It didn't take long for all of us to get untangled from Penelope and Uncle Bentley's traps in the courtyard...especially once Uncle Bentley applied the counter-compound to break down the sticky mess holding Mom stuck. Dad got me free of the net, while Uncle Razor and Uncle T-Bone hauled Murray out of the now empty pudding vat. He'd apparently decided to try and eat his way out, only to discover the vat only had enough pudding to cushion his fall into it.
Then came Penelope's story. And boy was it a doozy...
Penelope sat down in the courtyard, staring at the remote in her hands as everyone gathered around. "I...I can't shift all the blame," she said finally. "I got myself into this mess..." She shook her head slowly. "It all started with the time machine plans, and weapons, and...everything else..." She looked up at Coco. "You remember the conversation we had after Bentley went to the hospital for his spinal reconstruction? About...how I thought Sly was holding him back?"
Coco nodded as everyone else turned shocked looks on the pair. "I remember."
"Well, before that conversation...I'd thought if the time machine were tweaked slightly, it could be used to connect two points in time together, altering the events of the past while more or less maintaining the future," Penelope explained. "That I could...go back in time and keep Sly and Bentley from meeting, while still ensuring that Bentley and I met. That without Sly...Bentley would grow up a bit more like me, and he wouldn't have as many hang ups. It was stupid, impulsive, and wrong...especially going to Le Paradox to get the altered machine built."
"And then we talked..." Coco continued. "And you realized that it wouldn't have worked out the way you wanted?"
"Not entirely," Penelope countered. "While I did realize that...I also realized from the talk that if Bentley weren't who he was, if he didn't have those morals and honor code I found so frustrating...then he wouldn't be the nerd I fell in love with." She turned sorrowful eyes Bentley's way. His only response was a warm, comforting hand placed on her shoulder. Penelope managed a smile for a moment, then continued her tale. "So I raced out to a pre-scheduled meeting with Le Paradox to tell him I wouldn't feed him any more of the plans, and I was going to destroy what I'd already given him and what he'd built from it. But...he had an ace up his sleeve..."
"Seft," Sly concluded darkly.
"Yes...Seft was the technical genius he hired to make the plans work," Penelope confirmed. "And Seft was there at the meeting. He...he knew what I was going to say, and before I could speak up..." She shivered violently. "He showed me this remote, and the plans for it. Half a chroniton is suspended inside of it in a time stasis field, the other half inside a communicator worn by an assassin. This means one signal - a one or a zero - can be sent via the remote to a single point in space-time from anywhere, and anywhen, once the field is deactivated at the other end. And the assassin...is just outside Bentley's hospital room, after his surgery."
Gasps of shock and understanding greeted this statement. "That's what you meant," Carmelita concluded. "One of the buttons tells the assassin to kill Bentley, and one to abort mission..."
"And only Seft knows which is which," Penelope confirmed.
"And in the meantime, Bentley's caught in a Schrodinger's Paradox," Razor stated angrily. "Two possible timelines, one where he's alive and one where he's dead, with the course of events slowly diverging and straining his very existence. That's why he's been flickering."
"And why I kept briefly seeing Gyro Gearloose in his place," Coco concluded sadly. "In the timeline where Bentley dies, Uncle Scrooge would have sent him along to help us repair time to fix the Thievius Raccoonus, and stop Le Paradox..."
Penelope nodded slowly. "And...Seft has been holding it over my head ever since, forcing me to work against you all. I...I was willing to go along with it. Do...almost whatever it took to get the remote and knowing which button to push. Almost..." Tears beaded her eyes. "Maybe...maybe I should have-"
"No," Bentley interrupted firmly. "Penelope, don't think that. You've seen the kind of monster Seft is. There's no way of knowing if he would have kept his word. He might have deliberately told you the wrong button just to watch you squirm. And even if he did keep his word..." Wheeling himself forward, he cupped her hands in his cheek. "My life isn't worth putting you through...that..."
Penelope smiled sadly, tears falling as she put one hand over Bentley's. "I think it is..." she murmured sadly.
"Pray, I'm not certain I understand," Galleth interrupted. "You speak of this device reaching through time and space because it contains half of a crouton?" He gestured to the remote where Penelope had set it on the ground.
"Chroniton," Razor corrected. "A time particle, in essence. Splitting it in half causes the halves to resonate with each other, apparently, so anything that affects one half affects the other."
"And why does that happen?" Galleth asked curiously.
Razor and T-Bone exchanged glances, trying to figure out how to explain it. "Because...it wants to be whole?" T-Bone offered finally.
"Aha!" Galleth declared proudly as he drew his sword. "Then I perceive the solution to our problem. We do not need to guess at a signal. We must free the crouton, like so!" And he brought his sword down on the remote right between the buttons, shattering it.
"NO!" Penelope screamed in fear and despair as everyone else rushed forward.
Bentley let out a scream of pain as energy arced around him, flinging him to his hands and knees.
"Bentley!" Penelope called, clinging to him desperately.
"I'm..." Bentley gasped out as he struggled to catch his breath. "I'm okay...just a little...time singed..." He blinked as he shook his head. "There...there was someone in the hospital...he wasn't supposed to be there. The nurses found him in the hall, clutching at his ear. A...a crystal had drilled into his brain..."
"Are you insane?" Razor demanded angrily of Galleth.
"Verily!" Galleth responded proudly. "It runs in the family!"
"It so does..." Carmelita growled as she struggled to calm herself so she wasn't about to pounce Galleth and bite his face off and turn his tail into a warm scarf. Only the reminder that doing so likely would mean Sly would never be born held her in check.
Bentley's eyes stayed wide. "Is...?" Slowly, he pushed himself up...to his feet. Gasps echoed as he staggered against Penelope...but his legs took his weight. "I...I can walk?" he gasped in surprise.
"The collapse of the Paradox..." Penelope breathed in awe. "All that time energy being released, focused on you...it..." She shifted so she could look at his back through her goggles, data racing across the lenses. "It reversed the damage to your spine! Your leg muscles are a little atrophied, but other than that it's like you were never injured to begin with!" She pulled Bentley into a crushing embrace as she wept.
"Gack!" Bentley gasped out. "Well don't break it again!" His words held no true rancor, however, as he happily returned the embrace.