no technology and hid from satellite imagery. They were plotting something, but it was not getting anywhere fast. Then the Warsaw countries declared war against James, not the US, not a country, not his businesses, but him. The US told him to handle it himself.
That peaked his interest, usually the US was all about citizens not directly warring with other nations. He suspected them to be involved somehow. He was proven right when a Senator spiked his tea with an illegal sedative.
He woke up in an isolation cell in a Russian black site on American soil, missing two things that he wanted to keep. He was out of there by the time the Russian kidnapper realized that he was awake. Back at Four Peaks, he tripped all of the overrides and qude up a lot of medical stuff.
The world was trying to figure out what went wrong while James was getting a full medical work up, detox, and the old style replacements. Everyone realized why all the advanced equipment stopped working a little too late. Giant Mechs had stopped and pilots were ejected from planes and armored suits, everything turned against them. All communication was jammed, power went out, water cut off alongside gas.
Things not connected to the Big Three stopped. Personal computers, cell phones, everything repeated one message on a loop with text. "The world chose the wrong path. Now you all pay." Billionaires went for their bunkers and preppers readied to roll out as rednecks ran for loved ones and commy bastards coddled their comrades. Monsters rampaged and technology ceased to function.
Even purely mechanical systems failed because of induced magnetic coging. Then people started to fall over, dead before they hit the ground. James had a lot of advanced tech up his sleeves and they hadn't even seen the tip. He was genocidally angry and not even the monsters would escape his wrath.
The worlds of monsters on the other side of the gates were being ravaged to nothing but ashen wastes. Few countries were spared to any degree. Those that caught a break only saw their population cut by eighty percent. Gnome was spared, so were Jamaica, Hawaii, Rural Japan, Rural South Korea, Rural Ireland, Rural England, parts of Wyoming and the southern US. It was bad, and God had questions.
Then Costan pumped out the super volcano. He left a bunch of educational materials and bunkers to survivors. Then his work was almost done, he ordered the cleanup of all radioactive materials and then the self destruction of everything not given to the survivors. He then sat next to the reactor at Four Peaks and waited for the end of it.
God had questions and he got answers. They weren't the kind to answers he wanted to hear, but he got them. Costan went to hell again, and the Antichrist was floored by the news. Nobody wanted to enlist his help ever again.
But, everything changes and nothing is eternal, leaving the yet again Emperor of Hell to get yoinked outta hell again.