The circus was crowded that night. Of course, Molly wasn't exactly an expert- she'd very rarely gone to the circus. She was thirty-four years old, an experienced, licensed time traveler for five of those years. A wayward time traveler, but a time traveler nonetheless. Through her trusty- though somewhat faulty- time machine, "Old Betsy," she had been chased by hungry dinosaurs, narrowly escaped the fire bombing of Dresden, and even seen Richard Simmons naked- but she had yet to get over her childhood fear of clowns. She had had a bad experience today- a visit back to the Stone Age, when Homo erectus was just learning how to procreate…through trial and error. It was almost as bad as that ancient Egyptian New Year's celebration- or, as she liked to call it, "If-It-Moves-F***-It-Day." Almost.

"And now," The ringmaster said, stepping into the center ring. "We have, for your comedic pleasure, the amazing, the spectacular, the Leonardo Traveling Troupe Spectacular Clown Quartet!"

"Crap." Molly muttered, adjusting her glasses, and applauding along with the rest of the audience. "Oh well, you came here to cure your fear of clowns right? Now is as good a time as any."

"Mommy, mommy!" A little kid wearing a Mooby the Cow sweater said, pulling on his mother's sleeve. "This lady is talking to herself!"

Molly mentally slapped her forehead, and sat down. But then the Spectacular Clown Quartet rushed in, honking and falling over their own feet. They went into their routine of highly predictable slapstick jokes. The only thing that wasn't predictable was the way two of the clowns insisted on slapping each other on the butt when they thought no one was looking. Anyway.

Molly was caught up in the insanity, laughing and generally having a good time. Finally, she blurted out: "This is great! I can't believe I was ever afraid of clowns!"

Suddenly, everyone fell silent. All the lights went off, except a small spotlight that remained on Molly. People began to murmur, confused. Good, now maybe she could escape while…

"HEY! DID YOU HEAR THAT?!" The ringmaster said, as loud as possible. "SHE'S SCARED OF CLOWNS!!!!!" The entire audience turned and looked at her.

Molly forced a smile and waved weakly. "Uh…hi?"

"Anyone who's seen us before knows what we do with people who are scared of clowns!" The ringmaster shouted. It was a cue, Molly realized. Some people over on the other side of the tent began to chant:

"Dance. Dance. Dance."

More people began to pick it up.

"Dance! Dance! Dance!"

Molly looked around, confused, as everyone took up the chant.

"DANCE! DANCE! DANCE!"

"What dance?" Molly shouted.

Suddenly, two of the clowns grabbed her arms and dragged her down into the center ring. Molly kicked and protested and threatened to call her lawyer until, finally, the clowns dropped her and ran away. When she finally got to her feet, the only others in the ring were the ringmaster and the one of the four clowns.

This final clown was the most spectacularly garbed, which was odd since most of his costume was black. He had inhumanly deep blue eyes, set in his largish head. There was something strange in those eyes, something…mesmerizing.

"Now, this lovely young coulrophobe here will join our very own Ringo, the Eternally Happy in his signature dance, that ballet of bliss, that tango of terrific-ness, that flamingo of feel-goodness, THE DANCE OF ETERNAL HAPPINESS!" The ringmaster shouted, and the crowd went wild.

Molly's eyes widened, and she started to protest, but the clown- Ringo- whispered: "Just follow my lead," and the dance began. Ringo used the weight of his large h ead to spin himself and Molly around, doing extremely intricate movements with nothing but his cranium. The audience watched in silent awe.

When the dance was done, Molly was in a daze. Maybe it was Ringo's deep, blue eyes, or his large head or his smile. Maybe it was because she had just spun around in circles for a few minutes.

Either way, Molly decided it was love. Which, indeed, it was.

* * *

Ringo, the Eternally Happy, was removing his clown makeup and black outfit, as usual, when he stopped and looked at himself in the mirror. It was the first time he had ever realized how tired he was. His hair was naturally red, but there were the tiniest streaks of gray in it now, as it rested like a brush fire on his large head. His eyes were still as clear and blue as they had always been, but they had a clouded weariness in them. The weight was distributed too evenly around his body, making him look like a giant egg, and on his stomach, right over his naval, was the worn but still identifiable black, bladed sun tattoo- hangover from another life. He was little more than a giant slouch, a walking manifestation of lethargy.

He was tired of being a clown, tired of being a part time circus freak, tired of the circus altogether. And not just the circus. He was tired of always looking over his shoulder in public, tired of making sure the bladed sun emblem was never visible, tired of having to avoid any place that the powerful, eccentric, or rejected might dwell. Those were the places that he was most likely to run into one of them.

He was considering maybe getting plastic surgery and faking his own death, when there was a knock on the door of his trailer. Ringo hurriedly put his black clown suit over his torso, hiding the bladed sun, and stepped out of his dressing room, into the main area of the trailer. The other three members of the Leonardo Traveling Troupe's Spectacular Clown Quartet- John, Paul and George, and the bearded lady, Bertha, were sitting around, playing poker.

Ringo blinked. "Anyone going to get the door?"

When he got no answer, except for the middle fingers from all four, he sighed and opened the door himself.

It was her- the coulrophobic who had done the Dance of Eternal Happiness with him earlier. He hadn't gotten a good look at her before- the lights were always turned down for the Dance of Eternal Happiness, to add an air of mystery of the dance no one could do, and the swirling, black cloth of Ringo's outfit. Mystery. Huh. If only they knew...

But here, under the yellow-tinted light that hung over the door, he could see her clearly. She was tall, maybe as tall as him, with brown hair that extended to just under her shoulder blades. Her eyes were brown and guarded by glasses that were a bit too large. She was dressed up way too much to be at the circus- all in khaki, as if she was going to go on a safari or something.

"Um, hi." Ringo said, trying to smile. He shouldn't have to force it, he thought. He should be able to just stand here and talk to the good-looking woman on his front step. But they had trained him to be suspicious, and they weren't below using an innocent looking woman to get to him. Besides, the whole safari look? That was sort of weird, and they always used weirdoes.

"Hi." The woman- Molly- responded. She took an awkward half-step back and her foot caught on a piece of trash lying on the ground. She tripped, turned the fall forwards on instinct, and fell into Ringo's arms.

Molly turned bright red and hurriedly tried to stand up. "Um, sorry, I do that a lot,"

Ringo grinned. "It's no problem, I always get-" Just then he felt it, that cold sensation that he was being watched.

Ringo whipped around and snatched someone out of the shadows on the side of the trailer, and was about to rip him a new air hole, when he realized who it was.

"Oh, sorry Vinnie. Didn't know it was you," Ringo said, setting the kid down.

Vinnie was Bertha, the bearded lady's son. He was short and wiry, even for a kid his age with sunken, shaded eyes and a thin line for a mouth. Not very noticeable- except for the fact that he always wore women's clothing. Ringo theorized it was to make up for the masculinity of his mother- what with her having a beard and all. That and the fact that Bertha had hoped he would be a girl and dressed him up as one. It was a strange, strange state of affairs. At least his father- a Mafia hit man- wasn't alive to see it.

Vinnie was definitely weird- a perfect candidate to become one of them. Then again, not all weird people went that way, just those who got pushed in the right- or wrong- direction. Bertha, at the mention of her son's name, hustled over to the door, and glared down at the quiet, shadowy boy.

"Damn it, Vinnie, how many times have I told you not to do that creeping in the shadows thing?"

Ringo came to Vinnie's rescue- after all, parental scolding was an excellent way to push someone in the wrong direction. "Oh, no, it's okay. He was just, um, showing us his, uh,"

"Fishnet stockings!" Molly said, snatching a pair from the assorted trash on the ground. Bertha swelled with pride.

"Oh, my little Vick- er, Vinnie! They're gorgeous! A little big for you, but maybe when you grow up to be an assassin like your father- God rest his soul- you can wear them!"

She took Vinnie inside, chatting about how he could conceal knives in the netting of the stockings, and the boy looked over his shoulder at Ringo and Molly, his eyes thanking them.

When the door had closed and only Ringo and Molly stood outside, Molly said, "So, um, hi!"

* * *

You can pretty much figure out for yourself what happened- since when do strange dances, mysterious clowns, wayward time travelers, bearded ladies, cross dressers, circuses and the word "coulrophobic" not equal love?

Anyway, for the common sense impaired, Ringo and Molly realized they were a great team but at first, they didn't think they could make it. Ringo didn't want to stop being a clown, and Molly wasn't going to give up time traveling to tour the country with him. But then, fate stepped in.

After doing a show in Tulsa, John, one of the members of the Spectacular Clown Quartet, was shot by the little kid in the Mooby the Cow shirt, the one who had heard Molly talking to herself on the night she first met Ringo. We tried to warn them that Mooby only lead to trouble but they just wouldn't listen. Stupid parents.

Anyway, the Clown Quartet broke up, and while Paul and George went to Hawaii to secretly get marr- er, start a solo career, Ringo quit clowning all together and spent his time with Molly. Finally, one night at a Showbiz Pizza, he proposed, giving Molly a dozen blood red roses.

They were married, bought a house, and settled down in beautiful Hope Springs, Colorado. And after two years of marriage, they had two, beautiful baby girls- twins. Both had Molly's brown hair and need for glasses. One, however, the second to be born, had a slightly larger head, a trait inherited from her father. They named the first, and therefore the oldest, Roses, because of the flowers Ringo had given Molly when he proposed. The second, the one with the larger head, they named Ann, after Ringo's mother, the first person in his family to have an abnormally large head. She had also been the true inventor of what are now called the Oreo, even though she had been ripped off by some loser who sold the merchandise to Nabisco. Oreos were baby Ann's favorite kind of cookies.

Everything was fine, for four years. Molly was happy, Ringo was happy, and Roses and Ann were happy. There was nothing more that they wanted. Well, almost nothing...

The truth of the matter was that Ringo wanted a son, someone he could influence, someone he could make do the right things, as his absentee father never had. And so, after much pleading and doing chores and changing Roses and Ann's diapers, Molly finally agreed that they could try to have a son.

And so, from Ringo's somewhat selfish desire to have influence over a child, a son was born, four years after the births of his siblings.

He had Molly's brown hair, but it was short like Ringo's. His body also had the same, roundish appearance as his father's. He would also, later in life, inherit Molly's need for glasses. But the most noticeable thing he inherited was Ringo's clear, sapphire eyes. He came into the world without a sound, and then, after his umbilical chord was cut, etc., he lay on his back and peed all over himself.

Ringo couldn't have been more proud, because the baby had the right equipment to do so.

They named him John, after the man whose death had lead to their marriage. John was a problem from the start, always stealing toys from his four year old sisters, taking all of the blocks and erecting thrones for himself, knocking down towers that Ann and Roses built together. Most of the time, though, he sat in his high chair, looking down at his sisters with what could only be a superior look. He also spent a lot of time walking into walls and falling down. Ringo coddled him, and sometimes even assisted him in stealing his sister's toys.

"John's going to be special some day," He had told the girls. "He needs all the advantages he can get."

At first, only Roses and Ann were resentful, but soon John's birth and existence began to tear at the seams of the family.

Molly, who was all but left out of raising John, decided to adopt a son for herself. However, the adoption agency only had one kid, and that was some creepy Chechnyan kid named Ruslan who levitated things with his mind. Ignore the fact that, by the Remnants timeline, he hadn't been born yet. She had enough problems with John; she didn't need a kid who was going to chuck food across the room with his mind. Then, fate stepped in again. She found a boy, a little younger than her daughters, living in the alley behind the adoption center, and surviving by eating trash and small rodents.

When she first approached him, he screamed "KALOOKALEE!!!! I AM THE SEA GOD!!!!" and ran away- right into a wall, in fact. After some serious counseling, she adopted him, and named him Poseidon, because of his first words to her. But she didn't like the letter "P" all that much and turned it into an "R." However, the name "Roseidon" reminded her too much of her destructive and arrogant son, John, and so she softened it to "Roseidous."

Things were very tense from then on in. John had officially become "Ringo's son" and Roseidous "Molly's son." Roses and Ann were caught in the middle, but tried to keep their heads down, knowing the explosion was coming soon.

And when it did come, it was centered on, well, an explosion. Molly and Ringo had gotten into "Old Betsy," intent on going back in time to end their argument over whether John Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence with his left or right hand. However, there was a malfunction and the time machine exploded. Molly and Ringo were gone, but their bodies were never found.

The children were all adopted by families in the same neighborhood. They all went to grade school together, but then everyone got brainwashed, and there was a little fluctuation in the time/space fabric that allowed people who didn't exist then to be present- anyway, everyone involved forgot.

Roses was sent to Clyattville, Georgia, where her parents had first met. Her foster parents let her take up ribbon dancing at age ten, but didn't get far, because she got more pleasure from whipping her fellow dancers with the ribbons than she did from the actual dancing. She did, however, become student council president for every year from eighth grade up, since her competition kept "mysteriously" ending up in the emergency room.

Ann was sent to Michigan, where Ringo said he had "a friend." She ended up with a family named the Chovis, who kept her name as Ann, not noticing the obvious fish reference. However, she soon learned that the "friend" that her father had referred to was not the Chovis, but the Chovys, another branch of the family who had kept the old spelling of the name. It seemed that before Aunt Mae had married Uncle Ben, she had had a one night, madcap, whirlwind affair with a drunken clown. The product was a duplicate of Ann, only with blond hair- her cousin, Jan Chovy. After this odd revelation, Ann went on an "excellent" adventure, in which she teamed up with a boy named Ron Day-Voo, who taught her to read and write (which Ringo had neglected) and then helped her find the secret map to Atlantis. Ann then made Ron her first man slave, and sold him to Jan for their grandmother's *special* Oreo recipe, which Ringo had left to Mae for safe keeping. Ann later sold the secret map to Atlantis on E-Bay, so that she could finance her Moon Base, but that wasn't for a while.

Roseidous got to live with a normal, average family. He had the typical male obsession with supermodels and Baywatch girls. One day, Roseidous found a big balloon of a woman in his foster father's closet. He promised not to tell, but one day vowed to have one of his own.

But what about the youngest child? How did one, small child become the evil, ruthless, and numbingly idiotic villain we know today? Here, for the first time ever, is the true story of how that destructive little boy would become... John, Lord of Darkness (Dum Dumm Duuuuuum!)!

To Be Continued…