Temporal Vertigo Is Hard, But You Can’t Let It Get in the Way of Important Information
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After a few seconds, everyone else joined Cal at the top of the hill, looking down at the metal city with him. “Wow!” said Ray, hopping from foot to foot, tail straight up in the air. “Where are we? I’ve never even heard of a city like this!”
“Me either,” said Sully, rubbing his arms. His disguise was down, and so was Mick’s. “Elves used to have some pretty kickass cities, but they didn’t look like this.”
“Could the Clock have taken us way into the future?” Travis asked.
“Or way into the past?” Mick added.
“The stars are wrong,” Beatrice muttered.
They all looked up with her, and she was right. “Woah,” said Wes, taking in the sky, which didn’t look at all like the sky normally did. Even in Narwhal Junction where the stars were a bit different, they weren’t like this.
It wasn’t their sky. But Cal knew whose it was. “Bob,” he said quietly.
“Just a second,” Bob told him, frowning down at his unireader. “There’s a lot of interference, but…”
“Bob,” Cal said, tapping his head. “Look.” He pointed at the sky.
Bob, ever obedient, did as he was told. “That’s…impossible.”
Cal nodded, watching as a planet called Jupiter occulted a planet called Saturn. “You said that was never going to happen again.”
“It wasn’t,” Bob whispered. “Because this planet was supposed to have been destroyed five thousand, five hundred and sixteen years ago.”
“What?” asked Wes. “What does that mean?”
“We’re on Earth,” Cal told him, still looking at the sky. “The world I went to when I time travelled with the Clock. It’s the world where humans used to live before we came to our world.”
“But that world got destroyed,” Joey said, looking around. He had a boner. “This world definitely isn’t destroyed.”
“But did Earth get destroyed?” asked Arky, turning to Bob. “Like, did the whole planet literally explode? Maybe someone else started living there. Here.”
“Who’s the kid?” Beatrice asked.
“Arky, the imp,” Cal told her. “Not sure why he’s looking all human.”
“My body is determined by the Web,” Arky said, shifting in place. “The Web isn’t present here.”
“He’s right,” Sully said, shaking his head. “There’s no magic here.”
“There should be some magic,” Juniper disagreed. “The Web, the thing that gives most of you your magic, is only present in your—our—world. Other types of magic should still exist.”
“Like yours?”
Juniper nodded, then shook his head, holding out his hand. “My spirit gave me my powers back during the fight with Kozna. But…they’re gone again. And…he’s gone too.” As he said that his voice cracked, fear coming through. “I can’t feel him or hear him or…” he shook his head, rubbing himself. “It’s so fucking hot.”
Cal reached out and touched his forearm. “Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. Bob’s going to get us home and you know he’ll be there when we arrive. He’ll probably bitch you out for disappearing on him, too.”
“I…I hope so,” Juniper said, looking down. He sighed at himself. “I hear temporal vertigo isn’t as bad the second time.”
It seemed like he was changing the subject, but looking around, Cal saw his teammates getting sweaty, red in the face, and hard. Well, except for the ones who got wet instead of hard. “I guess we’ll find out,” he said. “Hey, guys, now’s probably a good time to mention that time travel makes you super horny?”
“Yeah,” Bob agreed. “No need to be embarrassed by…”
“Oh, good,” said Joey, jumping on Travis and sending them both to the ground. He was already grinding against Travis, kissing him.
Ray took Beatrice’s hand. “Um. I’d like to practice having sex with a woman, if that’s okay with you?”
Beatrice pinched Ray’s ear and pulled him to the ground. “Fine, but I’m a hard teacher.”
“And I’m a hard student!”
“You guys can join in if you want,” Cal told Juniper and Arky. “Because of temporal vertigo.”
Juniper shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“I’m fine,” Arky said, sitting in the grass, stroking himself. “I’ve time travelled a bunch so I’m not going to get any vertigo. I’ll just watch.”
“You know I’ll be asking you about that later,” Cal said, getting down on his knees as he started to feel hot himself. Not as bad as the first time, though. He kissed Bob’s thigh.
“Watch me not fucking answer,” Arky said, rolling his eyes. “Now put a cock in your mouth, you sound smarter that way.”
Cal flipped him off and kissed the rune on Bob’s balls. “So if we’re on Earth,” he said to Bob, licking a finger and slipping it into Bob’s ass, which of course took him easily, “how is that possible?”
Bob took a breath, looking at the stars again. Then he looked at his unireader. “When Earth was destroyed,” he said, as Cal pressed a second finger inside him, “time was split in two. Uh. We call that event the Split.”
“Creative,” Cal muttered. His cock was throbbing, so he stood up, span Bob around, pressing himself against Bob’s hole. Sully was eating Lillian out, and Mick and Wes were coming over. “So what does that mean?”
“It means that there were two futures. One where humans went to Nova, and one where they, they didn’t,” Bob said, as Cal started to fuck him. Cal smiled at Wes and Mick and laid himself and Bob down, with Bob on top of him, face-up, legs spread. When Cal nodded, Wes pushed a finger inside Bob alongside Cal’s cock.
“So,” said Mick, voice heavy and hot as he kissed Cal around Bob, hand on Bob’s chest. “The Clock took us to the future where we didn’t come to our world?”
“I think so,” Bob said, gasping as Wes’s horniness overrode his caution and he started to press his cock inside Bob alongside Cal’s, correctly assuming that Bob would fit him. “But that’s…impossible…”
“Why?” Cal asked, nipping Bob’s ear.
“Because nobody can travel to the other side of the Split. It’s not…our tech, our time travel power, isn’t capable of crossing whatever barrier is between the two timelines. We’ve tried. We’ve lost people trying.”
“Is the Involuted Clock that powerful?” Wes asked with a grunt, as Cal took Mick’s cock in hand, rubbing it against Bob’s leg.
“It’s not about power, it’s, it’s…it’s about a form of magic called quantum physics. It has rules like anything else. You can’t build a tower to the moon. We can’t cross the Split. The Clock’s power…breaks the rules.”
Oh. Oh, shit. Cal closed his eyes. “You’re saying we’re stuck here.”
Bob nodded, squeezing his eyes shut. “My instruments aren’t working. The Bureau is pretty sure time travel doesn’t work here. I don’t think I can get us back. I’m sorry.”
“Hey,” Mick said, hand on Bob’s face. Bob opened his eyes, and Mick pushed his cock inside too, alongside both of them. “It’s okay.”
Bob gasped, clinging to him. “No, it’s not.”
“Yes it is,” Mick insisted, with a thrust. “We’ll figure it out. Just as soon as we clear up this temporal vertigo thing, fuck.”
“Yeah, it’s a bit of a bitch,” Wes agreed.
Cal nodded, holding Bob. He kissed his neck. “We’ll be fine,” he promised. “The Clock brought us here. We’ll just find it.”
“Nobody finds the Involuted Clock. It just does shit.”
Cal smiled, closing his eyes and picking up his thrusting, enjoying Wes and Mick’s cocks beside his. Together the three of them pounded Bob for a good few minutes, until Cal felt his orgasm grow. One errant twitch of Wes’s cock did it, and Cal was cumming inside Bob, biting his shoulder. Then Mick started to cum, and Wes right after him, all three of them filling Bob right up.
Cal took his mouth off Bob. “I found the motherfucker once,” he reminded Bob. “And I’ll fucking find it again. I’m sure your Bureau is competent enough, but my team is better and you know that.”
“I…” Bob sighed, relaxing into an orgasm of his own. “Yeah, I do know that. I believe you.”
“Good.” Cal kissed him again, and extricated himself out from underneath Bob. “Now stop worrying about that and worry about something useful, like being a good hole for your teammates.”
“Y-yes, Captain.”
Cal smiled and gave him one more kiss. “That’s better. Love you.”
“Love you too,” Bob said, voice distant now.
Cal squeezed his shoulder, then kissed Mick and Wes both. “Love you guys too. Can I leave you with him while I go check on team morale?”
“Sure,” Wes said, as they sandwiched Bob between them. “We’ll take care of him.”
“Make sure he takes care of you too, that’s his job,” Cal warned.
“Got it,” Mick promised. “We’re good, Cal.”
Cal could tell he meant that, so he nodded, and went over to Joey. He lifted Joey’s tail out of the way and pressed inside him, just so he didn’t get any funny ideas about being the boss just because he was topping someone.
Cal was the boss here, and this team was his responsibility. It didn’t matter if it was a cult or a torture god or an impossible timeline in a world that shouldn’t exist. He would get them home.
Just as soon as they all fucked this temporal vertigo out of each other’s systems.
—
How Best to Use a Sword 