Timely rescue
#1 of Time
Just a heads-up, I am no longer allowing votes, if you want to let me know something didn't work for you, or that you thought some part sucked, comment about it. I don't hold it against people if they say something negative, everyone has a right to an opinion, just please try and be a little constructive about it if you do want to flame :)
'Time twists and time warps, but time can never be altered because time has already happened.'
I sighed and scrubbed out the words, "Just how the hell am I going to explain this to her?"
Then it came to me, she probably couldn't read anyway, there was no point writing it down, I would have to explain it to her, but when?
I chuckled, "I have all the time in the world, but for her it is a fleeting thing.". I turned to the computer, executing the 'time manager' application. I began by loading the standard, commonly held beliefs about the beginning of the fourteenth century, then told it to focus down and loaded the interference-map I had already worked on, events I had caused to take place, people I had influenced, documents forged... I wonder how many things in history are real and how many I have yet to twist to happen 'as they did'.
With a laugh I scanned her time line and found a few hours just before she was supposed to be executed to act, the timing might be tight and I would need some props to work this, but it was doable.
I grabbed the chameleon suit, it was a full body outfit that could warp peoples perceptions of your outer proportions to anything you programmed it to, I set it to one random male build, one of the guards at the jail and one build of the girl I was trying to reach, and then I put the thing on.
It clung to my fur, but once it was in place it defaulted to 'pass through mode' and I looked down and around at myself to see the same native Australian wolf that I had been seeing in the mirror since I had been required to take the treatment our forefathers had designed. Like all children born in my time, I grew up to adulthood within four years, it was then that like all other modern children I became sick and had to take the treatment. After five days of feeling like crap and being exposed to the animal DNA I had chosen I was left a five foot nine, striped wolf.
I double checked my readings on the computer again and grabbed the other suit, the SEP one. Once it was worn anyone not trained to be able to see it would be unable to see the person wearing it. It wasn't supposed to be called that of course, but I named it that because of an old story I read.
Flicking on one of my 'random human male' disguises, complete with basic clothing, I started to make my way leisurely toward Rouen, it was a warm day in this part of Europe, even for summer, by the end of the day I expected I will have felt something a little hotter.
Finding the prison the English were holding her in was easy, there were many people outside it in the city square, most were just here to ogle the killing of a heretic, some were vocal in their defence of the woman. No one here would risk everything to save the girl of legends though, except me.
Watching the pattern of guards I bided my time, it would be almost forty minutes before the two hour event window would begin, I finally had my target guard off on his own, from then it was a quick "Excuse me sir, do you know you shoelaces are untied" and a hit from my suits built in stun gun and he was down. Quickly I removed his armour, and told my suit to take his form, as it had been programmed. I donned his armour and then pressed his thin knife into the back of his head. According to a journal I had recovered from one of his fellow men he would have spent the last two hours doing very, very horrible things to my girl, now I could keep the timeline complete, work the way I wanted, and hopefully live happily ever after.
Walking toward the side door the man had exited I mentally kicked myself into an older English accent, "Uh, fuck something I ate is not going down well." I spat on the ground, the soldiers laughed at me and opened the door back up and let the wolf among the sheep.
Excusing myself, "I gotta show our little friend some of the sights of England." and laughed as I went alone down to the cells.
"I dun care what she done, nothing deserves what he goin ta do ta her." One of the men said behind me.
Another replied, "Just shut it, by midday the little bitch ain't gonna matter no more. Let 'im have 'is fun, 'less you got the guts to stop 'im?"
The bastard I was disguised as was a brute, and the poor soldier with some morals wasn't stupid enough to pick a fight over nothing. Quietly, in my head, I thanked him for what he did do, the diary, without that, I couldn't have planned this nearly so well.
I fumbled with the keys before opening the door. I sighed when I saw her, the greatest strategist the world has ever known, she had won wars untrained and without even knowing how to read or write, and she was on her knees praying to a god who neither would save her nor even knew she existed. Assuming the god existed that is.
I closed the door behind me, not locking it and she started to pray more fervently.
Shaking my mind into French I said, "We have two hours of time, during which I will help you get out of here, fake your death for these ungrateful scum and take you to a place where you will have an even greater impact on the world than you did on France. Jeanne, just tell me you don't want death here today, tell me you want this farce of justice to be over."
She looked up at my face, still seeing the English brute, yet no fear was on her features. "Are you here to taunt me? Are you here to make me confess to something else?"
I sighed, taking off the armour and pulling the SEP suit from my thin pack. "I thought so, you wouldn't trust a thing at face value, good." I turned off the chameleon field, leaving myself some clothes of course, poor girl could get used to more modern habits of dress later. "My name is Gregory, I know I look a little different, but at least you know I am no Englishman."
She thought for a second, face twisting slightly, then a small giggle came from her, "No, no Englishman, you lack the features of a swine. What are you then, a demon come to try and seduce my soul from me?"
"No, not a demon. I do not ask you to do anything unnatural, nor against your pledges, what I ask is that you trust me for just this one day, if at any point you think what I am doing is wrong you can stop and I will return you to this room, safe, and ready to die for the humour of some English king."
She pondered my words, "Well, logically if you are a demon you would lie to gain anything, I can of course not have my soul stained without doing something to stain it, so if I follow my morals even a demon could be an ally, if for a moment. If you are honestly here to help me, I would be a fool not to do what you say. Very well, demon or not, I will do what you ask. Now, what's the first order?" She asked.
Holding out the suit I said, "That's an easy one, strip and climb into this." I handed the astonished French girl the SEP suit and turned around.
Again she giggled, but I heard her doing what I asked, I didn't even try and sneak a peek. I muttered, "And she was the one canonised."
"Ok, I am done, now what?" I turned, the suit was very sheer. I gulped, ok, maybe I didn't need to peek.
"Now, you walk out of here and head west of the city till you find a pile of four rocks leaning against a tree, if you head off the road directly there you will find a little house, wait there till the end of the day, and don't, ever, remove that suit." I told her.
"But, they will see me!" She exclaimed.
"I told you to trust me, their eyes will see you, they will open doors for you when you ask, and you can ask, but they will not remember you, nor will they see you." She was opening her mouth but I forestalled her question with a hand, "Its not magic, its something better. You know how crossbows are better than throwing darts?" At her nod I continued, "Well that suit is better than wearing black on a dark night." At this explanation she smiled.
"Then till tonight my non magical demon." And she opened the door and walked out.
Dropping back to modern English I couldn't help but say, "Fuck she has some balls.".
Shaking my head I commanded the suit to take her form, put on her 'boyish' clothes, then I packed all the armour into a corner, sat, and waited the order for death.
When I heard booted feet in the corridor I checked the trans-locator one last time, it would work, its opposite receiver was picking up and telling me all was ready.
The two guards came in, one said in rough, broken French, "Time to go.".
The other stopped and said in English, "Hang on Harry, just wait out there for a bit." The moral guard then preceded to hand me a flask, then once more in French, "Its strong miss, it will make this a lot easier to deal with..."
I looked up at him and shook my head, pushing it back. Damn this guy was just too nice.
The other guard came back in, "What you waiting for, lets get her out there." It was spoken in English, so I didn't immediately start to move, best to not give anything away.
We reached the outside, there was a huge wooden pole erected, it had kindling around it. I gulped, damn trans-locator had better work or this will get messy.
Whilst I was being walked out, a man in robes was yelling the girls crimes so that all could hear, ".. with demons! Claiming they were the Lords Angels. Coveting...". It was all bullshit of course, as a later trial would find. That would have been too late for her though.
I was at the foot of the pole now and was roughly lifted up to stand on it where someone behind me tied my hands behind my back.
I glanced at two priests, "Please, hold a cross over my face, so that none see the horror." I relied on the voice synth in the suit to make it passable female, I supplied the French of course.
".. and for these crimes she has been sentenced to death by burning at the stake." He nodded to someone at my side who leaned down. In a moment things started to get hot.
The suit could take a little heat, I was betting that it could take a fair bit more. I got one hand loose and just as the flames were obscuring the world from my vision I activated the little device, immediately swapping my space with the dead guard.
I almost howled, the suit was burning the crap out of me, my fur was singed in places, I just got the whole mess off before some of it started melting and really burning. "Shit, there goes my ticket out of here."
Waiting for nightfall I crept down to the river, climbed in slowly and started to swim toward the west side of town. Levering myself out of the river I ran along the road, finally reaching my marker and soon the little hut.
When I opened the door there was a sword at my throat and a very angry woman attached to the other end of it. "You are late!" She said in French.
It was then my wounds caught up with me and with a soft thud, everything went black.
-
I woke slowly, hearing a soft chuckle and the sound of my little computer terminal playing my usual war simulation game. Still trying to get my bearings I noticed the sound of the game signalling a player victory. "Ah, my valiant hero is awake?" Her voice came, I looked up and it took a second for my mind to wrap around and cancel out the SEP suit and I could see her, damn it really was very sheer.
"Yeah, I am up, I see you found my game." I managed to move over to the little table where she had been playing, glancing at the screen I noticed the difficulty and the victory margin, shit she was the one. "I guess you are wondering what all this is in aid of?"
"You mean, why a man, obviously from some future time, due to all this," she gestured, encompassing the suit and the game, "would come back to now, rescue me just before I am to be killed and smuggle me to a secluded shack. Yes I am, not to mention why that man is a wolf of some kind who can walk and talk. This is something I would very much like to know."
My jaw was on the table, the best I had gotten before was forty five minutes explaining the rudiments of time travel to an uninitiated, this girl, not yet nineteen by human years, had worked it all out by fucking clues?
I regained some control at her laugh though, "Jeanne d'Arc, I need, the world needs, the greatest military mind that has ever lived. It needs you." With that I reached out with one hand and grabbed the computer and reached out to her with the other, she took it and I started the concentration, that little knack, that would pierce the barrier of time, pulling my companion along with me.
As the sensation faded, my face was filled with with a lot of a very angry female lion humanoid.
"Just where the fuck have you been?" She demanded in modern English. All of a sudden her face changed to amazement, "Holy shit, you got her didn't you? You got your general for this whacked out unit?"
"Yeah." I replied in French, for our newest recruits benefit, "Molly, this is Jeanne. Jeanne, this is Molly, she doesn't bite too much." Then the lights went blank on me again, damn time travel always messes me up.
Really wanted to do a story with time travel, next to magic its another of the great plot-hole fillers, although mine is a very different world of time travel than most. Readers of the Dragonriders of Pern will have the best idea, things in the past happened and can't be changed because even if you did go back and do something, the past happened because you did what you did. There's no parallel worlds, no alternate realities with all the what-ifs, just one poor wolf trying to keep this whole history thing in some kind of order.
Oh, and try and guess which world of mine this occurs in? :)