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Chapter Text

|| The Year XXXX; Skaian Chronology HQ

"AA, mission control wants to see you."

Your Synchronal Operations Language and Logistics User Experience system's voice echoes from your Temporal Apparatus wrist watch. You perk up. You're needed in mission control? That must mean that there's work to be done.

"How exciting!" you respond to the AI. "Tell them I'll be there soon, Sollux."

"You got it."

You put away the little music box that you'd been tinkering with and make your way from your room, out into the main hallways of HQ. It's busy as always, with people walking past. Some are clearly fresh off of an excursion, wearing period appropriate clothing or hazard suits. You see a beautiful roman headdress, a mammoth pelt kilt, and a gorgeous kimono. Kanaya always knocks it out of the park with these hand-crafted outfits - you make a note to compliment them when you next see her. You hope this upcoming mission lets you wear something fun!

You all but rush through the atrium, which is filled to the brim with ticking clockwork, powering the most powerful temporal anchor across the timeline. It's a sight to see, but you simply do not have time to admire it now!

You're almost out of breath by the time you get to mission control, but that doesn't stop the beaming smile across your face. You love your job. "You needed me?"

W.Q. is standing next to a live map of temporal readings. The 1920s is completely grayed out, but that's nothing new. The large warning sign currently centered around the year 440 BCE is very new, though.

"Yes. An unusually large anomaly has sprung up over the Aegean Sea during the golden age of Athens. Given your experience correcting anomalies and your knowledge of classical archaeology, we were hoping you could take a look into it."

You feel your cheeks starting to hurt from how wide you're smiling. Oh, you love going to times before the common era.

"Of course! I would be happy to pop in and hopefully correct the issue at hand!"

Despite your excitement, W.Q.'s face is grim. "Be careful, Megido," she warns. "This is likely the biggest anomaly we've ever seen. If you feel as though it's too much, I want you to back out immediately. We don't want to lose you. Even if all you can do is come back with some information..."

"I assure you, I don't intend to die," you say. "I will be careful!"

The look on her face implies that W.Q. feels otherwise, but she doesn't say as much. She lets out a heavy sigh, and then nods. "Please do. You can proceed to launch. Kanaya's already prepared your Athenian garb, and I've sent your temporal apparatus the multi-dimensional coordinates."

You nod and proceed out of the mission control and into the 'launch pad.' It's really just a glorified dressing room, since your favorite little wrist watch can now do all of the hard work of setting up a time jump himself. Still, it always feels better to make a time jump from this room. It's tradition!

You see the chiton that has been left out for you, and you take the time to get dressed and to pull all of your hair up into a headdress. It's always a little uncomfortable fitting it all in there because you've got so much of it, but it's a small price to pay for getting to visit one of your favorite time periods.

(You have a lot of favorite time periods.)

Once you're all ready to go, you do your last checks. No obviously futuristic tells. No bits of biota that could cross-contaminate the area. Your temporal apparatus is glowing blue, showing Sollux is primed to make the jump.

"Alright. I'm ready whenever you are!"

"Initiating jump in three... two... one..."

The familiar buzz of red and blue static washes over you as Sollux bends time and space. It's one of the most thrilling feelings you've ever experienced, and you've been told your grin is almost manic whenever you activate your time machine. Your stomach drops and you close your eyes just to enjoy the rush as you fall back... back... back...

You feel your body suddenly frozen in place, the air caught in your lungs. That's new. You snap your eyes open, expecting to find yourself standing somewhere in Greece, but when they open, you see only more of the blue and red static.

You can't open your mouth to ask the question, but TA seems to know what you want to ask anyways.

"I'm having trouble breaking through the anomaly," he reports. "The temporal field is so di-istorted here that II-"

His voice starts to crackle, and you're worried that you just might be stuck here. There's plenty of grim precedent, especially from the early days of the Chronology.

Just as you think all hope is lost, the scent of the sea hits you square in the face and you hear the creak of wood as your feet hit the ground. Good! He must have figured it out and gotten you onto a trireme-

There's the sound of cannon fire, and on instinct, you throw yourself to the ground and cover your head. You hear an explosion from further away; the cannon must have hit another ship.

You are certainly not in ancient Greece.

"Gangplanks at the ready, and another round of the cannons!" a woman's voice roars. "I want eight holes in his broadside before we board!"

"AYE, CAP'N!" comes the cacophonous reply, and you feel the deck tremble beneath you as booted feet rush to fulfill their captain's orders. Across the water, you hear shouts of a decidedly panicked nature.

"They're out of iron!" the captain crows in triumph. You raise your head. You need to find better cover before they notice a stowaway dressed for a performance at the Globe. You scramble across the sand-scattered deck of what is increasingly making itself known as a pirate ship, managing to stuff yourself underneath the open riser stairs without being accosted.

Swarthy men and women festooned in scars and sweat rush to the starboard rails, coils of ropes in hand, some already twirling their grappling hooks, while others haul up long, laddered planks, a shared, eager gleam in their eyes.

You smack your watch a few times, but it just beeps and hisses at you mechanically, Sollux's voice silent for now.

"Shit." You laugh lightly to yourself. Marooned in time on a pirate ship was not the best place to be, but it was far from the most boring place. If your ears aren't deceiving you, that's real English you're hearing, not being processed and translated through your TA. Your eyes dart across the scene before you, devouring every detail despite the very real mortal peril you're in. Cutlasses, flintlocks, shouts and commands in what has to be a Caribbean pidgin: there's no doubt.

"The Golden Age of Piracy," you murmur. You're ripped out of your reverie by the screams and squalls of the two crews as the gangplanks come down. The pirates pour out from the ship onto their smaller prey like a tide. Gunshots and clashing steel rings out, and you start smacking your watch a little more insistently. "Come on, Sollux! A stray musket ball is not in my top ten ways to die! Probably not even my top twenty!"

A sudden crash of boots slamming down just a few feet away from you startles you from one panic to another, the wearer of said boots already whipping a pistol from the brace across her chest and aiming it straight between your eyes. A feat, considering her head is above the stairs and out of sight.

"Oy, up with you. The captain don't take kindly to stowaways." The voice is high and careful, not at all a match for the bloodstained sleeves and grisly weaponry it wears.

You begrudgingly raise your hands in surrender, tucking your feet back under yourself to rise to a shaky stand. As you emerge from under the stairs, you get a look at this pirate's face: skin reddened as much as it's tanned; plush, pouty lips; long, feathery lashes; and eyes the crystal blue of the sea behind her.

"I'm unarmed," you tell her, which is mostly true, as you wouldn't trust Sollux's emergency defensive laser right now, and bullet beats peronai too often for you to test your luck.

"Not very bright, sneaking onto a pirate ship without even a bootknife." She eyes your sandals dubiously, and her eyebrows raise as she takes in your bare legs. "Not very bright to forget your boots and britches, either."

You wince. "Took a wrong turn at port?" you try, but not very hard. She's already grabbing your arm with a rough, calloused hand, dragging you along as she strides towards the captain, the person you actually need to convince.

"Captain, we've got a pest problem!" the pirate calls out as she pulls you up the stairs to the quarterdeck, where a woman stands at the railing, shouting more orders. From the triumph in her voice, the attack must be going well.

It's not until you're shoved to your knees at the captain's feet that she turns to face you, glaring down at you and thumbing the hilt of her cutlass. The left side of her face is mottled with burn scars, but what's left of her hints at a strong beauty, with dark olive skin, an aquiline nose, and deep brown eyes. You wonder if she's someone you should know, if she made it into the history books. If she did, maybe you'll know the right thing to say...

"Peixes, what the hell is this? I thought you were on defence duty, not snatch and grab."

"I never left my post, Captain. She says she's been aboard since our last port of call, Captain," Peixes says with a scoff.

"That was a week ago," the captain says incredulously, then jabs you in the thigh with her boot. "Come on girl, tell the truth. You can't've been on my ship, dressed like that, for a whole week, without my crew noticing." The captain fiddles with her cutlass, exposing an inch of the blade to the sunlight.

"I'm good at hiding," you say, heart hammering. Your chiton came pre-stained with dust at the hem and discoloration at the shoulder from the peronai, but that isn't the sort of grime you'd expect to see from a week spent as a stowaway.

"She could be one of Ampora's whores," Peixes suggests. "He probably has a chest full of costumes for them."

You seize onto the lifeline that's been thrown to you. "A girl's got to make a living, don't she?" You bat your eyelashes and try to give the captain a coy smile. "But I can cook too, and clean, and tack a sail. If you keep me, I promise I'll be worth your while."

"Ampora that bad a lay you'd rather put yourself at our mercy?" the captain snorts, crouching down to get a closer look at you. "Well, you're certainly a pretty thing, but I've already got Peixes if I want to admire a pretty face."

"Vriska, how do you make even compliments sound insulting?" Peixes asks petulantly.

"It's an art," the captain - "Vriska", evidently - replies flippantly. "And don't call me that unless I'm actually admiring your pretty face. It's captain right now, remember princess? I thought royalty were all about titles."

"Only if you remember not to call me princess," Peixes responds. "I left that behind when I chose this life."

Vriska looks up at the other woman, and you wonder if their distraction is increasing your chances of survival, or simply delaying the inevitable.

"You're a romantic, Peixes. It'll get you killed." Vriska's voice is soft.

"I chose that too, when I chose you," Peixes replies, her voice softer.

You feel a warm heat at your wrist and look down. Your wristwatch is starting to flash with red and blue static again. The pirates don't notice, staring into each other's eyes.

The static gets brighter, even though you haven't spoken the code word to initiate an emergency evacuation jump.

The scene in front of you vanishes into pure static, and you feel that rush of time whizzing past you again, your stomach dropping...

Decades, centuries, millenia rush past you, all vanishing into the two-tone blur. Your head spins. Something is very wrong.

The static fizzes away like soda bubbles, and you find ground under your feet once again. The smell of soft, damp earth fills your nose, and the sound of gentle rainfall on leaves surrounds you. Your vision resolves itself, and you see before you a lush forest, the sky above grey and heavy. Moss and fern covers the ground, and distant sounds of... Birdcall? They don't sound like any birds you're familiar with.

You let out a small sigh, glad to be out of danger, when you hear it. A thump. The footfall of something big. Very big. And very close behind you.

You turn, slowly, careful not to draw attention if whatever it was hadn't already noticed you. Another footfall, and you nearly miss it, were it not for the fact it was less than a hundred feet away and looking right at you. Its scales match the grey-green of the mist and foliage, and beneath, muscles larger than your whole body convey it like a terrifying, hydraulic machine. Keen, hunter's eyes watch you, hawklike, and you feel smaller than you've ever felt in your short life.

An honest-to-god Tyrannosaurus Rex, king of the Cretaceous, is staring you down.

"Oh. Wow. I really wish I had my camera," you say. "I have one of your teeth, you know?"

The dinosaur's pupils constrict, and with no fanfare, no mighty warcry-like bellow, no Hollywood magic, the Rex rushes toward you at a speed that nothing that big has any right to be moving at, shaking the very earth.

Your heart skips a beat, and as high as "getting eaten by a dinosaur" would be on your ways-to-die ranking, you still let out a squeak of a scream, squeeze your eyes shut, and bring up your hands in front of your face in an act of sheer prey instinct as the beast thunders toward you.

Then, with a sudden flash of red and blue light, you feel your stomach drop, and this time you don't manage to stick the landing.

You fall face-first into the ample bosom of the pirate princess Peixes, who shrieks in surprise, and feel the sharp sting of captain Vriska's cutlass at your back. You freeze in place, afraid to move and risk steel to the spine.

So now your busted temporal apparatus is just sending you places willy-nilly? How the hell are you going to get back to HQ?

Chapter Text

Captain Vriska’s voice is a low growl in your ear, her blade pressing into your back until you feel a trickle of blood. “Alright, what in the blazes is this nonsense? You better start talkin’ real quick-like, sweet, if you be wanting to live.”

“Ah,” you scramble through your mental dossier of excuses for situations such as this, adrenaline still pumping from your recent brush with death. “Well, it’s a wee bit of a touchy subject, Captain, but I’ll tell you if it’s that or me life! Er…but first, may I have your leave to stand?”

Vriska grunts. “All right, but no more of this funny business, or I’m sending you right back to the ship whence you came, and you can sink with the lot of ‘em.”

“O’ course! No funny business here!” you exclaim. Vriska withdraws the blade from your back, and you withdraw your face from Peixes’ generous chest. Vriska presses the cutlass to your front this time, backing you up against the rail of the ship. You glance behind you. The water is a long way down.

“Now speak, or I’ll gut you where you stand.”

“Alright, alright!” You look from side to side, then cup a hand to your mouth. The nearest man is on the lower deck dying loudly in a pool of his own blood, so you doubt he’s going to go tattling on you, but the secrecy is mostly to sell your story either way. “Now don’t you go sharing this around, masters, this be dangerous information if it falls into the wrong hands, but y’see…” Vriska and Peixes lean in.

“...I been cursed.”

Vriska and Peixes step back from you as one, crossing their chests in a warding gesture.

You hold up your hands non-threateningly. “Now hold on, hold on! It’s naught that could spell danger to you or your ship, I swear it! I just…went and had a teensy run-in with a witch one time, and now I, well, go disappearin’ sometimes.”

“Where do ya go?” Peixes asks in a horrified whisper.

“Hell, o’ course,” you shrug.

They nod as if this makes all the sense in the world. You relax slightly, glad to have talked your way through yet again.

“Peixes, put ‘er back on the sinking ship.”

You startle. “What!?”

Peixes grabs you by the wrist and starts dragging you away.

“No, wait, please!” you cry, tugging hard against Peixes’ firm grip. She’s tough for an alleged princess, you’ll give her that- you can’t pry a single finger free. You glance at your destination across the gangplank, dragging your heels. The poor merchant ship is listing at an ominous angle, and the fight appears to have already wrapped up in favor of the pirates. You spot a small rowboat bobbing between the waves bearing a number of roughed-up sailors in uniform- one of whom appears to be wearing a British captain’s coat. With the ship evidently abandoned by its original owners and an increasingly obvious time limit, the pirates hustle to toss their stolen cargo to safer ground. A bolt of silk flies over your shoulder as you and Peixes approach the narrow crossway.

“Stop! Please! You can’t leave me here to die!!” you cry, eyeing the (aft?) end of the ship disappearing beneath the waves with dread. With your free hand, you surreptitiously smack Sollux a couple more times, but don’t get even a static shock in reply. If he can’t save you in time, drowning would be quite a bad way to go. In the bottom 50, at least.

“Sure I can!” Peixes declares cheerfully.

“No, you can’t!” Think, think, Megido. What do you have left in your arsenal to convince them?

You whip your head around to Captain Vriska, who still watches you from the quarterdeck, leaning casually over the rail with her cutlass in hand. “Captain, listen to me! My curse is harmless as a hare to you on its own, but kill me, and I’ll- I’ll come back as a vengeful ghost! Ne’er again will your crew get a peaceful night’s sleep on these waves so long as I lie unrestfully below them, I promise you that! Mercy, Captain, I beg for your mercy!!”

She squints at you. It warps the burns around her eye, like that whole side of her face is squinting too. “Bring her back, Peixes,” she calls, voice dripping with irritation.

Behind you, you think you hear Peixes release a breath. You’re brought back to stand before her at the bottom of the stairs, where Vriska stares down at you with a look of utter distaste. “You dare threaten the dread Captain Mindfang and her crew, greatest pirates of the seas, strumpet? You must be a rotting idiot. And oh, I haaaaaaaate idiots…but,” she points at you, eyes narrowed, “lucky fer you, I hate ghosts even more. So you know what? I’ll go ahead and be generous today. I’ll let you stay fer the time it takes to get to port, wench.”

You beam at her. “Oh, thank-”

“Yeah yeah, go ahead and kiss my boots, but just so you know…this ain’t a kindness. I will be makin’ you pay.” She slaps the railing under her elbow, pointing at Peixes. “Throw the lass in the brig! And before you leave her to rot, strip her of everything she’s got! If I’ve got ta harbor a cursed fugitive, I’m going ta squeeze my money’s worth out of her first!”

Peixes frowns. “Um, but Captain, we ain’t got a brig no longer? We turned it into a card room last summer, remember?”

Vriska groans, “Well, then throw her into the smelliest room you can find, Peixes, and bar the door from the outside!”

“Aye aye, cap’n!” comes her chipper reply, with a smart salute.

She drags you below decks, tossing you into a tiny bunkroom next to the galley. You stumble against the bed. It reeks of fish and body odor.

“You heard the captain, hurry up and hand over the booty.”

You sigh. Getting robbed in the past is never ideal, given the likelihood a new anomaly will be caused by the misplaced items, but it’s a hell of a lot easier of a mess to clean up than an unknown event, or, in the worst-case, your remains.

She grins as you produce a small pouch of (horribly off-period) coins and hand them to her, but you’re not surprised when she’s not satisfied with that alone, holding her hand out for more. You untangle your headdress and pins from your mass of hair and hand them over too. When she points to your peronai next, you grimly accept that she’s taking it all. You suppose the length of linen making up your chiton will fetch them a decent price, after all.

Luckily, after you hand those over she lets you go, leaving you your strophic and loincloth, at least. She scrunches your possessions under one arm, stepping back. “Alright, you heard the captain, no more funny business on the way to port, wench! If I see even a hint of demonic behavior, I’m dumping you on the nearest sand bar!” she declares loudly. Then, she leans in and whispers, “So tell me, in hell, you ever seen any fantastic beasts?”

You blink. “Ummm…Yes! Just saw one today, in fact. Nearly screamed me throat out.”

Her eyes light up. “Did it have lots of eyes and teeth and tentacles and things? Like a big sea monster?”

“Er, no, sorry.”

She deflates. “Aw.”

“-iin here changing my code, Ii can’t-”

You both jump as Sollux crackles to life on your wrist.

“What in the briny deep was that?!” Peixes exclaims.

“-don’t know what i-it wants, but anomaly readiings-”

Peixes snatches your wrist again, and you cry out as she squeezes extra tight. “Now where have you been hiding this pretty treasure, pet?”

Your eyes widen as you see her staring at your watch. She shouldn’t be able to see that!

She grabs for Sollux with her other hand, and you twist, trying to break her grasp. “No, wait, it’s dangerous, don’t-!” you shriek as she works it off your wrist.

She hoots in triumph, holding Sollux up out of your reach. “Oho, so it be a weapon! Thought us pirates easy marks, did you? Wait…what’s happening?”

To your horror, Sollux starts crackling with blue and red energy again.

“Aradi-ia! Sorry, my- Ii’ll try– briing–”

“Peixes! What’s all this ruckus? Can’t you handle one measly trollop for five– Feferi! What’s wrong?”

“Vriska!” Feferi shouts in fear.

The energy crackles down the pirate princess’s arm, and you feel your own skin prickle where your hand meets her elbow. You look up to see Captain Vriska reaching forwards with a horrified expression.

And then your stomach drops, and you’re falling through time once more.

Heat slaps you in the face, along with the flavor of dust. You squint against the light. A tumbleweed rolls by.

“What in the devil…?” Peixes exclaims, at the same time as a much different voice.

You turn. Staring you in the face is a bona-fide cowboy.

Chapter Text

Before you stands an ethnically ambiguous man with dark hair, and the single greenest eyes you’ve ever seen in your life. He has a dark olive hat, cow pelt chaps, and a belt buckle holding two Colt revolvers inside his holsters.

He’s staring at the three of you as though he’s just witnessed some sort of miracle. “What in tarnation…” he begins, right before Captain Vriska has composed herself, snapping out of her shock to place herself in between her lover, the cowboy and you, holding up her still stained with dinoblood cutlass.

“You ought to introduce yourself if you know what is good for you,” the pirate begins, Feferi wincing behind her. Green eyes lowers his gaze, eyes traveling from the tip of the blade to the one-armed woman holding it.

“‘Was about to ask the same to you,” the man says, hands in his belt. His accent is a mixture of sounds that makes it hard to tell if he’s from Spain, Portugal or Russian. “Name’s Jacobo Sarez Halley, but ‘ya lasses can call me Jake, or El English. See, my Grandma came from the Flintshire county back in the ‘Olde Continent, and I guess that European folk are rare enough ‘round these parts that the nickname sort of stuck, nevermind that Grandma was actually Welsh.”

“I’m European myself, on my mother’s side,” Vriska replies, lowering the sword, but only because this Jake English guy looks far too slow to pose anything of a threat to you. Must be because there’s a herd of about 10 cows staring lovingly at him. “Our family came from Milan.”

“Milan, huh? So you’re Italian, I take it?” you ask, and just gain a glare from the pirate.

“And I take it that you are not one of Ampora’s bedwarming ladies,” she hisses back at you. You are nervous enough that you just default into giving her your brightest smiles. “Or one of those demonic creatures we first thought you were.”

“What I am is far more complicated,” you whisper, not sure if you will have to come up with another clever lie or… well, or engage in the Emergency Protocols that Skaian Chronology has in place for situations just like these.

Feferi’s staring at the cows with such amazement, that Vriska has to give her a look, instructing her that this is most certainly not the time to pet any of them. Jake is still staring at you like he doesn’t know whether to start shooting or drop down on his knees to start praying instead. Vriska’s sneer lets you know that you still owe her an explanation.

You glance down at Sollux and just curse, as a stream of pathetic smoke pours out of the device.

One of the cows walks past Jake, and nuzzles her kind and gentle face against you.

With no access to their Synchronical AI, and with more than one people who have seen you engage in time travel, two of which you’ve brought with you to the 1880’s America Frontier, and you’re judging here solely from Jake’s attire, the Time Traveler’s Manual is clear on what you have to do:

Explain this particular situation to the best of your ability, and use any psychological trick you can on the book to make it certain that these people will help you get back to HQ.

“Well, the captain is correct, I am not from here,” you say, gesturing at the prairie where you’ve found yourselves in. “And I’m not really from Hell, either, no demons here at all, though that certainly would be fun. I’ll gladly explain this to all of you, because my dear friend is currently out of service, and I could use any other friend I could get. So, how about we sit down by the fire and you listen to my crazy tale, which I assure you all, is completely real and not at all fabricated, and I have more ‘magical’ items as you called them, Feferi, which prove it.”

“You do?” the woman steps forward, interested.

“Feferi, I do not think it pertinent to indulge her-” Vriska begins, but Feferi cuts her off.

“No, Vris, look around you!” she says. “We were at a port in the middle of the Atlantic sea when all of the sudden we were here, where there’s little to no humidity! You- you saw the beast you slayed yourself, as well as the- the magical vortex that brought us here, by god Vriska, it was like standing in the middle of a kaleidoscope!”

“It was something,” Vriska admits, softened a bit by her enthusiasm. “I thought that certainly Ampora had used his girl to slip some opium into our drinks, but that made no sense, you know I’ve built up a tolerance for that sort of treachery, so surely such a hallucination was caused by a different substance.”

“It was no hallucination at all, and as I’ve explained, I am not one of Ampora’s girls, I might not even be a girl, depending on what particular standards you use to define your genders,” you began, reaching behind your ear to look for the thing you need, hidden between a piece of jewelry.

Jake stares dumbfoundead at you. “You- you are not a girl? And what is. What is this gender thing that you speak of-”

“Oh, nothing we have to get into right now, but it’s one of those complicated cultural concepts that really shift depending on the time period and part of the globe you’re in! For example, I bet it is seen as completely socially acceptable for you to take on a male lover, Mr. English, and that you even share your finances with him in a way that would seem very husband-and-wifey to other non-ranchers-”

“-I well, uh, I would not call me and Roxy lovers by any means, mainly because I’m certain he would most certainly deck me or anyone who tried to make him a ‘wife’ again, but yes, we do share our meager wages with each other,” Jake says. “But,this, this might be important to him and I need to question you more on this ‘genre’ thing, what do you mean by not being a girl-”

“-Semantics, Mr. English, try to keep up! Most labels that humans use to label themselves with are products of their time and as such, can change and shift and expand or be annihilated depending on the effects that time has had on a culture, oh, there we go!” you grin.

Finally having unlodged you're planetary projector from your earring, the place Kanaya usually puts such trinkets in, you set the little metallic pearl on the floor, and smash it with the sole of your foot, a holographic sphere of the Milky Way and all her stars being projected around all of you, despite this being the middle of the day somewhere in Post-Civil War Arizona.

Jake’s mouth is agape, and Feferi gasps. Vriska is speechless, but her arm does travel toward’s her hat, where she takes it off and presses it against her chest.

“What. What is this witchcraft?!” she insists on knowing.

You grin. The planetary projector doesn’t really do anything but project the night sky for a few minutes, a sight so spectacular that just about anyone would fall over themselves to get to know more about it, as it was designed to do. The pearl you used for it is dust on the grass, already decaying at a rate that will have nothing left of it in a few days, all made from Carbon molecules that will not seem out of place anywhere you could travel.

You could fault Skaia Chronology for many things, but certainly not for the effectiveness of all their protocols.

“It’s not witchcraft, captain, but rather- Science. And it is this science that brought us here and incidentally, put me on your ship.”

You explain everything to Vriska, Feferi and Jake, who takes you home with him, over to the tent he and Roxy share. Roxy is another cow herder Southern-belle-turned-cowboy, wearing a pink discolored blouse and a bright smile. He explains that though his hair is short now and his family fortune left back in Missouri where he escaped his upcoming nuptials with Jake’s help, he couldn’t be happier to have found you here, at this exact place of time.

“We don’t have many cots, just these spares, I hope two of you don’t mind sharing,” the beautiful boy says.

“It is not a problem at all,” Feferi loudly proclaims with a big grin, which makes Vriska flush slightly.

The captain is staring at you, and you are staring worryingly at your wrist, fussing with Sollux to try and see if you can make him come back online. Whatever is messing with the timeline is messing with him too, something that as far as you know has never happened before, or won’t happen at least.

The last time Sollux failed in any capacity, it was December 29th, 1919, and one Mary Jane Sassacre had just married into the Crocker family.

Whatever turns out to be the reason for this particular timeline mishap, you can only hope it has nothing to do with that terrible, terrible woman, or her sick desire to ban time travel across all parts of the timeline, not solely the decade she was able to wrestle away from W.Q. to keep all to herself…

Chapter Text

You look up from your wrist as Jake lifts the flap of the tent, and you all enter one after the other.

The tent is unusually large, implying that this is a more permanent shelter, so you all could fit inside somewhat comfortably. 

The cots are folded up and stacked in one corner near the entrance, while the two far corners housed what are presumably Roxy and Jake's cots. One is a dark, but relatively faded green, and the other is a notably brighter pink, probably dyed recently. 

While you were looking around curiously, Roxy had already started setting up one of the two extra cots. Somewhat embarrassed, you help him with the second cot.

One cot is a bit thinner than the other, and you claim it, assuming that Feferi and Vriska need the extra space more. Feferi gleefully throws herself belly first on the larger one. Vriska tries and fails to cover up a smile at the sight. 

You snicker quietly behind your hand, and exchange an amused glance with Roxy, who is doing the same. Jake is totally unaware of what's so funny, having just finished putting his things on a crate near his cot, and raises an eyebrow at the two of you.

Roxy pulls a deck of cards from the top Jake's crate with a mischievous look on his face  and suggests you all play poker to pass the time. Jake is quick to suggest Rummy instead, since Roxy always wins otherwise.

In a couple hours, while an army of crickets are chirping outside, you notice a heavenly smell wafting into the tent and your stomach growls in response. Just when you are lifting the flap of the tent to investigate, Jake calls everyone out for dinner. 

The campfire was burning near two large rocks, perfect for sitting. Next to them were a few mismatched stools and chairs. The most important thing, though, was the giant pot of stew simmering over top of the fire.

After everyone is settled, Jake begins ladling the stew into small bowls. There's enough bowls for everyone, but one or two of them look handmade, and you wonder which of the cowboys know how to carve wood. It could easily be both of them, 

The conversation over supper is sparse, everyone too hungry and exhausted to bother much after the exciting day. You find out that the bowls were carved by Roxy, and some of the spoons by Jake. He excitedly offers to show you the half a chess set he recently whittled tomorrow, and you nod with a grin.

With your stomach full of rich stew and in comfortable clothes borrowed from Roxy, you let out one of the longest yawns you've had in a while. You notice the others following suit, so when you suggest turning in for the night, you're unsurprised that they all agree readily.

Jake starts kicking dust into the campfire, and everyone files back into the tent. Roxy puffs a little laugh as you and Feferi flop onto your cots immediately. Vriska hesitates, but Feferi beckons her with her arms spread wide. With a dramatic sigh, as if she had been asked to do a dreadful chore, Vriska accepts her fate, crawling onto the cot and into Feferi's waiting arms. 

The two of them are already snoring quietly by the time Jake returns to the tent.

Your hair is making your neck itch, so you move it to the side and turn over. Your arm starts to go numb with you laying on it, so you roll back onto your back. When that gets uncomfortable, you decide that the sandman isn't paying you a visit any time soon and pull your wrist towards your face, checking if Sollux has somehow recovered. No luck.

You're starting to roll onto your other side when a hushed voice makes you start.

"Can't sleep?," the voice, who you now recognize as Roxy's, asks.

"Guess not," you reply tiredly.

"Worrying about your watch thing? Jake said you can't go back to where you came from 'cause it ain't workin' right."

"Yeah. It's just…" You trail off with a sigh. 

"Do you wanna just chat for a bit? Might help to think about somethin' else instead of dwellin' on it." Roxy turns to face you, a slightly darker silhouette against the dark of the tent.

"Sounds good to me. Any particular topics in mind?" you whisper, feeling a faint smile tug at your lips.

"Hmmm, mind if I ask a question or two? I can't deny being curious"

"Ask away."

"How'd you meet Vriska and Fef? Jake tends to neglect important details like that."

You pause for a moment to think of how best to explain it, then promptly give up and settle on, "Just appeared on their ship. In the middle of the ocean.  Dressed for ancient Greece."

You hear Roxy's muffled giggling and smile wider. 

"I'll bet they were awful surprised"

"So was I!" you reply, slightly too loud.

Another short silence follows as he comes up with his next question. "What's life like for you?"

"Being a time traveler? Amazing. I get to see something new and exciting every day." 

"I can imagine, but I meant besides that, like what's it like at home? Do you have any cats, what kinda place do you live in? Stuff like that."

"Never heard that one before, but then again, I haven't exactly told any non-time traveler about my work before, either." 

Neither of you say anything for a moment as Jake starts snoring loudly. Vriska grunts and snuggles closer to Feferi on their cot.

"I kind of figured," Roxy comments, "That's part of the reason why I asked. That, and I really wanna know if you have any kitties."

You laugh quietly before replying, "Unfortunately, I'm out too often to keep a cat, but we do have one that hangs out in the facility. Someone brought it back by accident, and since we don't know where, or when it came from, we just let it stay."

"Really? That's amazing! What's its name?"

"It has 2 extra eyes, and the person who brought it back really liked martinis, so we call it-" a brief flicker of light from your wrist cuts you off, but any possible signs of Sollux being back online are gone as suddenly as they came. You frown, and poke it a bit before sighing again. 

Neither of you say anything for a bit. Roxy asks softly, "What's wrong with it?"

"I don't know. But I worry it's not an accident. I'm starting to think someone might be disrupting it on purpose," you confide, the late hour, or perhaps just something about Roxy himself making you honest.

"Who would want to do that?"

"Someone awful. She's always hated time travel. I can't understand why, but she wants to put an end to it for good. She already has one decade no one can go to, but I guess the 1920s wasn't enough. Her name's Meenah Peixes, not that anyone calls her that," you explain, muttering the last part. 

"Peixes?" the cowboy asks.  "Like Fef's family name? Surely they ain't related, but it sure is a weird coincidence ."

Chapter Text

“It’s a very unique name, so I’m a little inclined to believe so.” You put a hand to your chin in thought. “But, Feferi is a princess… so maybe Meenah’s from the same bloodline! Can’t entirely rule it out unless I know for sure!”

You stand up with a shout that somehow doesn’t wake Jake, but does grab Feferi’s attention, and she glances over from where her head rests on Vriska’s shoulder. “Meenah? I’ve never heard of someone named Meenah in my family.”

“Well, there’s a very easy explanation as to why,” You begin. “If I’m right, then she’s from your future.”

It doesn’t change the fact that you can’t currently, purposefully head straight to her—Sollux’s sorry state notwithstanding—but theorizing about villains and the mystery decade is always fun.

As if on cue, your watch lights up. This time it isn’t just a trick of your eyes. “Someone wake up Jake. It looks like we’re about to jump.”

You duck as a loose arrow fires from somewhere among busied, mobbing people. “Of all times… the castle seems to be under siege.”

Vriska hears you mumbling and huffs. “It’s only right. If the seas didn’t call me, I’d be raiding castles! Now keep shuffling, Jake and I can swap spots coming up and he’ll give you a boost to the window.”

The second you land inside after getting Jake’s help, you take immediate notice of the duel happening. An injured man with long, tied back curly hair swipes his rapier to block an incoming attack from a second man with really bad facial hair.

“All that I ask for?” Their blades clash as the first man speaks. It seems you’ve missed the beginning of this fight, and sneakily try to pull Vriska up behind you with both cowboys’ assistance.

“Anything you want.” Scruffy McGee huffs, short of breath.

“I want my father back, you son of a bitch!”

With what seems to be a final stab, the first man seems to have satiated his overdeveloped sense of vengeance. He doesn’t even look your way, and turns on his heels to rush out of the dining room.

“That was close. Hopefully we can just hide out here until we jump again.”

“Watch out Jake!” Roxy throws an arm out to help his fellow cowboy not trip his way up the mountain you all got thrown on after Sollux fired up again.

“And I thought the stormy waves were rough.” Feferi chirps as she nearly trips. You turn to support her, and Vriska has the same idea.

“You hadn’t even seen the worst of the storms yet, Feferi… anyway, where the hell are we?”

“When the h-”

“Aradia, if I may, please never make that joke again.” Jake groans.

“Well, either way, it’s a question I can’t exactly answer…” You peer around the mountainous valley, a thick fog clouding the lowest part of the terrain. A bit above you, though, it seems the path continues after a temple that’s design strikes you as the Edo Period. “Or maybe I can! We seem to be in Japan around th-”

Just as you’re answering your companions, you slip on an incredibly narrow section of the path. You do your best to get your clothes to take the beating as you roll down into the fog, and you’re definitely a little worse for wear once you’re back on your feet.

Your first instinct is to check on Sollux, and he’s in the same state of ‘barely working’ he always has as of late. Your second instinct is to take in your new surroundings, and you spot what could be the path up to the temple you’d noticed. Hopefully, everything will eventually meet back up, so you start towards the obvious new path.

It’s… lonely. Being separated from your little ragtag group of timeless people, that you shouldn’t even have, feels lonely.

Usually, you have Sollux to keep you company, but he’s not here to fill the silent trek up dirty stones.

Your thoughts are broken by the sound of a muttering voice once you reach the temple, and you just barely slide open the door to peek inside.

The iron scales, leather, and bright red threads of a samurai’s armor greet you.

“-LARPing a samurai takes a toll on a guy… Sollux are you getting this?” The ‘warrior’ speaks into one of the braces on his arms, and you push the door open far enough that it creaks.

“LARPing? Sollux” You ask with hope in your tone.

In one swift move, he draws the katana on his hip and points it at you. “They’re these... New things.”

“Live Action Roleplaying isn’t gonna be a thing for awhile.” You smile. “And no samurai should know what a Sollux is.”

There’s a beat of silence as you contest his terrible lie, and his posture seems to relax as some sort of recognition washes over him.

“Oh thank fuck, Aradia? Do you have any idea how long I've been stranded here, ‘Rads?” The samurai’s voice takes on a different tone and he sheathes his katana. You tilt your head just in time as he removes his helmet and get an eyeful of pale hair and glaringly out of place sunglasses. “Sollux is completely busted.”

Dave Strider—time traveller from the 2010s and a common partner of yours when it comes to doubleman operations—flashes his wrist your way, and you move the brace on his arm enough to see his watch is in a worse state than yours; the screen is full of black and white static.

“Well…” You frown. “Mine’s just been throwing me anywhere! I actually have this group of people I might’ve… accidentally displaced.”

Dave laughs, but it’s the kind of laugh that comes out as a puff of air from his nose. “I might’ve gone a little off the handle and dumped all of the information about Skaian Chronology to a shinobi who resides in this mountain village.”

Your laugh is full and directly from your heart. “So we’ve fucked up?”

“Sounds like it.” Dave smiles. “And ten bucks says that problem is about to get a whole lot worse when I walk you there so I can make sure he doesn’t think I died.”

Even though it’s probably a losing game, you have a gut feeling (and enough faith in your companions to climb a mountain properly). “I’ll take that bet.”

He leads the way down the temple steps to the rocky path you had spotted before. As you both get closer, he puts his helmet back on. It’s probably for the best—thanks to those stupid sunglasses of his—but you stick out like a sore thumb anyway.

Dave was right. You’re ten dollars poorer, but he’s another smile richer.

“Oh wait—” You set your hand on Dave’s shoulder to stop him at the main village entrance, and point near what looks like a water well. Your gut had the right idea. “It looks like my group got here first, so therefore I’m not the original outlier to cause the whispers. Do you think me walking in here ‘made it worse’?”

When Dave shrugs, the armor plating on his shoulders clanks against his headgear. “You know what? Sure. Keep your money.”

You wave as you close the distance, and Roxy proudly produces a full flask. “Apparently this well runs down to a fresh spring.” He smiles and passes the container to Jake, who then passes it to you after taking a drink.

Vriska nods from where she’s seated on the stone bricks with Feferi. “We passed it on our way up, if your device thing doesn’t fuck up anytime soon it’d be nice to check out… who’s the statue standing behind you?”

“Dave Strider.” You thumb at the ‘samurai’ next to you. “Another stranded time traveller! His Sollux is completely frozen, he’s been stuck here— how long? Because that’s probably the same amount of time I’ve been hopping.”

“About two weeks. When it was a week in and Sollux wasn’t responding, I started talking to the shinobi— Dirk. We have the same last name, and I was on edge enough to joke about time travel, and… ”

“The rest is history?” You make a joke yourself with a snort, but then frown—and not just because you’ve remembered you can’t make ‘when are we?’ jokes anymore.

Two weeks is a lot of time to get thrown around. Who knows how much longer it’ll take you to end up at HQ to put an end to this and to tell them your theories about Meenah Peixes possibly being the cause behind the current disruption, just like the 1920s.

You look back at Vriska, Feferi, Roxy, and Jake.

“Do you wanna add your shinobi pal to my odd cast?” You point out the obvious pirate, her maiden, and the cowboys.

Chapter Text

Dave shrugs again, clanking more. “Why the hell not,” he decides. “Is your Sollux even going to be able to transport me n Dirk?”

“Dirk and I,” you correct automatically. You wince at his stink eye.

“Me n Dirk,” he repeats, louder and more pointed. You decide you're not winning this one and duck out.

“It should! It got us here. But,” you raise a finger. “Should we try? I mean, we’re already here, and if we try to warp, who knows where or when we’ll end up?”

“We’re not going to make any progress stuck here,” Vriska chimes in. “Besides, where’s your sense of adventure?” You sigh and tap your Sollux reluctantly.

No dice. The machine is running some kind of scan. You're not technologically inclined enough to know what it's doing,and you're not about to let anyone NOT with your IT department fiddle with it. Dave leans over, raises an eyebrow when you pull your watch away, and straightens back up. He shuffles over to Dirk and starts up a conversation quiet enough that you can't overhear anything. Not that you're trying to.

You...

Chapter Text

You are far too preoccupied with your misfiring equipment to care about the brothers.

Okay, you tell yourself. This time it will work.
You take a deep breath, trying to center yourself.
You put in the right coordinates. You repaired what you could. Just a press of a button and-

You’re home.
Standing on the launch pad. You see the door open and Kanaya walking in with a confused expression on her face
And then she walks backwards, the door closes and you fall with a last attempted yell of “Kan-”
But then the air gets pressed out of your lungs once more and your body is enveloped in red and blue static and when you come to once again with a flash of light, it’s to darkness.

Well, not complete darkness but your eyes need a few seconds to adjust. You are in a room. Stones all around. Big, rough hewn. There’s wine barrels stacked against the wall, a stone staircase leading to a wooden door and you pray to everything you do not believe in that it isn’t locked.

Your prayers seem to have been answered.

For when you open the door, you stand in a little hallway leading out to an atrium.

And when you say atrium, you mean atrium. As in roman atrium. In a domus. Fully fitted with an impluvium, statues and -oh the gods really listened to you- a bunch of romans.

There seems to be a party going on. You can just pretend to be a guest, and won’t be mistaken for a home-invader. You won’t be too noticeable in your chitton and hair weave at the least and… huh.

As you start to walk around the party, you notice something weird. You’re watching the dancing people next to the musicians, the guests, lounging on chairs and benches, being fed by slaves roaming the floor with food trays and the man dressed in the barely concealing armor of a gladiator sitting on a low bench surrounded by young roman women and men fawning over him. He’s obviously working here at the behest of the host as entertainment for the guests.

You’ve seen that face before.

That gladiator guy looks just like… “Jake?”
You should not have said that out loud. Far too many faces turn towards you.

“Aradia?”
He stands up, much to the dismay of his fans and moves to take your hand, checking your wrist for your time travel equipment.

“Oh thank the Gods, they finally sent someone to get me. I've been stuck here for three years!”

Chapter Text

Before you can reply to Jake properly, your stunned gawking barely sufficing as a response, the red and blue static of imminent spacetime fuckery fizzes and pops around the two of you like a snarling web of tree roots. There’s no time to tell Jake just precisely how harrowing your day has been so far, which means that the only thing to do is to grab his wrist back with a death grip so as not to leave him half-spliced across the continuum, considering his first instinct to immediately let go of you would have likely proven fatal.

“What in the utter hells did you do?” Jake cries into your ear, entirely too loud.

“Me? You grabbed my TA!” You shout through the crackling static. “And what were you even doing in Rome to get stuck for three-”

You’re both interrupted by the sudden lurch in the static that causes the two of you to tumble to the ground. Real ground. Earth, dry and dusty, poofs into your face. You sneeze. Jake coughs, and sits up.

Jake opens his mouth to speak, staring intently behind you, but before he can do so, another voice commands your attention.

“Well, look at what the cat dragged in! It appurrs that someowny decided to leave little ol’ me a purresent!”

You whip around and stumble to a standing position, dusting off your definitely-ruined chiton as you scan your surroundings. Three horses- all mounted- dominate your field of view. Atop the pure white one, front and center, sits a short woman with deeply tanned skin. Well, the skin that you can see is deeply tan. Most of her is covered in thick, working clothes best befitting a ranch hand, and a deep blue cowboy hat crowns her unruly nest of black hair. It is to you that she directs her next statement, scrutinizing you with bright, olive green eyes.

“What a darling li’l lassie!” The woman fawns facetiously. To her left and right are much taller men, each mounted on a gray horse and a brown horse, respectively. They stare at you balefully as the woman continues to speak. “Eq, Tav, round up the feller behind her. I’m meowty curious as to what the two of mew are doin’ out here in West Texas all alone with no horses or nothin’.”

The two men on horseback, presumably Eq and Tav, guide their horses in a leisurely saunter past you to deal with Jake, who sputters and yelps before falling silent. You feel the nagging need to check on him, but you can’t force yourself to break the gaze of the woman in front of you. “I’m sorry, but to whom am I speaking?” You can’t help but feel irritated at the woman’s condescending Cheshire cat grin as she leans against her horse’s neck to stare you down.

“Now this is a furrst!” she crows at you, grin only widening. “Everynyan ‘round these parts knows to fear Lioness Leijon and the Bobcat Boys!”

You squint at her. “So you’re the Lioness Leijon? I presume?”

“The one and meownly,” she purrs at you, batting her thick eyelashes. “Poor girl like mew, stranded in the desert with only that oaf behind mew,” here she nodded her head at Jake, who, upon a cursory glance backwards, was standing hunched in on himself surrounded by the burly men on horseback, “for company, well. Why don’t we get mew back to our camp for some… more feminine respite.” She tilted her head, gaze coy. It didn’t escape your notice that she kept her hand resting on the glinting silver revolver at her side.

Yet, somehow, her words didn’t feel like a threat. If anything, they sounded like a proposition. Gosh, something about you and powerful women with guns and a crew. Well, perhaps at camp, you could get a quick break before finding out what the hell was going on with your temporal apparatus.

“Why not?” You shrug, brushing a flyaway strand of your hair back behind your ear slowly. “Though, I don’t think I could walk all that way…”

“Nothin’ to worry ‘bout!” Lioness Leijon sat up on her horse and scooted forwards a bit, patting its rump behind her. “We’ll just have to share.”

You grin widely. Swinging yourself up and onto the horse behind her is old hat, but you make sure to fumble a bit for show. Leijon catches on, both figuratively and literally, grasping your hand as though to keep you from falling.

“Hold on tight, nyeow,” she murmurs just loud enough for you to hear, before addressing the other two men on horses, presumably the Bobcat Boys. “Equius! Tavros! Get the gladiator lookin’ feller on one of y’all’s horses. We’re goin’ home.”

The men turn to face you both, and you study their faces more closely. The one on the gray horse is a very tall Native American man, with dark eyes and an austere face shaded by an olive green cowboy hat, his long, dark hair flowing behind him in the limp breeze. The one on the brown horse is shorter, though still taller than Leijon, and his warm, umber eyes are sliding sideways, shy, at Jake’s bronzed physique. His cowboy hat is a simple brown- and a bit too large, you notice as it slides into his eyes, quickly pushed backwards by his own hand.

“I, uh, he can, um, ride with me?” The shorter, shy man offers.

Jake looks up at him confused.

In front of you, Leijon nods. “Alright, then, looks like mew get to ride with Tavros!” She addresses Jake directly.

He gulps, visibly and audibly. He doesn’t object, his own eyes darting up at Tavros with curiosity and ill-hidden interest.

The other man, who must be the one Leijon had called Equius, guides his horse to trot up beside the two of you. Now that he’s closer, you can see that he is absolutely drenched in sweat.

“Nepeta, are you sure this is wise?” he whispers to Leijon, skeptical.

Leijon- or Nepeta?- waves a hand, uncaring. “Aw, come on, Eq. What’s the worst that could happen?”

It is precisely this moment that your TA decides to sputter and crackle, spitting out red and blue static that surrounds you, Nepeta, and the horse you both sit upon.

“Oh, come on!” You hear Jake cry in despair, too far for you to reach.

You really hope that this Lioness Leijon woman won’t mind a little spatiotemporal silliness. You suppose she doesn’t have much of a choice. And, then again, neither do you.

Chapter Text

Your stomach drops. Leijon curses up a storm, but it’s difficult to hear much of anything over the combination of temporal static and the horse flipping the fuck out.

“Shit!” Leijon pulls on the reins, sending the confused and disoriented animal to the side as another horse charges directly through the spot you had been mere moments before. It’s all so fast that the rider is a blur of metal.

You are surrounded. Spreading out around you in all directions is an unending sea of bodies determined to break themselves upon one another. There are a few other riders, but it is mostly footsoldiers with the occasional standard-bearer holding red flags.

Your sudden appearance has not gone unnoticed. The initial shock of a horse with two riders appearing from the ether seems to have worn off as the wall of soldiers in front of you raise their spears and begin their charge.

“Move!” You scream in Leijon’s ear, and fortunately she has the wherewithal to act. She tugs sharply, sending the horse spinning around to run from the attacking crimson soldiers and directly into the crowd opposing them.

You hold your breath, expecting these other fighters to be similarly aggressive, but they didn’t seem to have even noticed your sudden appearance. They move to let you pass, and as you do you look back to see their ranks reform to stop the red soldiers from continuing their attack.

You scan the ranks of this opposing army, and spot their own battle standard. A lime green. You compare it to the olive green of Leijon’s cowboy hat. Enough to pass in the heat of battle.

Your eyes catch a glimpse of a red-clad rider, likely the same one who had charged you earlier. They rode directly through the swathes of enemies, their broadsword dripping with blood as they swung wildly, their horse trampling anyone avoiding the sting of their blade.

They turn to you, redirecting their charge to reach you.

“Heads up!” You direct Leijon’s attention. Watching her draw her sidearm is a sight to behold, her hand a fluid machine, cocking back the hammer like it was second nature before leveling it at the rider. They don’t falter as Leijon aims the gun, either not seeing the weapon or not fully understanding what it is.

Your ears ring as the sound of the gunshot fills your ears. The rider flies backwards off of their steed, red blood soaking the rest of their uniform to that one color, but the horse itself isn’t so easily dissuaded. Even without its rider the beast continues its charge forward, crashing itself directly into Leijon’s own mount.

Leijon’s horse bucks, striking its hooves upon the attacking horse, and you and Leijon are thrown off its back. You hit the ground hard, but you don’t have a single moment to recover as hooves rain down on where you lie. You roll aside, barely dodging a strong animal leg punching directly through your head.

You see Leijon similarly recover before she looks up to watch her horse run off in a panic.

“Pounce!” She calls for her steed, but it doesn’t look back as it charges mindlessly into the crowd. The attacking horse hadn’t been as panicked. It charges for the prone Leijon, hoping to crush the enemy underfoot, but it is put to a stop as a third rider clad in green rushes in. They pull their own horse alongside the rampaging one, grabbing hold of its reins and violently tugging it to the side to quell its rage.

The green rider looks down at the two of you, their face hidden behind imposing metal.

“Peasents?” Their voice is low and gravely, but it still holds a level of concern that you didn’t expect to leave that grim mask. “You shouldn’t be here!”

“Of course! We’ll,”

“I ain’t goin’ anywhere without my Pounce!” Leijon rises to her feet.

“Excuse me?”

“And where the hell are we? You!” Leijon points an accusatory finger in your direction. “I should’ve trusted Eq when he told me you’d be trouble. You witch!”

“I--” Your eyes catch sudden movement. A red soldier wielding a broadsword breaks through the barricade of human flesh as they charge directly for the green knight. “Look out!”

The knight starts to turn, but the are still far too slow. Fortunately, Leijon remains completely unphased as she unloads another shot into the approaching enemy. Her first shot had gone unnoticed by the surrounding soldiers, but this time Leijon had the army’s full attention. You could see the red army in the distance hesitate before beginning a retreat.

The green knight grips their helmet, pulling it off to reveal flowing black hair that trails down their back. How they managed to keep all of that contained within the helmet is far beyond you. Their dark face, creased with many wrinkles and even more scars, looks down on the two of you as their bright green eyes take all of you in.
“I’m Lady Harley,” She says as she offers you an outstretched hand. “Let’s get the two of you out of here.”

⧖⧖⧖

You rode on the back of Lady Harley’s horse. Leijon originally threw a fit over coming with, but after finding Pounce she was happy to ride alongside you. You look at your destination. A few miles from the warzone you left behind sits a stately castle, a landmark that continues to reassure you that your assumption of arriving in medieval Europe is correct, but the architecture seems… strange. Medieval Europe was not a topic you were especially well versed in, but something seems off. You just can’t put your finger on it.

Lady Harley leads the two of you across the bridge and to the stables. Leijon leaves Pounce with a stablehand, though she does give the poor stableboy a few colorful threats on what might happen if her beloved horse is hurt.

With Leijon busy intimidating the poor boy, a squire arrives to help Lady Harley with her armour, a young woman with hair so blonde it is practically white. They don’t speak, but the two of them continually steal glances at each other when they think the other isn’t looking.

Leijon decides that the stablehand has had enough vague threats. She stands beside you, watching the knight and squire.

“You’ve got some explaining to do, miss.” Leijon’s words aren’t angry or accusatory. She says them like one would when stating a fact.

“I can’t in front of them.” You whisper. “Just let me do the talking, and I’ll explain it all to you when we’re alone.”

“What? Afraid they’ll burn ya at the stake?”

“Technically they didn’t start burning witches until the 1550s.”

“So we are in a different time.” Leijon speaks as if this was a conclusion she had reached already.

“Dammit,” you curse. “Please just keep quiet and I’ll explain everything.”

The squire finishes her duties, and leaves to put her knight’s armor away.

“The two of you will be brought before her Majesty. Follow me.” You give one last cautionary glance to Leijon before you follow Lady Harley.

She brings you into a massive throne room. Seven panes of stained glass are placed along the walls, three pairs on either side of you leading down the hall, and one massive piece in the wall behind the throne. The multiple glass pieces seem to be depicting Christian symbology. Snakes curled around red objects seems to be the throughline, probably an apple? Christianity, especially medieval Christianity, was another area where your expertise was lacking.

The pane of glass above the throne is the most ornate of them all. A young woman(Eve probably?) stands naked aside from the fig leaf over her crotch. In one hand she’s holding what you guess is the apple? It’s depicted strangely, much lumpier than you’d expect a fruit to be. But still, it has a bite taken from it so it must be the fruit. In her other hand she is holding the snake, the reptile curled around her wrist and trailing up onto her shoulder. The snake curls around Eve’s neck, rising up to press its face to Eve’s lips.

Hm. Even with your subpar knowledge on the subject, you’re fairly certain that this imagery is incredibly sacrilegious. Especially for the time period.
Sitting below the strange glass, in an ornate throne adorned with emeralds sits who must be the queen. She rests back in her throne, a dark green robe trailing down her body. Emerald eyes scan you as you watch her back. Her skin is incredibly pale, to an almost sickly degree, but what you are most taken aback by is her head. Her hair is shaved close to the scalp, nearly leaving her bald.

“Your majesty.” Lady Harley kneels, and you are quick to follow suit. Leijon hesitates, but after a stern look from you she follows your example.

“You may rise, my knight.” The queen gives a weak flick of her wrist, and Lady Harley does as instructed. You and Leijon follow.

“We found these two in the midst of our battle with the Red King’s forces. This one saved my life with her powerful weapon.” Lady Harley looks expectantly towards Leijon. The cowgirl gives a brief glance at you before pulling out her revolver to present to the queen.

The queen’s eyes bore into you.

“Hello your majesty,” You take the lead with a bow. “My name is Aradia Megido, and I am a trader from the Ming Empire, and this woman is…” You wrack your brain for appropriate backstories. “My guide of the area from the Crown of Castile.”

“Lioness Leijon. Call me Leijon.”

“We unfortunately got caught in the midst of the battle, but we’re ever so grateful to your Lady Harley for saving us. We ask that we could be provided a place to rest?”

The queen had remained still throughout your entire speech. She tilts her head to the side as you finish, and you follow her gaze.

Her eyes are locked directly on your TA.

You start to discreetly cover it, but the queen stands up.

“Tell me Aradia.” She says as she begins to approach the two of you. “Have you met me yet?”

The words make your blood go cold. You should have noticed it much earlier. Sacreligious art. Unknown architecture. Hell, Lady Harley was a dead giveaway. Women soldiers weren’t an impossibility for the time, but one with the title of knight was unheard of.

All of it an obvious sign of temporal intervention. You look back to the still approaching queen, and now that she is closer you can see a small irregularity under the arm of her cloak. Perfectly in the shape of a TA.

You hear your own TA begin to sputter and crackle to life, but for once you are glad for a chance to get out of here. To get as far in time as possible from this rogue time traveler.

You grab Leijon, and watch the queen’s face twist into fury.

“Harley, grab them!”

Lady Harley, despite her obvious confusion at the situation, leaps upon the two of you mere moments before you are all sent somewhen else entirely.

Chapter Text

When you wake up (you didn’t even notice you passed out but it isn’t the first time you pass out after travelling) you find no signs of Lady Harley or Leijon. You find no signs of any humanity either, but that isn’t as unusual.

One thing that is unusual, and is the first thing that you notice before you even open your eyes, is the smell of smoke. A glance to the sky reveals what you feared the most, a column of smoke rising in the distance, they are tampering with the environment—a huge no in the time travelling industry, you shall intervene.

Your attempts at maneuvering through the forest fail, and you spend what feels like eternity (although likely only about ten minutes) stuck on tall grass and bushes. The only reason you don’t rot away in the jungle is that Leijon stumbles upon you.

“What happen’d with thou?” Leijon queries as she frees you from a bush. “You are too fair of a lady to be passing out for no reason.”

“It’s too hard to explain,” you explain, ironically enough. “Just trust me that it’d take a while for you to get it.”

“Me and Harley have been making a small encampment by the shore of a weary river, would you mind joining us?” she asks after freeing you.

You nod, and she brings you to her encampment—you should have realized that her understanding your nodding as ‘yes’ was a sign she also was a time traveler. Yet that only clicks when you see their encampment’s name: ‘RiverClan’.

“So—”

“Yeah,” Leijon explains as Harley giggles, “My old English thing was just a bit.”

“I figured,” you lie.

“Your time machine still works, right?” Harley asks. “We gotta get back home ASAP.”

“Well, yes but actually not really. Every time I use it it just sends me to a random place and time.” You vaguely remember the contract you signed after getting this job saying they weren’t responsible if this exact scenario happened.

“How fucked would it be if I said that’s exactly what happened with me and Leijon?”

Very.

Chapter Text

The three of you stare at your time machine. A wild smile overtakes your face as Leijon watches you fiddle with it. Her eyes widen as she realizes your plan. It beeps, zaps, sizzles. You reach both hands out to touch the others and BOOM.

You tumble, struggling together, as time warps and whizzes past you. It takes a bit. Not as long as sometimes, but longer than you’d like. Long enough that you know you’re going far away - er, far ahead. Or behind? But you’re glad that you have two beautiful other travelers with you this time. 

It can get lonely only being by yourself all the time!

With a thud, you arrive. Where are you?

It’s cold, and there’s posters everywhere. Your foreign languages aren’t too good, but you’d guess it’s Japanese based on the view of Mt. Fuji you have. But as far as time goes? This could be anything.

“What year is it?” Leijon asks, rubbing her face. 

“There’s no one around,” adds Harley. 

You look for any signs of life, squinting your eyes against the snowfall. You’re not dressed for this weather at all. Despite all the buildings around plastered with the posters, you see no one. Everyone else was smart enough to stay home, you guess. 

You hear a shout. An arm raises and - there, there’s someone. 

“Why are you out like this? It’s a blizzard!” he calls to you. Thank gog the translator still works.

“We were just on a walk!” you shout back, unconvincingly. Where has all your training gone? Out the damn window. 

“This is no weather for three beautiful ladies. It would be a terrible day for all of us if we had to see three corpses frozen in place until the snow melts in a few days. That’s really inconsiderate of you, actually. You ought to think about how your actions affect others. I’m Kankri by the way.”

He doesn’t shut up as the three of you just follow him inside. It beats being out in the cold in your skimpy garb. Even if you have to put up with his lecture about how freezing to death is actually problematic to his own existence, or something. You tune him out. 

“Kankri! Holy shit! Why are you in the cold - and who in the everloving hell are those women?” This voice is higher than Kankri’s, and shouty. “You better not be in the process of bringing home geishas now of all times, think what father would say! You’re such a boneheaded self obsessed prick, I can’t-” and then he trails off into grumbles. 

You have to assume TA is just having fun with these translated idioms, you doubt Edo Era Japanese uses terms like “prick” and “everloving,” but you never know. This wasn’t your forte in timeschool. 

“I’ll have you know, I was rescuing them from the cold, they were out wandering like this, and I think it’s quite problematic of you to insinuate that I would debase myself by spending time with women of the night, as it were. You really think so lowly of me? That’s ageist, to assume that all adult men would do such a thing. I thought higher of you, Karkat.”

This brings two things to you. First: ageist? That’s anachronistic. You choose to ignore that. This seems like the guy who would invent ageism just to win an argument.

Two: Karkat is the short shouty one’s name. 

Kankri seems to gain the upperhand in their longwinded conversation slash argument slash college lecture, but then Karkat will just tell him to “shut his pointy-nosed piehole” which you are certain has to be TA’s flavorful translation, and then it all begins again.

Apparently people with pointy noses are oppressed?

You can’t hardly get a word in edgewise, either. Not that you’d want to. This is better than any pantomime.

Chapter Text

It's a disappointment, then, when Sollux starts to emit that shower of blue and red sparks again. You know you're about to be leaving these very interesting people and time behind, and you may never see them again!

"Oh- well, it was a delight talking to the two of you!" you say. "It's a shame I cannot stay, but I do hope you come to a satisfying conclusion about your conversation!"

And with that, you feel the tug at the pit of your stomach as you jump through time.

You're back on the pirate ship with Feferi and Vriska. Vriska jumps at your arrival.

"You're back again?"

"So it seems!" you respond. The ship rocks under your feet, and it's making you a little queasy this time - or maybe you're just getting a little out of sorts from all of these time jumps.

"Do you just like coming back to pester us all the time, or-"

Sollux is sparking again. You give what you hope looks like an apologetic smile to Vriska. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry!" you say. "It seems I'm being pulled again!"

There's the tug on your stomach, and you jump to the next time.

You immediately realize that you're standing in a very private scene. You appear to be in a tucked away part of a medieval palace, a place that nobody else would likely look. You are not the only person here, however. A pale-haired knight is pressed up against the wall by what appears to be a very insistent princess. He notices you first, his eyes widening, but his mouth is quite occupied. He mumbles something against the princess's lips, which finally gets her to pull back.

"David, what's wrong-" she says, and then she turns to see you. The princess is quite pretty, with long dark hair and the most brilliant green eyes you've ever seen, which are now wide with shock. "Who are you?" she demands. "Don't tell anybody, please-"

Sollux is already sparking again. You sigh. Oh, this seemed so interesting too! "Don't worry about that, your highness!" you say. "I don't think I will be able to tell anybody."

Your stomach drops, and you jump.

It's cold, and you rub your arms, wishing you had something warm to wear. You look around for shelter, but see something much more fascinating instead. A mammoth lets out a trumpet of despair as it is impaled by multiple human spears. Or- are they neanderthals instead? A mix?

You creep closer. You don't want to be impaled on a spear yourself. While it would be a thrilling way to go, you still want to get to the bottom of this mystery.

It's hard to make out the sort of physiological differences that would help you distinguish H. neanderthalensis from H. sapiens from this distance, but you think that they might just have a mix. You wish you had a camera or something so you could bring this back with you! Assuming you ever make it back!

You watch as a small woman leaps onto the back of the mammoth with what seem to be false claws held between her fingers. How fascinating! Tools like those have never been found in the archaeological record, so that must mean that these are a unique invention by this woman specifically. You'd love to speak to her and hear her ideas about her own weapons, but-

Sollux sparks, your stomach drops, and you're thrust from the chill of the Ice Age to the blazing heat of a desert. Your body shudders at the sudden change in temperature and humidity, reminding you of the fragility of your human body. You need to take some deep breaths to steady yourself before you can finally look around.

It's Egypt. That's immediately obvious to you. You like to think it would have been immediately obvious to you even if you couldn't see one of the Pyramids of Giza starting to take shape off in the distance. From this distance, the people constructing the pyramid look like ants. If you had any assurance that Sollux wasn't about to pull you away again, you'd walk over to get a closer look and perhaps talk to one of the builders in person, but at this rate, you don't want to expend the energy.

You admire the ingenuity of the engineering, using ramps and pulleys and manpower to build impressive structures so long before humans had any access to real machinery. You wonder if maybe this system is, in some ways, more reliable than the system you have right now. You look at Sollux.

"What's going on with you?" you ask softly.

"AA-" He starts to speak, and then he starts to spark again. You let out a heavy sigh and prepare yourself.

You immediately regret the sigh, because the next breath of air you take in simply isn't enough. You take another and that isn't enough either. You look around, and it feels like you're on an alien planet.

There's no grass. No trees. No insects, no bird song. Strange monoliths release spores into the air, and the ground beneath you is covered in lichen and small, alien plants. You rack your brain. These descriptions are familiar to you from some of your orientation lectures, but you aren't normally going this far back in time. That's a different department!

Still, you know that there's warnings about bringing oxygen tanks and hazard suits to avoid the radiation from the sun. This is... oh, it's so hard to think of geological time tables when you can barely breathe!

You take in a deep breath of air, only to cough when you breathe in some of the spores. Okay, there's land plants, but no insects. Devonian. It could be much worse than this, but not by much. You know the o-zone layer isn't fully formed yet, so you need to get into the shade, but there's no shade to be had apart from those spore-producing towers of fungi.

"Sollux," you gasp out, trying to fiddle with the device on your wrist. "Get me out of here."

He doesn't reply, which is concerning. Is he broken? Oh, you can't die here!

Well you certainly can. In fact, you're pretty sure you'll pass out in a few minutes due to the thin oxygen in the air. It's more a matter of the implications. HQ would have to do so much work to account for all of the timeline changes that would occur if you died here and let your microbiome proliferate so long ago.

The decomposition process would be fascinating to watch, though. What does decomposition of a body look like without a single insect?

"Sollux?" you wheeze. There's a moment of silence. It's the most deafening silence you've heard in your life, not even the buzzing of a flying insect to fill it.

Then, he starts to spark again. You've never been so relieved to see those blue and red sparks arcing off of your device. Your stomach drops, and you lean into the jump this time, hoping for some place a little closer to home and the 21% oxygen concentration you're used to.

You're back on the pirate ship yet again. You take in greedy mouthfuls of fully oxygenated air. You don't even mind that it's infused with the smell of salt water - it's a relief just to be able to breathe.

Feferi looks at you with concern. "Are you okay?" she asks. "You look pale as a ghost!"

You try to offer a reassuring smile again, but that's getting hard to do. You're starting to get whiplash. "Oh, I suspect if this keeps up, I very well may be a ghost soon!"

Vriska's lip curls. "That doesn't sound reassuring," she says.

"Most probably not! I just... need to find a way to fix this!" You hold up your TA. You don't suspect that showing pirates a highly technical device is going to do much to help fix the situation, but you're willing to throw what you can at the wall in the hopes it might stick.

Sollux sparks once again, for what must be at least the fifth time in an hour. Something is wrong, but even worse, it feels as though it's going wronger and wronger the more time that passes in your personal chronology. Will you even be able to exist in a single span of time for longer than a few minutes? What happens if that keeps decreasing, down to seconds? Milliseconds?

You feel that tug on your stomach again - you really are starting to get nauseous from all of this - and then you jump.

Chapter Text

“Oh no you don’t, little miss-” You don’t hear whatever antiquated expletive you are about to be called. You feel time and space stretch before you, and beyond you. There is a distant scream, all too familiar and foreign at the same time, as infinite horizons bend and twist your senses. You feel the clammy grip of the pirate captain slipping from your interlocked fingers, and she drifts away into the time stream. You almost envy her. If you had to be REALLY candid, “death by infinitely being torn apart by the time stream and thus scattered across eternities” is probably your number one way to die. Not keen on robbing her of your favorite way to go, but also not exactly wanting to be responsible for unceremoniously ruining the time stream just any more than this malfunction has caused, you stretch beyond your means and grab her by the hand. You begin to feel what she must have felt for seconds-eternities. It is an agonizing lifetime-flash of pain, but not pain like you’re used to. You might have to slide this one down a few slots, if only because the incomprehensible nature of dying in a time stream is not as cool as you hoped it would be.

Finally, things coalesce around you. The world begins to make sense, the pain of time ripping you in every-no direction fades finally, and is replaced by the stinging salt water in your nose.

You take a cautious breath in. The smell of black powder fills your nostrils, but there is no hacking from primitive oxygenation.

“Hey! We made it! Vriska! Capta-”

She clasps a hand over your mouth, shooting you a glare so full of daggers it could shred a topsail. Slowly, the hand slipped away.

“Watch your tongue, girl,” She hissed, gently motioning, “Noticing anything SUSPICIOUS about this ship?”

Aradia did her best to poke her head out without being TOO obvious. It was…a pirate ship?

“I don’t get it, what am I looking-”

Captain Vriska’s hand gripped Aradia’s head firmly, turning it towards the horizon…where a familiar ship approached.

“Your fancy little watch just brought us across an ocean,” She stowed her flintlock pistol, glancing around, “No idea how long we’ve been…away. Looks like the old lass has made quite a steady headway. Odd that the crew didn’t ransack the place. Maybe you distracted us from our hall,” She sneered at you. Away from her ship and empty handed was putting her in a foul mood. What made matters worse, however, was the sudden shock of a cannonball landing in the shimmering sea ahead of them. A warning shot. Vriska looked confused.

“Do those idiots not know I got captured!? They’re likely to sink us into-”

It was your turn to interrupt, pulling Vriska back as a rush of sailors manned their stations, thankfully out of view of their stowaways. You put a finger to your lips to hush her. That might have been a bad idea, from the wild look in her good eye.

“I think…I think we’re on the other ship…”

“I figured as much,” Vriska began to protest before you continue.

“No! BEFORE you boarded them! You're currently launching your attack!” You might be...a little TOO excited. It was strictly forbidden to travel within your own timeline. Normally not a problem; time travel was prohibitively expensive and dangerous enough that simply altering your own timeline to become rich was what many in your field would call...

“FUCKING STUPID,” Chief Gatekeeper Vantas answered his own question, “It would be fucking stupid to cross over your own timeline.”
These morning meetings usually followed tragedies, mistakes, problems... You remember the first one. The silence that fell over the room. He was always this blunt, but this time felt...different.

“Not to mention the economic ripples, but you run the risk of forcing use of the Rogue Protocols, scrubbing the paradox from the timeline by any means necessary...”

The Rogue Protocols. Your blood ran cold thinking about them. You looked at Vriska, the fear in your eyes must have been apparent, because her fierce glare softened just a bit with concern.

“What's gotten you looking so grim, lass?”

You put your head down, “If you get boarded...they're gonna wipe us out.”

“What? These louts barely put up a fight last time!” She gave a grin of pure, distilled overconfidence. You could almost see what that Peixes girl saw in her. But, unfortunately, your dour look did not match, and she immediately caught on.

“...You don't mean them, do you?”

You shake your head, “No. They'll activate the Rogue Protocols. To...put it bluntly...it's going to wipe us out. Scrub us from the timeline.”

“And telling her that isn't gonna make their decision any more difficult, if that's what you were wondering,” a somewhat familiar voice. Definitely not with the usual accent of the era. You didn't dare investigate, as another sword found its way pressed against the small of your back.

“Now, stand up slowly. Hands where I can see them. You, too, Captain. I might not have a fancy watch like her but I am pretty well versed with a number of weapons at this range.”

You both obeyed, Vriska tilting her head just a bit to the side, enough for her good eye to get a glimpse of their would-be captor.

“Where'd'you think you're takin' us, you damnable tow headed-”

You miss the rest of the curses flying freely, currently in awe at the origin of the word “tow headed” nearly two whole centuries before its' first recorded use! This was the kind of thing you loved about this job! Not so much the sharp jab in your back, again.

“Oy, get walkin', or we'll BOTH be hangin' with jack ketch, girl.”

More mental notes. You are learning so much!

“Keep walking, Megido.”

You didn't dare crane your neck back, but you KNEW that voice...you could swear...

Chapter Text

You wrack your brain for any kind of information that could be remotely useful in this situation you found yourself in. The blade at your back keeps your attention on the path ahead, yet your eyes instinctively wander over. Curse your curious nature and want to record everything.

“How many times need I repeat myself, Megido? Eyes. Forward.”

There's a palpable threat in Vriska's tone, and you obediently do so, but gah! Your mind is chomping at the bit.

“Sooo, are you really not going to introduce yourself at all? When are we meant to find out?” you ask despite the glare Vriska is probably giving you.

You notice that there's a curve to the blade at your back. It can't be an ordinary knife or short sword. It had to be some other weapon. Oh if only you knew! Maybe you could piece together their identity from that.

“You'll find out once we get to where we're going. So until then, kindly shut the fuck up,” the gravely voice said.

Okay, you're sure now you know this person if only you had an image to match the voice. You wonder if Vriska is stewing up plans in her head. She seems like the type of lady to have plenty of irons in the fire. Any second now Vriska is bound to spring into action: maybe do a cool pirating move that could take this guy by surprise? Maybe you also have watched way too many pirate movies.

Your answer came in the form of your constant companion up to its shenanigans again. Inevitably, you feel the static electricity and vibrations of your watch. You hardly have time to give a warning before you, Vriska, and mystery person are falling through a dark abyss. It's something you're used to from the many jumps you've been on, but Vriska was deftly less so by the way she clings to you once you're standing on solid ground. It takes little more than a few seconds for Vriska to hiss and jump away from you like a startled cat. Even her hair seems to stand up on end until her eye becomes less wild. You and her both stare down the person who previously had some kind of blade to your back. Vriska growls at the short person who glares at both of you with a look that could certainly kill. This is when you realize that you do in fact know this person. Quite the opposite from Vriska, you break out in a grin, practically jumping up and down at this chance meeting. The questions of why he was taking you both captive and where he was going to take you are at the back of your mind as you offer him a hand.

“Oh my stars! It’s so good to see you, Karkat!” you say as he stares pointedly at you and gets up on his own. “I knew the current path I’m on happened for a reason.”

“A reason? It shouldn’t be happening at all!” Karkat growls, eyeing Vriska as she makes a move toward her cutlass.

You raise a hand and gently place it atop her arm, guiding it back down to her side. Vriska snaps her teeth in indignation but reluctantly obeys. Karkat merely growls back.

“I know, I know. I’m probably causing such a ruckus time wise, but I’m trying my best not to change things too much. I can’t really help that my watch is on the fritz. Speaking of which, where is yours? I’d imagine you’d also have one, unless you got demoted possibly?”

This suggestion elicits a hiss from Karkat who points his sickle right at you. Vriska’s guard is immediately back, but you know better. You stay as relaxed as ever even with a weapon being brandished at you. Of everything that has happened so far, this is definitely one of the most normal interactions you’ve had.

“None of your fucking business, Megido. I got separated from Sollux is all. I was about to put a stop to this chaotic tirade you’ve gone on, but it seems your broken ass watch had other plans. We need to get it fixed like as soon as fucking possible….where’d it land us anyways?” Karkat asks, finally taking a look around.

“Not so fast, landlubber,” Vriska pipes up. This time, her hand is on the hilt of her cutlass. “We lost me partner along the way. Some kind of…oh what did this one call it…some kind of anomaly. She ended up elsewheres. I refuse to go anywhere else until we find her.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Like I’m taking orders from some old timey pirate, gods,” Karkat sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

As the two of them bicker, you take in your new surroundings as you feel the pleasant warmth from the sun on your skin. Completely clear blue skies overtake the land filled with meadows, rolling hills, and lush forests. Different song birds fill the air along with the sound of…hoof beats? Scanning the horizon, you notice what is definitely a stone castle in the distance and a tower in the opposite direction. They’re nothing grand, but given that along with the dirt roads where horses and carriages are meandering about, you’d guess maybe medieval Europe. It was when the hoof beats grew louder that you turn around and see a stark white horse decorated with red banners on either side of it portraying some kind of crest who is now approaching your group. Atop the horse is a knight in literal shining armor. His helmet hangs to the side of the saddle while he dons the rest of it on himself. His broad sword clings in its scabbard every now and then.

“Woah, are you guys about to have a brawl? Why are you in the middle of the road? You know, that’s pretty dangerous. Unless that’s the point, like you want to get run over by a horse? It’s not really my business, but I do need to get through,” the knight says, red eyes flicking from you to Vriska and Karkat. For a knight, he is rather handsome with the scarlet eyes and light blonde hair. He looks young, maybe mid twenties or so.

“Run us over if you want, fucker. We’re having a conversation here,” Karkat says, and the knight raises an eyebrow.
“Pardon him. He’s just a little grumpy; woke up on the wrong side of the bed and all that,” you say, politely bowing. You can imagine that is probably a respectable gesture for this time period.

In turn, the knight bows his head slightly. Seeing an opportunity to get a lay of the land now that your watch has calmed down for the time being, you take it.

“My apologies, sir knight. We’re quite lost you see, so perhaps if you could lead us to the nearest town, we could find out where we are. I’m Aradia by the way. My compatriots over there are Vriska and Karkat.”

“I’m Dave,” the knight says and points down the road. “Nearest town is just over yonder, but…well, guess I have nothing better to do. I can escort you. Been a while since I’ve met some fresh faces.”

Chapter Text

Dave takes you and your cohort to an inn. This isn’t your first rodeo around medieval times, yet it still shocks you how different the inns are to their usual depiction in the media.

For starters, they’re small. This one he took you to is barely the size of a house, with the actual ‘inn’ area being roughly equivalent to an attic, the majority of the space being taken up by a tavern.

It’s also empty. The only person that had been inside it in a while aside from Dave is the bartender/host, which Vriska already chats to.

“Heeeeeeeey! Could you pretty please give me that whole—” Vriska tells the bartender, while the rest of your troupe (including you!) watch in amusement. Or horror, if Karkat’s stare says anything.

“No.”

Vriska stares into their eyes—the gender of whoever’s behind the counter is ambiguous, and also none of your business—and they swiftly comply: giving her a full barrel of ale.

Vriska drags that barrel all the way to your group, that is still stationed by the inn’s entrance lounge,

“Great. Absolutely fucking fantastic,” Karkat quips. “I guess we have to drink this whole barrel now. Thanks for the gift.”

“C’mon! If we ration it out we might be able to bring it home,” Vriska replies.

“Why do thou desire bringing our ale home?” Dave interrupts their argument. “Judging by the way thou are dressed, I assume your land has riches that allow ale of immense quality to be fermented.”

You decide you’ll want him to be sitting down for the whole ‘time travelling’ talk, so you bring him to the counter and sit right by him, waiting for him to get an old bottle of wine (that smells horrendly!) before you start going on about time and the like.

“Well, that’s crazy,” Dave looks at you as if you explained boring family drama instead of actual mind-bending science. “But I’m also from the future.”

Another time traveller? That can’t be right. You already know Vriska and Karkat don’t belong here. Now Dave?

“It was more of an isekai thing. My bro went a li’l too hard when strifin’ and pushed me off his apartment roof back in ‘09.”

“So you’re that kid?” you ask. You remember hearing about a kid who fell off his apartment roof and never made it into the ground in a documentary years past. It’s what got you into those kinds of odd jobs that involve reality-bending science. It’s what changed your life.

You’re staring at the catalyst of your own current personal odyssey.

“Fuck you mean by ‘that kid’,” he replies, coldly.

You should’ve thought it through when asking him, you suppose.

“Could you please pay us a room here, we need the rest… maybe we could even drag you back home!” you say.

“I mean, I don’t need to pay us a room,” he explains. “The host’s pretty nice. He’s like a 80s fag but I don’t mind.”

You can tell he’s an ‘09er. “That’s neat.”

The host seemingly absconded from the back of the counter to the upper floor area. Dave returns to lounge area with Karkat and Vriska—presumably to inform them of his time-traveler-esque status—and you decide to talk to them.

The stairs creak under your feet and for a second you contemplate the idea of dying because of the stairs breaking—that’d be stupid. Almost as stupid as falling down those stairs, especially since Sollux warned you when you got your job about stairs, and how old ones are incredibly risky.

“Hey, I heard you’re from the—” you greet the host, who’s currently counting coins into a jar.

“Dave told you, didn’t he?” they interrupt.

“Yeah! He said you were an ‘80s fag’, how did you end up here?”

“Would you mind if I asked you to not tell any of your group?” They pull you aside to the hallway.

“Absolutely not! If you don’t want to tell me that’s all totally fine!”

They smile. “So, when I was younger I used to always put on my cousin’s dresses, and to make a long story short, with the help of a friend I figured out I was a transsexual.”

“Did you know that in the future—” you attempt to cheer her up.

“Yeah, I know, there’s going to be porn of us and all that. I don’t mind, anyways I couldn’t just tell that to my dad because he’d be furious so I came up with a plan.”

Oh no.

“My friend would catch me right out the window—since I lived in an apartment—and I would run away without anyone ever knowing. It was the perfect plan.”

You can’t say you were expecting that.

“Do I need to say more?”

She doesn’t, but yet you wait until she thanks you for getting her a couple old—new to her, you suppose—coins from a later medieval period.

At the end of the day, Vriska shares a room with her, Dave shares a room with Karkat and you get to be all alone.

When the sun rises, you know it’s time to stop fucking around and actually try finding your damned time machine.

Chapter Text

After countless hours of search, you managed to find your damned time machine. You got so curious that you tried traveling to a date close to the time period that you couldn’t go at first, because you wanted to know so badly about what happened there.

You immediately switched the date to DECEMBER 31, 1919.

You see a nice celebratory evening of a brand new year. It’s completely exciting and peaceful at first, until…

It happened.

Pipe organ music starts coming out of nowhere. A large cataclysmic storm of darkness and fire comes about, and the giant worm with the appearance straight out of Lovecraft’s weird shit appears.  Legends named it with something so impossible to pronounce without the feeling of shivers down the spines.

They call it THE WORM.

As you watch THE WORM come out of the Earth’s core, you hear people screaming, army troops arriving, and the firing of guns, cannons, and tanks. THE WORM , surviving all of its attacks, cleansed the whole army with a giant beam of energy. 

You froze in complete horror before you changed your mind and immediately rushed back to your time machine, before it would disappear due to its mechanic of leaving at a high threat-level danger.

You then went back to the previous time period where Vriska, Dave, and Karkat are still there hanging out.

Dave opens the door to Aradia, saying “Sup, Aradia. We just had a great time playing this board gam-”

“IT’S TRUE. IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN MY VERY EYES!”

Chapter Text

“What are you even on?” Dave asks.

“I’m stuck here. There’s no way out.”

“Lemme guess,” Dave says, sitting back down with Karkat. “You saw a fellow time traveler and he told you that but if you get twenty dollars from each of us you can finally return to the future.”

“No,” you attempt to explain. “My time machine won’t let me return home!”

“The fuck you want us to about it?” he quips.

“I don’t know! But you all helped me through this so I was hoping at least one of you was willing to…”

Karkat interrupts, “Whatever future bullshit you’re dealing it, I doubt Vriska would ever help you—”

“Hey! Cut that out!” Vriska interrupts his interruption.

“Works like a charm,” he whispers as she approaches you.

“Soooooooo… what’s the problem?” she asks.

“You weren’t paying attention?”

“I was!” she exclaims. “I just want more details!”

“So, every time I try returning to the present it just teleports me randomly like it used to do,” you explain. “Remember earlier?”

“Maybe, you’re missing a partner! Have you considered taking me along?”

“Fuck, she’s really buying into it,” Karkat whispers to Dave. 

“She still owes me like a couple bucks, better hope Aradia isn’t a leftover nazi spy that’s gonna kidnap her or somethin’,” Dave replies, still whispering.

You can barely hear them — you should probably act like you can’t.

Vriska probably also is hearing them. Judging by the way she takes your hand and absconds into the weathered box you call your time machine it probably doesn’t matter.

All she does before shutting the door is wave them both goodbye and suddenly —

Nothing.

Your time machine malfunctions.

You and Vriska are stuck. The door is not jammed, it simply can’t physically open.

The light inside of it shuts off. It only works when there’s sunlight.

Oh.

Oh .

Chapter Text

"Is this normal?" Vriska queries, and you’re left fumbling for words.

“...Not really.”

“I have fixed a few of my neighbor’s machines! Maybe the battery -”

You interrupt her, but say nothing. Just grabbing her shoulders and watching as her eyes meet yours.

“...Aradia?”

You back away from her until you hit the wall opposite to her, which doesn’t take long - you hit it almost instantly.

“Sorry but…” you trail off. Too ashamed - perhaps that’s the wrong adjective for this scenario but it’s the only word you can think of - to admit you roped an innocent teen into your grave.

“But what? Are you saying that we are doomed? But that can’t be! I can hear birds outside,” she lies. “At worst we can -”

“We can’t. Whatever you’re about to suggest. We can’t do that.”

“How can you be so sure?” she asks. You recognize this tone as the distinctive sass of an early 20th century teenage girl, it's almost endearing.

Almost.

“Whenever we are there’s zero light. No sun. No glimmer. Zilch. Nada.”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“...Vriska, the best case scenario is we’re inside a cave.”

“And?”

You wish you had this much faith in your own life as she has.

“Vriska -”

“Stop calling me by my name,” she shouts and pushes you into the wall. “You sound like my mom and you know how much I hate that -”

“Stop.”

And as if you were a magician, she stops. It’s like you flipped a switch in her head.

“Your mom isn’t here anymore, is she?”

“I won’t be either if we give up now.”

“You won’t be either, period.”

Silence fills the rusty box. Silence’s outside of it, too. You wish you could hear the silence outside it too.

“...You’re right.”

You’re relieved she accepted this before the oxygen level went any lower. Otherwise, knowing her, you wouldn’t have the privilege to die without your organs ever seeing anything outside of you.

The silence that follows is far more comforting, you both sit right by each other and stare toward the time machine’s keypad - its screen displaying question marks.

“I’m proud I gave my friend my house keys.” She breaks the slight comfort you had grown accustomed to.

“Your neighbor, right?”

“No, no. Not that I have any issues with him, but I wouldn’t want him growing through my stuff.”

Totally justifiable. You also wouldn’t want a 40s teen going through your stuff.

“So who is it?”

“...You promise you won’t judge me?”

“No! I would never!”

“I hope that when my mom realizes I’m dead, that she lets Terezi take my stuff…”

You don’t know who that is.

“...Did you think I left my room tidy?”

“Yes, you did.”

You’re growing tired. This is the end.

She sighs. Probably the end for her too.

“Would you mind if I… pretended you were her for a moment?”

“No,” you grumble.

She - very carefully, as if you were a porcelain doll - kneels right by your lap and slowly moves her head toward your head.

She kisses you.

You close your eyes for the last time and -

“Thank you,” you both say.

Those aren’t the worst final words you have heard.

That isn’t the worst kiss you ever gave.

She isn’t the worst girl you ever loved.

You are relieved it ended like this.