The car pulls away from the field as Nate inspects his prize with a massive grin on his lips, the small metallic Jeff frozen in his grasp. He looked up to Jeff and learned all he knew about soccer from him, but now he belonged to Nate and all he could do was look down at him and smile.
"Congrats, Nate, one more for the shelf? If you keep this up, your mother and I may even have to install a second one." Nate's father laughted, delighted at the sportsman that his son had become, even at a young age. "One day, you may even have a bigger collection than me."
"I don't know, dad, this one's diffferent. I think Jeff deserves his own case." Nate looks closer at the plastic face of Jeff, frozen as an inanimate object, but still exhuding a strange presence, as if he didn't quite fit with the rest of his collection or the widef world around him, and as he held him longer, he felt something shifting in the air. Something that was shifting from the trophy... into him.
The car stopped in the driveway and the young Nate ran inside. "Mom, we won again!"
"That's wonderful. How close was it?" His mother smiled and rubbed her son's hair before sending him off to his room to stash his trophy with the rest. The question was more directed at his father, as she knew the risks that came with playing in this reality. A lesson taught with a personal bend as her own brother had the misfortune of playing a game with her husband a few Thanksgivings ago... and now sits on her husband's shelf... forever.
"Not close at all." Nate exclamed as he was already half way up the stairs. When he swung open the door, he placed Jeff on his desk... and found something in the center of his room that wasn't there before.
... a cardboard box with the word 'Chronivac' written on the side.