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A Treasure of Time

Part 9

For Nataraj

By Draconicon

"And there's the matching bracelets..."

Salla sighed, rubbing his forehead over his mask. Not that he could feel it, at this point; that function of the mask was shut down, as it usually was outside of very specific circumstances. This was not one of them.

As the lizard on the monitor grumbled about the unfairness of the traps, he glanced out of the corner of his eye. Tatyana was in the middle of running various readings through their connection with Nataraj, checking out what the bracelets and anklets did, and he could tell that she was fascinated with it. At least, that was what he imagined that the gawping expression for the screen meant. He didn't see her looking at anything like that if it hadn't fascinated her to at least some extent.

The mouse leaned back from the computer, shaking his head. His agent was starting to create a number of problems for them, what with his desire to test himself again, but he had already decided to let it happen. There were reasons, though he had yet to puzzle them out.

I'm clever. I'll work it out.

As the red-suited mouse crossed his arms, however, the tigress muttered something in Russian. His mask filtered through it, translating it as she went.

"Hmm. Neural boosters, feedback loops, programming through magical signals that correspond to pleasure and sensation..."

"Are we looking at something that's more tech or more magic?"

"A fairly even mix, though with a leaning towards magic."

"But magic that has to follow the physical rules?"

"From my current readings? Probably. There's some variables, though."

"Well, keep studying it." He shook his head, tapping a separate button on the console. "Coffee, Ethiopian, iced."

The computer beeped, confirming the order, and he leaned back in his chair again. The lizard was adamant about not getting any additional help with tracking the traps and the other difficulties of the temple, and he had already decided to go along with that particular stubbornness. He doubted that it was going to get any better for the already-distracted Nataraj, but he was willing to let the lizard prove him wrong.

He already had a pretty good idea why he was doing this, after all, and it wasn't to win.

The endorphin levels that he was going through while he was losing, the pleasure that he was taking in while the goddess was hammering him down, the way that he was accepting that loss...and now he's going back...

There were two possible reasons for that. One was that Nataraj was an addict to the pleasure chemicals of the body, akin to an adrenaline junkie, and got more out of the extreme sorts of play than he did out of anything that most people did. That was something that he had seen in more than a few operatives that learned of the distinctive abilities of the campsites that he and his crew used, and he had seen a few people burn out hard when they started abusing it. They always forgot that the mental side of things still lingered, so all those near-death experiences started to add up and created a horrible mess of PTSD.

That, however, wasn't quite what he was seeing here. Nataraj had lost, yes, but there had been shame in the loss. Shame...and a hint of something else that he was pretty sure that the lizard himself wasn't quite aware of.

He wants this, Salla thought, cocking his head to the side as he watched the lizard duck under a trap on the screen. No matter what he tells himself, he's intrigued at the idea of losing. He wants to see what happens when he doesn't have to be amazing. When it's safe for him to lose, to be beaten, to be...humiliated.

His finger hovered over the respawn button for a moment, and he forced himself to pull it back. No. No. Nataraj was not part of his crew, and he didn't have an obligation to yank him out without being asked for it. He could do it, and he might just end up having to, but at the same time, he wasn't obligated to. And he had been asked to hold back, for that matter.

Olag's screen caught his attention, the bear's worries starting to stack. Salla shook his head, hiding a smile.

"He's going to be okay," he told the bear.

"Yeah, but is that 'okay' like he'll keep functioning, or 'okay' like he'll be the same?"

"None of us are the same after respawning."

"I hate it when ya get existential on me."

"Trust me. I know what I'm doing."

"I know ya do 99% of the time. We still in the 99, or in the 1?"

"Pretty sure the 99."

"Hmmph...you're the boss, boss."

Olag wasn't particularly happy with the situation, but that was normal when the bear started getting attached to someone. He was pretty sure that the big guy wanted to go running up the steps and slash the temple apart to keep an eye on the lizard. After all, Nataraj had lost once...

But that wasn't the way that you ran people. That's not how you handled them. One could not be coddled, and the other could not be risked just to keep the former in one piece.

Besides...there's a development there...

Salla leaned back in his chair yet further, going almost horizontal as the mouse put his booted feet up on the reclining chair. It was not an original piece of furniture to the inside of his ship, but then again, almost nothing was. The number of modifications that the old battleship had seen since his retrofitting and capture of it was nothing short of astounding.

The coffee cup floated over to him, and he sipped the iced drink. The slit in the front of his mask opened for a second to allow it through, then closed when he lowered the cup again. He leaned on one fist, tapping his fingers against his cheek.

"Tatyana?"

"Mmm?"

"What do you think that the chances are of Nataraj actually resisting the goddess this time around?"

"Very low. Do you want numbers?"

"Not particularly."

"Why ask, then?"

"Just thinking about making a bet."

The tigress slowly turned her head, narrowing her eyes at him. The mask kept his own smirk from being seen as he looked back at her.

"Would you be interested?"

"The last time that you made a bet, I ended up making a mech-warrior for a samurai's arch-enemy and destabilizing a Cyberpunk Kyoto."

"Yes, but the last time that you won, you ended up getting six months off with full financial backing to make whatever you wanted. Admittedly, you wasted it on making a great deal drones that never actually worked out, but you still won."

"...What are you planning?"

"Let us say, if I win, then you make one thing that I ask of you. No questions asked, no demands about customizations from you, nothing altered. One thing, pristinely mine."

"..."

"And if you win, you may name your terms."

"That would include taking over this ship."

"For a limited amount of time, yes," the mouse said, laying his cane across his lap as he leaned his head back. "Are the terms appealing, hmm?"

"...Dammit. Fine."

"Wonderful. I will win if the lizard gets what he wants."

"And I'll win if he can't hold out."

"Agreed."

Salla got to his feet, cupping his drink in hand.

"Where are you going?"

"A short walk. He'll be busy for a while, anyway; I'll be back by the time that he reaches the goddess."

Just to be safe, though, the mouse tapped the screen. The holoprojection of Nataraj's view as he walked through the tunnels of the temple detached a copy of itself, and he dragged it up to the side of his mask. The copy disappeared, displayed down at the bottom-right side of his vision.

Whistling to himself, the mouse took his cane and began a slow trek through the ship. There were a few other operations that he needed to check in on, a few more things that needed doing, just in case his suspicions were correct.

Now that Nataraj was slipping into a different sort of direction, he knew that he'd need to shore up the other problems that Atlantis presented. The lizard could still be useful for taking hold of it, keeping the island from shifting too far in and out of time, but just in case that ended up being nonviable, he needed to have back-ups. He had a few other teams that could be inserted in different routes, people that could continue pushing forward while the lizard figured himself out.

He hadn't given up on using the slutty lizard to start taking control of the wandering island, but he knew better than to think that it was going to be as simple as just waiting for it to happen. Nothing was that simple.

The ship started to stretch around him, but while other crew members froze in place, or leaped through the holes in the wall to the different, more stable rooms, Salla kept walking. The great corridor stretched before him, and he allowed the warping, unstable nature of the ship to take hold of him and carry him along. One moment, his boot rested on a catwalk, the next it rested on solid metal.

His mask told him that he had been taken from two decks below the top deck to six, and that he wasn't that far from the galley. The mouse chuckled to himself, turning to the left and entering the room.

There were many members of his crew there, all of them harvested from different realms, dimensions, planets, and times. They had come to him either out of a sense of adventure, or from the need to escape where they were, or just out of sheer cluelessness that he had been willing to use until they were informed enough to figure out whether they wanted to stay.

Most did. The ones that didn't usually made it back home, but when they couldn't - whether from some world-ending event that they barely dodged, or through some other difficulty - he did his best to put them somewhere similar. He even managed to avoid the worst of the paradox problems.

One table was filled with a cluster of stallion siblings, six of them that had all come from the same mare, all from a world filled with an endless plain that suffered a massive fire. The starvation had been horrifying in that world, and Salla had managed to make a deal with several of the herds that were still alive: he'd take them to different worlds, different places, in exchange for them passing on whatever they heard in the new places.

He'd gotten one better with this herd. They'd offered him the six siblings that were in line for being the next leader of their particular herd. Six big horses, each one with thick shoulders, large muscles, and - thanks to him - particularly well-educated. The table that they sat at was specially reinforced as a result of many explosions during meal-times, and he could see that there were a few more black marks that implied that they'd been continuing with their tinkering habits.

The mouse approached, and one of the brothers noticed him. He jumped up and his siblings did the same, saluting and throwing back their manes.

"Captain, sir!"

Salla rolled his eyes, but again, there was no way for anyone to see it. The white mask he wore blocked any facial expression he made, kept him with that slightly mysterious air that seemed to work wonders for fear. Annoying, really, but it was what it was.

"Down, boys, down."

The stallions sat down immediately, and Salla jumped onto the adjacent table, sitting on it and letting his legs hang down. His boots stopped over a foot from the floor as he looked the stallions over.

Eighteen to twenty, no more, the mouse thought as he looked them over. Good boys that have become good men.

"I have a job for the six of you."

That got the grins that he expected. They had been trained on the ship more than in the field, but they'd had a few 'jobs' to start getting the hang of how to handle themselves in a real situation. Salla tapped his cane against the table before they could talk, though.

"I want you to listen, boys. This is serious."

"We know, captain, we know," the black-furred one of the bunch, the oldest, said. "We haven't done much, but you're never less than serious."

"This is more serious than usual. Listen; I want you to come back. And not just because your sire would try and blow up the boat."

The six stallions nodded, rubbing the backs of their necks. They knew that he wasn't joking, either. Their sire was grateful to the mouse, for sure, but that didn't mean that he was getting a free ride. None of them were.

"You remember the botched Atlantis job?"

"Yeah, the one that you screwed up, right?" the youngest, a yellow-furred one, asked.

"...Let's say that happened the way you think it happened," Salla said, shaking his head. "But yes, that one. It wasn't as botched as the public reports made it out to be."

"Called it," the young one muttered.

"Yes, you probably did. Regardless. There are ways back to the island, and I've already sent one team in to try and stabilize it. However, there are complications. They may yet make it, but I want at least one back-up team trying a different route."

"And we're it?" the oldest asked.

"Indeed."

The horses looked to one another, their eyes flicking from one to another. He knew the expressions; they were piss-poor at hiding them, and despite doing his best to train them to school their faces, they never quite managed it. They were open books, which was why they were better suited to raids and missions that involved breaking in rather than subtlety.

This wasn't an ideal one for them, either, but it was better than some of the other jobs that he had on the books that needed doing.

"You'll be sent to another island leading to Atlantis in two hours. I want you assembled in the transporter chamber in an hour and a half for the final briefing. Tatyana will be there to ensure that you get everything that you need. Any questions?"

"Yeah. How'd the other team fuck up?" the black-furred one asked.

"They are...experimenting," Salla said. "And that experiment may yield a better tool for moving on than we currently have. However, if that experiment backfires, or causes problems, then I need to have something else in the works instead of starting from zero."

"Heh. Looks like we're cleaning up the mess, then."

Click. The horse's muzzle shut so fast that it made a loud noise that could be heard for several tables over. Nobody looked up. Nobody did when Salla bothered to use his cane on a person rather than on an object.

The mouse held the gem at the end of the cane against the stallion's chin, shaking his head slowly. He slid down from the table and climbed onto the one the brothers surrounded, never quite taking his cane off of the big male. The mouse stood between the six brothers, letting the silence continue for a moment or two longer, before finally continuing.

"Let me make something abundantly clear, boys. I will not have that sort of talk. I will not."

"But, if you need to send in a second team - shutting up!"

The youngest horse leaned back as Salla brought his boot back, pointing his toes as a knife popped out of the toe of the boot. It was a delicate move, quick and swift, and the red-suited mouse shook his head as he stood on one foot between the brothers.

"I will repeat myself one last time. I will not have that sort of talk. You are a back-up. The current team has not 'messed up.' They are experimenting, as I stated, and the experiment may or may not work out. That is not a reflection on the ability of the team. It is a reflection on the obstacles that they have encountered. What you will encounter will be entirely different as you will be taking an entirely different route. To evaluate your path based on another's...is simply a sloppy comparison.

"Now, do we understand each other, or must we indulge in another humiliating 'game' of yours?"

"..."

"..."

"I'm glad we understand each other."

Salla dropped his boot back to the table, clicking his heels to draw the knife back into the bottom, and then lowered his cane. The six stallions didn't say anything as he hopped off the table, nor did they react when the mouse called for the cook.

"Get them extra portions. They're shipping out on a mission tonight!" he shouted.

The rest of the galley was obviously surprised, but he left the stallions to handle that. He had other things to take care of. Giving the image in the bottom-right of his view another glance - Nataraj was still going through the corridors of the temple - he stepped into the corridor of his own ship and allowed its warping qualities to take him away.

#

The mouse sat at the bow of his ship, looking out at the great emptiness of the underwater span between him and Atlantis. The various islands continued to bob in and out of existence, and the rips in reality were getting bigger in this underwater realm. The longer that this went on, the closer that they came to the barriers between the timelines and different realities ripping completely, allowing the water to pass through into other places. If that happened, the ocean itself could drain out, leaving nothing on this planet and drowning many others in different timelines across the multi-verse.

He sat with his legs hanging off the bow of the ship, his hands cradled over the jeweled top of his cane as he looked at the island in the distance. It was no longer just going up and down in the water, but rather starting to swivel, spinning in a slowly-growing arc every time that it swung around. The smaller islands around it followed in its wake, but there were some at risk of being thrown out into the void and lost forever.

Despite the horrendous implications, Salla couldn't help but chuckle to himself.

"At least it's interesting," he said under his breath. "At least it's something that I can fix."

The mouse rubbed his forehead again, thinking of the times that a certain dragon had come by and pushed him to try doing something good with all his resources. Not just by donating to the occasional charity, not just by tearing down someone in power, but by actually doing good. Salla always found it hard to explain why he held back, why he went out to solve these huge problems rather than trying to fix the more systemic problems.

Seeing a world ripping itself apart was a far more direct problem than systemic poverty, than class warfare, than entrenched speciesism. The latter was a regular epidemic, admittedly, the sort of thing that would eventually rip a world apart, but the former was one of those things that was an immediate problem that could be solved, a puzzle that could be taken apart and enjoyed.

Trying to solve the latter was more like figuring out what other problematic solution you could implement, and how long you could get away with it before everyone found out that the new solution just came with its own problems. He'd tried. He'd tried seven times before he'd taken on the mask and joined the Colorful Council. Even then, he kept trying, but you could only run up against the most common problems in the universe so many times before you had to give up on people for a while.

But only for a while, he thought. I'm almost due for another shot at the wall. Heh. Maybe the craters I made last time will still be around.

He'd give it another try, he knew. He couldn't entirely give up on people, not forever...but first, the island.

After all, couldn't fix all the other problems if there wasn't a world for them to be in.

Sending the brothers in will work for a back-up, but I need to make sure of what's happening with Nataraj with this. He's been useful, but the question is, will he still be at the end of all this?

The corridors of the temple were nearly done, which meant he'd need to be back at the console soon. Tatyana would be sending a runner before long, and he always tried to beat her to that if he could. Not to mention that the tigress might try and cheat on the bet if he wasn't there to oversee things.

But for now...

Despite everything, the mouse smiled behind his mask. Who would have thought that a little mouse from the poor side of town, on the wrong side of the tracks, would end up here? Rising through the criminal underworld, becoming a wanted man, joining the inter-dimensional criminal syndicates of the Colorful Council...all because of a mugging that nobody cared about.

Salla ran a gloved thumb along the tip of his cane, shaking his head. The world would always take you to strange places, but he was pretty sure he was up there for weirdest places compared to where one started. A hundred different universes, with dozens, hundreds, thousands of worlds in each, all stacked and interlocking with one another. It was an overwhelming concept for most anyone, and even having seen it piece by piece, building on what he had already known, there were days when he honestly wasn't sure if he could believe the sheer scale of something like this existence.

There was a soft beep from his mask, and the mouse groaned as he got back to his feet. The lizard was almost at the altar, and that meant that he needed to be there for the respawn. It was going to be needed, and he knew better than to believe that Nataraj would be able to think of it on his own.

Not that he would ever admit it, but he knew it from experience.

The 'torments' of the goddess were, admittedly, rather powerful. Even with the readouts and the distant show, Salla could feel some of her influence spreading through the monitors. It wasn't enough to affect him, not after all the other things that he had gone through, and Tatyana was similarly inured to the effects of a sex goddess from her past. But the other men in the room, watching the show?

"Take it outside," Salla said as the third orgasm from the coupling and masturbating men almost distracted him.

"Nnngh, but then we can't -"

"You can jerk off, or you can stay. Your choice."

The men eventually managed to put their dicks back in their pants, but that was hardly a consolation prize. They were still distracted, which meant that he was distracted in turn. He kept having to tune out what they were doing, adjusting the settings on his mask to keep him informed of what Nataraj was going through without tuning out everything.

"Looks like he will break," the tigress said. "A pity. He is a skilled agent, but -"

"I am not sure about that."

"She is pressing harder and harder. He will not stand up to that." She gestured to her consoles. "Not when he wants it."

And that was the thing that was keeping them from withdrawing him just yet. The lizard had every reason to call out, but hadn't. Salla had been puzzling over that in the back of his mind, allowing it to churn in the unconscious, and he had come to his own realizations over this.

Nataraj, for all his charm, for all the things that he could do for himself and others, had hit a wall. A hard, difficult wall, one that made it all but impossible to move forward without recognizing that you weren't yet complete.

And to learn that? That breaks people.

He'd give the lizard full credit for not giving up, for not breaking down, but he knew that it was going to need more than that. Whatever Nataraj wanted to be able to do from now on, whatever he had learned was missing, he would need to do more than just challenge the same person in the same way as before. He'd need to change.

And change he did.

Salla leaned back as he watched the feminine traits popping in on the screen, seeing the lizard becoming less and less himself, and more and more 'herself.' The whispers of the goddess came through the speakers, and the men behind him continued to whimper as they fought their base needs. The mouse tuned them out, shaking his head.

"He'll come through."

"And what makes you so sure?"

"I'm not."

"You're not usually a gambling man. Why are you betting twice in one day?"

"Because I don't have to be sure to feel confident. And this lizard? No matter how much confidence is stolen from him...he still has that dedication."

It might not have been targeted towards a specific cause before, never quite leveled at a specific person, but he'd seen that in Nataraj from the moment they'd met. The lizard needed focus, but once that focus was given, one could never doubt his loyalty and dedication towards completing a task. One way or another, it would be done.

The back-up team wasn't there in case Nataraj and Olag couldn't get the job done. They were there in case the job couldn't be done fast enough.

Still...dedication still required focus, and the goddess was sucking up a great deal of the lizard's attention right then and there. Salla tapped the console as the lizard moaned, shivering on the screen under his bigger breasts, his fatter hips.

"Nataraj. Remember your goals. Remember your orders."

That stiffened the lizard up good and true, and Salla once more smiled behind his mask. Nataraj hissed softly through the torment that he was going through, thinking a message back to them.

"Two minutes. No more. Get me out...after two minutes," his agent said.

"See?" Salla said.

"I doubt that will leave much."

"It will leave enough."

"You're breaking him."

"No. She's breaking him. I'm just taking advantage of that to give him what he really needs out of this."

"...You bastard."

Salla smiled, chuckling to himself as he leaned back with his arms over his head, only to get a beep from his mask. He spun his chair, barely blocking the mug that would have shattered across his face with the back of it.

"You utter bastard. You bet that he'd get what he needed, not that he'd win."

"You're a tested, legitimate super-genius, Tatyana. You can't blame me if you didn't bother listening to the terms."

"You - ooooh, fine. You win this round...but you know that I'm going to make you pay for it next time I win."

"Wouldn't be a real bet if you didn't."

"Hmmph. Then I will prepare my lab. By the way, you're down to thirty seconds."

"I know."

It was a mess on the ship that night. The men that had been there for Nat's tormenting had been all too eager to spread the news of the show across the ship. Salla had done what he could to stifle the teasing and the talk about how the lizard had 'fucked up', but there would be some muttering despite that. He'd have to do a bit more the next day, ensure that the lizard - or whatever Nataraj ended up becoming - had a place to come back to.

Or at the very least, an opening to fight for what she was.

The mouse tugged his boots off as he laid down in bed, letting his long feet breathe after being cooped up all day. He curled his toes, popping them carefully, and then leaned back, crossing one leg over the other as he stared up at the ceiling.

We're on the second island. We have two more hops to go before we reach Atlantis proper, he thought. If Nataraj can pull herself together in a day or so, we should be able to make it before the stallion siblings get to the core...

But that would be a bit iffy. From what Olag had told him - Nataraj had been a bit insensate when she had first woken up after the hard use she'd gone through, so he hadn't gotten anything there - the lizard was pretty shaken up. Not broken, not shattered, but definitely shaken from the new body.

Not too surprising. A new shape like that was definitely weird, particularly if it came with conflicted feelings.

Dysphoria will always be a thing, unfortunately...

They had a day, though. A day in which they could work through it. A day in which Nataraj would be able to take time to start getting used to being feminine, to dealing with the new feelings that had come up through the scans. Even if the lizard herself didn't know what it meant, didn't know what she wanted, Salla had the brain scans to work with it.

There was quite a bit of female in there, and most of it didn't come from the goddess. It came from the lizard. This wasn't a curse, but a potential gift.

The mouse rubbed his mask again, almost giving in to the temptation to take it off. If he did, he'd be a bit more comfortable. If he did, he'd be a bit more vulnerable.

The decision was easy, wording it like that.

He rolled onto his side, still in the suit. He was always in the suit, if he could help it. It was better that way. The mouse closed his eyes, and the mask dipped into a sleep-mode of sorts, connecting to his mind and augmenting his senses. It started its night-time scan, keeping the room monitored for movement, for shifts in the energy flows, for everything. It would wake him in a hurry if there was need.

Salla doubted that he would sleep, but the mouse knew that he had to try. With something that big threatening the time streams, he needed to be well-rested. He was brilliant, but he wasn't infallible.

And I'm not adding more variables to this than there already are...

The End

Summary: We shift POV to Salla for a bit, giving us some insight for what's going on with the mouse, and what he's feeling about what's going on.

Tags: No sex, M/F, off-screen sex, lizard, mouse, tigress, Salla, Tatyana, transformation, insight, character building, series, plotting, planning, ship,