Chapter Text
9:55 a.m., UTC+1.
August 19, 2021.
Triberg im Schwarzwald, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
In a small Airbnb overlooking the quaint Black Forest town, eleven-year-old Ojo Finley sat in the bedroom, doodling on her iPad.
This was no ordinary tablet—it was a gift from her best friend, Rhiannon Rodriguez, the fifteen-year-old concept artist who taught her how to draw digitally. Rhiannon claims the tablet had been passed down through her family for generations, but not always in the same form—her grandfather claims it used to be a painting set, and her father saw it as a camcorder.
Which should have clued them in that the tablet was no ordinary art supply.
Its powers extend beyond changing its form—as Ojo discovered, its mysterious drawing app, Clee Painter 2.0, could allow her to draw what happens later in the day. And, if she puts enough willpower, it could even bring her sketches to life.
Eight months earlier, she used it to test the children of the Heroics, the world’s superheroes, to see if they were ready to take the place of their parents. They all passed with flying colors, and Ojo was made an honorary member of the new Heroics with full privilege to save the galaxy alongside them.
But she chose to live as a normal person, enjoying the life of a young online artist.
So there she was, drawing as she normally did, when she realized her latest sketch was something she didn’t expect.
Instead of showing her at a tourist spot with her family, it showed an unfamiliar young boy standing inside her bedroom, with her falling backwards presumably in shock. In the corner, a cuckoo clock read ten o’clock sharp.
Ojo spent the next few minutes observing the drawing. The boy had red hair tied in two uneven braids, wore a white shirt with a green lederhosen, and had a green cap with a yellow feather sticking out of it. He twirled his thin moustache as he gasped at a pocket watch chained to his trousers.
He looked like a local—but why would he be in her bedroom of all places?
The answer came a few moments later.
The cuckoo clock on the wall chimed ten o’clock, and alongside it, a boy materialized seemingly from its pendulum. He looked exactly the same as the boy in the sketch, and in shock, Ojo fell backwards.
She sat up just in time to watch him twirling his moustache, checking his pocket watch, and singing what appeared to be a clock chime—four bars, each of four notes, followed by ten loud bongs.
“Wh… who are you?” asked Ojo.
The boy didn’t answer. He sang another song—one which Ojo identified as “Ievan Polkka”, a Finnish folk song. Strangely, he appeared to be singing the lyrics and backing beat at the same time—an ability even Ojo’s musical friend A Cappella couldn’t do.
Stranger still, as he sang the backing beat—which consisted of the words “pol, pol” repeated every second—the clock’s pendulum glowed and swung to the same exact time as the beat.
He only answered after finishing the entire song. “Hallo,” he said in a thick German accent, “my name is Grandson Clock.”
Ojo giggled a little. “Grandson Clock?”
“Ja. I’m the son of the son of Grandfather Clock, the hero of Switzerland.”
Ojo was immediately charmed by his soft, fair skin and piercing blue eyes. “Nice to meet you, Grandson Clock,” she introduced, holding an arm out to the boy. “I’m Ojo, the daughter of Miss Granada, leader of the Heroics.”
Grandson Clock grabbed her hand and sharply turned it so that it pointed downwards—which, needless to say, confused her.
“Oh, sorry.” He turned her arm so that it pointed upwards, paused, then returned it to its original position. Only then did he shake her hand like normal. “I thought you were a clock that needed resetting.”
“You’re really into clocks,” noticed Ojo.
“If you can’t tell, they’re the source of my power,” explained Grandson Clock, striking a dramatic pose with a clock key. “For example, I can make clocks chime at will.”
He pulled one of the pinecone-shaped weights on the cuckoo clock, and the bird called once—even if it was 10:03.
“I can also reset any clock to the perfect time.” To demonstrate, he advanced the cuckoo clock a few minutes, then tapped it with his clock key. The hands immediately reset to the proper time.
He then sang “Ievan Polkka” from start to finish—again. “In case you’re wondering, ‘Ievan Polkka’ is one of the few songs with a perfect 120 beat-per-minute tempo—that means each note in the backing beat equals exactly one swing of a pendulum.”
Lastly, he showed his pocket watch to Ojo. It not only told the hours, minutes, and seconds, but it also had smaller dials that told the month, date, day, and year. “And this pocket watch—“
“Let me guess,” interrupted Ojo, “it tells the perfect time?”
“Exactly. How did you know?”
“That’s my power. Super intuition. My iPad allows me to draw what happens in the near future.”
Ojo showed her iPad to Grandson Clock, showing a comic of her encounter with Grandson Clock with all the dialogue perfectly matching their current conversation.
“And did I mention I can bring my drawings to life?”
Ojo demonstrated by sketching a cuckoo bird. It flew off the screen and landed on Grandson Clock’s shoulder, calling two times.
“Wrong timing, cuckoo,” teased Grandson Clock. “It’s 10:05:53. You’re three hours, fifty-four minutes, and seven—six—five seconds too early.”
Ojo giggled. She erased the sketch on her tablet, and the bird disappeared mid-flight.
“You know what, Ojo?” asked Grandson Clock suddenly. “I may have met you just six minutes and fourteen seconds ago, but I feel like the two of us are more than just superheroes.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Ojo shot back.
“Of course not. We’re like weights and a pendulum—different powers, but we compliment each other to do great things.”
Ojo couldn’t help but blush. “I feel the same way too.”
Without warning, she ran up to Grandson Clock and hugged him really tightly. Feeling the same way, the boy blushed slightly and hugged her back.
Suddenly, Ojo felt a tug on her iPad.
She looked at it to see a drawing of a girl with a bowler hat, watchmaker’s loupe, suit, and tie smashing a cuckoo clock the size of a house with a mallet.
She showed it to Grandson Clock. “What does this mean?”
His eyes widened when he saw the picture. “That’s the House of a Thousand Clocks here in Triberg. It’s one of the largest cuckoo clocks in the world.”
“And who’s that girl?”
Grandson Clock’s eyes widened. “Samantha Schnoozelnein—my nemesis.”
“Nemesis?”
“She doesn’t want anyone in the world to know what time it is. It’s more fun that way, she says. But without clocks or time, I’ll be out of a job.”
“What are you waiting for, then? Stop her!”
“I can’t, Ojo. I’ve tried at least 25,913 times already. But she always wins.”
Ojo suddenly posed dramatically with her stylus. “Not without me.”
Grandson Clock blinked in surprise, then smiled warmly. “You’d really help me?”
Ojo nodded with determination, her grip tightening around her stylus. “Of course. With your time powers—“
“Clock powers.”
“Sorry—clock powers—and my ability to draw the future. Samantha doesn’t stand a chance.”
Without wasting another second, they raced out of the Airbnb, weapons in hand.
Ojo didn’t need her super intuition to know that this was the beginning of a new adventure.