It's Always Time Act 04

Act Four: Food for Thought

Chapter Three: That Fine Line

"Shit," Dee said over dry crackling, "I broke another tree. Sorry." He let go of Eurydice's waist, slipped out of her nectarous sex, and stepped back.

Eurydice threw him a lazy, cross-eyed smile over her bare shoulder. "S'okay," she panted, clinging to the listing tree for dear life. "I'm goo—oop!" The tree groaned and gave way, dragging her down with it. She lay there, bent over the fractured tree stump, her rump high in the air. "Man, am I good." Her giggles sent shock waves through her heart-stopping apple of an ass.

Dee ogled her rear-end. Green syrup wept down the insides of her squeezing thighs. The translucent flesh of her ass, her pussy, and her tenebrous inner gel, churned a milky, pale jade as his cum suffused her substance. He ran three fingers up the inner curve of a thigh and the liquid of her sex ran down the back of his hand as hot mint jelly. Eurydice cooed and rocked back, squashing his fingers between her legs. Dee grinned, angled his fingers up, and eased them further in. Eurydice whimpered and thumped the ground with her fist, stirring a little flurry of twigs, leaves and earth into the air. "No fair," she whined as he slid his hand about, "don't tease me."

Dee bowed over her. She groaned, propped herself up, and crushed her back into his chest. "I thought you liked it," he scolded into her ear.

"I do. I like it too much." She plopped back down to the ground in a viridian puddle.

"And we're running out of trees," Dee admitted.

Eurydice glanced around, frowning. The four toppled trees gave her a clear view of the road and the Jeep. "I finally get to fuck you in public, and nobody's watching, dammit. Yves is just sitting there reading a roadmap."

"Yves is not a voyeur," Dee said. "'Unless there're two dicks involved, and one of them's mine, I'm not interested,' he says. It's part of his 'existential monogamy' nonsense." He tapped her on the ass. "C'mon, hon. He's waiting."

"It's not just that," Eurydice said, watching Yves comparing notes between the hardcopy map and talky GPS. "He's wound so tight." She turned to Dee, eyes glistening. "You know why, right?" Dee nodded and she faced forward again. "And now he's surrounded by goo girls. It isn't his wet dream, it's a nightmare. What are we going to do?"

Dee cleaned himself off with the muscle shirt. "The only thing we can do." He plucked his briefs and borrowed sweatpants off a broken branch. "Be his friends and help him save the world. Oh, and ruin another one of his shirts. I grabbed a bunch of his old clothes from his closet and stuck them in the trunk."

Eurydice smirked. "I like your priorities. Let's go." She pulled herself upright, her chest stamped with the zigzag of tree bark. Gel pulsed down her legs in a fluidic reflex, splashing into the puddle of piping hot apple jam at her feet. Teeny whitecaps formed on the puddle's surface and soon Eurydice stood in the center of a minute maelstrom. She huffed and closed her eyes in concentration. The whitecaps peaked and spun, higher and faster. Eurydice clenched her fists at her sides. "C'mon, dammit, c'mon, keep it together."

Dee could see the anxiety painted across her face. He tried to ask if everything was all right, but she spat, "I can do this, dammit." She hefted her fists up, arms trembling with the effort, as if struggling to raise heavy, invisible dumbbells. The whitecaps stabbed into the air, rising and wriggling like fingers—"Got it!"—Eurydice snapped her fists up to her shoulders and the whirligig of goo funneled up her legs, feeding her core. "Got it, God damn it."

Dee pressed a gentle hand against her back. He felt currents racing below the surface tension of her gel-flesh. "Are you in control?"

"Aye. I mean, yeah." This time, the smile she gave Dee over her shoulder was crooked but nervy. "But if you ask which me is in control, I'm going to kick you in the crotch."

Dee nodded. "It's a fair cop; that's exactly what I was thinking." He hitched up his briefs. "But is there anything I can do?"

Eurydice winked. "Lower your sperm count?"

Dee snapped the elastic band of his briefs. "I'm already wearing really tight undies."

"I can see that," Eurydice breathed, eyes shining as she glanced down. She sighed and shook her head. "Better put Mine away, Dee, unless you brought Hazmat suits for your friends along with those extra clothes. I lose a little control with each nanogasm."

"You kind of always have," Dee said, pulling on the pair of baggy Hammer pants.

"But not like this. Too many nanogasms at once and I, um..." She groped for the right word. "I fragment, I guess."

Dee perked up. "Like a hard drive."

"You are such a dork." Eurydice mugged and morphed into her Unabomber disguise. She took care to smooth out tufts of unruly, violent green cilia that erupted from random crevices, sprouting from the tops of her boots and struggling out from between her tits.

"I'm in love with a Great Old One," Dee mused as the last writhing mass vanished into her disguise. "What would Lovecraft say?"

"Howard? Dunno," Eurydice shrugged, "he kept passing out. Had to take notes from Clark and Rob."

Dee's eyes bugged out of his head. "You're shitting me."

Eurydice crooked an eyebrow at him and popped her sunglasses on. "I don't kiss and tell." She sauntered out of the devastated copse and onto the road.

Dee hopped after her. "Aw, come on, you've got to be kidding. Right? Right?"

Eurydice swung her hips, crying out a preposterous, overacted fake orgasm. "Ia! Ia!" Ursula swaggered into view around the Jeep and Eurydice froze mid-swing. "Ia—

whoa

."

Dee's jaw dropped. Ursula scissored down the road, a proverbial walking streak of sex. She had abandoned her clunky Doc Martins for a pair of gleaming, black vinyl go-go boots that hugged her ankles and disappeared up the bellbottomed legs of her jeans. Thick, six-inch heels

whacked-whacked-whacked!

on the pavement as Ursula brought one foot down right in front of the other. Without the poncho, the waist of her jeans smiled wide under her flat stomach, riding low enough to expose the mouth of the valley of her crotch. Dee saw no flash of flesh, just more of that same glossy black PVC-like material. It rose up out of her pants in a seamless one-piece, sealing off her entire body below the neck in a hard candy shell that yielded and flexed with her every movement and breath but never stretched or creased. An Emma Peel cat-suit with muscle memory. "How do we look?"

"You have to ask?" Dee managed.

Ursula ground to a halt. Her fingers, gloved skintight, toyed with a long, plaited ponytail as she muttered. "Yves wouldn't look up from the map. CeeCee wouldn't stop wisecracking. Raz couldn't stop frigging but that's okay because she says the most awful things anyway."

Dee interrupted but soon found himself at lost for words. "Ursula, you've got nothing to worry about. You look, well, I don't quite know how to say this, but you look..."

"

Damn

, girl," wowed Eurydice.

"Yeah," Dee agreed. "What she said."

Ursula blushed, beamed, and flounced back to the jeep. Dee watched her braids pendulum across her ass. "I wonder how that feels for Nyx," he said.

"Mm, I can't even imagine," Eurydice sighed. When Ursula disappeared around the Jeep, Eurydice asked him, "Should I be jealous?"

"Excuse me?" Dee crooked his thumb. "You were the one who fucked her, apparently."

"No," Eurydice said, swaying close and running her hands over Dee's ribs. "I mean, have we ever tried that? Have you ever, y'know..." She left a curlicue finger-trail of green frosting over his abs. "...worn me?"

"Not like that," Dee admitted. "Not exactly."

Eurydice pouted. "Then I am jealous."

Dee waggled his eyebrows. "You don't remember the Nanocream Bubble Spa Technique."

Eurydice pulled off her sunglasses to wonder at him wide-eyed. "Whuzzat?"

Dee scooped the frosting off his skin and popped it into his mouth, lips smacking at the tangy taste. "I don't kiss and tell, either." Eurydice mocked shock and Dee added, "You'll remember. You'll remember everything, I promise."

Dee smiled as confidently as he could and made his way past her toward the Jeep, pretending not to hear the anxious way her voice fell as she mustered, "Yeah, I know I will."

* * * *

"This is an utter indignity," CeeCee protested from the trunk of the Jeep, a cramped gap between the backseat and the vehicle's rear hatch. "I like restraint if it doesn't go too far, but a woman of my stature should not be so confined."

"Get your

boobs

out of my

head

," Eurydice huffed.

Dee, intrigued by the peculiar phrasing, twisted in the front seat to get a good look. Eurydice mashed her elbows against the avalanche of confection-flesh billowing over the lip of the trunk. The speeding Jeep jolted. CeeCee's butter yellow tits bulged around Eurydice's arms and flumped against both sides of her head, orange areola smothering the green girl's ears through the hoody. "Great," Eurydice said as stiff nipples slipped through the surface tension of her own citrus gel, "now all I can think about is tight, scratchy sweaters, baby binkies, and—for some reason—Graham cracker crumbs."

"Unless your man's hankering for a slice of Key Lime pie," CeeCee told her, "we'd better get to this 'SRU' place in a hurry."

"Would you rather be stuck on the roof with Raspberry?" Eurydice threatened.

"I'm fucking the wind!" Raspberry hollered from above. Lavender Ghostbuster slime spattered the windows. Yves flicked on the windshield wipers, launching a spray of wiper fluid. "Oh, bugger off, you butt-pirate." Yves snarled and pumped the brake. Raspberry cried out with each lurch. "Oh, yeah! Harder! Give it! Aw, was that the best you got?"

"I think I'm beginning to hate her," Yves said, pinching the bridge of his nose. Eurydice shot Dee a worried look. Dee put a hand on Yves' arm. "I'll be okay," Yves muttered. "That caffeine headache must be kicking in early. Are you sure you know where we're going? The GPS thinks were in middle of the county reservoir." Dee gave Yves a reassuring shoulder squeeze and Yves sagged in the driver's seat. "Look, I'm know I'm not 'great' or even close to 'fine,' but I will be okay, so let's just get this thing done. I swear I'll let you know if I get in trouble. Hell, you'll probably know before I do. All right?" Dee nodded and Yves glanced into the rearview mirror and spoke to Eurydice. "You too, all right?" Eurydice nodded and fought back another landslide of cheesecake. Yves rolled his eyes, frowned, and angled the rearview mirror. "Ursula, what's up? Carsick?"

Ursula sat in the backseat next to Eurydice, flushed and agape, her face prickled with sweat, her oval eyeglasses askew at the tip of her nose. "N-no, not really, I'm fine. Really. Just..." She shifted in her poncho. The rubbery collar around her neck looked dappled and slick. "Just don't bounce and jerk the car around like that again, okay? All that cum, um, commotion caught us by surprise, that's all."

Yves shrugged, scanning the road ahead. Eurydice, arms spread wide to hold back the marshmallow tide, grinned at Dee but said nothing. Ursula turned to look out the window, cupping her chin with a gloved hand. She ran two black-lacquered fingertips over her lips. A single, impish giggle escaped her and she sucked her fingers into her mouth. The inky material of the glove wrinkled and wriggled in frantic motion, but Ursula just worked her fingers in and out, her slurping laughter deep and muffled.

"Do I want to know?" Yves asked as Dee spun to face forward.

"No," Dee said, blushing scarlet, "you really don't."

"Good," said Yves, pulling the Jeep into a wide, empty parking lot with a white brick building squatting in the middle of it, "because we're here."

"No Mini Coop," Dee observed, "but the sign says 'Open,' so SB is probably inside. Don't park too close. We don't want to interrupt anything."

"Mm, listen," Ursula said, pulling her wet fingers out of her mouth. "They've got a bathroom in there, right? Because I really gotta pee—

Eeep

!" She sat up, stiff as a board and thunderstruck. She blinked, blushed, and relaxed. "Uh, never mind."

Eurydice edged away from Ursula as Yves picked a parking space halfway into the lot. The Jeep's engine cut off and Dee heard a discordant ringing at the edge of hearing. The car ticked as it cooled. "Well," Yves said, waving a hand at the cluttered storefront window. "Now what?"

The ugly claxon grew loud as the door with

SRU MEDICAL

stenciled in fading blue ink opened inward. A lean, muscular girl with skin the color of Ruby Red grapefruit juice and cornrows of cotton candy stepped out onto the sidewalk. Her coppery, sleeveless dress rippled in the wind, tracing the sleek physique beneath.

"Dee, I thought you said Strawberry Banana was hung like a horse," Yves said. The rose girl stepped down onto the pavement. Dee nodded. "Some dick-girl," Yves scoffed, eyes narrowed. "Where's her dick?"

The rose girl raised her right arm parallel with her shoulder. She furled her fingers and a forest of fractals sprouted from her palm. The pale, rainbowed lines and wedges zigzagged through the air, reminding Dee of the sudden, geometric spread of ice crystals captured with time-elapsed photography. The cloud of chaos whirling away from her fingers grew random and fractured and unrecognizable, but at some hidden instant collapsed into solidity and certain, deadly shape.

The rose girl held her scimitar aloft. Its wide, curving blade of pale pink crystal dazzled with sunlight. She wrapped her left hand around its huge pommel and brought it down before her chest in the imposing two-handed grip of a harem guard from the decadent flights of Arabian fantasy. Her diamond eyes were cold and expressionless. The sickle tip of the sword towered above her head. For a long while, Dee heard no sound other than that horrid bell, blessedly muffled behind the closing door. Then came the crunch of dust and lose pavement as the rose girl advanced on the Jeep.

Yves stared ahead. He clucked his tongue.

"Do something, Dee," Eurydice whispered, huddled into CeeCee's pliant flesh.

"What should I do?" Dee asked as the rose girl drew closer." SB could probably kick my ass six ways to Sunday. Maybe I could talk to her?" He shook his head to clear it. "Wait, what are we worried about? She's made out of Jell-O. That

sword

is made out of Jell-O. It's useless."

The rose girl swept the sword out and down in an underhand grip. Its tip connected with the pavement. Sparks flew. She stepped over the charred, smoking scar the sword left in the blacktop. The swing followed through and the sword slapped back into both hands again, unmarked.

"I just shat my pants," Raspberry announced from the roof. The rose girl had crossed half the distance between the store and the Jeep. "I had to grow pants just to pinch a loaf in them. Somebody better appreciate the effort I went through before we all die by shish kabob."

"I think," Yves said calmly—and Dee knew that Yves at his calmest was also Yves at his most dangerous—"I've had enough of this sort of thing for today." Yves clicked open his seatbelt, eased out the driver's side door, and ambled into the rose girl's path. He walked with an unhurried gate, shoulders squared, his knees and arms kept bent at a relaxed angle.

"Yves' in trouble," Dee said.

"Don't let her hurt him, Dee," Eurydice pled.

Dee hunkered in the Jeep's busted doorframe, ready to leap out at the two figures closing ranks in front of him. "I won't."

Damn it,

, he thought,

none of this makes any sense.

SB wound her scimitar back, a batter ready to swing for the bleachers. Dee coiled to jump.

I can't think of any reason for SB to act this way...

"I've sparred with a Swiss

Flambergé

," Yves said, never breaking his stride as he stepped within striking distance, "a

Zweihänder

sword almost as tall as I am, even a stupid Klingon

bat'leth

." He did not stop until he and SB stood toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye. "But that..." Yves nodded at the crystal bladed scimitar glinting high above their heads. He let the silence stretch, his observation incomplete. SB cocked one eyebrow. The sword dropped a fraction of an inch, and Yves said, "...is just gay."

Dee thought,

Unless this is another test?

"And that," Yves finished, "is coming from a guy who voluntarily has sex with men." The scimitar's scintillating tip traced an eccentric oval in the air as SB's poker face cracked into perplexity. "I mean," Yves added, pointing, "look at that thing. It's got to be over a foot wide, and, what, four feet long? Something from a video game." He shook his head. "Not a real sword. What the Hell can you do with it? Run around screaming 'Hassan chop'?" SB glared in silent defiance, turned aside, and brought the sword down close, hugging the pommel between her breasts, like a toddler protecting her favored teddy bear from a bullying brother. "Fine," Yves shrugged, stepping back. "I'll show you." He held out his hand. "Give it here."

SB stared down into Yves open palm. Dee stood up in the Jeep doorframe, leaning outward. "Uh, Yves?"

Yves flicked a

Stay-out-of-this

frown in Dee's direction before waggling the fingers of his outstretched hand at SB. "Well?"

Scowling in uncertainty and moving with exaggerated care, SB offered the haft of the scimitar to Yves. Yves wrapped a hand around the roseate bulge of the pommel. SB stared at Yves' tan hand for a while before Yves said, "You've got to let go eventually, you know." SB relaxed her fingers and the full weight of the blade transferred to Yves. "See?" Yves grunted, quickly grabbing the scimitar with both hands. "It's got to weigh over ten pounds. There's no way you can...Huh." He choked up on the grip and took another pace backward. "It's got good balance, I'll give you that." SB pursed her lips, a sarcastic smirk beginning to blossom on her face—the scimitar swooshed once, twice, three times around Yves' shoulders as he whipped it about with the expertise of a champion baton twirler—and SB gasped and gawped instead, hands clenched over her heart.

Dee hopped onto the pavement. "Hey,

Yves

?"

Yves ignored him and set the scimitar spinning on its pommel in the flat of one hand. SB broke out into a sweat, her hands dropping to trace little, twitching circles over her washboard abs and chiseled obliques. "Alright," Yves confessed, tossing the sword end-over-end and high into the air, "it's got freakin'

amazing

balance." The sword purred—

whum-whummm

—slicing the sky before Yves snatched it and began an effortless twirl again. "But let's see what it can

really

do."

SB's eyes flashed with panic. "Wait..." Yves executed a simple, modified

kata

form-exercise: knelt on one knee then barked wordlessly, striking out horizontal with the blade before rising for a wicked quick, overhead cut in the empty air. SB moaned and plopped down hard onto her ass. Yves performed a series of fluid slashes, cuts, and thrusts of a

kata

for practicing fending off three attackers at once. SB, her eyes glazed and jaw hanging, watched him shuffle, swing, and shout as he completed one maneuver after another, describing a circle around her. "Please," she begged, clawing at the pavement. "Nn, God, please...I, I can't..."

The hollering bell grew loud again. "Hey, blondie." A young woman with raven hair glowered from the storefront doorway. Yves stopped in mid-mock decapitation to turn and look. Below the quivering blade, SB's eyes rolled back into her head and she toppled over insensate.

"Give Strawberry her banana back," Tomoe said.

Yves snapped out of his combat-trance. "Sorry. I'm really comfortable working up a sweat with this thing for some reason. I guess I got carried away. And I stand corrected about what I said before: this is a real sword." He knelt, holding the scimitar out to SB. "Here you go. Hey, you okay?"