Page 24 of Time Traveling Space Bastards
“What do you wear when you time travel? I hate them, but does this require an under-wire bra?” Baxter asked.
“Why are there wires in the bras on this planet?” Omi said, wrinkling her nose.
“Not sure, but it probably involves a man. They tell us if you’ve got big tits like me, you need that wire digging into your flesh, but they are making some amazing bras without them for those of us with bigger girls and I think they should make those people president.”
“Wear whatever you’re comfortable in,” Kuka said.
“I don’t like it,” Torrek grumped. “Kuka is the brains. Enix knows how to defend himself, but he’s a pacifist. Omi and I haveno problem tearing apart anyone dangerous, but we can’t pass on the street. We can’t go with you.”
That was the problem. Kuka didn’t know how to fight. It was against the law to lay a finger on him without his permission. Kuka wasn’t like this, but Valtens had people arrested whenhebumped into them.
I was just starting to learn. I was essentially lab-grown skin over a metal skeleton and I could feel pleasure, but not pain. I could do a lot of damage with just one punch. I just didn’t like violence. It didn’t hurt, but I still didn’t like it when I got sold to a sadist.
We needed Kuka and Omi. Omi was brilliant. She could easily keep up with Kuka and not everyone could have tricked Big Daddy into not alerting us we had a stowaway. It had to scan of life signs to get the oxygen levels right and the computershouldhave alerted us someone was making food we didn’t know about.
Omi and Torrek grew up in Rilia. It wasn’t the best area of our planet. You had to know how to fight to survive there. They got out and as soon as they were making money, they got their family out, too.
Maybe it was weak of me to rely on them for protection when I could crush a man’s head with my fist. Maybe it was strange that I had no problem with them ripping someone apart with their claws, but I didn’t want to kill them myself.
I was still figuring out feelings now that I was free and not constantly being factory reset. It was complicated and scary, but it was also…nice.
“Shit, they are right. If Owen is killing women on Thursday night, we need Torrek and Omi, but we can’t bring them with us on this planet,” Kuka said.
Baxter fell out laughing. Everyone was looking at her like she lost her mind, but I knew that laugh. Kuka did that when his genius brain figured out the answer to one of his insane theories.
No, Baxter Holmes had a plan.
Istarted laughing because they weren’t all that familiar with Earth. Especially not in this decade. I went to my bedroom to all the hoodies and band shirts I’ve stolen from guys I’d ghosted over the past few years. None of them were Torrek sized, but one of them could have had a career as a professional basketball player if he didn’t trip over his own feet going to the bathroom. He was clumsy as fuck, but professional basketball player shaped.
I grabbed what I needed because I definitely had a type. Omi and Torrek wore trousers that may have been laser ray proof for all I knew, but they looked like any black leather trousers I could buy at the store. Enix and Kuka needed different shirts, but their trousers would pass. I guess it was a good thing I was a magpie who stole something when I dumped someone because it certainly paid off when time traveling space bastards showed back up to save my life.
“Put these on and you can all go with me,” I said.
“I…don’t understand,” Torrek said. “Our planet has been working on perception filters for a long time. It’s Kuka’s next project when he’s done with time travel. This is just cloth.”
“How could you ever be done with time travel?” I demanded.
“Do I really want to go out in public wearing a shirt with some poor disfigured race on it that also saysThunder Cunt?”Torrek asked.
“Mine has some sort of unknown glyphs on it and saysBitch Priestess,”Kuka said.
“I want that one. Swap with me. Mine saysSperm Bomb.That’s gross,” Omi demanded.
“I don’t mind mine. It saysBone Vikingand I’ve accessed the data on Vikings.”
“Why are we putting these on, Baxter?” Kuka asked.
“Okay, so this is the plan. You aren’t aliens, you’re just eccentric. If anyone says anything, I’m going to whip out my phone, act like you’re cosplaying some obscure manga, and we’re filming it for social media. If anyone still wants to ask questions, I’m going to launch into this long-winded monologue about the plot of the manga, but make it super weird until they just go away. And trust me, I can getreallyweird.”
“What are these shirts?”
“Some pretty underground metal bands. I either found them on my own or a guy I dated introduced me to them. That’s not a disfigured race, it’s a demon. They aren’t real but people are scared of them. The weirder the clothes, the better chance people will buy the story. And you can buy special contacts to have eyes like Kuka and Enix. Plus, what’s the point of going through a black hole to visit a planet in another galaxy if you’re just going to hole up in my really shitty apartment?”
Seriously, if I got to visit their planet, I’d want to see everything. I’d want to talk to every single person there, and I’d want to try all the foods. My apartment was shitty. My landlordwas basically a slumlord. Everything in here was thrifted or found on the side of the road. It wasn’t pretty or even remotely comfortable.
They all ripped their shirts off, even Omi. Damn. They looked good topless. It was weird. I wrote about Enix because I’d met him, but they designed him because of what I wrote. He was physical perfection. He had the body of an Olympic swimmer.
Kuka was on the thinner side, but he was still wiry with muscle. I couldn’t see it before with his shirt on, but he had these amazing tattoos all across his chest and arms. Well, at first, I thought they were tattoos. Then, I realized they were a part of his skin. They were a little too shimmery to be tattoos. He had iridescent scales all over his chest and arms. He was beautiful.
