A highly peopled commission by  tanukibomb!. Our cast includes:

1.  rockysfplaya's Rocky, as his own ancestor Rodrigo Ramos
2.  a-kitsune's Ignatius, as a wealthy Texan oil hippo, and
3.  tanukibomb's goat Fontaine, as a corrupt priest receiving a well-deserved shakedown

And now on with our story!

---

Emmet and Sully were broken down but not beaten. Although it took nearly getting tarred and feathered, Emmet had finally acquired the items he needed to repair the NECESSITY’s bosonic concentrator: the only component he couldn’t jury-rig a fix for out of the timeship’s multiple redundant components.

They were finally going home! After the repairs were done, of course.

It was fairly dark inside the cave the NECESSITY had “landed” in, so the only lights were those aboard the ship itself. There were some tight spaces that Emmet needed to squeeze through—something he’d normally ask Sully to do—but he figured Sully was asleep in the copilot’s chair. He decided to let the ferret sleep. They’d both been through a lot.

Until he wriggled back into the cockpit and saw in the reflection of the ship’s glass that Sully was not asleep at all. He was staring out into space.

Emmet was slightly annoyed. If Sully wasn’t going to be sleeping then he should have been helping.

“Hand me that transducer, Ferret. Or even better come over here and charge these couplings for me. I need to get off my knees.”

No response. Sully’s eyes were fixed in the distance.

“Ferret? Is everything all right?”

“I was two months younger than Jeremy,” his assistant muttered to himself. “Now I’m gonna be three months older than him. Isn’t that weird.”

Jeremy? Oh, right. That was the otter Sully'd been going out with.

And the ferret was right as far as things went. They’d spent five whole months on the southwestern frontier. When the NECESSITY jumped back, it would be to a point only shortly after they left. From the standpoint of the present, once they returned they’d have aged nearly half a year in less than a day.

This was indeed a very unideal outcome. But it could have gone much worse. Sometimes it did.

Emmet patted the young fellow on the shoulder. “That’s time travel for you. That’s what you signed up for. The scars add up.”

Sully resisted being touched. “How long have you been time traveling?” he asked, still facing forward.

The question took Emmet aback. It was a fair question, one he’d never answered, but…

“How long have you spent in the past?”

“Well, I, erm—”

“Is that why you won’t tell anyone your age? You don’t want anyone findin’ out you’re actually supposed to be twenty-five?”

“Ferret, I’m insulted. Don’t talk like that.”

Sully swung around in the chair to face him. “Are you that vain?”

“No, I’m insulted that you refuse to use your brain around me! Think! You’ve been at the Burrow for the entirety of the NECESSITY’s operational life! Did you ever see me go downstairs and come back up two decades older?”

Sully dropped his gaze to the floor. “What if… what if I wouldn’t remember that you did?”

“Sully…”

“What if you went back and changed something? How would I know?”

“Sully.” Emmet sighed. “Do you know why I asked you to come along on this mission?”

“Because I’m the only one who can fit in the ancillary access tunnel?”

“No, because I made a promise. I promised both you and myself that I would never let any harm come to you. If I went back in time and something went wrong that caused you… that changed you, I would never forgive myself. Do you remember when I said that? Did you think those were empty words?”

The ferret shook his head. “No…” He let out a sniffle. “Do you think that, maybe, we don’t have to go after Victor at all? I mean, I know he’s done some bad things, but… maybe we should just leave him be.”

Something that changed you.

Emmet couldn’t tell him. It wasn’t just that he didn’t have the heart for it—he literally didn’t know how to. For all he knew telling him about the future he’d seen was what caused it in the first place.

“Victor is suffering,” Emmet explained. “He’s not supposed to be drifting through time like this. It’s a mistake we need to fix, but before we can do that we need to figure out the hows and the whys. We’ll have other chances to catch up to him. But think of it this way: if something like that happened to you—if you were set adrift—would you want me to just leave you be? Wouldn’t you want me to come find you and bring you home?”

His assistant smiled. “Of course.”

Emmet ruffled his assistant’s head fur. “Glad we agree. Now are you going to sit there moping about nothing or are you going to help me get this hunk of junk powered up?”

Sully wiped a tear from his cheek and hopped off the chair, his customary cheeriness promptly returning. He took the transducer and effortlessly slid all the way through the access tunnel Emmet had just stuck his head in.

A few minutes later his face poked back out of the opening. How did he even turn himself around in there?

“The axion emitter array’s completely discharged. If we try to jump without takin’ care of that we’ll just be goin’ around in a loop.”

“Well, let’s fix it so we can… wait a minute.” A whole slew of ideas hit the wombat all at once. He dove over to the NECESSITY’s control panels and accessed all the historical documents he’d obtained about Victor. “Going in loops. That’s exactly it!”

He pulled up a newspaper article on the ship’s holographic projector, dated February 10, 1891. “Ferret, do you see this?”

He read the headline. “TRAIN ROBBERY FOILED. Yeah. What’s it about?”

“Our mutual friend of course. This was his last appearance in this time period. He and his gang attempted to take a train full of valuables and valuable passengers. However, a ‘heroic civilian’ passenger sprung into action and shot the lead bandit dead.”

“So Victor dies here?” wondered Sully.

“No. That’s where things get interesting. Despite multiple witnesses testifying that ‘El Gato Blanco’ was shot point blank in the chest, no body was ever found. It was presumed that one of his subordinates carried off the body, but sooner or later all of them were hunted down and arrested, and none of them admitted to having ever seen his corpse. Someone striking back at a white cat, definitively inflicting a mortal injury, but somehow no one can find a body. Does that sound like anything to you?”

Sully scratched his minimal chin. “Do you think he jumps by dying?”

“Of course not. A feline described as a ‘dead ringer’ for the old west outlaw was next spotted 25 years later in California. Obviously he didn’t die, but just as obviously he did jump. I intend to find out how he does it.”

Emmet saw in his assistant’s face that he was also being hit by several ideas at once.

“The heroic civilian: does the article say who they were?”

“It mentions his name but critically not his species. That’s why this is going to work. I’m going to create a stable time loop.”

“A stable time loop?” Sully’s eyes widened. “But aren’t they, y’know, the most dangerous things in the universe?”

“They are if you change history. That’s the brilliant part. I’m not going to change anything.” Emmet took the phase distorter pistol back out of its box and affixed his hat to his head. “I plan on being the heroic civilian.”

“What was the guy’s name?” asked Sully. “The original one.”

“Rodrigo Ramos.” Emmet practiced aiming the gun at various imaginary targets. If his gut wasn’t so convex he’d have struck a dashing figure.

“But… you don’t even have a Spanish accent...”

Sully intended to formulate a firmer objection, but deep down he knew there was no way of dissuading his boss once a plan crystalized. “Well, can’t we jump home first? We almost have the ship working!”

“No can do. It’s now or never.”

“Not even for a snack, or a quick shower?”

A shower? This excursion must have had more of an impact on Sully than Emmet realized. “You know how it works. The moment we jump back home, everything we’ve done here is committed. We drag the new history back into the present with us. If we jump back here after that there’s a chance we might run into ourselves.”

Sully knew without being told why that was a problem. Meeting your own past self was a stable time loop times a thousand. Even the NECESSITY’s guidance systems took steps to avoid a worldline self-intersection.

“The train departs in four days. That’s just enough time for us to be there with tickets in hand, if we catch a stagecoach soon. Let’s get to it!” Emmet bounded out of the ship.

Sully caught a glimpse his sorrowful expression in the glass as he clapped his own Stetson back on his head. He really didn’t feel like playing cowboy anymore. He wanted air conditioning and internet and fast food. He wanted to see Jeremy again.

But Emmet was usually right about these sorts of things. And what was four more days, really?

---

It was a mixed clientele aboard the 2:15 to Prescott. Some of the passengers looked like wealthy types, the rest less so. In short, both Emmet and Sully blended in.

Seeing as the robbers would likely start at the caboose and work their way up, Emmet sat facing the front so he wouldn’t immediately be identified. Sully faced the rear as the lookout. While they waited, Emmet fiddled with his waistcoat buttons.

“How does that even happen?” Sully asked with a twinkle in his eye.

“How does what?”

“That!” Sully poked him in his bulging stomach. “We’ve been runnin’ around nonstop for five whole months! So many of our meals were nothin’ but beans and dried biscuits. We didn’t exactly have access to a lot of calories—”

“Sully,” Emmet rolled his eyes, “you know your own metabolism is going to start slowing down one day. We’ll see what a weisenheimer you are then.”

“No one’s metabolism is that slow!” the ferret cackled. “Were you holdin’ out on me? You were hidin’ snack cakes in your saddlebags, weren’t you?”

Emmet grumbled for a moment before changing the subject from his own waistline to the subtleties of his plan, sotto voce so none of the other passengers could hear.

“When Victor comes through, I’ll get him in the chest with the phase distorter. To everyone else, the effect will be the same as if he was dead. He’ll fall to the ground unconscious. Then once the rest of his gang have fled, as history says they will, we’ll search his body.”

“For what?” asked Sully.

“For whatever he uses to jump. He doesn’t have a timeship, that much we know. So it has to be some sort of personal device, maybe even handheld. And it has to be on his person right now. Historically he did not get away from this unscathed. He had to jump.”

“What if the real Rodrigo Ramos shows up? What if,” Sully eyed the raccoon across the aisle and whispered, “he’s the guy sitting right next to us?”

“Then we just have to act faster than he does.”

“And then what? Do we take Victor’s handheld time thingy away from him?”

Emmet scratched at his temple. “That requires improvisation. But yes. I believe if we are presented with a chance to seize the device, we should take it.”

“But won’t that mean he’ll actually die? Because he’ll still be here, and I’m guessin’ we won’t be. So the law will find him and… ain’t that basically the same thing as killing him ourselves?”

“Of course not. Don’t be daft.”

“But how do we know that won’t change history?”

Emmet hesitated. He didn’t know how to tell Sully exactly what he’d worked out about the future. “We’ll know a bit more about whether he can be killed,” was all he said, and he hoped his assistant was smart enough to figure out the rest. If he wasn’t, he would be one day.

Just then the train screeched to a stop. Emmet immediately knew why: the bridge directly ahead of their direction of travel had been blown out with dynamite. The figures galloping by on horseback out the window were exactly what he was looking for. Emmet must have been the first person in history who was excited to be the victim of a train robbery.

Emmet watched the preordained events unfold. The conductor telling everyone to be calm and remain in their seats. Two armed men in uniforms moving towards the back. They wouldn’t be seen again. There was nothing he could do about that.

Then the door to the car opened again. Men entered, some of them wearing boots with spurs from the sound of their chinking.

“You all know the drill!” rumbled a familiar voice. “We want your money and your valuables. Hand ‘em over and you get to keep your lives!”

“It’s him,” whispered Sully. “I’d recognize those fangs anywhere.”

“Switch seats,” Emmet ordered. “He mustn’t recognize us until he’s right on top of us.”

Sully grinned devilishly as he sat next to Emmet. “This is actually gonna work, isn’t it?”

“Time travel is more than racking up scars,” the wombat beamed. “Sometimes it’s knowing exactly how things turn out ahead of time.”

As the outlaws slowly made their way up, Sully chanced a glance behind. “You are not gonna believe this,” he giggled. “You know that caribou from back at the saloon? The one who looks like that Bryce fella? He’s here.”

Emmet felt his heart sink into his stomach. “You mean he’s a passenger on this train?”

“No, that’s what’s so cool! He’s one of the bad guys! He’s shakin’ somebody down right now! Man, I know you said you thought them two were in cahoots, but I never figured that guy for a train robber!”

“That’s because he isn’t a train robber.” Emmet’s pulse started to race. He felt himself shiver.

“What do you mean?”

“There is no caribou in Victor’s gang. None of the historical records mention one!”

The world went dark for a second.

---

“Boss? Boss, talk to me—you’re scaring me!”

Emmet sat huddled beneath the seats, cradling his legs, trying to get control over himself. Sully was down alongside him. The ferret’s voice snapped him back into focus somewhat.

“Boss, are you okay?”

“Quiet. I’m trying to think.”

The caribou didn’t just happen to resemble Bryce Sorensen any more than the ferret doll happened to resemble Sully. There was a reason for both. And the obvious reason for the former was that this was one of Mr. Sorensen’s ancestors.

“He’s creating a stable time loop,” Emmet muttered to himself.

“What?”

“Quiet!”

Somebody must have fed him information. Somehow he found out about Bryce in the future.

No, that wasn’t even strictly necessary, was it? Imagine you’re a Paleolithic man who receives time travel powers. You know your powers came from the future. Eventually you’re going to catch up with the time your powers came from. Then it will be your responsibility to make sure they do get sent back. You need to ensure the loop is closed or the resulting paradox wave might destroy you.

But that’s not the only problem. What if somebody from the future came to take those powers back? More than likely it would be the same person who made those powers possible in the first place.

So you kill two birds with one stone. You pick a person—any person—and follow their descendants throughout history. Any era you jump to, you find out where that family tree led. Then when you reach the point of closing the loop, you make that era’s representative individual responsible for sending your powers back.

If the Maker himself ever shows up, you simply ensure that the relevant ancestor is close at hand…

“Ferret, listen to me.” Emmet kept his voice low. “The spare gun. The one with bullets. Give it to me.”

“Uh, sure… but why?” He drew the “real” gun from its holster and handed it over.

Emmet could hear Victor drawing nearer. “Whatever we do, whatever happens, we mustn’t harm the caribou! Do you understand?”

If the ancestor dies, then Mr. Sorensen would never be born.

If Mr. Sorensen is never born, then he will never give the doll to Emmet that prompted his decision to go back here. Their present loop would be canceled.

He and Sully would either be stranded in the past indefinitely, or the moment they jumped back home they’d drag the new history with them. Bryce Sorensen would cease to exist, and retroactively the journey would never have happened. They would be left with no memory of their journey. No knowledge of Victor. And Victor would be free to start over with a different individual. It cost him almost nothing to undo everything. Just a life.

The caribou was Victor’s temporal get-out-of-jail card. All he’d need to do to write Emmet out of his own history was sacrifice his “partner.” A bullet in another man’s head was his ironclad defense against time travelers.

Sully was starting to panic. “What do you want me to do, Emmet?”

“Keep an eye on the two of them,” he ordered. “If you see the caribou do anything strange, or see Victor do anything strange to him, tell me immediately.” Emmet, now accepting the new parameters of their mission, edged himself back onto the front-facing seat. “Try not to stare. If he notices we’re here that will make things much more complicated.”

Sully tried to hide his face, pulling his hat down so he couldn’t be seen. That’s why Emmet took the spare pistol from him. Sully couldn’t be counted on for this.

And there was still the fact that, historically speaking, there was no caribou in Victor’s gang! But they’d both seen him there, sitting at Victor’s table, playing cards with El Gato Blanco.

The logic didn’t work out. Somebody had to have warned Victor. Even before Emmet showed up at the saloon, he knew to be expecting someone.

Emmet’s gaze fell on Sully. I want to count on you. But who are you?

Have you already changed?