It took around two hours, but the various news crews eventually had to leave. About ten minutes in, I’d taken to freezing all but one news crew in time at a time, which reduced the sensory overload factor. That said, it was still a really unpleasant experience, and several times during the ordeal I’d wondered to myself why I didn’t just teleport out. Ultimately, the reason I came up with for myself was that teleporting away would just be putting the problem off for later. The fact that I’d never have to actually arrive at ‘later’ did occur to me, but that struck me as both cowardly and boring.

Still, the instant the various reporters all began comparing footage to try and get at the questions that only one of them had been able to ask, I immediately dived into the relative safety of the void outside time and came out in my room at Edgewood college. As I arrived, I saw past me still occupying the bed, lying on her front. It took a bit for it to click what I was looking at. Not really seeing any reason to change things, I allowed the loop to close as I gently rubbed past me’s back.

Eventually, past me woke up and rolled over so she could see me. It took roughly thirty seconds, but eventually she asked, “How far back?”

I answered “You should go back about five hours. Now can you please get out of the bed, so I can use it?” Without any further fanfare, past me quickly skipped off through time, vacating the bed in the process. As soon as the blankets were empty I began getting ready for a nap, and inside five minutes I was fast asleep.

I woke up an hour later, feeling much less worn out than I had when I started my nap. I quickly got dressed again and made my way down to the dining hall to get lunch. I could have just teleported, but I figured that I could use the exercise. Besides, I might meet someone on the way, which wouldn’t happen if I teleported. That said, as soon as I reached the stairwell I heard what sounded like… chanting? My curiosity got the better of me, and I diverted my course to investigate.

I easily followed the sound, finding myself right outside Henrietta’s dorm room. As I got close to the door I could finally make out what the people inside were saying.

“And thus Claire the savior ascended to the temporal plane, gaining control over...”

As I realized what was going on I facepalmed hard enough that it hurt. Thankfully, the pain didn’t last long as I reflexively reverted time to just before I slapped myself in the face and decided against it. The absolute last thing I needed pestering me was a freaking cult.

I brought time to a halt as I opened the door and stepped through, before allowing events to flow once more as the door clicked shut. When I saw who was in the room, my hopes that Henrietta wasn’t involved were dashed against the unforgiving rocks of reality.

Seriously, Henrietta, what are you doing!? The room looked to have been converted into an improvised chapel, Henrietta wearing a blue robe as she stood behind a lectern in the corner. There were eight people in the room besides myself, all of whom were wearing stopwatches as pendants.

I had a hunch as to what the people here were up to, but I couldn’t confirm it unless the other people in the room could reply. Sighing as I did so, I allowed time to flow again and asked Henrietta “Seriously? Weren’t you really skeptical about all this time-warping stuff? Also, what’s with the cult?”

In response, Henrietta simply replied “Hey, you’re the only verifiably real supernatural being on the planet. As far as I’m concerned, your time-warping abilities are a lot more convincing than any of the miracles from any of the major religions, so I figured you’d be as good a goddess as any. As for the Order of Time, they all pretty much agree with me, given your showing off in the dining common.”

I groaned, before saying “But I haven’t done anything worthy of worship yet!”

The brunette with delusions of priesthood replied “But we know you will; I know you well enough to know that if you can possibly help save or improve someone’s life you’ll do it. That probably won’t change now that you can wrap cause and effect around your pinky finger.”

Hearing Henrietta’s justification only increased my indignation over having attracted a cult. I replied once more “Look, I haven’t done anything really important, I don’t have any big world-changing revelations, I’m just me.”

There were a few moments of silence before Henrietta got up and gently put her hand on my shoulder, asking “So you don’t consider verifiably breaking reality over your knee to be important?”

I hesitantly replied “Not really.”

Henrietta smiled as she shook her head, saying “Typical; you’ve completely upended the entire scientific consensus on what’s possible, and you don’t consider it important.”

My answer was “Well yeah; it’s just that I haven’t really gotten around to using my powers for saving the world or something like that. Yeah, people reacting to what I’ve done is probably going to change the world in big ways, but I haven’t gone and actually changed the course of history directly.”

Henrietta shook her head, before asking “Can I ask you a question?”

Seeing an opportunity for a bit of wordplay, I said “Well, you just did, so the answer should be obvious.”

My friend chuckled as she said “I walked right into that one. Anyway, what I wanted to ask you was a hypothetical question.”

I nodded, and the self-proclaimed priestess continued “Let’s say that there’s some new disease going around, and there isn’t a cure yet. Thousands of people have already been infected, and unless they get the cure they’re almost certainly going to die in horrible agony. What would you do in this situation?”

I immediately answered “I’d go to the future to get the cure, then bring it back to a few months before the disease undergoes a major outbreak. That way, no-one gets sick in the first place.”

Henrietta nodded, before saying “That’s a miracle you’d have just performed there by just about any standard. Face it, as far as us mere mortals are concerned, you’re a full-fledged goddess.”

I briefly considered this for a second before I answered “No, I’m not a deity! There is no possible way that I could possibly be an immortal divine being, especially considering that the previous user of my abilities died of old age. The only difference between me now and me a few days ago is that now I can control time.”

Henrietta smiled as she countered “Well that just makes you a mortal divine being, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, you’ll make a better Goddess than pretty much any of the ones with established religions already.”

I’d had enough of this. Groaning in exasperation, I told Henrietta “Stop worshipping me. For the last time, I’m not a divine being and I have no desire to be treated like one.” before I teleported to the dining hall a few minutes before everyone else would get there to pick up my lunch.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

I’d already gotten about a third of the way through my food when Charles sat down across from me. He looked frazzled, there was a certain sluggishness to his movements and his hair was slightly messed up from what had been a well-combed part.

As I saw the state my friend was in I asked “Are you OK Charles? You don’t look too good.”

Charles shot me an exasperated glare before he remarked “Fucking reporters. They kept asking me questions about you and your powers for over an hour, and they wouldn’t go away.”

I winced in sympathy as I remarked “Yeah, I got jumped by several dozen of them at once as I was leaving church today; they harassed me for about two hours. I’m not sure why they’d have bothered you though.”

Charles sighed sadly before he remarked “I’m pretty sure they bothered me because of you. After all, I’m roommates with the only confirmed metahuman on earth at the moment and they probably wanted some first-hand info as to what living with you was like.”

I groaned as I replied “Those scumbags! I can sort of excuse them coming after me given my weirdness, but dragging you into this mess was just wrong!” a hint of anger slipping into my voice in the process.

My room-mate took his turn to speak, saying “Tell me about it. Actually, please don’t; maybe it’ll go away if I ignore it.”

There were a few minutes of relative silence as we ate, with my mashed potatoes blending amazingly well with the gravy that came with my chicken. Sadly, I was too grumpy over the ordeal the media had put me and Charles through to really enjoy it. Eventually though, an idea for dealing with the problem occurred to me and I asked “Maybe we could get a restraining order or something like that?”

Charles gently shook his head as he replied “Maybe, my dad’s a lawyer. If we’re going to do this, then we should probably talk to him.”

Thinking on the matter I replied “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

Once we were done with lunch, Charles called his dad. Thankfully he picked up; I’d honestly thought the hard part would be convincing him that this was real, but he’d probably seen the news already. Soon enough the call came to a close, and Charles told me “Alright, my dad’ll be open for the next half hour or so. Do you think you can teleport to his location?”

I replied “Yeah, but I’d have to know where he is first.”

Charles’ smile brightened as he opened up google maps on his phone, commenting “My dad lives in San Francisco, think you can port to here?” showing me an intersection somewhere between North Beach and the financial district. To be more precise, it was showing the place where the local road named Broadway and a road called Battery Street crossed.

I answered “Yeah.” before I jumped to the designated location and a minute into the past, but with one very important change. As I jumped, I visualized a second dot on the timeline representing Charles, and moved him with me.

I arrived on the sidewalk under one of the trees that had been planted for shade, the intersection directly in front of me. Across Battery Street was a grey block of a building with a television transmitter on its roof, and as I turned around I saw a Subway restaurant. I also saw my roommate sprawled on his backside and cursing up a storm.

I leaned down to help him up, and asked “So, did you enjoy the ride?”

As he got up, Charles answered “Screw you Claire, that was terrifying!”

I hurriedly apologized, saying “Sorry! I promise to ask you if you want a teleport from here on out.”

Charles shook his head as he replied “Apology accepted. Anyway, dad’s going to be coming outside to meet us in not too long. Maybe a minute or two.”

Not much happened before Charles spotted his father in the crowd and waved to them. The man who came over had pale skin and grey hair, but his deep brown eyes disproved the idea that he was an albino. His short beard was obviously well cared-for, and his face was only mildly wrinkled.

As he approached, the man asked “Charles? I hadn’t expected you to be here; you wouldn’t have suddenly developed superpowers without telling me would you?”

Charles shook his head as he replied “No dad, I don’t have any powers. It’s just that Claire here decided to use me as a test subject for bringing passengers through her teleports without telling me.”

At this point I opted to introduce myself, saying “Hello. As your son so helpfully pointed out, I’m Claire Stevens.”

The man nodded before introducing himself with “And my name is Andrew, but you may call me Mr. Brown during formal occasions.”

I replied “Nice to meet you Mr. Brown.”

Andrew nodded before he commented “Anyway, there was something you wanted my help with, and it’s best if we do that in my office. Please, follow me.”

I answered “Sure.” as we made our way towards Mr. Brown’s office.

We soon arrived, and as Andrew sat down behind a massive desk that looked to be made out of teak, he asked “So, you’ve obviously got some variety of problem that needs someone with my expertise. Would you care to tell me what it is?”

Sitting up straight, I answered “Put quite bluntly, ever since news of my powers got out this morning, the media’s been hounding me and Charles constantly. Could you please help make it stop?”

Mr. Brown nodded, before he said “Miss Stevens, In order to do as good a job of this as possible, I’m going to have to ask you some questions.”

I nodded my assent, and Mr. Brown asked “First, could you please tell me in detail exactly what the various parties that you want to get a restraining order for did to you?

I began to describe what had happened, beginning an hour-long session in which Charles and I discussed every single aspect of our publicity-inflicted ordeal with his father.

As we finished explaining what we had been through, Andrew looked thoughtful before he remarked “I do believe getting an injunction would help, and it would be fairly straightforward to accomplish given the pile of evidence for harassment. With a bit of luck you can probably even wring a few dozen grand out of them, if you’re interested in doing so.”

Charles and I made eye contact before I answered “Yes, we would very much appreciate that.”

At this, Mr. Brown nodded, before asking “Alright, so, which news network are you trying to get an injunction for?”

To this I answered “Ideally, all of them, if that’s what it takes to not get jumped by reporters on a regular basis.”

Andrew’s eyebrows shot up before he answered “I don’t think you’ll need to go that far, nor do I think you’d win if you tried to sue an entire industry. If you just sue one or two of the biggest offenders to make an example, the rest should back off.”

Charles looked at me as he commented “In my opinion, we should just follow my dad’s advice on this one; he’s the expert after all.”

Within an hour, we’d hammered out a plan of action for dealing with the media’s harassment. With the end of our ordeal in sight we were in much better spirits, good enough for Charles to jokingly ask “So, about that time traveller’s license?”

I replied “I’ll go get it right now; I should be back in about half a second.”

Just before I jumped, two instances of future me arrived. One of them walked over to Andrew’s desk and informed him “Mr. Brown, I’m here to return your revolver after borrowing it.” while producing the aforementioned sidearm and handing it across the desk grip-first. I couldn’t get a clear look at it from here, but it was painted jet black.

My other future self walked over to me and said “Past-me, you really need to see when we just were, but it’s going to be dangerous.”

Towards the back of the room, I could hear Mr. Brown remark “Well, this is most definitely my gun, but I don’t recall lending it to you yet.”

All three of me replied in unison “Time travel.”

Curious, I asked “Um, what’s the big deal with the gun and everything?”

To this, my closer future self replied “We found the threat. We’ve also got a lead on the other Concept user.”

This is when Andrew intervened in the conversation I was having with myself, saying “If you’ll excuse me, it’s clear that I’ve gotten my gun back in good condition and you’re probably going to need it, so I see no point in not lending you my revolver.” With that, he passed me a handgun, more specifically a large revolver with a matte black finish.

As I turned the weapon over in my hand, Andrew informed me “That is a custom-made .44 Magnum Colt Anaconda with a four inch barrel. I keep it loaded, so please be careful with it.”

I accepted the weapon and made sure the safety was on before I pocketed it. As soon as that was done, near future me asked “So, are you ready to go?”

I nodded before saying “Say, you never did tell me when we were going to.”

Future me grimaced as she replied “Tuesday, back in Madison. Don’t jump on your own, let me take you.”

I nodded as future me pulled me into a tight embrace. She asked “Are you ready to go?”

My reply was a simple “Yes.”

Future me interjected “Liar. Admit it, you’re scared out of your mind about what we’re going to find.”

I admitted it, saying “Yeah, of course, you probably know that from experience.”

Without any further delay, we jumped.