Vivian reached out to steady her friend as she made her way into the apartment. Einaudi was still playing through her smart speakers, and the peace that always washed over her as she listened seemed to be having its blessed effect on Amy too.

She brought her friend over to the sofa. “Hope you don’t mind, but I can’t help finding this a bit unlikely,” she told her. “Considering your belly was flat enough to make most people jealous just yesterday, when we got your back. And now…”

Ms Miracle’s hand rested on the upper slope of her baby bump as she slowly settled into the cushions. “Now it’s not,” she agreed. “Nothing like it.”

“So you know I have to ask.” Vivian had ducked into the kitchen, grabbed a wine glass, and then stopped and realised. Instead she came out with a tall glass of water. “What happened?”

“I’m… not sure,” Ms Miracle said, slow and thoughtful. “I’ll be honest, my memories of the future are a bit… fuzzy.” She wouldn’t meet Vivian’s eye. “The Exchange seems to have messed with a bunch of us physically. Although, no, nobody else has… this.”

Vivian sat down beside her and picked up her own wine. She considered. “Future you was a bitch,” she said. “The future Ms Miracle, I mean. The whole second week, I was hoping she was going to turn out to be a villain, because punching her out would’ve been so satisfying.”

Amy laughed. “I can go weirder than that,” she said. “Professor Mordecai is still around out there.”

Vivian stared at her. “What was the date again?”

“3025.”

“So… what, he discovers some kind of life extension?”

“He was really cagey about it,” Amy said. “But I got the impression that maybe he was just already immortal.”

“…Lab accident?”

“I think he might be mythological somehow,” Amy said. “He’s not so much a super genius as a regular genius who’s had hundreds of years to get ahead of the game.”

“Jeez.” Vivian laughed. “How weird is that?”

“Right?”

They exchanged amused smiles and, out of respect for the ringer she knew her friend had been put through, Vivian said nothing for a while. She probably would have done that even without her conditioning pushing her to be a better woman. Even as Macabre, Ms Miracle had been one of the very few she’d respected; in one of their first battles, she’d given her opponent a chance to recover before their final battle. (Not that she’d made that mistake ever again.)

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she said softly.

Amy clucked her tongue. “I wasn’t lying,” she said. “It is kinda fuzzy.”

“But?”

“But…”

*

Memphis was different enough not to be recognisable from the air, except for one thing; the Greenline Park was still there, a thin line of beautiful nature snaking into midtown from outside. Amy let it guide her in, taking solace in its familiar pattern.

The world had changed around her in a heartbeat, and only the horizon had told her she was even still on Earth; the strange spires and organic-looking towers that twisted and grew together over decaying, cracking tarmac, now ignored and abandoned in favour of small airborne vehicles.

This wasn’t the first time Amy had been to the future. A deranged hobbyist from the year 2500 had wanted her and the other Justice Guard members, frozen and maintained by nanotech implant as automata, for her collection of ‘Heroic Age’ memorabilia. The men had been set as statues, their poses reconfigurable according to the Archivist’s whim. The women had been used as servant-droids, and it had actually been a fairly relaxing, peaceful time for Amy, if only because she’d known rescue was at hand. The Archivist’s initial kidnap attempt had missed two members of the team who’d only been inducted that day; Peregrine and the new Hatchette.

Those two had had a hell of a time on their first official mission with the Justice Guard, but in the end, the team were restored and even found their way back before the Heroic Age could be brought to an early end. Which, she’d found out afterward, had altered the timeline; the woman who would otherwise have become the Archivist instead took up the mantle of the Warrior Queen, having uncovered the burial cairn in which her ritual armour had been left. She became one of the founders of the Third Age of Heroes, not the woman who ended the first.

In any case, in that world, those family-sized aircraft had looked like hovercars; these ones were sleek metallic bullets with anachronistic-seeming helicopter blades above. Maybe that was a difference in the way technology had gone; maybe it was just the current fashion, or these were more eco-friendly.

That didn’t matter, or at least it didn’t matter nearly so much as the fact home didn’t exist. Where her apartment building had once been was instead the middle of the pitch in an open-air circular auditorium, at least the size of the biggest NFL arena of her own day. Of course, Memphis itself was a lot bigger - probably the crowds in this future were much, much larger.

Her next move was to find a public building. Where City Hall had stood looked like something completely different, but the old midtown library had been replaced with a building that, however unknown it was, was clearly still what it always had been. A moment of trepidation filled her when she saw other users apply handprints to access the terminals, but on the offchance she placed her own palm flat against the scanner.

There was a melodic chime, and text appeared across the screen:

IDENTITY CONFIRMED

MS. MIRACLE I

WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

and then

HOW CAN I BE OF SERVICE?

“How… how do you know who I am?” she asked, her voice not much above a whisper.

She was wearing her costume, of course. Somehow she didn’t think that was a factor.

IN A PREVIOUS TIME

I WAS D.A.N.I.E.L.

said the screen.

Her attention sharpened immediately. “Is there still a Justice Guard?”

THE ORGANISATION WHICH

BORE THAT NAME IN YOUR

TIME STILL EXISTS

“I need to contact the current Ms. Miracle, if there is one,” she said. Amy’s biggest asset, beyond her powers, had always been her ability to decide on a course of action based off limited data, and just go for it. In a world of complex plans, it made her a game changer.

THERE IS

I SHOULD NOT DIVULGE

HER ADDRESS

She bit her lip.

BUT I WILL

YOUR INFLUENCE WOULD

BE BENEFICIAL

And she smiled. D.A.N.I.E.L. still loved fucking with his friends, it seemed, even if he hadn’t spoken with them in centuries. “What do you mean by that?”

I WOULD RATHER NOT

PREJUDICE YOUR OWN

ASSESSMENTS

After a moment, the screen changed to display a surname, an address, and a small section of city map with a glowing red dot. “Is that my destination?”

OF COURSE

“Thanks, D.A.N.I.E.L. I owe you one.”

YOU WILL REPAY ME

IN MY PAST AND

YOUR FUTURE

and then

I HAVE MISSED YOU

AND THE TEAM

Amy laughed. “I don’t suppose anyone left me a message that would be useful in whatever brought me here?”

YOU KNOW THAT’S

AGAINST THE RULES

and then

MERCY SAYS HI

“Alright. I’ll remember that.” She was chuckling as she left the terminal, went out the door, launched into the sky.

Something was clearly wrong with the current Ms Miracle, but that was fine. Between the two of them, they’d figure it out; once they’d bought the world a little respite, she’d find her way home, and this would all be just another interesting adventure.

Future Ms Miracle had a penthouse suite, almost dead centre of midtown; the surname wasn’t the same, but that didn’t rule out them being related. If they were, the family was doing OK. She came in for a landing and noticed a hatch automatically sliding open to welcome her.

Inside was pandemonium; impressive considering there was only one actual person in there, a wiry, nervous-looking man with curly red hair and a wispy not-quite-blonde beard. His trousers looked like jeans, only made of some iridescent material; above the waist he wore something that looked like a cross between a snug-fit sweater and a high-collared jacket with ribbed shoulderpads.

Amy thought it was a colossal eyesore, but that wasn’t really the part of all this she was focused on. “Excuse me?”

He didn’t look up, so she said it again, louder, as she took a couple of steps closer.

“Eleanor, I’m not in the-” Looking over his shoulder as he spoke, the information he needed from the world around him seemed finally to have caught up with his brain. He broke off, swallowing. “You’re… uh, you’re not Eleanor.”

“I see that.” She smiled gently. “Do you know who I am?”

“Well, uhh…” He looked away for a moment, flustered; grabbed something that looked like a stylus. Fiddled with it. Immediately appeared a little more confident and comfortable in himself. “You’re a Ms Miracle. I don’t know which one. I probably should. I’m sorry.”

“I was the first,” she said. “I’m guessing Eleanor currently holds the title?”

“Yeah.” His face, having tried on several different expressions through all this, finally settled on a thin-lipped, tense smile. “I sort of work control centre for her.”

Amy nodded. “In my era, the One-Woman Army has something like that. It’s probably historical knowledge now, but it was a secret back then.”

He nodded in response, not meeting her eyes. She tried again. “And you are?”

“Aitan,” he said. “Aitan Fitzhugh.” After a moment, seemingly starting to collect himself, he said “Eleanor’s my sister. I, uh, I didn’t know why I thought you were her.” Which, if you had Amy’s experience in the costume game, offered more information than he probably thought he was revealing.

“She just went missing, didn’t she?” Amy asked. “Like, in the last hour?”

“Right. I actually just contacted A.S.T.R.A.E.U.S. about it a moment ago and he told me to wait a moment and… Oh.” She watched him swallow nervously. “He said something would make things clear. He meant you, didn’t he?”

A.S.T.R.A.E.U.S. - she’d been able to hear the dots - must be the AI that D.A.N.I.E.L. had evolved into, she supposed. Presumably a Greek god of some sort; she was going to have to look up what he was in charge of before she formed a judgement. “Definitely. I just arrives about an hour ago, and I wanted to contact my counterpart. But clearly, that’s why I’m here in the first place.” She sauntered over to the control panel he stood by, trying to reassure him by the confidence in her body language. “What can you tell me?”

There wasn’t much for them to go over at first. Not until it became clear that this era’s Peregrine was gone, that Maximilian Power, scion of the great Power family, had vanished too. Instead Maxine Power and Ms Miracle’s former mentee Peregrine were doing their best, trapped in a world that none of them yet understood. Rather than join the others in Philadelphia, in the building that had once held the Justice Guard, Amy stayed with Aitan, partly out of a desire to protect Memphis, partly out of a desire to be there if his sister rematerialised and needed help.

Memphis was her city. It would always be her city, even if another in her legacy had technically taken over.

Besides, she and Aitan were getting on much better, especially from the second day on. She’d gone to sleep disgruntled and worried, in the bed that belonged to the Ms Miracle of this future time, and she’d woken happier and more relaxed, and she’d gone through that day humming a tune she couldn’t place and smiling more fondly on Aitan.

The second full day she was there, after stopping something called xxxt’Bhuta from eating Midtown, she flew back to the penthouse, took Aitan by the shoulders, turned him around, settled to her knees and took his cock between her tits. Silently, with the same dedicated focus she’d shown in fighting the monster but with more gentleness, she milked his cock with her tits until he came on her, cum sticky on her upper slopes, and then pulled her costume back up and went on patrol.

As she heard the retelling, Mercy tilted her head, looking at her friend curiously, but Amy clearly noticed nothing wrong, nothing out of the ordinary.

The third full day she was there, having first encountered members of the cult responsible for the exchange, she spent her morning and well into the afternoon running down leads, outrunning messengers, and trying to capture as much of their globe-spanning network as possible intact for analysis, Amy broke off with plenty still to do and accelerated back to Memphis, where she found Aitan relaxing on the penthouse roof, enjoying the sun, rather than manning the control centre. She ‘landed’ a half inch above his lounger, thighs spread to hover over him as if she were straddling him, then settled to rest on the lounger more gently.

From there she slid the shoulder straps of her costume off her arms and brought her arms up in double biceps pose, so that the upper half of her uniform was flexed free of her tits and dropped down to her waist, showing off her body. Then she slid back down the lounger until her bare tits brushed against his naked thighs, and she took his erection in her mouth and sucked him off, smiling all the while, keeping her eyes on his until he could no longer meet her gaze.

She gargled his cum like it was a fine wine and shot back into the air to complete her self-assigned tasks for the day, pulling her costume back into place only when she was already moving.

The fourth full day was a day where A.S.T.R.A.E.U.S. was analysing data from the evidence she and others had recorded previously. Amy indulged in some minor crimefighting, busting up a drug cartel peddling a substance she’d never heard of before that conferred a high she didn’t understand; if they hadn’t been a murderous group she might well have decided she didn’t know enough to condemn them.

In the evening, rather than meet up with the other heroes native to the time and compare notes with Peregrine, Maxine, and the half-dozen other heroes and heroines from her own time, she went back to the penthouse where she got Aitan’s attention by slowly tearing her tights from around her invulnerable thighs, a party trick she’d learned was loved by men from so many mind controllers. That done, she shed her costume - aside from the boots - and dramatically swept clear a portion of his workbench to bend herself over.

She didn’t say a single word in any of this, as she hadn’t for any of their sexual encounters. But she knew Aitan would understand, and he certainly did, making his way toward her, undoing the strange heat-sensitive seam on his pants, taking out his cock, and fucking her where she waited. She listened to him grunt and mutter, to his breathing quickening, to his focus on her body and his pleasure.

If she’d been mind controlled she couldn’t have liked that any more.

On the fifth day, Amy did her best to ease the troubles the world around her faced. This cult, the whole fact of her displacement, was a problem; it just wasn’t the only one, and some of the others were trying to take advantage. She and Maxine Power both ended up in a brawl across Neo-York with something called the Genetic Order, a name that outraged Maxine in particular as it made no sense whatsoever.

By midafternoon there was a nagging feeling in the back of Amy’s head that she should be doing something else, something much more pleasant. But she couldn’t just break off from the fight and leave Maxine to go it alone, not unless there was an actual crisis to handle. So she bravely squared up to the fact she was letting Aitan down, and just as bravely dealt with the fact she was missing out on being used like a sex toy while it happened.

Late that night, though, when she finally got back she stripped naked just outside his room, slipped inside, and climbed into bed with him. He was only barely awake, having started to stir when she opened the door, so she crawled below the covers and fellated him until he wasn’t just hard but, by the entertaining noises he was making, he was properly awake. Then she climbed on top of him, waited for him to thrust himself into her, giggled, and rolled onto her back, her strong thighs taking him with her until she lay flat on her back and he could breed her to his heart’s content.

As she heard the retelling, Mercy frowned. Amy didn’t even seem to have noticed how the words she was choosing were changing as she remembered.

On the sixth day, Amy told A.S.T.R.A.E.U.S. there were things she had to do in Tennessee. She stayed in the penthouse, didn’t get dressed, and Aitan gave her several bowls of nanotech slurry to consume; she sucked him off after each one, and an hour after the last one was finished, he led her to his bed, took her by the hair, bent her over, and bred her several times, leaving her bent over each time as he recovered. She stayed in position just as long as it took, every time.

After that her duties were clear, and she let Aitan breed her at least once per day no matter what else was happening. Her memories, too, became cloudier; she remembered only fleeting glimpses of each day, usually of a battle or a chase with the cult, and of course of the times she felt most alive, with Aitan’s cock inside her. If she was lucky some days she would get to drink from him after he recovered, which she was convinced made conception more likely.

She barely remembered Aitan’s sister, but then they’d been in the same time for only moments.

*

Silence reigned for a long time after Amy finished telling her story. Vivian knew what to say, but had no idea where to begin, and she wasn’t exactly sure that what needed to be said was helpful, either. Amy sat staring forward, eyes flickering from point to point, jaw twitching. Thinking something through.

At length she said simply “Huh.”

Vivian nodded.

“That… Okay. I didn’t remember most of that until I started.”

“I figured that.”

“The start is so much clearer than the end.”

“Right.”

“That’s got to be something to do with the effects of travelling through time, right? The closer something happened to travel, the foggier it gets.”

Vivian stared at her. After a moment, she said “No. No. God, no.”

Amy turned to look at her for the first time since starting the retelling, an expression of total bewilderment on her face. “What do you mean?”

“Honey, you got mindfucked.”

Amy stared at her in disbelief. “How do you figure that?”