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A Yeen in Time.

© Tsumi Moogle '22

Characters Themselves.

'A mission that doesn't involve subterfuge, or potential violence, or impending doom?' The kangaroo asked as he looked over the rabbit sitting across the large desk. Late afternoon Sunlight streamed through the tall, almost glittering skyline, gleaming off the polished desktop, and the snowy buck's fur as Teio inclined his head.

'And here you are sounding almost upset by the notion.' The buck grinned, before offering a soft sigh. 'Though, I can't guarantee a lack of danger. New technology always tends to have the odd bit of.. variance.'

'Well, of course. You wouldn't want it to be too easy now, would you.' Kyle gave a soft grin, leaning on his tail.

'Quite so. But I'm not the only one. Several other companies have a vested interest in this venture, and you meet the criteria for its introductary foray.' The handsomely suited lapine swiped a finger along his desk, letting lights within illuminate a holographic image of the planet in the air over its surface, rotating placidly.

'You know just as well as I how the world changed in the Great Cataclysm. The change in nature, in fauna, in flora, in the general weather and atmospheric conditions.'

They both glanced out the window to the way the oranging sky rippled with the odd shimmer of purple, like sand, like smoke dancing in the wind, and vanishing.

'And the hunger for knowledge of times before it are quite sizeable. The information it could give us about potential future terraforming programs could be invaluable.'

'Or completely useless.' the marsupial glanced at his employer, running a hand through his azure-dyed mess of hair. 'But I study chemistry as it is now. Not in history. Sure, it would make a neat assignment or thesis, but, we're several hundred years out from accessable information.'

'We were.' Teio gave a wry smile. 'Long term studies into naturing Potentia have lead to rather interesting avenues, after all.'

The kangaroo paused a moment. He blinked.

'Time isn't a nature, Teio. It's a standard.'

'Yet you've experienced time-dilation and contraction with regards to it, no?' The rabbit's scarlet eyes fixed on the honey-brown roo pointedly.

'...You're kidding.'

'Only where Devlin is concerned. This however, is a very real avenue. And given your personal capability for survival in unique and potentially dangerous situations, your name came up in several circles for it. So I would like to ask you to gather this information for us.'

'..Well, I only have my existence in an instance of time to lose, right?'

'Always the font of positivity. Let's get you hooked up.'

It was a strange thing to travel with Teio Hunter. With his personal walking fortress of a body-guard in Nikita, a massive husky who had on more than one occasion stopped cars with his bare hands. The limousine ride quite smooth, something he couldn't talk or brag about, for revealing his connection to the buck.

The trip wove through town a ways, out through the industrial section, to more gated facilities, the sort Kyle expected of Nostor Inc and the sort. The large white building they approached bore an insignia of a golden hourglass surrounded by a sheening purple background littered with stars.

It took Kyle only a moment to ripple his shape, adjusting mass and size and outfit, until he stepped from the car, the black, white and rich blue outline of Morpheus. The hyenolf adjusting his mane as he waited for the rabbit.

Guards stood posted rigidly at the doors to the facility, looking at ID from Nikita and Teio, and glancing at the familiar hero, before swiping a pair of cards and tapping a code to swing the heavy doors open.

The hero had scarcely seen vault-like security on this caliber. His tail twitched all the more as they closed behind them, silent even for their doubtless many-tonned mass.

Another guard within lead them down the well lit, yet empty corridor, a simple metal elevator with another card and passcode.. Until finally after a seemingly short trip down, the doors opened with a simple chime, to a long and wide hall.

Machinery and large tubes wound around the walls, Wires thick as the hero's thighs connecting one to the next, with the steady hum of a huge amount of power that made the hybrid's ears twitch.

'This is all powered by potentia.' Morpheus murmured, glancing to Teio who nodded.

'Hence why it is situated very, -very- deep down.' The buck mused, before hitching a smile as a figure approached them.

It was a red panda, if in name only. His fur was instead, a snowy white to match the rabbit's, with sheening silver where darker markings would exist on a normally shaded one of his kind.

With a button-up shirt and slacks, Morpheus could well have mistaken him for an out-of-bounds sight-seer.

He shook hands with the rabbit though.

'Teio, always good to see you. And I see you managed to find our candidate.' The wah smiled as he turned his golden eyes on the hero.

'Indeed. Didn't even have to be in peril, either. Quite fortunate. Morpheus, may I present Dr. Iskim. The head of the project.'

'A pleasure, doctor.' the hero took the wah's hand to shake, 'though, I hope you'd be kind enough to explain a little more about how whatever this is works. I wasn't aware potentia could be utilized for this type of undertaking.'

Iskim's eyes passed from the hybrid's masked gaze to Teio's, raising an eyebrow. The rabbit shrugged.

'He's hardly the sort to take an uncalculated risk. He had to be told a modicum of the going's on.' The businessman offered with an unfazed smile.

'..I suppose that's true.' Iskim nodded as he puffed and turned to lead the duo deeper through the large, glowing machinery, watched and adjusted by a number of folks in coats and goggles.

'Well, I imagine you said something to the effect of 'Time isn't a nature.' Which was widely believed to be true.' The wah mused. 'But that's not entirely true. While it is a constant, a measurement from A to B, it is affectable. Gravity, of course being the greatest culprit. But with some study, and a little input from my brother and I, we found a means of.. well, folding time on itself in a way. An anchor-point, a vessel, and a destination. The latter is highly specific for the trip out. Imagine you tried to fold a point in time, to say here, in the lab, a week ago, but you didn't specify exactly where the lab was in space.'

The hero's shielded eyes widened slightly.

'Correct.' Iskim smiled. 'You'd find yourself afloat in space, where the lab will be, a week hence. Lucky for you, we have tested this theory, albeit, not with a person, or even animal. And we've pinpointed the location we intend well in advance.'

'And that location would be..?' the hero asked as he glanced at Teio looking about the lab with a particular eye for detail.

'Somewhere quite isolated. And therefore, safe.' Iskim smiled. 'A happy little island in the midst of the Shenic Ocean. It was, sadly, obliterated in the cataclysm, but all known records and maps prior to it, note it to be a quaint little escape, rather unmolested. The perfect place for the readings we're looking to begin with.'

'..That's a ways back.' Morpheus frowned thoughtfully.

'Yet not really close to when we'll be sending you. We'll be looking even further back. Another few hundred years, in fact.'

'Oh.' The hero sounded somewhat faint. 'Is that all.'

'Now, time to get you gear, and give you the run-down of what you'll need to do for us. It might be a bit of a wait to get back if things don't pan out, so do pay attention?' Iskim gave a small grin, beckoning to some nearby aides.

With information tumbling through his head, the hero let the wah guide him on towards the back of the extensive hall, where tubes and wires coalesced into a single ring of polished metal. Several heads taller than the Hyenolf, it sat innocuously, framing a simple, bare section of empty wall.

Morpheus looked over it, wearing a variation of his more common-place kangaroo shape. His biomesh supersuit shifted into some simpler clothing, with a backpack hitched over his trim shoulders.

Feeling a clap on his shoulder, he glanced to Teio standing at his side giving him a curt smile. The gleam of their familiarity disguised in that steady gaze.

'Safe travels then, Morpheus. And thank you again for obliging the request.' the Buck rumbled, as the hero managed not to purse his lips.

'I'll thank you to hold your thanks until I'm safely back. Whenever that is.' he retorted dryly.

'If everything goes according to plan, and it rather should, that will be.. exactly the moment after you step through the portal. So do try not to tarry, won't you?' Iskim intoned with a sway of his tail, stepping up to the side of the metal ring. Laying his hands on it, he closed his eyes, took a breath, and began to glow.

At first a soft purple tone that eclipsed his form, it warmed into a deep gold, with a slow hum crawling through the cables around the metal ring. Energy licked within its boundaries, reaching, stretching to catch one another. As one glanced across another, the energy seemed to hook on itself, and spread out rapidly to fill the large portal frame. A vibrant golden edge with a heart of royal purple. It thrummed with an odd unlight that made the hero swallow as he stepped up.

And through.

Where he expected a lurch, or hurtling sensation of vertigo, an instance drawn back through infinite blackness with whipping, whisping stars and whispers and screams of faceless, bodiless existences, the roo instead found himself stepping straight out onto soft loam, the portal just a cool brush over his frame, before it shrank, winking shut into a small, curiously wound and banded knot of shimmering metal, occasionally humming with that strange light as it dropped, and thudded into the soft earth.

Stooping to collect it, Morpheus brushed a hand through his azure hair, as he took a slow breath. The air was different. Cooler. In some odd way, kinder.

His bootsteps lead him through the bows of storm-shaped coconut trees, to a snowy white beach, and blue. Infinite, stretching blue.

He stared longer than he knew, out at the sky that sat thick with tufty white clouds, devoid of the odd, oily twist and coiling turn of latent potentia that saturated the atmosphere. The ocean's waves, lapping placidly, crystalline at the shore.

So different to the colours he knew of. The salty tang of the air far more crisp than the older briny scent he knew of in his excursions.

Slowly shaking his head clear of his reverie, the roo wet his lips, and tugged his boots free before he wandered back up the beach to the shelter of the trees. He was here for a reason, after all.

Tugging at his backpack, Kyle got to work, setting up a number of devices for reading, and for his own amusement for the notion of a camping trip, a modest fire pit.

---

The slow rock of the ship through the deeper waves could be hypnotic to a soul who wasn't kept busy aboard it. Of course there was little opportunity for that aboard that particular barge.

Bodies moved in shifts, swinging easily through rigging, adjusting ropes and tidying the deck. Below, bodies rested in hammocks or gambled odd trinkets here and there over rough-carved boards by the guttered light of single candles.

High up in the crows nest, a lone rat watched the brush of the moonlight over the waves far out to see. The inky, roiling carpet they glided along in constant flow with the press of a breeze full in their sails. A contenting life in its own way, he considered as he turned about in the narrow wooden nook, all the glittery stars familiar from years of traversing beneath them, and giving each their own name and story.

All stories known, and rehearsed, except for one, he spied. Low to the horizon.

Tugging at his telescope, the rat traced up the waterline, to the warm, golden glitter.

Firelight. On a known, uninhabited spit of an island.

Frowning and scanning along the line of the small strip of land, the rat saw no shade of sails, or rigging.

'Captain!' the rat barked as he contracted his telescope, and coiling his tail in a line of thick hemp rope, all but glided his way to the deck, to scamper for the captain's cabin.

Heads turned in his wake, rounded ears perking curiously.

'Fire, you say.' came the rich reverberation of the expansive form reclined within the captain's cabin. Immense, tan-shaded, with his thick, fleshy tail curled along the rounded length of one wall, the captain reclined among immense pillows of luxuriant burgundy, with a gleam of interest on his face.

'Aye, sir! We near Tarrynook Island, and there's some soul ashore there!' the comparatively tiny rat saluted, earning a curious tilt of the massive pi-rat's head.

'With no ship about. It could be some marooned soul who's about to have quite the run of luck..' mused the massive rodent. 'Set anchor and organize a welcome crew. Let's get a feel of who this solitary soul is, shall we?'

With an easy roll of his massive frame, the pirate slid the vast doors to his cabin open to slink out to a standing position. He kept knowingly to a middle section of the deck, feeling the aged wood creak beneath him with the steady shift of the sea beneath him.

Before him, the rats scrambled, as though the order had been shouted. A small dinghey readily lowered with a couple of rats aboard.

They set out towards that small golden glimmer, oars slicing silently through the dark waters.

Shirtless, Kyle sat near his firepit, just quietly enjoying the soft crackle and pop of the logs within. He would have to consider bringing something more fun to roast, if he made a return trip to the past. His thick tail swished slow as he glanced over to the carefully poised instuments. Silvery shaped things spinning away above sturdy frames. Atmospheric readings, he knew he'd get told if he asked. Some manner of magnetic spectrum device thrumming away in the warm firelight, and a couple of others he didn't quite comprehend, even if their readings seemed quite innocuous enough.

He wrote in a personal diary of his own findings. Of the simple nature of flora and fauna on the island. Sketches he'd taken to while the devices had begun their tasks. Winding through the shallows of the island in an ottery shape to examine fish and corals and feel the salt water through his own fur.

Perhaps he'd be the one to thank Teio for asking him, instead.

Just beyond the reach of the firelight, numerous tiny beady eyes watched the solitary figure in the gloom. Rats silent along the soft loam, tracing about the shapes of the trees, others clambering up into them, watching the placid shape pausing to think, before continuing his writing.

At least until he paused. The rats did too. Slowly lifting his head straight, Kyle's ears twitched softly. His eyes slowly adjusting, pupils shrinking, swelling, shaping curiously as he morphed them into something rather better for night vision.

Panning his head, the roo took his time in surveying through the trees, catching the shape of one small body slinking behind a tree.

One rat up another tree found itself frozen in a staring contest. The kangaroo's eyes assuredly fixed directly upon it.

The maskless hero blinked in curiousity. There had been no rats, nor sign of them when he'd scouted the place, he was sure. Watching as the rat slowly inched its way about the tree. Others, he glimpsed, darting from sight.

The dinghey pulled away from shore moments later, silent in its retreat for the outline of the shape in the starlight.

Kyle set out the thin bedding roll as he considered those rats. He knew textbook images of pre-cataclysm rats. He couldn't imagine the island to house a cave system of them, though perhaps it wasn't a stretch, even if the way they had acted, quite in tandem, silent and all but linked had him slightly unnerved.

The firepit's light grew soft as it ebbed slowly, the kangaroo settling down to watch the stars through the tree canopy above. At the very least, he thought, there was no megafauna to fear, least of all in a place like this. Lidding his eyes, Kyle smiled softly as he let his awe at the pristine place settle him, like the gentle breeze whispering softly through the trees.

At least until the muffled sound of slow, heavy footsteps had his eyes blinking open. Certainly not his heartbeat, nor a nightmare. His domino mask crawled over his face before he could think to remember of when he was.

The night was still deep, the firepit low with its gentle red light scarcely kissing the undersides of the instruments still spinning and swaying away in their indefatiguable tasks. Through a tiny gap in the trees, the faintest tinge of green peaked over the far horizon, with dawn promised close by. At least until a shadowy mass obscured it. A figure. An immense figure. Strolling up the beach towards him.

Silent as the rats before, the figure stopped a small ways from the hero's encampment. The glow of the fire not reaching so far as Kyle knelt up slowly, twitching his tail warily.

With a soft ripple, he drew into his hyenolf form, thicker shaped than the roo.

The figure began moving. Slow, purposeful footsteps circling slowly about the perimeter of the camp, taking out the lay of it, or perhaps to get a better look at the strange, alien devices.

It fell back as Morpheus nudged a drywood log onto the coals of the firepit. A small wash of light permitting the hyenolf to catch sight of the massive figure properly.

A rat, in a handsome black and charcoal coat, with a quilted-leather pauldron, and shining metallic chest plates, all held snug in thick leather belts. His cunning face watched from beneath the angular brim of a pointed chapeau, topped with a large golden plume. Trailing from the back, the hybrid noted the tufted starts of a mohawk so akin to his own. The gleam of metal, a large pole-arm, he determined by the shape of the long, wide blade, made him frown cautiously.

Especially when the rat took a booted step towards that growing ring of firelight.

'Well now,' came a rich tone rolling along the hero's ears that made him shiver slightly. He almost couldn't place a resemblence. 'This is a most unexpected find in a most unexpected place. And how did a soul such as yourself wind up on such a lonesome stretch of land, with naught but yourself and some delightfully different contraptions for company?'

The hyenolf kept his muzzle shut as he stood up, his clothing having shifted into a darker approximation of his suit, even if his boots lay nearby, untouched. He glanced again at the rat's weapon. Watching the doubtless pirate appraise that gaze, before he leaned the massive weapon with care against a tree, showing his empty hands with some flair.

'And no longer a threat, albeit perhaps a little larger than most folks you know.' The rat swept his hat from his head, baring a purple bandana, and indeed a proud mohawk beneath. 'Do feel free to call me Orel, my friend. Captain of the most daring of ships out yonder, if perhaps hidden by night. Tell me,' the rat said, with his eyes fixing on Morpheus' own masked ones. 'What is your name?'

It was uncanny, the sensation that rolled through the hero's form, through his mind, scampering through the vaulted halls of thought and memory, bubbling like a swarm to to the top before he could help himself.

'Ky- ..M-Morpheus.' he sputtered, blinking with concern as the rat's keen grin spread just a little wider. The sensation so alien, yet so terribly reminiscent of-

He caught a small flash of purple from the rat's ear, a studded gem and nearly faltered. There it was.

'Lovely to meet you, my dear Ky-morpheus. Quite the mouthful though.' Orel smirked as he leaned down low, his large, handsome face before the hyenolf's, regarding his features in the budding firelight. 'Rather like you.' He snapped his great jaws an inch from the hero's face, making Morpheus flinch, lifting his fists.

The massive rat though, laughed heartily, straightening up. 'Oh, Relax. I am not so barbaric, my friend. No, you will find me quite the gentleman for a pi-rat. I could well have had my men up on shore to smuggle you aboard my ship for a new life of salty spray and foamy rocking before you had even roused.'

The quirk in Orel's grin had the hybrid seeing every iteration of his words. His tail twitched behind himself.

'And yet here I stand before you, just a humble rat of insatiable curiousity.' He turned and walked slowly about the fire pit, his thick tail snaking along the ground behind him as his fleshy fingers trailed the edge of one of the whirring devices. 'And perhaps a modicum of interest in these most delightful implements. Do you know what they do?'

'..Mostly.' the hero frowned, tenser than he ought to be, and perhaps not tense enough, given what could be at stake.

'And what is that?' the rat smiled curiously. His fingertips lifting the rolling orb between several smartly clipped claws.

'...I'm not at liberty to say.' Morpheus swallowed gently. Orel regarded him with the look of one sizing up a modest puzzle.

'Indeed? Are you at liberty to part with them?'

'No.' The answer was out of him in an instant, unaided or impeded.

'And why might that be?' coaxed the pirate with a smile. His eyes continued to hold the hero's face, rolling the delicate instrument over his fingertips rather like a contact orb.

'...Because they don't belong here.'

'..Do you belong here, my dear Ky?'

Again that pressure in his head. It took no small effort to will himself atop it, to smother it down. Pursed lips and eyes breaking contact with the rat's, the hybrid puffed softly.

He kept his tongue, tail twitching as the rat smiled.

'A boorish line of questioning, to be sure. And quite rude of me to keep prying, too. Do accept my most humble appologies.' Orel swept his hat before him in a bow. 'Though, aren't you rather warm in that outfit? Particularly by the fire?'

'...It's not too bad.' the hybrid wet his lips softly as he kept his eyes on the rat's chest, along the shape of his cheek. Orel eased the sphere back to it's stand gently. 'I adjust well enough to most climates.'

'Rather like your eyes adjusted to spy my little outpost?' smiled the rat curiously. The hero tensed.

'Your little- ...those were your rats?'

'Indeed. They made mention of this curious, thick-tailed, tall-eared soul in loose fitting clothes, writing among the most bizzare trinkets.' The pi-rat's grin was almost predatory, in the way he had cornered the hybrid. Morpheus' chest swelled with a deep breath, before he exhaled, sizing the pirate up warily.

'The ocean is a vast place, Ky.' Orel said wryly. 'Wonderous stories on every horizon. Whispers and rumours at every port. Every city their own mysteries about the possibilities of the world.

A shape-shifter from the future is surely not the most outlandish, believe me.'

Morpheus' eyes snapped to Orel's face.

'How did you- I mean- I didn't-!' the hero sputtered, recognizing the sensation in his head again.

'Not intentionally, I'm sure.' winked the massive rodent, laughing again. 'But that is neither here nor there. You already have made it clear you're not party to acting as soothsayer, nor am I inclined to believe you if you were. A pi-rat makes his own future.' Orel smiled as he licked his lips.

'I am curious though, you can change your eyes. And I assume by my scout's tales, your shape. Show me.' The words rolled over the hero, as readily as his ability to shift, which he realized had taken effect. The kangaroo stood tersely before the pi-rat's gaze. 'Fascinating. How about.. Oh yes, A lion.'

Morpheus caught himself this time, narrowing his eyes with warning at the pirate, even if a small smile pulled at the corner of his lips for the apparent delight the massive figure found in playing with his abilities.

He shifted with intent this time. Mohawk blooming out into a rich mane as his form swelled and tautened. His heavy tail sweeping ropily behind him with a ripple. A thunderous rumble issued in his chest, making Orel's teeth gleam in the firelight as he grinned.

'Wonderful. Though, would you humour me just once more, my friend? How about a Rat? I quite like rats.' The pirate's head tilted hopefully, eyes watching keenly.

Morpheus sighed gently, as he let the rumble ebb. And with another smooth ripple, drew himself into a trimmer, wiry frame. His fleshy tail thumping in the sand as he took on a rat's shape.

He opened his lips to speak, only to find there were no words. There was no thought. There was only the massive rat before him, his voice rolling in his mind, drawing him with the simple intonation of 'come to me.'

There was naught but the sense of the massive rat before him. A true king among rats, his king, his every utterance, every bare and base whim to be observed, obliged and indulged. He was but an extension of the glorious pi-rat right before him. Titanic, poised above him, with infinitely deep eyes that drew him in, a soothing ocean of serene bliss in his place before, beneath the King-rat.

Every step he took to follow that beckoning thought was like wading through mud. His legs heavy, tail dragging. His king reached out to him, the outline of a hand scarcely recognized, before the back of a large finger traced his cheek.

His sleek coat tingled in the wake of the captain's touch, skin beneath rising in goosebumps as he pressed gingerly into the touch, feeling it snake down his neck and chest, spanning into thick fingers and broad palm along his side.

'Mine.' the rat-shaped hero felt thrumming through him, as something thick and fleshy curled about his calves, and then up about his hips. The ground, the very world fell away, leaving just himself and the touch of Orel's glorious form, the warmth of his fur, the richer scent of his large body.

Before the world slowly swam back into focus. Colour, and light, and the cool evening air brushed along his senses, making the hero gasp gingerly as he came to himself. He was shirtless. The upper half of his outfit stripped away, and Orel's fingers sliding the last of his pants free from his form with delicate grace.

'Welcome back, my little friend. As you can imagine, rats tend to rather like me, too.' he chuckled softly, easing the freed rat from the embrace of his large tail, grinning as he stood tall before the trembling frame.

'That.. was quite unfair.' Morpheus blushed as he rubbed at his cheek, feeling the lingering trace of the pirate's finger still.

'Perhaps just a tad. And here I have you so readily bared. Perhaps I should level the playing field a little. One of mine for one of yours.' Broad fingers lifted to the thick buckles over his chest, unclipping easily and sliding the thick armoured coat free. Baring the rat's sculpted frame, his pectorals and firm abdominals, the thicker curve of shoulders and built arms, all in that unbroken, modest tawny shade.

Morpheus felt his fur growing warmer as he stared, watching the small sea of Orel's muscled back shifting as the rat turned to set his coat on his glaive modestly, and returned to the awed rat, smiling down to him.

In just a pair of mended linen pants, the outline of the Pi-rat's shaft was unmistakable. Weighty and curled atop some equally immense stones. Orel reached, combing his claws slowly through Morpheus' mohawk, and cupping the back of his head, to draw the smaller rat to him.

Though no words washed over the hero's mind, the rat king's masculine scent did exquisitely in a pinch, as the smaller roden't snout sank against the supple fabric, burying against the underside of that pulsing spire. A soft intake of breath and a trembling moan had Orel's grin wide as he stroked down the smaller male's head and nape, coaxing him proudly.

'That's it now, breathe it deep.' he urged warmly, shifting his other thumb along his waistband to slowly untie them, and letting the fabric flump into the soft loam with a slightly weighty rustle.

The girth of the rat's length unfurled with another keen throb, to rest instead over Morpheus' head and face. Teased by hand, and slowly traced along the indulgent face. 'Though you are quite an apt shape-shifter, I don't feel that I should test your limits of stretching just yet.' The captain considered with a smirk.

Orel's words washed over the hero's hazed mind. Aware that he was speaking, but unable to pull meaning from them as the pi-rat's musk clouded his mind instead.

He only felt the brush of that heated spire, pulsing steadily, and the trace of a finger beneath his chin. The spotted rat could blearily make out the shape of his captain- the captain looming over him.

Though less so, as that flesh slowly dragged along his face, pulsing against his chest, down against his belly as the Pi-rat's face sank lower, like it's own furry version of the sun towards the horizon.

It stopped, Morpheus still looking up, with awareness cloying its way to the fore as Orel's nose brushed his own, and the pi-rat's lips pressed in against his.

His body thrummed in the kiss as his hands grasped at the taller rat's frame. Feeling the hunger in that kiss, that keen intent. What was the old term? Shore Leave?

Orel eased back from the kiss too, to let Morpheus fully recover his senses.

Still larger than him, but only by a head or so. Still that handsomely carved frame built from days and lives aboard the hard-faring ship, still that coaxing, scent of salt, and strength and Rat king.

But something darted about his feet, brushing his ankles.

Glancing down, the hero-rat stared at the sizable swarm of many-hued rodents pooled about them, scampering, scurrying, moving in one fluid like mass through the trees to a wider space. Tiny hands scratching and tugging through dirt, Others darting, in a revolving fireman's chain to the ocean, with tiny bodies swarming the steady pit they were scurryingly digging.

Loam and dirt grew sodden with each soggy, tiny frame that dived in. A twist, a curling squeak of mirth, before the rat scampered to permit the next.

Soon, a wide pool of roiling mud, with numerous playful squeaks, and peeking beady eyes watching rat-hero and pi-rat.

The world fell away as Orel scooped the smaller rat up into his arms, smiling at him with a wriggle of his whiskered muzzle.

'I hadn't really considered a mud-bath..' Morpheus murmured, finding the Pi-rat's muzzle brushing his own with that cheeky grin.

'Well, I hope you will. Because you have about five seconds to do so. Let's just.. have some fun, shall we?' Orel's voice teased deep as he sank another teasing kiss against the hero's lips, striding into the vast mud-pool. The tiny bodies about him parting and scurrying up the banks to vanish in the undergrowth, on silent orders for a night off.

The thick gooey mire squidged about his toes, and swallowed suckingly about his ankles, and up his calves as the rat knelt slowly, and supported the still vibrantly blushing hero atop his chest as he eased back into the mud.

The soft claggy grasp of it about his legs as he straddled Orel's torso, Morpheus nibbled his lip with vague recollection, kneading hands along the larger rat's chest. He eased back slowly, with his fleshy tail slopping, snaking in the mud with the Captain's hands on his hips guiding his rump to the now manageable, yet still stretch-testing girth throbbing away at him.

He was the one to press the kiss to his captain's lips as he eased his hips back slow.

A shudder rolled through both of them as the snug flesh parted slow, achingly tight, and curiously, delightfully slick.

Orel's throat reverberated low with a groan as he let the smaller rat take him in, inch by trembling, squeaking inch, until that sculpted rump kissed his hips.

Grinding up, he drew the most delightful whimper from his new friend and temporary crew-mate as he pressed on numerous points within the shape-shifter's body.

Their bodies rolled, with want and need building in errant battle. Morpheus' hips hungrily grinding, sinking, bouncing, as Orel playfully supported and timed his thrusts to frustrate the smaller rodent. Earning those moans anew when they met back up in timing, rolling thrusts drawing thick, sucking slurps from the mudpool about them, shifting with Orel's large mass churning through it.

The brown goo oozed up against his sides like a submerging ship with every rocking thrust of his body. The buck and thrust, the grind and draw, and the irksomely practiced brush of his thick tail against the hero's form to keep Morpheus' own shaft from grinding on anything too well. Though the new rat's orgasm built in earnest, he wasn't going to reach it any time soon, if Orel had anything to do with it.

Where his own was worked up with steady pace, now freely indulging in the press and bounce of those hips, the burying of his shaft so deep, the drag of his claws along those rumpcheeks as he groaned throatily.

The mud bubbled, all but gurgling as Orel's large frame surged through it, his pace growing swifter as he delighted in Ky's avidly spasming muscles around him.

His eyes rolled, lungs heaving keenly as he let that pleasure surge over himself with the first cresting waves of sticky mud pasting his torso. A great groan erupted from him, as Morpheus tensed with the sudden, immense tide of thick, gooey seed jetting into him. His frame quaked with want, burning with need, yet still the pi-rat denied him. Until Orel sagged slowly, and with but a single puff, grinned at the bedraggled look of the well rutted rodent riding him.

'One for me,' he rumbled with a grin, steadying Morpheus' frame with a hand, as he rolled over, and withdrew in a smooth motion.

The drag of emptiness within him, dragged a confused, almost outraged squeak from the spotted rat as he was sunk in kind into the mud.

Orel's hand eased aside, squishing into the mud by his head as he loomed over the smaller form. Rivulets and small claggy beads of mud dribbled from his form, pattering down atop Morpheus' frame before Orel crawled up slowly, straddling the smaller rat in kind.

His thick tail coiling, entwining the hero's, the captain's rump ground in his new associate's lap, hot-dogging his shaft with taunting, practiced grace. The Pi-rat held the widened gaze of his friend, giving him the barest nod of invitation, before Morpheus' hands were grasping over his legs at that rump. Sinking his throbbing cock slickly home in one, the spotty rat nearly muffled Orel's hissing in delight as he sank back to ride the smaller rat with a delighted cry.

Their bodies hunched, buried in wanton pleasure, as they rolled, definition ebbing between them in the blanketing weight of the mire. The two distinct bodies steadily indistinguishable as their back and forths, and ups and downs and ins and outs buried them both. The grind and press of bodies so close, and need so heatedly intense that the mud could have boiled about them for the friction, for the intensity of their joining.

Time, and awareness seemed to fall away from the duo in their fun, until at last Morpheus lay atop Orel's form, snuggly impaled on the captain's shaft, and only too happy to hold it within himself as he rested, spent, aching, and smiling so wide, as he wrapped his arms about the large form.

The slick, sticky weight of the captain's arms slid about him, as Orel gently chinned over the smaller rat's slicked ears, letting sex-hazed sleep envelope them in the sticky pit.

---

Mid-morning sunlight beamed over the trees as the hero slowly stirred.

He lay curled against a large, properly cloying, sticky expanse of wet fur. The heavy weight of large arms that almost eclipsed him made him blink groggily, before he smiled, recalling the night before.

Empty once more, he realized, with the weight of Orel's length rested some against his thigh, the rat slowly combed his fingers along one claggy bicep nearly as big as his head.

His large bed gave a gentle stir, with the sound of a thin layer of sun-dried mud cracking as Orel slowly roused, and snaked his tail about. The hero blinked as he spied some of the rats from the night before leaping atop it's frame in the mud, and sinking into it, being absorbed into its weighty mass.

'Good morning, my dear Ky. Slept tight, I hope?' Orel's rich voice rolled over him, making the hero smile, then grin a rattish grin.

'With you in me? I think not, captain.' he teased gently, earning a rich laugh from the massive form.

'Ah well, next time perhaps.' mused the massive rodent. 'And to be certain, I would very much like there to be a next time.' Orel rumbled. 'And a time after that, and so on. You would be very welcome in my crew, Ky.' the pi-rat said with all honesty, looking into the hero's face, but making no use of his captivating power. 'Sailing the seas on a whim, to see the sights of a thousand lands, and a thousand cultures. A thousand, thousand rat dickings on board, letting the rock of the waves sink you time and again on my shaft.' he almost purred, letting the heat and colour grow in the smaller rat's form.

'..As terribly tempting as you make it, I do have to say no.' Morpheus murmured as he looked back up to the captain, feeling the faintest suggestion of the rat's draw building on his mind, before it retreated again.

'I understand, my friend. A thousand ages to explore instead.' the pi-rat winked softly, grinning as he lifted himself up from the murk, carrying the hero rat easily.

Tromping through the trees for the beach, Morpheus gazed out over the shape of the rat's boat a ways out to sea. Its clean sails bundled tidily among neat rigging. Tiny forms clambering this way and that along the framework, as Orel eased into the ocean to wash off, mindful not to bury his small friend too deeply.

Eventually they stood among the small gathering of the whirring contraptions, Orel drawing his handsome black coat over his damp shoulders, and grinning as he looked to the smaller form hopping about into his pants.

'If then, I cannot have you stay on, what say you instead to.. memorabilia?'

Morpheus blinked as the pi-rat dug into a breast pocket to draw out a small handful of glittering gold. Offered before him, Orel's thick tail snaked, always tracing warily around the devices which had at last stilled.

'A trade, to remember a fun time, and a handsome face.' the rat purred softly, as the hero reached carefully to take one. Orel's fingers closed about his hand softly. 'Ah-ah. One of mine, for.. some of yours.' The large rat grinned down to the smaller.

Eyes glancing towards the contraptions, the hero hesitated. They couldn't stay, it wouldn't be safe, things could go so very wrong if he-

Looking back into Orel's eyes, he found that gentle glow, that infinite sea of soothing bliss washing over his mind. Yet it was still a suggestion. The hero-rat struggled against himself, against Orel's urging, before he sputtered-

'..Alright.'

Orel's fingers released him, letting him take a palm-sized coin, which he gingerly thumbed over, before easing it into a pants pocket.

The pi-rat grinned as he considered each of the curious devices, gleaming and glittering in their own curious make, before he slid one from its stand, to sink into another pocket, smile wide with the trade.

He turned back to the hero, to find him holding out a small sliver of silver in kind.

'Be careful with this one. Morphic metal.' the hero rat urged as he shaped it with a turn of his fingers. 'You should be able to shape it into almost anything you want. Within reason.' He smiled. 'And I'm modestly certain it will only work for you.' For now. He thought.

Orel smiled as he gently took the small mass, and considered it, looking the smaller rat over as he lifted it up to sink into an earring, thumping his thick tail.

Following the larger rat to the shore-line, Morpheus rippled gently, shifting into his kangaroo shape once more, as Orel hefted his glaive onto the large boat, and stood waist deep in the glittering water, looking back to the time-traveller.

'Until next time, my friend.' The rat tipped his large plumed hat with that roguish grin.

'...yeah, see you around, Captain.' Morpheus smiled with a small pang as he watched the rat heft up onto the boat, to see himself back towards his ship, waving behind him.

The Kangaroo stood on shore, watching as the ship came to life with the captain's return, as the sails eventually dropped and the wind caught them, as the horizon swallowed them all.

He finally turned to pad back up the beach, to collect his things.

The portal-ring unfurled with the careful application of energy as Iskim had taught him. The instant of entrance held in stasis glowing once more in that deep portal.

Taking one more glance around at the island, Kyle smiled gently, and taking another breath of fresh air, stepped through time and space.

Iskim and Teio stood waiting for him on the otherside. A perfect picture of how they had been the moment he'd left. The buck frowned softly as he glanced to the Red panda slowly ebbing his power through the machine.

'...That was it? Did it work?' The rabbit twitched his tail.

'As intended! How did you go, Morpheus?' beamed the scientist as he padded over, accepting the Roo's backpack.

'Oh, it was mostly uneventful. Certainly not what I'd anticipated.' the hero mused as he took a focused breath, noting the difference in the air. Some odd taste he couldn't really name, had never really noticed without the comparison. Familiar, at least.

'No? Well, I imagine that would be true of anyone heading back several hundred years- Wait, the spectrometric array.' The red panda blinked, staring at the hero. Morpheus' tail twitched.

'Well, there was no one there, sure enough. But I picked an awful spot for a camp. Coconut as big as my head..' the hero shook his head as he smacked his palm with his fist. 'Sorry.'

Iskim's eyes held the hero, staring him down for several long moments, before he sighed.

'...You could at least have brought it back to repair.'

Morpheus rather couldn't help himself.

'Bit late now, I think.'

Iskim smirked begrudgingly.

In the wake of the debriefing in Teio's office after they'd left, Kyle strolled his way from the gleaming building. The familiar streets of New Rhodia large and busy, with foot traffic weaving this way and that, such a shocking difference to that tiny isle. It's quiet and quaint escape from everything.

The adventure of pirates, and romping among the wilds in a long forgotten past...

Easing his hands in his pockets, the roo started to ease in among the throng of citizens, gently thumbing over the weighty gold coin in his pocket.

A smile crept over his face with a sway of his tail, until a soft glimmer caught his attention.

Glancing down a nearby alley, he caught sight of a coin being flicked into the air in the hand of a tan-furred figure.

The rat wore a roguish grin, his mohawk tall over the purple bandana about his forehead.

He tipped an invisible hat to the roo with a wink as Kyle grinned, cheeks warming once more.