June 6, 2057
Dortmund, Germany

Leaving her old prosthetic leg riddled with teeth marks leaning up against a wall, Eria was once again hard at work on her time machine. Papers bearing equations and numerous blueprints were scattered at her foot. In wandered the yawning old doberman and Eva, who kept her dog close wherever she went.

Taking no notice of the two intruders to her lonely basement, Eria continued her work, more determined than she had ever been. Eva stepped clumsily, knocking over empty foam coffee cups as she went along. Schneider, though aged, was still intent on mischief. As Eria sighed at the complex labyrinth of machinery over her, Schneider snatched up her prosthetic leg in his jaws, breaking into a heavy run back up the stairs with his prize.

The loud clattering immediately caught Eria's attention, who widened her eyes and proceeded to attempt sitting up. The result was Eria's head colliding with her machine with a loud clang. Lying unconscious on her four-wheeled board, her mouth gaped open and her eyes were tightly shut with an expression of pain and a thin stream of blood flowing from her forehead.

Frightened by the loud collision between cranium and machinery, Eva stumbled back upstairs, leaving her godmother passed out in the basement. In the her injured stupor, Eria dreamed of the past, those days of solace she hoped to reach yet again.
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October 12, 2026
St. Louis, Missouri

"Eri?" a soothing voice whispered. "Time to wake up. C'mon, you're getting refitted today. Lazy logs who don't wake up don't get new legs."

Two pale blue eyes slowly opened. Swiftly, a girl of about ten years with long jet black hair sat up. The room was dark, the only source of light was the yellowish glow coming from a glass tank, where a large iguana with pale green scales lounged lazily on a branch. She could faintly make out the bookcase below, stocked with picture books, paperback novels, dictionaries, and encyclopedias. She turned her head to the left, where she met her gaze with a woman who crouched at her bedside. She was a petite woman with short brown hair who had a long scar from her patched right eye socket up to the left side of her forehead.

"Well well, about time you woke up," the woman said grinning. "Up an' at 'em, Eria. Breakfast is just about ready."

Then, noticing the prosthetic leg on the floor, ill-fitting and damaged beyond use from a few days before, Eria shot the woman a slight glare, to which the woman responded by laughing.

"Up and at them, Mom?" Eria responded. "Yeah, real funny."

"Whatever, I'll get you your little chair," Eria's mother muttered, irked at her daughter's lack of humor. "After that, then we get rolling."

Eria groaned at her mother's pun. Balancing on the armrests of her wheelchair, she threw herself from her bed to her seat.

"Ah, you'll love the new leg. Real beauty, irrefutably my best work," her mother boasted. "Aren't you lucky to have a doctor and an engineer as parents? Plenty of amputees out there would love to be you."

"No, they'd rather be someone with a full body intact," Eria grumbled. "Joke all you like, this all really sucks and I hate it!"

Eria's mother sighed. "Bah, that's no attitude to have about this. I had my eye clawed out in a battle, boo-hoo. Thought about it, and realized it was really pretty freaking funny. A turd's a turd, instead of groaning over it, pick it up and chuck it at something."

Eria grimaced. "Nice, just nice. You haven't been using the humidifier as a bong again, have you?"

The mother and daughter paused. There was a good ten seconds of silence before a male voice called out from another room.

"Estelle, gimme a hand here! Gustafa puked in the sink again!"

Estelle slapped her forehead with her full palm, shaking her head and groaning. "Ah, that brother of yours!"

She got up, stretching her arms out and then scratching at her side. Before turning around to leave, she gave Eria a playful flick on the nose.

"No use sweating the small stuff, kid. Just remember that even if you're not careful with your new leg, I'll always be here to whip up another one for as long as I draw breath."

She ran out from the room and down the hall. Eria stared down at the stub just above where her knee once was. She sighed, and a smile slowly stretched across her face.
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June 6, 2057
Dortmund, Germany

A warm, slimy length of flesh hit Eria's forehead. The two pale blue eyes threw themselves open, and Eria sat up. Despite being alone in the basement with only a toddler and an overweight old dog in the house, she had somehow been pulled out from underneath her machine. She lay in a bed of crushed foam cups and scattered papers.

Schneider backed away from Eria, having licked her wound clean and sitting obediently with the metal leg he stole earlier at his side. Eria took the leg, slippery with dog saliva, and examined it in silence. Pieces were missing from it, and it was obviously broken, perhaps beyond repair. Eria stared down at the shattered remnants of her leg in despair, thinking about her dream of the past and what her mother had said. She sighed, too tired to scold Schneider. If she did punish him, she figured, he wouldn't have the slightest memory of what he'd done. Eria stared up at the stairway leading back to the garage, realizing just how helpless she was with stairs ahead of her and only one leg.

Schneider whimpered at his new owner's helplessness. He nudged towards her another leg, which had nary a single sign of use on it. Eria's eyes widened, and she took it quickly. Who, between the toddler and the dog, could have known where Eria hid her extra legs? Both were unlikely, and Eria chose not to pursue the thought any further. She stared up at the doorway, wide open and flooding the dimly-lit basement with fresh sunlight. A tiny figure emerged from the doorway, appearing as an angel from Heaven.

Down the stairway and into the basement came Eva, holding a box of band-aids. Eria took the box gratefully, and with her free hands Eva proceeded to chew on her thumbnail. Eria looked on her two housemates fondly, rubbing both of their heads affectionately. She proceeded to attach her fresh prosthetic, and yet could not take her eyes off of the glowing doorway. Once her leg was attached, she found herself once again pondering the mystery of how the leg came to be in her hands.

It was, perhaps, brought to her by the same force that had pulled her out from underneath her invention. Her mother's words once again echoed in her head.