It's Always Time Act 05

It's Always Time, Act Five: Just Desserts

Chapter Three: Too Little Too Late

* * * *

"STUDY the myths and legends of cultures across the world, and many uncanny similarities soon appear: great floods, winged dragons, serpentine women, cannibal kings, cunning imps, and mad oracles are just a few of the common mythological motifs. Look closer still and the stories of myth, the sequence of events tying these mythic motifs together, take on a familiar rhythm: a hero must journey into the underworlds of Hell to recover what was lost; a heroine must endure trials of pain and disgrace to free her beloved from enchantment; hubris is punished, courtesy rewarded; a prophecy of doom is only fulfilled when someone tries to prevent it from happening in the first place.

"Many of these coincidences can be explained by the myth-makers' proximity in time and geography. Roman myths mirror earlier Greek myths because the Romans adopted the legends and religions of the peoples they conquered. But the continual repetition of themes, symbols, and events have lead some scholars to hypothesize the existence of a monomyth,

a central story ingrained so deep in social fabric and psyche of the human condition that it is the seed for all others. Attempts to distill the monomyth from the corpus of world legend have met with only modest success. The failure to find the monomyth is not one of method, but of point of view, and the monomyth will remain hidden until the mythographer considers the possibility that the monomyth is not an archetype of the mind, but an artifact of history. Instead of the same story being retold over and over in slight variation, the same situation, the same sequences of events, had actually recurred, playing out again and again, throughout history and across the world, by the same players under different names and, most importantly, different ingredients.

"Until now."

-From the introduction to

Deiter Detwiler: The Hero with a Thousand Flavors

, by Ursula Frost, 2nd Printing 2010

* * * *

Freeing his elbows did the trick. Dee pried his chest and legs from the crushing strata of granite beneath the pavement, dug through rubble, and hauled ass onto the asphalt. Grit got everywhere and itched like crazy.

"Some superman," Raspberry said as Dee emerged, one hand shoved into the seat of his pants, "scratching his ass to get glad." She wiggled in her impromptu straightjacket by Brooks Brothers. "He took his damn sweet time, too."

Eurydice knelt behind Raspberry and encouraged the lavender girl to recline into her green gel-flesh. Raspberry lay back with little grace. Eurydice reached around in silence, plucking at the knotted sleeves below Raspberry's breasts. Raspberry snickered at the green girl, "I was about to suggest you frig a few gallons of cum down that hole and grease him out."

Eurydice perked up. "Hey, really? That’s exactly what I was gunna do! Ellagic and citric minds must think alike." She tugged the cuff out of the knot. "But I'm too low on nanomek."

Raspberry flushed violet. "I was joking. You, uh, can really cum that much?"

"Oh, sure. Just for starters." Eurydice paused to watch Dee fuss with his cindery underwear. "That man really gets my motor running. Oh, Raz, don't cry. What's wrong?"

Amethyst tears dashed down, eating little pits into the blacktop. "I wanna get laid!"

Eurydice clucked. "That dick is Mine, girl." The knot came undone at last. "But maybe we can work something out." She peeled Yves' shirt away from Raspberry's chest.

Raspberry pulled away fast. "No, don't."

"You've got enough nanomek to hold yourself together, don't you?"

Raspberry shrugged. The overshirt yawned. Her nipples stiffened and caught the material, the midline of her breasts and midriff peeping out. "Yeah, but that's not it." She settled back into Eurydice's lap, gazing across the road.

Yves was helping Ursula pick through the concrete debris beneath the overpass. They moved from slab to slab, Ursula clinging to Yves waist, Yves supporting her by the shoulders. Raspberry undulated, a single wave rippling out from her core. The shirt-sleeves bulged, filling with lavender gel until her fingers wriggled out from the cuffs. Eyes locked on the bishi and goth girl across the street, Raspberry raised a forearm and scraped her lips over the sturdy cotton, breathing deep and shuddery. "This tastes sooo much fuckin' better than the mixing bowl."

* * * *

Ursula cast about. "They've got to be somewhere."

"Your glasses?" Yves asked.

Ursula turned in his arms. "Does it look like we need glasses?"

Yves still startled each time she—

Not "she," "they"

—moved against him. Earlier that morning, standing together before Bee's apartment, he and Ursula had held hands. The hallway became a sauna and Ursula's hand had felt as warm, clammy, and shaky as his. But that was all before Ursula met Nyx. When he had clambered over the broken concrete beneath the overpass and reached down to help her up—

"Them," damn it, help "them" up

—it was the first time he had touched

Unyx

.

Unyx's hand had felt cool and dry, fluid but not liquid, and utterly frictionless. He had shook hands with a ghost. He had looked down at her face and saw his own image double reflected in eyes of polished obsidian. No irises, no whites, not even eyebrows, just shining black orbs in a shadow eye-mask in the shape of infinity. One loop of the eye-mask had arched up her milk-white forehead (

oO

), Unyx's version of cocking her eyebrow.

And then Yves had blurted, "Ben Franklin!"

Now Yves looked into Unyx's black-on-black eyes again. "No, you don't," he said. "Those glasses did look good on you, though. On Ursula."

Unyx softened and smiled. "Yeah, they did. We'll have to fix them, maybe take out the lenses, and put in flat glass."

"So Ursula doesn't need them anymore?" Yves decided to come clean with his fear. "Ursula's still in there, right?"

"Of course I am." The eye-mask dwindled and drained away, revealing Ursula's eyes, the irises neither hazel nor emerald but shining ebony. "I have nanomek contacts now," Ursula said. "I can see

gravity

. We, Nyx and I, are Unyx when we both want to be." She shrugged. "We just want to be Unyx a whole lot, maybe even all the time from now on. I'm sorry, Yves, I know this must be freaking you out." She giggled and imitated his voice, "'Ben Franklin!' You still haven't explained that."

"Tell me what we're looking for, first," Yves said.

"My hair." Ursula touched a pom-pom tufted end of one of her shorn, horizontal pigtails. "My braids. I can't find them anywhere. Not here, not now…" She stared of into the middle distance somewhere past Yves' left ear. "Not ten minutes into the past or future." She ghost-squeezed his shoulder. "We need to find my hair, Yves, or we're all royally fucked. Nyx cut as subtly as she could, but even meliae can’t cut sharp enough to sever such a strong sympathetic connection."

"Ten minutes where? Sharp enough to what? Wait, your

hair

?"

"No fair." She shook her head, whacking Yves with a pigtail. "Oops, sorry. I want my answer: Why 'Ben Franklin'?"

"Caloric theory," Yves said. Ursula looked blank. "Look, I may have taken English for Engineers in college, but I know my history of science. Ben Franklin thought that electricity was a fluid. Before modern atomic theory, all sorts of stuff was considered fluid: electricity, light, heat and cold, were all supposed to be a kind of dry goop. I touched your hand, touched Nyx, and the first thing I thought of was Ben fucking Franklin and his fucking electric-heat goo." Something clicked in his head and his migraine returned with a vengeance. "Oh, no, not

Benjamin Franklin

. Do not tell me Nyx boned Franklin in a past life or something. I can't take any more of that kind of crap."

Ursula laughed hard enough to make her stumble. She cinched her arms tighter about Yves waist and he gave her shoulders a supporting hug. He had to hook his arm in her armpit or risk slipping off her near-frictionless, second skin. Ursula puffed, pressing her cheek to Yves' ribs. "Oof, so little nanomek left, I need to be careful."

"I saw that," Raspberry cried out from across the street. "Oldest trick in the book, baby-butch bitch!" But Eurydice waggled her and CeeCee, still lying supine on the side of the road, gave Ursula a thumbs-up.

Ursula stuck her tongue out at all three of them; to Yves relief, it was as pink as ever, not black. "

Any

way," she said, "Nyx doesn't remember fucking any Founding Fathers. She's different from the others. Not a meliae, really; something else."

"What the heck is she made of, anyway?" Yves asked.

"Just what you said: electric-heat goo. Sort of. Black Cherry mixed her from Devil's Food pudding and about a pint of latex paint."

Yves massaged his forehead, knowing it would do little for his migraine. "But those two things don’t mix. At all."

"No, they don't," Ursula agreed, "but they gave the nanomek a framework to work its magic, to mix her essence, not just her physical substance." She pulled away, testing her own balance. "You know your history of science, I know my alchemy. Nyx is phlogiston, the

terra pinguis et fluida

: the black blood of the Earth."

"You mean oil."

"She means Black Blood of the Earth," Tomoe cackled, hopping from one slab to the other, snake-skin purse swinging on its strap. "That reminds me: I wonder what Egg Shen is up to? Took him clubbing about two centuries ago and he never called back, the bastard." She reached an adjacent slab. "Hey, little sisters. Is your last name Exposition, by any chance? You're better at it than me."

"It's Frost." Ursula looked Tomoe up and down. "'Tiamat,' huh?" She smirked. "How many hit dice you got?"

Tomoe harrumphed, then leaned close and took up one horizontal pigtail in each hand. "Handlebars," she drawled, giving Ursula's hair a gentle-back-and-forth tug. She stood straight, hands on hips, and surveyed the whole Ursula/Nyx package. "I'd ride that like a bicycle."

"Oh, ha ha…Oh. Oh, shit. Yves." Ursula turned, eyes glittering in alarm. "Black Cherry. Black Cherry must have my hair."

"Uh, I've got be honest." Yves shrugged. "So what? She's got Galatea, she's planning to mass rape-murder about fifty college guys, and then ending the world. I think we need to prioritize a bit here. What am I missing?" An engine revved somewhere above them.

"I haven't had a haircut since I was twelve." It was Yves' turn to look blank, so Ursula continued, "Remember all that sympathetic magic stuff I talked about? How my soap established a connection between me and Galatea, so I could find her? Well, a decade worth of my hair, all cut off at once, is the strongest sympathetic connection to me anyone could possibly have, other than some fresh blood. It's better than any voodoo doll; it's a perfect stand-in for me, for my body." The humming motor drew near. "If Black Cherry knows anything about magic, she can turn me—and Nyx—into her skank-bots with it, and then use us to control anyone we have a sympathetic connection with."

"Your homemade soap," Yves said in dawning dread. "Galatea used it. Dee too."

"And the girl at Starbucks," Ursula said.

Yves thought about it. "You mean the one with the great—"

"Yeah," Ursula butted in, blushing silver as a rose Mini Cooper sped down the highway off ramp toward them.

"Black magic is just like VD," Tomoe said, nodding. The Mini Cooper zipped past, horn

meep-meeping

a friendly greeting. "But you don't even get to cum first."

* * * *

Dee contemplated his navel, plumbing for pebbles. The rose Cooper pulled up beside him, idling. The passenger door popped open, the front seat pushed up to the glove compartment. Four gallons of bottled water sloshed in the rear foot well. The brunette EZ coed lay unconscious on the narrow back bench. "She's wearing your dress," Dee said.

The little car's AM radio crackled to life. "You want her naked?"

"No," Dee said, straightening his muscle shirt and bending in, "but I didn't think someone else could wear it. You can divide?" He moved the four bottles onto the road.

"Not exactly," came SB's voice from the radio. "Only one part of me can really come off. I can make all sorts of things, though."

Dee pinched the coppery fabric between his thumb and forefinger. "It feels…real. Not rubbery or kinky at all."

"You sound disappointed. I locked it. It's real, and hers to keep. Look, could you take her out, please? I don't wanna change back with her still inside me—don't know her near well enough—and I feel really stupid talking through the radio."

Dee eased his arms around the brunette and lifted her out. "You didn't find the others?"

The car's engine cut off. The chassis glinted liquidly, collapsed like an accordion before spindling into SB with a familiar metallic sigh. "I did, but a state trooper picked them up first." She read Dee's panicked expression and added, "Don't worry. Most people don't come this way unless they're drawn in somehow. And besides, the local patrollers are used to some seriously weird shit."

The brunette in Dee's arms yawned, eyes blinking. She tipped her head.

SB stood two feet away, rose-red and buck-naked, candy floss cornrows drifting in the gentle breeze, flaccid cock dangling to her knees. She flashed her diamond grin. "Why hullo there."

The brunette squeaked, latching herself around Dee's chest. Confusion clouded her brow. Her fingers tickled over his back, feeling yielding skin covering marble-hard muscle. She tilted her head up with exaggerated care.

"Please don't faint," Dee said, trying for his most disarming smile.

She fainted.

"Fuck."

* * * *

SB lugged the water jugs over to the far side of the street, proffered two to Eurydice and Raspberry. The green and lavender girls tore open the bottle's plastic tops and guzzled. SB called across the road. "Hey, Unyx!"

Beneath the overpass, Ursula turned, black eye-mask flowing into place over her eyes. "Yeah?"

"C'mon over."

"'Kay."

SB unscrewed the top of the third bottle and knelt beside CeeCee. The amber woman lay on the pavement, slowly liquefying. "Are you going to be okay?" SB asked her.

"Not without a lot of nanomek—and I mean a lot—very soon." She reached up. "But some water will see me through for a little while. Thanks, honey." She filled out as she drank, her half-melted curves coalescing until she looked less like a runny butter sculpture and more like a record-breaking slice of creamy cheesecake molded into a big titty momma of rock and roll.

Unyx wobbled over, her candy coating of glossy black swirled with matte gray. "'Zup?"

SB passed her the last bottle. A few feet away, Raspberry and Eurydice chugged down the last of their water. They tossed the imploded plastic bottles over their shoulders into the fallow field behind them. They belched in near unison and dissolved into giggles.

Unyx took a few sips and handed it back.

"Wait," said Raspberry, the water spreading through her gel restoring her to a healthy jiggle. "That's all you need? After all that badass kung fu magic shit?"

Unyx arched her eye-mask. "Nyx gets the water she needs from Ursula."

Eurydice wrinkled her nose. "Oh, ew."

Raspberry's amethyst eyes sparkled. "Wicked!"

"Huddle up, girls," said SB, "We gotta talk." Unyx hunkered down and CeeCee scooted close. "Listen," SB said, voice low, "I'm running low on nanomek, enough to make me nervous." She hooked a thumb. "CeeCee's got one butt-cheek in the big freezer in the sky."

"Now that's just silly," CeeCee said. "It's true, but silly."

"Anybody else?" SB asked.

"I fragment awful fast," Eurydice replied, "I burn nanomek to stay coherent. And after that crash? I'm damn low."

"We're going gray," Unyx said, "that can't be good."

Raspberry sniffed the tails of her shirt. "I've never needed a hot beef injection more in my life."

"You're less than a day old," CeeCee insisted, "and you've been saying that every fifteen minutes since you were born. So what are we going to do?"

Raspberry blushed purple and looked across the street. Tomoe and Yves traded withering witticisms.

Eurydice shook her head. "We can't ask him. You don't know what he's been through."

"What if he…" Raspberry made a hollow fist and pumped up and down above her crotch.

"Where's the fun in that?" CeeCee protested.

Raspberry's blush deepened into a raging indigo. "I—we—that is…You know. Watch."

"Oh, honey." CeeCee patted the lavender girl on her mane of orchid petals. "That man's turned you into a blushing violet."

"Yves is out for the count," Unyx said. "He's been up over thirty-six hours, he's had the shit kicked out of him two, three times now, and he's running on empty calories, caffeine and adrenaline. He's amazing, but he's only human."

SB pursed her lips, nodding. She stood up, scraping her hands together, a coppery one-piece dress settling over her firm lines and gentle curves. "Let me see what I can do about that."

"Besides," Eurydice said, watching SB swagger over to Yves and Tomoe, "we're going to need a lot. Like, a whole lot. I'm talking pints."

Unyx, CeeCee, Raspberry, and Eurydice all craned their necks, smooth and slow. Dee stood under the overpass across from Yves, a brunette coed in his arms, chestnut hair falling in ringlets into his face. He returned their burning gazes, oblivious.

"What?" he said.

* * * *

Yves' migraine fissured his thinking. "I'm sorry, Tomoe. What did you say?"

Tomoe held out the two pills again. "Little. Yellow. Different. Come on, it's a perfect straight line."

"Tomoe, look." Yves felt the mad desire to drill a hole in his skull; anything to relieve the pressure-pain. He forgot what he was going to say.

SB sauntered up, her usually tight one-piece dress flowing loose past her knees. "Hey, T, Yves. Wow, Yves, you look like shit."

Yves tried to smile, grateful for the rescue, but only affected a grimace. "Well, I feel like shit." He managed to put two thoughts together. "So at least there's symmetry." His knees began to buckle.

SB steadied him, her grip strong and cool on Yves' bare forearm. "Yves, you've got to take a break. You're dead on your feet." He lost what she said next to the miasma of migraine. SB's thumb slipped under the strap of his tan, sleeveless tee shirt, massaged a pressure point in the hollow of his collar bone. The pain and fatigue faded enough for him to focus. "Ride me, Yves."

He found his balance. "What?"

"Welcome back," SB smirked. Her grip slid down his arm and she placed her hand in his, careful to avoid the gauze bandage on the pad of his thumb. "I said, 'Take a ride with me, Yves.' Back to SRU. There's something there that I want to give you." Tomoe coughed. SB glared. "What now?" Tomoe unsnapped the top of her purse and pulled out a plain, glass mason jar filled with strawberry-red jam. SB's expression softened. "You knew? Of course you knew. And you're okay with it?"

Tomoe held out the jar. "Are you kidding? I've been watching this bit for

weeks

." SB took the jar with her free hand and Tomoe added, "Give the knight his sword. After all, you haven't had this good a candidate in forever, seems like."

SB took a step back and tugged on Yves arm. "C'mon, Yves. Eurydice and her pals are running on empty and looking at Dee like he was the

Exxon Valdese

. You don't want to be here for what's about to happen next."

Yves shook his head. "Nothing Dee does surprises me any more, not after the skank-bot gangbang. The world works different for him, that's all. I just need to figure out the rules." SB smiled and tugged again, and this time Yves followed her. "But I can always work out the rules later. Or from a minimum safe distance."