The Plot
Alien creatures know as the Zephlin are a race of beings who are "planet pirates." Creatures who travel from planet to planet in search of resources to feed their thriving technology. With their homeplanet dissolved of their own resources, and later the destruction. These people travel to their latest location Earth, known for it's incredible natural resources and will conquor it and mine for themselves. All opposistion will be destroyed. The aliens latest conquorings take them to a middle of nowhere regional high school so as to start the early stages of their attack and eventually seize the planet with little bloodshed, so as not to harm the planet from a war and thus render the resources useless.
Cloning
Although the Zephlin creatures a superior race with incredible weapondry and extraordinary strength and fighting skills. Their numbers are few and range no more then several hundred thousand. They therefore require an army and slaves to do their dirty work. Thus they created an vast techology humanity only begun to clash with... cloning. An army can be created in only several hours and when they all are destroyed, just make more, easy and simple. Everyone the same, emotionless, and genetically superior in many aspects. So they clone the local dwellers of their new lands and use them to wipe themselves out and contain them.Super Powers
When the Zephlin first attack the Pomperaug High School in 1999, several students were given enhanced abilities that exceed normal people. The aliens maintain control over their clones in their vast battleships and command centers by relaying a form of telepathic signals to each of their field commanders. Several students and teachers who happened to be in a certain spot of the school during the early stages of the attack were able to grasp this telepathic signal. The signal is something much differnt then any other type of wave and it played around DNA and mutations occured and randomly changed each person into literally a super person. Most abilities range from phyiscal strength increase, to regeneration to another being, controlling energy consisting of "ki," etc.
Time Travel
This gets farfetched to a degree and easiest to explain straightout here. A time line is a string of events from one period to another. When someone or something makes a desicion there are consequences and rewards. An alternate timeline is produced from each side with its outcome. So if someone were to go back in time to before a particular event occured, they may only travel to where the "fork in the road" where their timeline began. If they were to change the outcome, their timeline does NOT change. But another timeline opens up with the new outcome.
For Example
Richard goes back in time to make sure Joe doesn't die and the Super Clones are destroyed. He travels in time to when his problems started, to when Joe dies and the Clones take over. He manages to destroy them and he returns to his time, in the same mess he left it. But with the clones dead, there is no Apocalyptic future that Richard would later be born to and experience in the timeline that the clones were destroyed. Strangely enough, Perfect Calabro followed the same way from Richard's alternate future to the real present and later the mature Richard goes back to his past to meet him before he leaves to the real present.
As the picture depicts, both timelines have the same events occur, up until Richard appears. From there the red timeline changes because of Richard's doings and the timeline now has different events that happen because of the super clones' death (ie: Parts 4 and 5.) However when Richard comes back, everything is the same as he left it because he didn't change anything from his timeline.