Warty Hugeman strode into the vast Main Hall wearing the finest fashions looted from 50,000 years of human vanity. His shirt was woven from the softest nipple hairs of the giant echidnas that obliterated Africa in the 35th century, genetic abominations from yet another failed attempt to reterraform Earth. His pants were cuttleshark leather, the still-active chromatophores rippling with colors painfully beautiful to the human eye. His boots were each carved from a single piece of butter-soft mimetic mastodon ivory. A cape of the blackest megasilk was tied with an elaborate knot at his throat and it billowed out behind him like a sail lost to a fierce storm. His weapons were simple and elegant: a sword pried from the hand a tyrant dying on a long-ago battlefield, a handgun that could destroy a city with a single pull of the trigger.
The Time Plunderer's Ball was a vast one million second long party in a closed time-like loop on a tiny little moon orbiting a dull planet parented by an uninteresting sun that was tucked away in a boring globular cluster. It was billed as hyperexclusive, but the whole thing was set up to be one of the worst kept secrets in all of history. You could only go if a time traveller that had already spotted a future version of you at the party invited you, but since everyone who was anyone eventually made it to the Ball, it meant almost all time travellers there ever were or will be ended up there at there at some point. It was started by a pair of piratical bastards as a trap to kill other time travellers to thin out the competition, but they had miscalculated their CTL and the party always restarted for them just as their frame of reference brought them to the moment they were supposed to trigger a bomb in the moon or a solar flare or something. Accounts differed. Most people Warty tried to ask about it just told him to enjoy the party and drink up because the bill was never, ever going to come due.
Trap or not, the etiquette for The Ball was strict. It was utterly gauche to talk to yourself at The Ball. Warty didn't even nod to a younger version of himself that was drinking and playing cards with a few people he vaguely remembered. Warty did make note of the primitive timesuit the younger version wore. It looked dated and frankly ridiculous, like your high school haircut. There was another Warty--or maybe just a Wart--looming over the party on a balcony, gripping a railing, wearing a featureless body suit that swallowed light completely. All Warty could see was the outlined absence of his futureself.
Everywhere around him time travellers were displaying looted artifacts, telling the story of elaborate scars or boasting about conquests.
"Cleopatra? Cleopatra? Everyone's had that fucked out hag by now!" a TechnoViking roared to a small, bespectacled researcher from a Time Institute. Warty couldn't tell which Time Institute; he had encountered hundreds of organizations calling themselves that, often working at cross-purposes to preserve their idea of the "proper timestream."
"Did she try to stick a crocodile turd in her pussy first?" the TechnoViking continued, poking the little man hard in the shoulder. The Viking was almost as large as Warty, with a carefully combed beard, flowing blond hair and a Time Axe slung casually over one shoulder. It was laughable technology compared to the timesuit; the Galactic Northmen had to cleave a wound in time and step through, hoping the cut was just right to take them to their destination. More often than not they stepped out into empty space and died.
"Oh, leave him alone, Sven," Warty said. It was a calculated gamble. Warty wasn't sure if he knew this one, they all looked so much alike they were probably clones or forced zygote propagation, but most of them seemed to be named Sven.
"Hoogemoan!" Sven boomed. "Meet my new friend." He clapped the Time Institute stooge on the shoulder and nearly knocked him to his knees. He was a nervous type, sniffing the air like a prey species. His only interesting feature was a gruesome scar like jagged lightening along the left side of his head.
"Hoogemoan. Hooge-moan, you deaf little creature," Sven thundered.
Warty stepped between them. To the stooge he held out his hand, making the spray of vacuum impact diamonds along the knuckles glitter.
"I'm Warty Hugeman." He grinned as nicely as he could. He had killed dozens of these guys in various encounters and in many different incarnations, but there was no sense in scaring this one. The Ball was neutral ground.
"Warty Hugeman?" the stooge gulped. "Oh, Jesus. Oh, fuck. You aren't supposed to look like that any longer!" He began pawing at the time harness so many of them used, frantically trying to calculate a time jump.
"Calm down there, friend," Warty said. "I'm not going to hurt you."
As Warty approached the stooge slowly, a huge shadow fell over them both. Looking up, Warty could see that the massive futureself had vaulted the balcony railing and was falling toward them. Before he could react, Wart(+?) had seized the stooge. With a single gesture he ripped off the Institute harness and stomped it to junk. The stooge was screaming a abject terror until Wart(+?) grabbed him by the throat and shook him.
"What's going on?" Warty demanded. Wart(+?) turned and hit him with the stooge. He could hear dozens of bones breaking in the little man's body as he crashed against him. Warty flew a few feet and landed on a table full of drinks, scattering a group of Aztechnocrats that were touching themselves as they shared a manufactured race memory of a long summer day spent ripping out a thousand hearts with obsidian blades. A set of headphones had landed near Warty and he could hear the screaming victims and the chants of religious ecstasy. Over it, much louder, in the shocked silence of the ball's guests, he could hear the wet firecracker sounds of rapidly breaking bone.
"Your Eventual wadded the little man into a ball and then jumped away with what was left," Sven explained as he help him up.
"I don't remember that happening," Warty said. He looked for his younger self. Warty(-18 Subjective) was waiting to catch his eye, and then cocked a brow. Warty shrugged and his younger self shimmered of out the current frame of reference.
"You need a drink, Hoogemoan," Sven said. "Many, many drinks." He threw his arm around Warty's shoulder and led him away, taking care to step right on the frightened scrap of penis hanging out of the rucked tunic of the High Priest of the Aztechnocrats.
Chapter Two
Warty was almost drunk when The Parade of Curiosities began.
Sven was in the second hour of recounting his sexual exploits through time to the various creatures sitting at their table. Highlights so far included urinating in the cavernous vagina of Pope Joan and titty-fucking General Kei-Ong before her defeat at The Groomsbridge Massacre.
The Forstock Twins huddled together in a single chair, passing a glass of something that looked like curdled red wine back and forth. An enormous gengineered panda absently stripped narcotic bamboo as it listened, nodding at Sven's litany of famous names he had sexed up on throughout history. There was even a amorphous blob of glitter with them that claimed to be a post-real intelligence from "otherways in time." Warty suspected it was just some asshole with a holoprojecter taking the piss, but it was happy to gamble poorly with credit chips it claimed to be willing into existence, so Warty didn't run a backscatter defense protocol through his suit's countermeasure suite.
Sven broke off when the first exhibit of The Parade got close.
"Hoogemoan, what is this thing?"
Warty turned in his chair to see a disembodied brain on a floating platter, crackling vines of electricity running through the folds and channels of its surface.
"The Pretender Brainiarch of 2458, a corrupted clone of a renegade Brainarch that it sent back to blah blah blah. Stealing a planet or something," Warty told him.
"Not much of a capture," the panda said, its voice deep and melodic. "I've heard it's not much smarter than an Aquaculture Technician Grade 2."
The Forstock Twins tittered at this. Warty could never tell the weird little bald fuckers apart and he was far too drunk to remember the panda's name. It had a number in it. Maybe.
"How does it have sex?" Sven wondered.
"Who cares, Sven? It's got to shit out of something... won't be good enough for you?" Warty said. Sven's roar of laughter spit beer all over The Forstock Twins.
"A velociraptor? What is this, amateur night?" the panda scoffed. A ring of short robots herded the brightly plumed dinosaur through the hall. When it got too close to a herder, a crackle of electricity could be heard over the quiet laughter of the crowd.
"It looks like an evil chicken," Warty said. Dinosaur hunts only interested him if they were bare-handed and afforded him ample opportunity to trample as many butterflies as possible.
As the velociraptor pinballed between the robots, a savory smell of cooked flesh wafted over to Warty. His erections were immediate save for Node 7, a small error light blinked in the lower left of his visual field. Even with the lavish spokesman money, he was going to make those dipshits at Futurecock fix the Hydra model or he was going to break off each of the seven shafts in the orifices of corporate officers. He was mentally composing a threatening t-mail when the velociraptor screeched.
"You fucking assholes! I'm not really a dinosaur!" it growled in passable Relativistic Time Creole. It drew out its esses like a cartoon reptile.
"Ah, I see. An extreme genoretrotype like myself," the panda said. "But cruder." The panda squirmed with smug dismissal.
"Looking in the central database of the parade," Forstock Left said.
"I and we see that it is one of the first of your clade." Forstock Right finished.
The panda's eyes drifted to the ceiling as it read the entry on an implanted display.
"Ah. That is impressive then. The first experiments on that scale were so secret the details were lost. All the subjects and scientists were killed by some fringe don't-play-god types and the research destroyed. I'm going to kick Ned Ludd in the balls the next time I run into him. And I'm going to use my claws."
It wouldn't change anything, Warty thought glumly. Stupidity will always out, even if it comes in under a different name.
"I wonder where it learned RTC?" the glittercloud asked in a tinny voice as it floated up to the table, throwing in what Warty considered unnecessary static and bleeps and bloops. It had been away at the bar for such a long time getting the next round that Warty had hoped it was gone for good.
"I'm off to take a piss," Warty announced.
"I shall join you, Hoogemoan," Sven said. As he struggled to stand, he slipped and his head cracked loudly on the hard stone floor. He was out cold.
"Can someone roll Sven over into the recovery position?" Warty asked as he left.
He dodged a merwolfman being wheeled around in a grandly appointed aquarium, sidestepped a stampede of modular AI components all shouting in binary at one another, and shoved aside the gleaming chrome skeleton of a tripedal whale that was chatting up a smoothly gorgeous strain of Herpes Simplex 798--lovely in an evening gown the way only a sentient dick sore can be.
At least the bathroom itself was largely deserted. It was normous due to all the various facilities it had to offer for the assorted post-humans, transaliens, cisaliens, cyborgs, glitterclouds, insubstantials, mutants, post-mutants, cishumans, reverts, retrotypals and other sorts of sentients in attendance--and all their pets.
He stepped up to a normal-enough looking urinal and unzipped. The Furturecock Hydra had barely begun calculating urine flight paths when he heard the familiar crackle of an electromagnetic pulse grenade and everything went black.
When Warty Hugeman came to on the no-slip surface of the bathroom floor, he realized immediately that his penis had been stolen.
Chapter Three
Warty quickly pulled up the Find My Penis app on the timesuit's display. The Hydra was moving toward the main entrance to The Ball.
"Freeze," he ordered the suit and jumped to his feet.
"An exclusion field has been active for the last 4.87 seconds," the suit told him primly. No time-travel, no tricks like stopping time or recursion hops.
"How long was I out?"
"Local reference clock signal comparison indicates that internal sensors were out of operation for 264 seconds," the suit said. It seemed almost contrite. It was time to destroy its higher functions again, Warty only mentally noted. You never want to live inside anything that could develop a sense of humor.
"Suit functionality report. Anything else missing?"
"Nothing else was stolen. Suit functionality at 87%. At current repair speed, 100% in 158 seconds local subjective."
Warty took stock of his appearance in a giant mirror. The majestic cape was in tatters; it was made to billow and the time on the floor motionless had destroyed it. He ripped it off and threw it in a waste bin. Whoever knocked him out had taken a knife to his cuttleshark pants and his shirt smelled of piss. He stripped it all off. He let the timesuit substantiate into local space.
"The exclusion field has doubled in area of effect," the suit said. That meant the power supply for must have peaked. Warty glared at the moving dot that represented his penis as it sped away.
"Calculate a jump for when the field goes down. Put me in front of the idiot that thought it was a good idea to steal my penis."
"Acknowledged. Solution in… Hold… Your penis has vanished. Sensors read that the thief generated a jump once outside the exclusion field."
"Motherfucker!" Warty yelled. He slammed his massive fist on the counter beside the sink, spraying resin-bonded regolith shards in all directions.
The absence of his mighty multi-headed miracle manhood was a dull ache. At least they hadn't cut out the attachment ring or taken his magnificent ballsack. He was born with those spectacular jewels and remained quite attached to them. His long, thick, veiny and thoroughly original love sausage was floating in liquid nitrogen, waiting for him to tire of Futurecock technological replacements.
"The exclusion field is degrading," the suit murmured. "Time jump facility available concurrent with current field collapse estimate."
"First things first, suit." Warty subvocalized a set of coordinates.
***
Warty Hugeman materialized outside the Research and Development laboratories of Futurecock Industries, still needing to take a piss. He had been the face of the company for so long in the current frame of reference that the security guards let him into the facility immediately and escorted him to the Director of Male Genitalia (Nominal) and Crotch-Based Energy Weapons' office. He was a small and obsequious little man, oily in his manner, but he knew combat-model cocks like no one else.
"Mr. Hugeman. What a pleasure to see you," he purred, holding out his hand.
"No time for pleasantries, Dr. Weissblut. I need a replacement for my Hydra."
"Hydra? It is damaged? Were the power cells breached?" The little man's eyes were wide with terror.
"No, Doctor. It was stolen after someone used an EMP on my suit."
"Stolen? Why there's no telling how much destruction and pleasure could occur if that fell into the wrong hands!"
"Exactly, Doctor. I need you to re-equip me."
"But you have the only Hydra."
"I need something better than the Hydra in order to beat someone with a Hydra, Doctor."
"Of course. Give me a year, Mr. Hugeman. I'll have something for you."
Warty nodded and mouthed the coordinates. The room blinked out of existence for a fraction of a second. Dr. Weissblut stood before him as before, but the left side of his face had been burned down the bone and was covered with a clear mask.
"Mr. Hugdemaan," the doctor slurred. "On time ash uzuall."
"Doctor? What happened?"
"A small assident, sir. My assistant will help yoo; I mush retire."
The doctor left the room and younger version of him came back in. Whether child or clone, Warty didn't ask.
"Come with me, Mr. Hugeman. We will have to go to the fitting armory."
They walked together down a hallway that featured all the successful product lines from the century Futurecock Industries had dominated the recreational and military replacement cock market. There was the Mark 1, little more than a urethra drilled though the center of a white plastic dildo. It didn't even have vibration until the Mark 2. It was hanging up there as well, in all available colors: greasy pink, sterile white, and gleaming pitch black. So many memories. There was The Dominator, with counter-rotating rings, and The Sploosh, a knobby monstrosity that used sub-sonics to induce rapid overproduction of vaginal lubrication. Running along the top of the wainscoting were examples of the evolution of crotchal weaponry, from the simple penis bayonet to a scrotum-deployed MIRVmine. It wasn't until the two companies merged that the hybrid forms--meant for both sexual overpleasure and hands-free destruction of your enemies--began to be manufactured.
"After you, sir," the assistant said, when they reached the doors at the end of the hallway.
"Here is my father's final design, Mr. Hugeman."
In the small, colorless room, it waited for him on a clear pedestal. It was a triumph in black chrome, with a well-defined glans and circumcised expertly. As long as a forearm, as thick as a soup can, and even while switched off it seemed to hum with sex and devastation.
"It's enormous!" Warty exclaimed.
"That's what she will have said, Mr. Hugeman."
Chapter Four
Warty materialized in his underwater fortress. He had spent three days subjective on the island Futurecock used as a proving ground, learning the capabilities of his new penis. It had 480 different vibration and torsion settings and was strong enough to let him fuck an ancient internal combustion engine block in half with only a dozen shattering thrusts. The urethra could dilate to empty his bladder in a fraction of a second or squeeze down to make his urine a water knife that could carve through flesh. When deployed, launcher rails for missiles and mines made the entire length bristle like a manic porcupine. The
frenulum was an arc welder, the
corona glandis became a cutting edge spinning up to 700 rpm—more than a match for the toughest of hymens. Interfaced with the timesuit, Warty could program offensive and defensive attack scenarios. It could even run the attacks if he was unconscious, wounded or even dead. The thought of his big black doomcock avenging his death made the entire device shiver with electric pleasure.
The fortress was cold and dusty, barely used since he shared it with Marissa. Since she was annihilated from the timestream, he couldn’t even go back and see her from a distance. For a while he would murder the Brainarchy for their betrayal and then go back the day before the slaughter and murder them all over again. He had spent nearly a month subjective thinking up ways to kill them more painfully than he will/would have the next day, but it wasn’t going to bring her back. Finally he slung a boulder of antineutronium at their base the day before they would meet Marissa for the first time, years before she even became a Brainarchy agent. They died screaming, ignorant of what they did to deserve it.
Warty spit on, spoke to, coughed on and stared at the armory vault's biometric sensors until osmium alloy bolts as thick as his thighs slid apart and the blast-proof doors swung open. The serial killers and tyrants he had collected from the timestream were just a sideline to his quest to amass weapons of frightening power. He placed the citykiller pistol on its display shelf and slotted his sword next to it. He choose the gravity laser because it was small and could scale up or down for almost any situation and a big, ugly projectile handgun that could carry over a dozen different payloads. He tucked ammunition clips all over the pockets of the timesuit, as well as a variety of grenades and knifes. He selected the most heavily armored of his SmartCapes. The brochure said it could protect the wearer from a 5 kiloton airburst, but he had never put that to the test. The cape was also a full combat model and carried more firepower than a 20th century armored division. He removed the last of his party outfit, the beautiful mastodon boots, and let the timesuit grow out its own footwear. The soles could stick to virtually any surface and they were sturdy enough to withstand the purposeful stride of Warty Hugeman going to war.
"Suit," he said. "Wake everything up. Sensors, recorders, weapon and defensive protocols, everything." The timesuit hummed with activity.
"Playback starting from when I entered The Ball. Show me everyone that came in within 20 minutes on either side of my arrival. And generate an overhead of their movements near the bathroom."
Warty flipped through all the near time arrivals. He recognized a few and the suit was able to identify some from its archive files. Pikers and noobs mostly, jumped-up time pirates in stolen machines they could barely control that would eventually strand them somewhere unpleasant. Morlock food. Couple of Time Institute guys and a few more TechnoVikings that looked exactly like Sven popped up. A couple of heavy-hitters were easy to spot by their unhurried grins and wearable time apparati, but one was a friend Warty hadn't seen in a few years subjective and the other was a rival that he had already taught a few hard lessons. Neither were the type to try something so brazen.
"What are the greyed out profiles?" Three of them moved about the mock-up of the ball, one returning the bathroom several times.
"They possessed technology capable of blocking my sensors. The security feeds I was able to tap from The Ball also show evidence of interference."
"And there's nothing from the EMP grenade going off until you wake me back up?"
"There is an audio file from near the table you were sitting, but it is indistinct."
"Play it." There was a rhythmic crackling that remind him of a damaged vinyl record. Warty heard someone or something roaring in inarticulate rage. It sounded far away from the recording source. Someone—a woman maybe—screamed in terror closer to the microphone. More screams. Rising panic crashing like waves in a storm, then nothing.
"Calculate a jump to a bathroom stall outside the radius of the EMP grenade 20 seconds prior to detonation," he instructed the suit.
"Such a jump will result in a temporal overlap of approximately 510 seconds."
"I know that," Warty snapped as he loaded the projectile gun with shock rounds. He'd take the penis thief alive, find out what he or she knew, then use the Doomcock on them until there wasn't enough left to wipe a rat's asshole with.
"You will be dangerously close to yourself."
"I know that too." Warty thought about Marissa having her entire existence scribbled over after coming into contact with herself. He might be the last person in the universe who remembered she even ever was.
"Time jump coordinates locked," the suit whispered.
Chapter Five
Warty Hugeman peeked over the top of the bathroom stall. He watched until he saw himself come in. The mega-silk cape and creamy ivory boots. The liquid shift of hard muscles under tight clothes.
"God-fucking-dammit, I am gorgeous," he muttered. He ducked back down, running his thumb over the spiral pattern in the projectile pistol's grip in anticipation. The Doomcock had run through erection protocols and was fully deployed trough the timesuit. It bounced to his pulse. The dull crump of the EMP grenade going off. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Warty kicked open the door of the stall and stormed across the vast bathroom, the Doomcock flailing with deadly purpose. A small, lithe figure was hunched over his crotch, head-to-toe in light-swallowing black and masked.
"Hey, asshole." The figure looked up, the already detached Hydra in its hand. Warty fired two shock rounds into center mass. No effect.
"Run, you little shit," he told the thief as it turned to escape. "Run so I can catch you."
"Exclusion field active," the suit told him.
The thief slipped through the occlusion panels of the bathroom. Warty ejected the shock round magazine and let it clatter away on the floor. He slammed home a mag of shard rounds, non-conductive needles bonded with a polymer. Made to penetrate force fields and they blossomed when they hit flesh, chewing it to mush.
The main ballroom was bloody chaos and he lost the thief immediately. The exclusion field had crashed the life support system of the aliens in the room and the more extreme adapted humans. Everywhere people were struggling with their myriad time travel devices, trying to jump to safety or subjectively freeze time until they could figure out what was going on. Over the cacophony of their confusion, Warty heard the roaring from the recording. It was pure rage, pure hate.
He pushed his way back to his table. The Forstock Twins were gone already. The panda was amused by it all, still chewing his narcotic bamboo. Sven was sitting in his chair, but was slumped over his Time Axe. The back of his blond hair was dark with blood. The roaring was growing closer. A small creature that looked like a turd made from diamonds flew over his head, shrieking, and disappeared into the crowd.
"Have you seen a little guy in all-black carrying a giant multi-headed penis?" he asked them both.
"Oh, Hugeman. What a delightful question. Ask another." The panda had closed his eyes while he spoke, a wide grin his boo-junkie face.
"Sven? Sven? How are you doing?"
"I am drunk, Hoogemoan. And my head hurts," he said, a concussion slur in his voice.
"Perfect mood for you to help me kill this guy," Warty told him. Sven looked up at him with only one eye, but he was smiling. The TechnoViking rose to his feet. He looked down at the Doomcock.
"Gods, what a monster. What is that thing, my friend?" Sven started to bend over to get a better look, but suddenly thought better of it.
"Tactical pleasure weapon platform. Haven't you seen a Futurecock before?"
"No, Hoogemoan. We have no such thing in Asgard." An untapped market, Warty thought. His shares of Futurecock stock were going to soar.
"What is that noise, Sven? The roaring." He had to clap his hands together to get Sven to stop ogling the Doomcock.
"Something is loose from the Parade, Hoogemoan," Sven said, slinging the Time Axe over his back. "It is very mad. I can hear it in the loose bones of my skull."
"Track The Hydra," Warty sub-vocalized to the suit. A red arrow seemed to appear in the sky, pointing downward. It was moving away.
"C'mon, Sven." As they took off, Warty turned to the Panda. It had passed out, green ichor trailing from its slack mouth.
Sven and Warty pushed through the crowd toward the arrow. As they got closer, Warty realized the thief had stopped. He had a chance.
Sven pulled two slender creatures apart and they stepped pass them. A circle had formed, still backing away from what was roaring.
It was hideous, naked and enraged. A huge oblong head with a massive squashed nose and a mouth full of jagged teeth sat on a thick neck. The creature was nearly seven feet tall and covered in an ugly pebbling of razor rash and sported a massive erection that rivaled the Doomcock, but in ridged and veiny meat. Force cuffs, dead from the exclusion field, hung from its wrists and ankles. Held high over its bald head was his thief, the arrow bouncing up and down over him.
"What the fuck is that?" Warty blurted out.
The gross abomination threw the thief at Warty's feet and yelled in guttural English, "STEVE SMITH HATE TIME TRAVEL!"
Chapter Six
"Hoogemoan? What is this creature?"
"I have no idea, Sven." Warty watched as a securitybot crackling with taser nodes rolled forward. The creature back-handed the robot into a giant pink flamingo that burst into flames and screamed obscenities as it tried to flap away.
The thief stirred at his feet and Warty stamped down his arm, breaking it and pinning it to the floor. Warty reached down and pulled the hood off while the creature fought off more bots.
"You little fucking shit," Warty said. It was the Time Institute stooge from earlier, but maybe 25 years younger. Warty picked him up and shook him like a ragdoll.
"Where's The Hydra?" The stooge gaped like a dying fish, but managed to point with his crushed arm. Warty realized his beautiful seven-headed Futurecock was currently being used by a shaved nightmare to beat in the netgun of a securitybot.
Warty threw the stooge back on the ground. "Stay," he ordered. "Or I'll pull out your tibia and fuck you with it."
"If that thing manages to breach The Hydra's energy cells it will kill everyone on this moon," Warty said. A wild grin spread across Sven's face.
"I will go, Hoogemoan! It will be a good death!" The TechnoViking let out a manly scream and rushed forward before Warty could stop him.
"Who brought this thing here?" he demanded, turning to the crown as Sven and Steve Smith grappled. Dozens of fingers pointed at a frightened standard human that was surrounded by securitybots. Warty crossed to the human and loomed over him, the Doomcock dangerously close to his chestmeat.
"What is that?" Warty yelled.
"I just thought it'd be funny," the man said. He was a puny thing. Warty could break him with ease.
"Funny? Does this look funny to you? What is it?"
"It's Steve Smith, like it said," and he shrugged. Warty bashed the securitybots aside and picked him up by his shirt.
"How would you like to be dropped into a black hole, shitbird?"
"It's a Sasquatch named Steve Smith." Warty remembered Bigfoot from his childhood. Supposedly a relic species of over-sized ape.
"Bigfoot was just a myth," Warty growled.
"N-no. They are real. The last one somehow taught itself to sort of speak, shaved and tried to live as a human." He managed to grin at Warty. Sven screamed.
"And he likes to rape," the human said. Warty dropped him on a securitybot and let him sizzle.
"Hoogemoan! It has me!"
"STEVE SMITH LIKE BLOND HAIR ON GIRL! STEVE SMITH THINK BLOND HAIR PRETTY!"
Warty saw that Steve Smith had Sven by the neck and was trying to tear away his seal leather pants. He had The Hydra clamped in his mouth to free both hands and was chewing on it. Warty called up a firing solution for the Doomcock. He was delighted to have a chance to kill the last rapist Sasquatch in existence.
"Target occluded," the suit told him. Steve Smith was hunched over Sven, still ripping at his pants. Sven was crying--an ugly, frightening sound.
"Dammit," Warty said, as he edged sideways to clear the shot, but the movement only made Steve Smith notice him. He shoved Sven at Warty suddenly and they both tumbled to the ground. The Hydra fell out of his jagged teeth as yelled.
"STEVE SMITH HAVE NO TIME FOR PRETTY BLOND GIRL!
Warty struggled under the unconscious weight of the giant TechnoViking as Steve Smith advanced on them both.
"NOW NO ONE SAY STEVE SMITH NOT TOOL USER!"
Warty stared in horror as the monster raised Sven's Time Axe over them and prepared to strike.
The swing of the Time Axe didn't connect with Sven or Warty, but glanced off the skull of the Time Institute stooge as he dived for the discarded Hydra. The Futurecock was in terrible condition, covered in split drinks and animal hair from the floor and leaked lube from dozens of joy pores. One tip had been chewed off by Steve Smith and it struggled to grow back two new ones to replace it. The Hydra writhed in the stooge's hands as he rolled away from the blow the axe, spraying blood from flap of skin carved off the side of his head and face.
Steve Smith roared and raised the axe again, ready to split the stooge in two. Warty kicked out and caught the beast in the knee, buying himself the seconds he needed to roll Sven off. Somehow the stooge was still mobile and began to run away through the crowd.
"BRING BACK STEVE SMITH CHEW TOY, SMALL MAN!" Steve growled. He staggered to his massive feet and lumbered after the stooge, the axe held over his head. The crowd melted away like Styrofoam from a blowtorch.
As Warty Hugeman stood, his suit informed him, "Your previous self is now awake in the bathroom. He has begun to track The Hydra's signal."
He crouched to check Sven's pulse. It was weak and erratic. Steve Smith had broken most of the bones in his face and deep claw and bite marks covered his arms and torso.
"Hoogemoan," Sven gurgled, the word coming out of his mouth in a froth of blood. "The Axe, Hoogemoan. It is active."
"I'll get it back for you, Sven. Just rest."
Sven cried out, "MY ASS!" And then he died.
Chapter Seven
Running. Warty Hugeman's rage shut out everything else. His long strides were mechanically perfect. The Doomcock churned up and down, intent with its own terrible purpose. There. The ache to kill. Warty felt his scrotum clench like a fist. Faces turning into screams, blurring into nothing. Steve Smith. Warty was gaining.
"LITTLE MAN!" Steve Smith bellowed at the fleeing Time Institute thief.
Warty fired off a volley of pubic missiles from the Doomcock, programmed to seek mammalian flesh, each with enough paralytic to bring down Pleistocene megafauna. Creatures all along the rent Steve Smith had torn in the crowd dropped to the ground, but none reached the great beast himself.
"Nearing edge of exclusion field," the suit told him. Warty only growled in reply.
Steve Smith had caught up with to the stooge enough to try swiping at him with Sven's Time Axe. The blunt end smashed into the his head with a sickening crunch and he dropped. Steve Smith stood over him, panting, lifting the Axe again, when Warty reached them both.
"Stop, creature!" Warty ordered, the timesuit amplifying his voice to just short of a bomb exploding.
Steve Smith turned and swung at Warty instead, the Time Axe beginning to crackle with energy. Warty let the SmartCape take the blow. Somehow he still felt it when it landed. Warty was impressed by Steve Smith's strength and savagery.
"Exclusion field collapse in 30 seconds," the suit muttered.
Warty lashed out as Steve Smith tried for a two-handed overhead blow and caught the monster by its wrists. He could barely hold onto the creature, even with his boosted musculature.
As they struggled, Warty was face to face with Steve Smith. Even for a relict demon ape ripped out of time, Steve Smith was extraordinarily ugly. Black, dead-eyes glittered from dark pits in his protruding double-arced brow. Under a gigantic, squashed nose, huge teeth with pronounced canines gnashed behind a lipless mouth on a jutting jaw. The roaring furnace of his breath stank of rotting meat and blood, but it was hard to pick out from the miasma of hot garbage that squatted in the air around his sweat soaked body.
In another, lower, arena, as fierce a battle raged.
In a factory-programmed attack and response scenario, long, thin spikes of osmium sprouted from the glans of the Doomcock when it was brought close to Steve Smith's penis. Steve Smith's penis began to gyrate in a rough oval as their hosts jockeyed for leverage. The Doomcock lowered its rigidity constant and began to flail as well, attempting to intercept the stochastic movements of Steve Smith's penis.
The Doomcock finally connected with a graze and ape blood spewed from a nick in the superficial dorsal vein. Steve Smith's penis responded with a lunge that delivered a terrific slap to Warty's testicles, but their defensive carapace had been activated as soon as genital hostilities began. The Doomcock struck the same blow in reply, driving spikes deep into Steve Smith's massive, deeply-wrinkled scrotum. The Doomcock realized its mistake when it tried to pull back for the next attack scenario. It was stuck.
Steve Smith's penis began pounding on the Doomcock as Steve Smith tried to free his hands. Damage was reported from a dozen sectors along the Doomcock's central shaft as erotica detectors began to scream homopanic into the vast computing space of the Doomcock's central processor. In desperation, the Doomcock released the spikes in order to free itself. To cover its retreat, The Doomcock fired kinetic kill projectiles from its urethral railgun. They ricocheted off Steve Smith's testicles in a hundred directions.
What could Steve Smith's scrotum possibly be made of? the Doomcock wondered.
Warty gathered all his strength and pushed Steve Smith away. He knew he was never going to win without weapons. The creature was simply too strong. Steve Smith began circling him, the Time Axe now glowing a bright Cherenkov blue.
"The Hydra is now outside the exclusion field," the timesuit said.
Warty saw that the bloodied and concussed Time Institute stooge had crawled away from the fight. He cradled The Hydra in his broken arm and was setting coordinates with his other hand on a time harness. Warty started edging toward him, but Steve Smith growled and menaced him with the Axe. A hum was building to a scream within it.
"Hey, Steve Smith… That little man has your chew toy," Warty said.
"STEVE SMITH WANT CHEW TOY!"
"Well, go and get it. He's just a tiny little man."
Steve Smith started toward the stooge, but the thief disappeared, escaping into the timestream. The shaved sasquatch turned back to Warty.
"BIG MAN TRICK STEVE SMITH! BIG MAN AND LITTLE MAN THINK STEVE SMITH NO SMART!"
"Of course not, Stevsie." Warty watched the countdown to the exclusion field collapse. He planned on freezing time and seeing how far he could get Sven's Axe up Steve Smith's ass, but couldn't decide which end to start with.
"STEVE SMITH VERY IMPORTANT FOREST LAWYER! STEVE SMITH FIRST CHAIR IN FAMOUS CASE OF PINECONE VS. GOPHER!" Steve Smith lunged toward Warty, the Axe held high.
Warty brought the SmartCape around to take the blow and the suit said "Exclusion field nullified."
As the Time Axe came down, it ripped a jagged gash in the fabric of spacetime and Steve Smith disappeared into it.
Chapter Eight
"Track that fucking animal," Warty told the timesuit.
All around him people and creatures were disappearing as they took advantage of the exclusion field collapse to travel away from The Ball. Most just blinked of out of the local reference, but some dissolved, took a step sideways out of time, wavered in and out like a badly tuned viewscreen, ascended into a column of sourceless light, were seemingly consumed by a bolt of lightning with all the attendant thunder or opened a gaudy wormhole to step through—creating pressure differentials that caused dust devils of party trash to swirl around all over. After a few seconds, Warty was alone.
"Unable to resolve temporospatial coordinates of Steve Smith," the suit said.
"Track Sven's Time Axe. It has to have some sort of energy signature."
"Unable to track Time Axe energy signature. Sensors cannot detect anything beyond threshold of Time Axe temporal portal."
"So that thing could be anywhere or anywhen with a fully functional Time Axe?"
"Correct."
Warty stepped around to the other side of the shimmering wound in time left by Steve Smith's exit. There was sunlight from a much older star than Sol on the other side and something that might have been a dwelling.
"The temporal portal is closing."
With no other path through which to wreak his vengeance, Warty Hugeman stepped though the tear in time.
***
"SYSTEM MALFUNCTION" hung in the middle of an endless expanse of night, in lurid blood-red letters a mile high.
Warty couldn't breathe and his lungs were on fire. He reached up to take off the mask of the timesuit and he could barely lift his right arm. He could feel something writhing about his crotchular region, but with the suit down he had to hope it was the Doomcock and not some other weaponized genital platform.
"High gravity planet," he said thickly. He could barely hear his own voice. He probed his teeth with his tongue. The fake one that would activate his internal oxygen supply. It had a funny little ridge on the side to make it easy to find, but all his teeth were smooth. Did he have the emergency oxygen supply implanted yet? Where was the tooth? This is a stupid way to die. His thoughts were jumbled and flowed like slow glass.
The sky-filling words blinked off and were replaced: SYSTEM INITIATING…
Upper left bicuspid. The little ridge was worn away to almost nothing. It had been there a long time. Warty licked out the correct sequence and oxygenated blood brought his brain back to full consciousness.
"Suit? Answer me."
SYSTEM INITIATING… blinked off and on.
"OK, I get it."
The sky went dark again and stayed that way for an eternity. Finally words began to scroll past.
SUIT AI ONLINE
LIFE SUPPORT ACTIVATED
SUIT-ASSIST ACTIVATED
TIME CORE STATUS UNKNOWN
SMART CAPE... CONNECTED
FUTURECOCK Mk38… CONNECTED
Hundreds of status updates from the Doomcock began scrolling up the viewscreen faster than he could read them.
"Turn that shit off." They stopped scrolling, but the newest update was left on the screen: AMMUNITION RESERVES 17%.
"Activate the fucking visor." He was treated to a view of an alien sky, thick orange sunlight streaming in. The visor was streaked with something gooey. Two micromissiles streaked past, fired from his crotch.
AMMUNITION RESERVES 11%
Warty struggled to his feet as the Doomcock fought on. He was surrounded by a low wall of burned meat and shattered and limbs.
AMMUNITION RESERVES 4%
Something leapt over the wall straight at Warty, snarling. It looked like a ground wasp having anal sex with a bronzed gorilloid. The Doomcock fired a hypersonic dart and the creature split in half vertically, spraying ichor.
AMMUNITION DEPLETED. COMMENCING PENIS-TO-HAND COMBAT.
The Doomcock sprouted a forest of barbs, spikes, blades and spines along its length and the head blossomed into a four-taloned claw.
"Suit, what the hell happened?"
"Travel through the Time Axe transit portal was incompatible with current on-board technology."
"Well, fuck. Where is Steve Smith?"
"Unknown. Suit sensors are offline."
"Fix them."
"Systems and structural damage extensive. Please see a qualified service technician."
"What is the status of the time core?"
"Unknown."
"Initiate repair systems."
"Please see a qualified service technician."
"For fuck's sake."
Warty pushed his way through the chewed meat wall. The autochthons hadn't faired very well against the Doomcock. It was hard to tell what parts went with what. A few dozen were dead, at the least. The dwelling he had seen through the time tear was on the other side. Warty realized it was a hive.
"Can I breathe the local air?"
"Inadvisable."
"Will it kill me?"
"Not quickly."
Warty vowed that when he got home the AI core was going to get wiped and the physical substrate it was stored on was going to be given to the Doomcock for lunch.
He lifted the time suit's helmet from his head and took a cautious sniff. He expected the usual blood and burst intestine reek of battle, but the air carried a heavy caramel scent.
Without the helmet, he could hear grunting and cursing. Warty pulled out the gravity laser and walked toward the sound.
On the other side of a low rise, Steve Smith was beating a wasp-gorilla to a pulp with Sven's Time Axe.
"FLYING BUTT APE NOT SO FUNNY NOW! STEVE SMITH PENIS-EAT YOU!"
Warty raised the gravity laser and whistled at Steve Smith.
"BIG MAN! WHERE LITTLE MAN?" Steve Smith yelled.
"I'm going to rip you in half with this, Steve. And then I'm going to feed you your legs."
Steve Smith roared and began running at him. Warty pulled the trigger of the gravity laser. It was a fan-shaped spread. Steve Smith's legs would be bathed in heavy light until they crushed down to the size of a golf ball. But nothing happened. He pulled the trigger twice more. He threw the useless gun at Steve Smith's face and braced for impact.
Steve Smith leapt at him, covering the last yards in the air, and they both went down into a steaming pool of caramel gore. The Doomcock was rammed into the blood and mud by Steve Smith's knee. As it struggled to free itself for attack, it sent panicked error messages to the suit AI.
Steve Smith was on top of Warty and bashing him in the face with a massive fist when the timesuit said, "Time core restoration estimate 1.6 million seconds."
Warty dug his free hand into the meat over Steve Smith's ribs until the flesh tore and replied, "Two and a half weeks? What the fuck am I supposed to do on this shithole planet for two and a half weeks?" The suit's reply was lost in Steve Smith's roar of anger and pain.
"Suit! Reverse the polarity of the in-system musculature matrix!"
"That would burn out the system and you would be unable to move."
"OK. Don't do that then."
Warty wrenched a slab of flesh from Steve Smith's ribs and shoved it into his mouth. Steve Smith smiled around the meat and began chewing.
"Electrify the suit surface."
"This will drain the remaining charge in the laminar battery system."
"Just do it!"
With a sizzling boom, Steve Smith flew off of Warty and landed in a heap some meters away.
"Suit? Suit? Goddamn it," Warty said. Unable to move, he watched the alien clouds swirl above him as the suit recharged.
Chapter Nine
Warty managed to turn his head enough to see where the ape-man had landed. He had hit him with so much electricity, Steve Smith's heart should have boiled in his chest, his eyes should have burst and what he used for a brain should have been reduced to bubbling goo. The creature was still alive, somehow; his chest heaved with breaths that howled in and out of his gaping maw and his rough hands grasped at things unseen. Steve Smith looked like he was merely having a nap.
Warty's body was flooded with relief when the polite tone sounded and the suit began to reboot. When he could move his arms, he reached for the projectile pistol. It was gone. So much for putting a few rounds into Steve Smith's face.
Warty had seen the natives overhead a few times, but they keep their distance as he struggled to his feet. Steve Smith yawned and stretched like a grotesque house cat. Warty was down in a defensive crouch as the beast rose. The Time Axe crackled as he lifted it.
"STEVE SMITH NOW ANGRY, BIG MAN! STEVE SMITH GOING TO ENJOY SHITTING OUT YOUR BONES!"
"Steve? Is your grammar getting better?"
Steve Smith's only reply was to begin lumbering toward Warty, swinging the Time Axe wildly. Each swing was a jagged gash in space and time. A siren began screaming through the timesuit's auditory interface.
"By the Golden Balls of Baldr, shut that damn thing off!" Warty yelled. It mercifully ended as Steve Smith grew closer.
"What's the problem? Side text only." Warty feigned a kick at Steve Smith's right knee, then stepped in under the raised Axe to deliver a double fist punch to the ugly wound over his ribs. Steve Smith howled and staggered back, dropping the Time Axe to clutch at his side.
"TEMPORAL IMPLOSION EVENT IMMINENT," the suit flashed in the corner of Warty's eye.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck." The suit was telling him that time was so fractured in local space that a singularity was about to form, a infinitely slow moment where the rules of physics shat themselves into a laughing fit.
As Steve Smith groped for the fallen Axe, Warty lashed out with an iron toe strike to his throat. The beast's windpipe held, but Steve Smith flew backwards to the ground and didn't make a move to get back up.
Warty turned to the wounds the great ape had cleaved in time. The oldest ones were not yet closed, and might have even been bigger. Warty watched with dread as two of them touched and merged, a theoretically possible event he shouldn't have been able to survive.
TIME CORE INACTIVE
DEATH PROBABILITY: 100%
DEATH PROBABILITY: 0%
DEATH PROBABILITY: 100%
DEATH PROBABILITY: 0%
DEATH PROBABILITY: 100%
"Turn that off." The suit couldn't decide if being crushed down into an infinitely slow point—a time hole—was sure death or a subjective eternity of immortality. As the time hole formed, its diameter would expand and more and more matter around it would slow until it transformed into a Bose-Einstein condensate at near absolute zero. Eventually the entire planet would be a single super-fluid super-atom that could slow light to a crawl and Warty would be good and thoroughly fucked.
Warty edged forward warily and grabbed the Time Axe. It was still active, but had some sort of hardware conflict with the gloves of the timesuit. It seemed to writhe in his hand like it was attempting to get away. He carefully backed away from the forming time hole as another slash in time merged into the growing supergash.
"Do we have anything on how to work one of these?"
"There is a poor-resolution scan of an operating manual in TechnoRunish."
"Translate."
"Hold."
Text began to scroll: "Hello, Sven. This manual is intended to show you the ins and outs of working your brand new (or gently used) Time Axe Skull Splitter Pro 2. We are happy you choose to purchase the Time Axe Skull Splitter Pro 2 and we hope it gives you many years of faithful and true service."
"Summarize," Warty said.
"The Time Axe builds temporal momentum through application of kinetic force. Once at speed, an intricate series of movements are required to open a time portal at the right depth and angle to specify a temporospatial target."
"Summarize," Warty said.
"Once you swing it around enough, you swing it just the right way and you can go places." Warty swore he could hear the suit sigh.
"And it can take me anywhere and anywhen?"
"If you knew the choreography. But the default setting is Earth. It will be very easy to open a portal to Earth and the Time Axe will lock onto the Earth's surface as the default place coordinates. It seems as if the TechnoVikings don't travel much to other locations, just up and down the timeline on Earth."
"So I can go to Earth, but without being able to specify when?"
"Yes."
"Does the manual have a choreography for specific times?"
"Those seem to be set by the user. As a security feature."
"OK, let's go to Earth. Anywhen on Earth is better than this doomed shithole."
Warty had been watching the time implosion form as he argued with the suit. All the slashes had merged into one roiling cataract of degenerate time. Bose-Eisenstein condensates were forming as the edges, queasy daggers of super-fluid unreality stabbing outward.
Warty began swinging the Time Axe, building the charge, until the suit beeped. It took two hands to hold onto now. It demanded to be dropped.
"OK, suit. Take over the musculature controls and make the cut for Earth. Then shut down everything but the bare essential systems. I don't what to have to reboot on the other side."
"What about Steve Smith?" the suit asked as it parted time readily with the Axe.
"I'm go to go with, 'Fuck Steve Smith.'"
Warty was riding the shockwave of collapsing time hole into the open portal when Steve Smith tackled him from behind. They both flew through the portal to an uncertain Earth.
Chapter Ten
"Get off me, you idiot," Warty said, as he and
Steve Smith grappled on the floor of a lush forest at night. "We have to
get away from the portal."
Steve Smith only growled. Warty managed a finger dagger
strike into Steve Smith's deep-set left eye. The beast roared with pain and
knuckle-walked into the darkness beyond the baleful glare of the open portal.
Backing away, Warty watched through the closing time wound
as the time hole slowed more of the planet they had left behind. The colors were
fading as light nearing the time hole slowed down. If the slow time bubble
reached the portal before it closed, Warty wasn't sure what would happen. It
might keep the portal from collapsing and destroy Earth as well. Warty exhaled
loudly in the utter darkness of the forest when the portal zipped itself shut
and winked out.
"Suit? When are we?"
"Calculating starfix. It is May 15th, 26,176 current
era," the suit said.
"Switch to infrared." The forest was full of
warm-blooded creatures scurrying about in shades of orange and red, but none were
big enough to be Steve Smith.
"At least the forest seems pleasant."
"Short-range sensors have been repaired. The trees
appear to have both mammalian and reptilian genotypes. And they are carnivorous."
"Fuck. I really don't want to be eaten by a tree again.
Any sign of Steve Smith? Are his legs kicking feebly as a tree is swallowing
him?"
"Steve Smith's body is soaked in intratime radiation.
He cannot be tracked without long range sensors, but short range sensors will
alert if he approaches."
A strangled cry came from the depths of the forest.
"What the hell was that?"
"Unknown."
"Let's get out of here. Where's the Time Axe?" The
timesuit laid a projection map over Warty's vision. It was a charmingly retro
dotted line. Just as he set off, Warty heard the cry from the woods again.
Agony. And it was closer.
"Steve Smith is approaching." The suit outlined
the monster in black over the riot of colors in the infrared forest.
"Switch to light amplification." The forest was as
bright as noon. Steve Smith was headed straight for the Time Axe. Warty broke
out into a run.
"BIG MAN! STEVE SMITH RAPE MANY MEATY-TREES! STEVE
SMITH HAPPY!" Steve Smith roared.
"Good for you, Steve-o!" Warty called, still
running toward him. The prehistoric monster was practically standing on the
Axe.
"STEVE SMITH FOUND BLOND GIRL AXE! STEVE SMITH WANT
RAPE YOUR AXE WOUNDS!"
Steve Smith began slashing with the axe and Warty skidded a
halt out of range.
"Steve Smith! Put that down! Bad Steve Smith!
Bad!" Warty yelled.
"STEVE SMITH NOT DOG, BIG MAN! STEVE SMITH IS
LAWYER!"
Warty recognized the charge building up. There was a whine
that set his teeth on edge.
"STEVE SMITH GO HOME!" With a final flourish of
the Time Axe, Steve Smith opened a time portal and dove through it. Warty
followed him only seconds later.
10243 CE
The deadlands stretched out around both of them to the
horizon. Steve Smith was still running somehow, leaping over the deep fissures
in the parched earth with ease. Warty kept him in sight, watching him swing the
Axe around, trying to activate it again. There was a clap of thunder from the
cloudless sky.
7897 CE
Warty chased Steve Smith across a smooth and mirrored
landscape. The ground was disturbingly soft. A friendly-looking alien nun
stepped out from behind a shattered glass tree and Steve Smith punched her in
the mandibles and raced on. Warty thought about stopping. Some of his most
erotic experiences had been with recently-concussed space nuns, and they were
in short supply despite what those ads in the back of the comic books tell you.
But Steve Smith opened another portal, so Warty ran on.
5626 CE
Two well-dressed giraffes looked up from their afternoon tea
in the garden. A huge ape-man and a large man-ape went running past, screaming
incoherently, surprising them both quite terribly. The giraffes wrote into the
paper to relate their experiences, but were mocked by an unsigned editorial the
next day. Everyone knew primates were extinct. The editorial made some
disparaging remarks about what substance that had put in their tea to make them
see something so absurd. Their reputation index briefly dipped, but soon
everyone involved had just forgotten about the whole embarrassing incident.
3218 CE
"We're in the ocean, Steve," Warty said.
"STEVE SMITH NO LIKE WATER! STEVE SMITH NOT STONG
SWIMMER!
The biogen whale surfaced right under them until they were
standing on its broad and slick back. It spurted something that might have been
a question out of its blowhole. The timesuit performed the AI equivalent of a
shrug when Warty told it to translate.
"STEVE SMITH WANT RAPE GIANT FISH!"
"Steve, is there anything you don't want to rape?"
2316 CE
ULTRATOKYO covered most of the landmass of Asia, 140 billion
resurrected Japanese all crammed together in capsule apartments acting out the
height of the Japanese empire: 1985.
Steve Smith landed among a roving pack of schoolgirls. It
was almost impossible not to. They were everywhere.
The girls tittered behind there hands as they shuffled
backwards from the naked giant gaijin yajuu. As Steve Smith stood up, one of
the girls screamed "STEVE SMITH!" in recognition and they all rushed
forward. Hundreds of others began joining them, as his name rippled outward.
Warty plucked one of the girls from the edge of the crowd.
"What the hell is going on here?" the suit said
for him, in atrocious 20th century Japanese.
"It is Steve Smith!" the suit translated.
"Steve Smith huge holovision star! Everyone knows Steve Smith!" Warty
set the girl down.
"How long until the time core is repaired?" he
asked the suit.
"1.2 million seconds."
Warty groaned, bursting the eardrums of some of the nearby
Steve Smith groupies.
2134 CE
The werecyborgs that ruled the ruined streets of Manhattan smelled
the blood on them both and gave chase.
2017 CE
Steve Smith jumped from the ice floe and scaled the side of
the derelict cruise ship, the Time Axe clutched in his savage teeth. He
clambered on the angled deck and stood before the passengers and ship's crew
huddled on the deck.
"Are you part of the rescue team?" asked a young
crewmember, hollow-eyed and ravaged by norovirus and hunger.
"STEVE SMITH HUNGRY!" Steve Smith said, taking the
Axe out of his mouth.
That a giant naked creature with a massive erection and a
glowing axe had somehow boarded the ship finally sunk into the survivors. It
was raw panic as they stampeded for the lower decks. Only a handful didn't make
it behind bulkhead doors, but they were enough.
Warty found Steve Smith laughing as he was throwing their
gnawed bones into the sea.
1971 CE
"I am not going to let you rape David Bowie, Steve
Smith!" the large one in black said.
David Bowie lounged on a couch and watched the stubbly giant
argue with a black-clad bodybuilder. They were both so beautiful.
"STEVE SMITH WANT BLOND GIRL!" the naked one
yelled hoarsely. Its voice was like a handful of nails thrown in your face. It
turned to David Bowie and displayed its enormous and heavily-scarred penis.
"Get away from him!" the other one said. Something
shot out from its midsection and buried itself in the naked one's thigh. David
Bowie leaned forward to get a better look. It was a black claw trailing a wire
almost too thin to see. It began pulling the naked one away from him. It howled
in frustration.
"BLOND GIRL!" the naked giant yelled and held out
its powerful arms, a blue axe glowing in his left hand. Seconds later they were
both gone.
The next morning David Bowie took the same dose, but nothing
happened to even compare.
1944 CE
"STEVE SMITH WANT GO HOME! WHY AXE NO TAKE STEVE SMITH
HOME?"
A mortar went off just a few yards away, but Steve Smith
barely slowed his assault on a German soldier with the Time Axe. The Doomcock
intercepted a mortar with a X-ray laser and it exploded harmlessly overhead.
Every time the laser fired it felt like ejaculating in reverse. Warty was
starting to like it.
"HOME!" Steve Smith shouted at the Axe.
Warty bent down and broke the bayonet off of an abandoned
rifle. He tested the balance and then threw it at the rape-mad ape. Steve Smith
moved to cleave the German's head in two and the knife buried itself deep in
his left trapezius. Warty had aimed to sever his spine.
Turning, Steve Smith growled, "WHY BIG MAN FOLLOW STEVE
SMITH? LEAVE STEVE SMITH ALONE!" He reached behind his head with his long
ape arms and pulled the bayonet out. Axe in one hand and the bloody knife in
the other he advanced on Warty.
Warty pulled out his last grenade. Green and black stripes.
Acid fragmentation. He dialed it to max dispersal and lobbed it underhand at
Steve Smith. Warty saw Steve Smith bat it away with the Axe before being flung
forward to the ground. As he lay in the mud and blood of the battlefield he
heard the grenade go off and the screams of the men it was shredding and
dissolving. He struggled to stand as another shell whizzed past. Anti-tank
round. He had been shot with an anti-tank round, but the SmartCape took most of
it.
Over the alarms, Warty could hear Steve Smith laughing. The
beast opened a portal and walked through. Warty limped forward and let himself
tumble into the closing portal.
1908 CE
It was a cool morning in the forest, but Warty could tell
that the day would warm. He lay were he had fallen out of the portal and
watched while it closed.
"Where is it?" he asked the suit. Long-range
sensors had finally been repaired while Warty stalked Steve Smith through the
neon nightmare of 1982 Los Angeles.
"128 meters northwest. The Axe has minimal energy
signal." Steve Smith wouldn't be opening a portal any time soon.
"Time core repair?"
"Approximately 500,000 seconds. Less if we could find
certain rare earth minerals. Or stopped chasing Steve Smith."
"Shut up about that. Where are we?"
"Northern Asia, Siberia. 1908 June 30."
"Any idea were Steve Smith is headed?"
"There is no evidence of human industry or habitation
in range of sensors."
Warty stood up and followed Steve Smith's trail. The suit
could tell him how much subjective time he had spent chasing the ape, but Warty
didn't want to know. It was too long. There had been periods of rest, where he
had been able to show women the pleasures of which the Doomcock was capable.
Warty never wanted for female company. The suit could generate the most
fashionable clothes whenever he went and even those women who went "ew,
muscles" couldn't resist the allure of the Doomcock rampant. He denied
them his seed, though. Warty had spawned bastards all through the timestream to
women who asked for them, muscular, well-hung babies that were always born with
long black hair and a full set of teeth. They grew up to be warrior-kings or
ruthless CEOs or roguish space pilots. But Warty hadn't thought to set the
Doomcock to his genotype before leaving the fortress and refused to leave
behind inferior stock.
"Steve Smith has stopped moving," the suit told
him.
Warty followed the marker laid out by the suit until he
heard grunts and screams. Steve Smith had found something to fuck. Probably
some poor fur trapper.
"Suit, switch to adaptive camouflage."
The timesuit became a shifting collage of the forest around
him. Patches were dead and the black of the timesuit itself shown through.
Damage from the first Axe portal. Warty believed it would be good enough to
ambush Steve Smith, especially if he was distracted by rape.
Warty the blur crept up to a clearing in the forest. It was
a vision from a nightmare. There were dozens of Sasquatches in the clearing
watching Steve Smith mount a shaggy Sasquatch from behind. The others were
hooting and gibbering, cheering on their shorn brother as he pumped away. Warty
watched as Steve Smith shuddered in a prolonged orgasm.
"MORE! STEVE SMITH WANT MORE!" Another ape was
pushed down in front of him. He was already erect again. Warty gagged.
"Locate the Time Axe," Warty managed. A bouncing
red pointer appeared over it. It had been tossed aside and rested in a pile of
leaves outside the rape circle. Warty fired the Doomcock's grappling talon and
dragged the Axe slowly back to him.
"Have you figured how to travel to a timeplace with
this thing?" Warty asked as he backed away. For all the trouble it gave
him, Warty wanted to shatter Sven's Time Aze and fuck the pieces, but a week in
Rapesquatch Forest while the timecore healed didn't appeal to him whatsoever.
"The Time Axe's internal log will have recorded the
last dozen trips. I have recovered the files and have constructed a
choreography for each of them," the suit said. The suit referring to
itself in the first person made Warty's anus pucker. The suit was becoming
increasingly self-aware.
"Let's go back to 1982, maybe we could catch a Missing
Persons' show," he told it.
Warty swung the Axe rapidly to build up a charge. He could
still hear Steve Smith's yodeling screamgasms. The creature had no refractory
period. It could fuck and eat and rape forever if it wanted. Warty knew what he
had to do.
Warty let the suit take over and it slit open time and stepped
through the portal. He was in the Hollywood Hills, right as the sun was
setting. He began scrolling through the Doomcock options. It would be a long
week without it, but some things took precedence.
"CONFIRM MAXIMUM BATTERY BREACH, 5 KILOMETER AIRBUST."
"Confirmed," Warty said grasped the meaty obsidian
of the Doomcock to twist it free of the crotch interlock. The Doomcock
initiated antigravity drive and floated toward the portal.
In the last second before the gash in time closed, the
Doomcock slipped into it. The blast radius would kill them all. It sent a final
message.
"GOODBYE, WARTY HUGEMAN."
THE END
