Chapter 18

The twins went up to breakfast and sat together, not saying much. Tia had a lot to think about, after all, and Tara was still tired from her previous 'all-nighter' and from 'monitoring' that other Tara – the one on the teardrop ship – who seemed to be a younger, less experienced version of herself in a previous life, though she was still named Tara, and Tia was still her twin. She was clueless about how two sets of nearly identical twins could exist at the same time. The only solution she could imagine involved time travel (which was impossible anyway), and that didn't explain the fact that both sets of twins – the ones on the ship and her own here on Earth, seemed very near the same physical age.

Tia sat with a bite of cinnamon roll in her mouth, pressing the thick white icing against the roof of her mouth while she tried to fit Tara's memory of what happened during those first critical seconds of the explosion that should have ripped their Strato-Cruiser in half. The simple fact that it would have been impossible to warn the other girls to 'shield' after the fireball had erupted through the cabin meant that her own memory of what had happened was faulty. The fireball would have absorbed all the air and set everyone on fire before she could possibly have taken a breath (and sucked in a lungful of superheated air) to cry out a warning.

She absently sucked some warm, caffeinated mocha through the straw in her cup, diluting the sticky mess of icing and cinnamon roll in her mouth and swallowed. Another 'suck' drew air through her straw and Tia suddenly noticed her cup was empty.

So was her plate. 'I ate three sticky buns already?' she wondered, peering down at her empty cup and plate, then returned to her dilemma, her mind stuck on the fact that her memory of the explosion didn't match what had to be 'the facts'. She determined that several seconds had to have occurred from the time she yelled, 'Shield!' and the emergence of the fireball through the rear bulkhead. Yet she had seen the fireball – had felt the heat blistering her skin – before she'd cried out a warning. She simply didn't understand it, so she went through it again.

"OHMYGOD!" she yelped and stood straight up, knocking the chair out from behind her and nearly toppling the table. "I JUMPED!"

"No shit!" laughed a startled Tara. "You also spilled my coffee!"

"You okay?" a soothing male voice came from behind her, and Wolfgang's strong hands massaged Tia's shoulders as she stood there, shaking with her new realization. A scraping sound against the floor as someone picked up the chair that had fallen backward.

Tia forced herself to relax into Wolf's arms and he wrapped them around her shoulders, making sure he didn't cup her breasts in his hands, more interested in getting the girl to stop trembling than he was in 'copping a feel' – not that having Tia's warm tumultuous body shivering against his chest wasn't pleasant... 'Yeah, she's all right – maybe too many clothes, but other than that... '

Tia felt like she was suspended in space – held upright despite the fact that she couldn't feel her legs, or the floor beneath her feet. She found herself staring at her twin and felt that she was watching herself watch Tara. 'I jumped, ' she thought at her sister. 'I jumped in front of a giant ball of fire – ahead of where it was in time.'

Tara looked puzzled, so Tia simply 'recalled' what she'd just discovered and mentally held the image in front of her for Tara to peruse.

"That's ... amazing!" Tara murmured after a moment, then sat back down, ignoring the coffee on her blouse and shorts. 'Hmm. Interesting, ' she heard in her mind and looked around to see who might have had that thought. There wasn't anyone there who was telepathic, so she relaxed and returned her gaze to her sister, still held in Wolfgang's arms and being gently rocked from side to side as the man tried to calm his armload of trembling femininity.

"It's okay, you're safe now," Tia felt her Wolf's lips whisper into her ear.

'Am I?' she thought, fearfully pressing her head against Wolf's face as she began trembling even harder. 'I can move through time! I could slip right out of your arms and land... anywhere!'

A soft chuckle as a feminine mind brushed against hers. 'Don't worry, Tia – you can't go where I won't find you... '

'That's not Tara!' Tia realized and tensed up, not knowing what to expect.

"Who's not me?" Tara wanted to know. Her sister was emitting a lot of unstable emotions right now, and she was anxious to calm her down. She just sent her an image of being able to 'teleport' backward through time, and she needed to know more about that – the 'teleport' part being as fascinating as the fact that she thought she'd moved through time – which could explain a lot; there had been two of her for an instant, there.

Tara tried to reach Tia again, but this time, her twin's mind was tightly shielded. 'Lemme in, sis, ' she asked, mentally prodding her sister's shield.

For a single instant, Tia's shield slipped and the word, 'Monitored!' slammed into Tara's mind, then Tia was tightly shielded once again. Startled and unnerved, Tara slammed her own mental shield closed and began to stare intently around the room, looking for 'empty' spaces that might be looking back.

And ... she found one! "Who are you?" she asked, aloud.

"Just me," Ronnie chirped as she came into the lunch room and picked up a tray. She stopped and looked around, seeing Tara with her 'hackles up', and Tia standing there in Wolfgang's arms, looking like she'd just seen a ghost. There was also a slender, completely naked brunette sitting in a chair in the corner, with one leg up, her foot on the seat in front of her bare pussy, her arms wrapped just below the knee of that bare leg as she gazed at everyone else in the room with mild curiosity.

"I'm Ronnie," she smiled at the new girl. "Haven't see you around. You new?"

The brunette smiled and shook her head. "Been around..."

Ronnie cheerfully turned toward the display of fruit, breakfast rolls and the sodden vat of oatmeal and grabbed a couple of rolls. Adding a coffee to her tray, she walked over and sat down at the same table as the new (nude) girl. During that entire minute, no one else in the room had spoken a word. The only thoughts she could feel were Wolfgang's, and he was mostly preoccupied with how wonderful Tia felt in his arms, with her breasts bulging against his arms and the heat from her back and her rump as she pressed against him...

'Enough of that, ' Ronnie decided, and looked over at the new girl.

"You didn't need to stop watching that man's fantasy on my account," the new girl said. "I was rather enjoying your reaction. These girls," she indicated the twins in the center of the room. "They belong to you?"

"Yes," Ronnie admitted, still smiling at the unknown girl, though now she was accessing how much of a threat she might be. "They're my nieces – Tia and Tara Simpson. I'm Ronnie Simpson." The girl seemed unimpressed, so Ronnie added, "The Evil Vampire Queen?" No reaction, so Ronnie added, "It was a Tri-D show; Vampire Princess."