Back To The Past 1

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“Nope. Nooooope!” I said, turning away from The Mobian’s timeship. I turned and began to walk away. From the 360-degree heads-up-display of my power armor, I could see Mobian, or at least an older, scarf-clad version of Mobian than the one I’d seen before, turn and look at his companions. The bleach-blonde middle-aged woman was just as clueless. It was the other woman, an older version of Venus with grey hair and a robotic right eye, followed after me.

“I come begging for help and you turn your back on me? Since when!” she said, hurrying to grab my shoulder.

I turned. “As much as I love to hear about you coming and begging me, future Venus, you said no daughters. An awful lot of stuff I get dragged on seems to take a month of my time, and that’s a bit too long for me to leave her alone.”

She looked me where the eyes of my helmet should be and walked around to block the direction I had been walking. “We need the world’s best assassin. Do you want your daughter to see kill people?”

“My daughter’s been through some shit.She can handle me turning someone’s skull into my own personal dickpuppet, but what I don’t think she can handle is me just dumping her to go run off for a week or a month or however long.” I poked her in the chest, noticing that the tattered top she wore was less like her hero outfit and more like scrounged-up body armor.

The Mobian poked his old, grey-curled head in from the side. “If I may, my timeship does not operate by what humans call ‘San Dimas Time’. I can return you to the instant after you left.”

“And if something happens, then I’ve just suddenly disappeared from her life. Either Qiang travels with me on a journey throughout time, or you can fuck off to Transexual, Transylvania looking for someone to do the Time Warp with, gramps, got it?”

“We need you,” Venus said, moving closer and crowding me in.

I looked between Venus and Mobian, then leaned in, brushing my upper hands through their hair. “Shh. Shh. It’s ok.” Then I reached down and slapped a lower hand on their asses at the same time. “So, how serious are y’all about needing me?” They stood there awkwardly for a moment before I let go of their heads, stepped past them, and pushed them behind me with both sets of arms. “Get the fuck outta here! Killers are a dime a dozen. Like that guy.” I pointed off to the distance where Specialist St. John sat by a fountain, his giant alien blaster shotgun taken apart for cleaning. “Dragoon there used to be a mercenary. Killing for pay is the mercenary way.”

“We’ll let you bring your daughter along!” said the blonde woman, marching up behind me. Venus glared at her and the Mobian bit his bottom lip briefly.

“That is a bad idea. She’s a child,” Mobian said.

“No, fine,” Venus said, turning her glare to me and trying to fight it down. “If it’ll get you to come along, bring her. We’ll look after her.”

Dear reader, do you ever get that feeling like you’re not being told the whole story?

“You need me that bad, eh?” I looked to Venus, focusing on her. “Must be something pretty important. Why do you need me? Come on. I’m not a tool here.”

She blinked her biological eye and crossed her arms, standing with feet spread just a little. “We need you. In fifteen years, Mot awakens. It is an ancient god of death and pestilence that consumes everything. It empowers its followers to kill; it spreads filth and disease wherever; it takes the powers of whoever it consumes and sends their ghosts and corpses to round up more for it to eat. It’s unstoppable. Mobian finally came when we had no other options,” she gestured to Mobian, who bowed his head sheepishly. “It’s too powerful now. We have to go back to when it was weaker.”

“I’m following along with you so far, but why me?” I asked. I pointed over at Dragoon again. “Mercenary. Works for cash.” I pointed at myself. “Untrustworthy psycho. Gonna try to love you up and turn you into a horny toad.”

It’s a testament to how rough a future she comes from that this got Venus to smile just a little. She got control of her mouth, but it still happened. “It does things to people. Mot forces people to confront the worst about themselves. It brings out every bad thing about them and makes them see it.”

“Like depression?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Worse. Most people can’t put up a fight.” I don’t think she has much experience with depression. “We know where it will be at one moment, but we may only get one chance to destroy it. We know, don’t we? You know the truth about yourself?” She laid a hand on one of my forearms. “I can’t think of many who could get close to it through all of that.”

I cocked my head to the side. “What about future me?”

“You were dead. Will be dead.” The tense problem was just one portion of the awkwardness in those words.

“ You’re going to have to tell me how that happens,” I said.

“It’s a deal,” she said quickly. “Come help destroy Mot, and I’ll tell you how you die.”

“The timeship will be parked well away from this depression aura thingy, right?” I asked.

“Why?”

“For Qiang, of course. It was already agreed I could bring her.

“Yes,” Mobian said. “We wouldn’t want her to experience anything so terrible.” He looked between future Venus and myself. “We are agreed. Gecko, gather all you will need as well as your daughter.”

And I did. I grabbed Qiang, loaded up a couple extra rubber chicken grenades, and brought the radiationthrower back out of its carefully-sealed lead refrigerator. I don’t often get a chance to just drag the thing out, but it seemed like a good time to carry around an unlicensed nuclear reactor in a backpack. It helped conceal another thing I figured would be useful, especially if this depression aura was real. I’d been hoping to make more use of drones, and my brief time on the alien world attested to that. I snuck a couple of smaller drones under my cape, attached to the battery pack back there, as well as the back of my belt.

“Hey baba,” Qiang said, taking one of my free hands. Yet another advantage of having extras. “If we’re going back in time, can I see mama again?”

Hoo boy.

I squeezed her hand. “I sure hope so. I’ll see if they can do that, ok?”

I left a message for the Directory that I may or may not be gone for awhile. I’d let them know if I was leaving, and not to go selecting anyone else to take over for me too quickly if I don’t come back from the trip I may not go on. Mobian’s timeship was still where we’d left it. The blonde kept an eye out for me, though she spent more time checking out the various supervillains leaving. Most had been on their way out already, but Mobian’s vessel didn’t strike any of them as a good omen. As much as he was a hero, he was one who tended to show up around the time things were going wrong. It wasn’t so much that he caused problems, but he tended to be where problem were.

“Hey there,” Future Venus said, smiling warmly at Qiang in a way she’d never managed for me. Qiang ran over to go hug her. An idea flitted through my head of adopting more and more kids until she was forced to love me, but that obviously wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t even be fun, not even to watch from the outside. Might be a handy way to start my own gang of villains if I’m willing to put the years into it, so I decided to put it on the list of Possible Future Schemes. It’s right up there underneath “Engineer Global Ice Cream Shortage”.

I’d expected the inside of the ship to be all cluttered, with weird hoses and levers all around. It was a lot bigger on the inside than I expected, with a floor of some cloudy amber material. The walls were way more white than I preferred. A bit hard on the eyes there. The Mobian was standing atop a raised platform made of some dark metal that clashed with the rest of the interior. On one of the walls was a doorway of brass, perhaps, that led to further interior. Perhaps there were rooms there. Out here in this section, there was only the raised platform Mobian stood at pressing things, and the blank area for the rest of us to stand.

The opening we’d entered by closed up, cutting me off from the world’s information once again. “Are we ready to bid this millennium adieu?” Mobian asked, then leaned down to smile at Qiang. “It’s a smooth ride so you won’t need to buckle up.”

“Can we go see my mommy?” she asked in the Riccan pidgin.

Mobian’s friendly demeanor faltered for a moment. “I’ll see what we can do.”

“You speak Riccan?” I asked him.

He winked and pointed up at the ceiling of the ship. “My ship ensures we understand each other. Everyone who travels through time on it is linked, but the field dissipates if not soon renewed. Buckle your unnecessary seatbelts, folks!”

Despite that, the blonde woman was leaning on the side of the raised portion where it met the floor in a gentle ramp, holding onto the lip for support. “It’s ok,” I said. “I’m sure this nuclear device will be fine if it’s jostled too much.” I raised the radiationthrower. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“The where isn’t as important as the when. Tell me, have you ever been to the Cretaceous before?” Mobian asked. A part of the white wall cleared up like a fog, showing us lowering onto the edge of a marshy area. “If the location is important to you, this would be the continent Laramidia.”

“I think I caught that once,” I said. “So, this is is where an ancient god of death. Hey, after I kill this thing, I call dibs on its title.” Huh. Can a god of death be killed? Interesting question, but I suppose it depends on the type of god. My brief look into this Mot critter before leaving the present didn’t turn up a lot of info. Lived in a pit, ceaseless hunger, covers the land with filth. I actually had so much of a hard on for killing a god of death, I didn’t even want to pull out the social commentary, like wondering if this was Rush Limbaugh’s house or something.

The door opened and Venus volunteered to show me the way. “We’re far enough way that the ship won’t be affected. I’ll lead you as far as I can.”

I nodded and knelt down to look Qiang in the eye. “I gotta go deal with this thing, then I’ll be right back. Until then, this people are supposed to be nice to you.” I reached out and booped her nose with one of my lower hands. “See you in a bit, dumpling.”

We hugged. “See you soon, baba. Don’t get eaten by monsters.”

I patted her head. “Don’t worry, sweetie. Monsters hide under the bed because they don’t want me to find them.” And they don’t like it when I try to cuddle in the afterglow. I hugged her for a few seconds before breaking it off and standing up.

Once we’d exited the time ship, Future Venus pulled out a device and pressed a soft button on it. It created a conical hologram in front of her with lines marking ranges and a beeping dot in the distance. “This way,” she said.

We walked on for a bit, her not really responding to my attempts at conversation. Stimulating stuff, too. “And if that wasn’t bad enough, then Napoleon’s guys are just like ‘fuck it, kill ’em all. It’d just be cheaper to buy new slaves,’ and start gassing folks.”

“Do you just look at the worst humanity has to offer?” she asks.

I shot her a look. “No. I just figured I’d learn about the Haitian Revolution someday. It’s just your history, and it’s interesting. And those worst of humanity types come along naturally. Unfair to classify them as different. They are humanity.” We took turns hopping over portions of the swamp that we were circling around.

“Your daughter’s half that, too.”

“Yeah, she is. She gets to be my daughter. How fucked is her life going to be if people hold it against her, right? But that’s why I’m taking some of those lessons you tried to teach me to heart.”

“Bullshit,” Future Venus said as she stepped over a root thick enough to rival many a tree.

“I trust you with my daughter. I trust you enough to drag me to Jurassic Park. And I’ve been trying to do things to make the world a little better. I don’t want Qiang hurt because of a cycle of revenge that started with me.”

Venus hurried to get further ahead of me. “We’re almost there.”

“What, my attempt to be a tiny bit more responsible offends you, my dear Venus?” I jumped in front of her and turned around.

She stopped, of course. Even with the years on her, Future Venus was still beautiful and stubborn. “You’re bringing up some conflicting feelings, and it’s not easy knowing what’s coming left in your life and mine. My life from back then,” she gestured back behind her, toward the ship.

“Yeah, I plenty of conflicting feelings about you too. I hate you, but at the same time you’re so wonderful. A strong, unflinching hero with your stupidly naive goody-goody ways. I suppose Captain Lightning is too, but he’s not the one who seems willing to die for the belief there’s a better person in me.”

She crossed her arms. “And he’s not as pretty as me.”

I shrugged. “True, but I just learned it’s not an age thing at all, beautiful.”

She smiled and turned away, shaking her head. “You talk some shit.”

“Yeah, I do. But, ya know, I could always make someone look like you. They’d just never mean as much to me as you do,” I said. It felt a little warm under my helmet, but what the hell? I’m dead when she comes from, and present Venus won’t know any of this. “There’s a reason I can’t bring myself to kill you.”

“Yeah, because I can still fight you off.”

I handed off the radiationthrower to my lower set of arms and popped my helmet off so I could blow her a kiss. “Keep flirting like this and we’ll see.”

That got a laugh. When she stopped, she looked at me for a moment, pondering. Then she put her hand on my shoulder, leaned in, and something magical happened. “The-” she started to say before I made a little more magic happen. She didn’t let me go on forever, pressing a finger to my lips. “There. We’ve tried it. A man from your past and a woman from beyond your future.”

“Well see,” I said. When she backed off further, I put my helmet back on and redid the seals. “Unless changing the timeline makes you disappear, you could always stick around with myself and Qiang.” And my wife, too, but I wasn’t so stupid to mention that when I was on a roll.

Her smile faded and she looked down, shaking her head. “That won’t work.”

“If you’re afraid I’ll die on you, you’re supposed to give me that info anyway,” I reminded her. She sighed and walked past me. That… got chilly in a hurry.

“We’re almost there,” she said.

“Ok,” I said. I stayed quiet, hoping to give her time to think and sort all this out. Probably some hero hangup she’s dealing with?

I don’t normally enjoy nature hikes, but the day’s events made this one just awesome. If Mot the death god was trying to bring me down, he wasn’t doing shit. Maybe that’s what got Future Venus, but I wasn’t feeling a thing. I was thinking on that when she stopped, staring down at a strange stone that definitely looked out of place there from the glow within. The smooth obsidian orb just sat there. “This our Mot guy? A bit on the small side, and I thought there’d be a pit.” Behind me, the drones dropped out from under my cape. One took off for cover, the other headed up into the tree tops.

Venus looked back and up, trying to follow the noise, but didn’t seem all that concerned. “That leads to Mot. I’m not going any further, but wait a moment,” she turned and patted my shoulder. “I was going to tell you when you died, now, before you touched it. I can’t now. I hope you can understand.” She stepped back.

“This Mot aura’s really doing a number on you… Let me just deal with that. You tell me afterward.” I turned and walked toward the orb. “What do I do?”

“Just touch it,” she said. Nice words to hear coming from her. I went to nudge it with my boot and-

It was like it blew up on me, but not explosively. One moment it’s a rock on the ground, the next it’s surrounding me, everything held in place in rock or crystal or whatever’s the fucking difference when I’m trapped like that.

I could still feel the drones at least, but before I could direct them to fire on the thing, a diamond-shaped thing flew through the sky. It was even smaller than the timeship, but when it touched the ground, four beings appeared. Four humanoids, each wearing a different primary color with black and silver as secondary colors. The same damn things that showed up at the end of the big villain raid on the alien planet that created the Deep Ones and experimented on the mercenaries who accidentally found the portal.

The lead one in red made a sound that, after a moment, shifted into English words. “Go.” Venus turned and jogged away, sparing me one last glance. Red guy turned to me then. “You understand this language?” he continued in English.

I’d have nodded, or given him a middle finger, but both were hard to do. “Yeah, fuckface, but if you really want to speak my language, let me out of this thing.”

“You are Psychopomp Gecko, member of an infant race, leader of a group who attacked the society of your superiors. We will exact punishment for your trespass. You can not escape. You have no allies. Our victory is complete. Our power, overwhelming. Resistance will only bring pain.”

“Oh, you have no fucking idea,” I growled from inside this crystal ball that encased me as I stared out at a a foursome of aliens who decided to commit the world’s least fun suicide.

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