Breathing through my nostrils, I closed my eyes, trying to do as she said. She was explaining to Gloria what sort of strikes she could take, for now, and how best to advance as soon as possible to be even more indestructible, but all I could think was that my fucking wrist was broken, maybe other bones in my hand, too.

  I flashed back to the moment when I’d first embraced the pain of an attack, what that felt like emotionally, and pushed that emotion to the front of my mind. Taking it, I thought to myself, this is my pain, I will use it as I want. Nobody controls me but me. And some other bullshit.

  But it worked!

  Suddenly I was standing there with my hand pulsating with a red light in a way that reminded me of my cock when it wanted release. My hand needed to fucking cum, and that meant in the form of hitting something.

  Ria glanced over, saw this, and nodded.

  Taking the cue, I charged Gloria and roared as I did. She saw it coming, but stood her ground. My punch hit, energy releasing and knocking us both back. For me it was like a mini orgasm, my body feeling the aftereffect of release, the pain gone and leaving me in a euphoric state.

  Gloria, on the other hand, was staring at me with wide eyes, rubbing the spot on her chest where I’d made contact.

  “Fuck, that kinda hurt,” she said. “You’re lucky you didn’t hit my tit or you’d be getting a real ass whupping right now.”

  “You could try,” I said with a grin.

  She laughed, eyes moving to Ria for an explanation.

  “Contra’s powers are like that,” Ria said. “He can embrace pain, turn it against someone else in a way that expels it from his body. You took it well because of your new tank powers, but any one of these other ladies would likely have a broken sternum right now, maybe bones tearing into their heart, ending them.”

  “Hell,” Bubblegum said, eyeing me. “I’m all for getting rough, bossman, but let’s avoid the violent foreplay business.”

  “No arguments from me,” I said, massaging my wrist. “It doesn’t hurt now, but damn, that wasn’t pleasant.”

  “Hitting me, or the pain before?” Gloria asked.

  “Neither, I admitted.”

  She chuckled. “Good, I was going to be worried if you started getting a taste for it. That said, when we’re getting a little wild in the bed in the future, feel free to slap my ass a bit rougher than usual.”

  “Oh.” I looked from her to Ria, then the others. “Is that… going to be a normal thing? Us, I mean, in the bed?”

  “I assumed,” Gloria replied, and also looked to Ria.

  “My plan was to get you together to fight off the invasion,” Ria explained. “My hope is that, during and after, we can remain a team, but that’ll be up to each of you individually. Is that what we want? I mean, do you want to stay a team? Keep doing this?”

  I laughed. “I think you all know my answer is a definite affirmative.”

  “Yes,” Meher said.

  “Goodness yes,” Bubblegum added.

  Gloria grinned, and Ria clapped her hands together. “That only leaves me with the task of showing you, Gloria, how you can throw items now and make them explode. Where’s a good spot to practice that?”

  “Actually,” I interrupted. “Speaking of Death Girl, maybe I should check on her?”

  “Good idea,” Meher said.

  “I’m so ready to kick some alien ass.” Gloria laughed like a maniac, pounding her fists together and going with Ria to where she had some old cannisters from food and whatnot, which I imagined they were going to throw through the open viewing area, or maybe the window beyond.

  Our team was coming together. I almost felt sorry for whoever got in our way.

  18

  I made my way down the stairs and found Death Girl at a balcony on the floor below, staring out at the sky.

  “Everything good?” I asked.

  She turned to me, shook her skull, and said, “It’s all fun and games for you, but this… it’s like a holy mission for me. Like I keep thinking maybe I’ll get my old life back, but that’s not me anymore anyway. So then what? What am I fighting for if not the grand, big picture? Some spiritual sense of destroying all that is evil.”

  “You’re like a badass monk,” I blurted out, instantly wanting to kick myself.

  But she laughed. “Actually, sort of. If you’d seen the way I collected their souls and advanced in power, or their life force… whatever you want to call the strange light I took after killing them, you’d be a believer too. I feel like Death herself, or the Grimm Reaper, I don’t know.”

  “Wow.” I tried to imagine what she had gone through, but it was so far beyond my mental grasp, all I could do was nod and try to be there for her.

  “Pity?” she asked with a scoff. “I see it in your eyes. Don’t.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that… I can’t imagine. Here I am, some guy whose normal life is interrupted, to say life is going to be exciting, I get superpowers, and suddenly a team of very attractive super ladies is all over me.” I ran a hand through my hair and laughed. “Honestly, it feels like I won the lottery.”

  “The sex and super power lottery,” she replied, then laughed. And then laughed some more, her true face showing instinctively as she did.

  There she froze, staring at her hands, then down at her nude body, and watched as it faded back to the metal armor.

  “What… just happened?” she asked.

  “I…” Honestly, my heart was still thudding too hard at the realization that she’d been standing there nude to be able to fully put together an answer, let alone realize that I had no answer.

  “I didn’t do that,” she said. “I mean, not with my powers like I normally would. The laughter came, and then… it was just happening.” She frowned, turning up to look at something I couldn’t see, and then nodded. “Strange, the powers weren’t used to do it, either.”

  “Classic,” I said, starting to understand.

  “How so?”

  “You know—the power of laughter. Though I doubt it is only laughter in this case. Maybe an elevated sense of euphoria. Maybe there’s another way…”

  She turned to me, her skull visible but if this had still been her own face then I was sure she would have been frowning. “Don’t try to trick me into… experimenting. Not until I’m ready.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “Maybe… a little. But not like an invitation.”

  “So you’re not inviting me?”

  I frowned. “Would I turn you down? No. Would I pressure you in any way—also no. As you can tell, I’m not exactly suffering from a lack of fun in the sheets.”

  A moment of staring, then she nodded. “And what does that say of you?”

  “What?”

  “I’m saying, what sort of man is okay with that?”

  “Shit.” I rubbed my chin. “What would it say of me if I turned it all down?”

  “So if the roles were reversed?”

  “If I was with a woman, and a team of guys was with me, and we all cared for her and she wanted all of us?” My left eye twitched, giving me away. “That’s not my thing. But I wouldn’t judge the woman. Happens all the time on Planet Kill.”

  She eyed me, then nodded. “I’m familiar.”

  “Right. Letha, the recent Ascendant. Her generals were badass, and I didn’t look down on a single one of them for sharing her, or… her for sharing them. Maybe if I were in their situation, I wouldn’t have minded, either. I don’t know. So… you’re judging me?”

  “I’m withholding judgement.” Death Girl turned to face me, arms crossed. “Simply asking questions.”

  “I see.”

  “That said…” She tilted her head. “I like you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She laughed, the laughter again giving a flash of her true form. Covering herself, she added, “I’ll have to learn to control my laughter.”

  “Or wear something over this form as well,” I noted, indicating her armor.

  “That would be impractical, I think.”

  “How often do you actually fight, though?” I couldn’t imagine it was so often.

  With a sigh, she looked down, a shudder running through her. “More often than you could possibly imagine. It’s insane out there.”

  “As your stories have led me to believe.”

  “Right.”

  “So…” I leaned against the wall, trying to look cool. “That part about liking me?”

  “It’s less so when you’re acting cocky.”

  That golden skull turned to me, and I had to laugh at myself. Leaning there, basically hitting on a metal casing with a visible skull? Maybe I’d lost it.

  Seeming to sense my thoughts, she was starting to make a move to return to the others when she froze, then faced the sky again.

  “Incoming.”

  I looked up in time to see it—three shapes hurtling through the sky. At first, I thought they might be missiles, but as they drew closer, streams of black and green like smoke trailing them, it became clear these were more attackers. Even more so, when the first came crashing through the side of the observatory.

  The first to came through had the body of a goat—below the waist, anyway, with horns on his head. Straight away, he was leaping and striking, thrusting out with strikes that were like being hit with a mountain, but I was there to absorb a few while Death Girl did her thing. Ria was cursing as she and the others came charging down to help. She and Gloria arrived in time to meet the attack of the next one. With a serpent’s lower half and nude woman’s upper body, like something straight out of the old myths. If the fighting hadn’t gotten my heart beating fast, the sight of these two strange creatures certainly would’ve done it, but then again, I guess that after learning there was a whole race of succubus type aliens out there, there wasn’t much that should’ve been surprising.

  A third flew in moments later, wings spread wide, every bit the beautiful succubus Ria was, or so I thought at first glance. When I turned to throw a charged attack back at the goat man, though, I realized this third one was more of an incubus. It was a he, with all the trademarks of their kind, along with an extremely oversized dick flailing about as he fought. Scary and intimidating all at once.

  The incubus was putting up the best fight, though a good ice blast from Meher managed to catch its wings and send it crashing to the ground, where Gloria took him by his long, silver locks and slammed his face into the floor repeatedly. On the fourth or fifth slam, he managed to break out of it, a tuft of his hair in her hands, and sent a blast of golden light at her. The blast sent her staggering.

  “Try that on me,” I said, trying to catch him with a punch but failing miserably. He was too damn fast, but my plan worked. Kind of. The blast hit me and I absorbed it, but the pain was more than I’d been prepared for. It sent me to my hands and knees, which was enough distraction for the goat man to get in his hits. Two good punches and a knee to the face, and I was on my back, focusing on the pain.

  I knew I could make it through the moment, if I didn’t die first. Push through the pain, I told myself, blurry eyes registering Death Girl bringing the goat man to the ground with her spiked batons, then quickly decapitating him. One down, at least. Snake girl had me then, shocks going through her tail that were bound to finish me off, if not for the fact that I’d finally managed to grasp some of the pain from the golden blast. As Ria, Meher, and Bubblegum took on the incubus, Death Girl had turned to try and help me, but the snake lady was thrashing about, sending me careening into the nearest wall, slamming me into the floor. My arms were wrapped in her tail, but my legs were free, so the next chance I got I focused the pain through a kick, using my other leg to push against the wall and then stomp on the bit of the tail I could reach.

  My strike didn’t have as much of an impact as I’d hoped for, but it was enough to send the lamia trembling away from me. She clearly hadn’t expected that, and when I stood and pretended like I had another strike like that in me, it was enough to give Death Girl the opportunity she needed. The two clashed, metal spikes and batons digging into snake flesh, and in a disgusting display of gore, woman and snake were soon separated, both flailing around, screaming. The torso reached for Death Girl, spitting venom at her, but with no effect. Against anyone else, maybe, but not her.

  I charged in then with a kick to the back of the snake girl’s head, then moved aside for Death Girl to finish it with a baton through the eye. She released and the baton faded—apparently weapons she pulled from air—and turned to face the incubus.

  “For the record, I need batons like that,” I said.

  Death Girl grunted, and charged.

  I went for it, too, but the incubus seemed to be having a hard enough time, what with the ice from Meher and the way Bubblegum kept making air implode when she aimed for him. The latter hadn’t hit him yet, but kept him on the defensive. Gloria took another shot, this time enough to make her stagger back, but then she heaved up an old maintenance tool and threw it, so that the thing glowed bright red and exploded on impact, knocking the incubus to the ground. Ria was on him then, and judging by the way her wings carried her there fast, they were mostly healed! Death Girl joined her to kick the incubus back at Ria, but the incubus connected with arms out, dick swinging, energy flashing out in a way that sent us all back, momentarily stunned.

  It was like he had gripped the air, causing it to act as a cage to trap us all. His eyes roaming over his dead companions and then us, and he snarled.

  “I see you have new friends,” the incubus growled, his gold glare trained on Ria. “How’s it feel to betray your kind, traitor?”

  “In this case,” she said, standing tall. “Pretty damn good.”

  “You will fail, and I’ll laugh as I tear your corpse to pieces and feast on the flesh of your friends. Until then, enjoy these remaining hours of life. They will be your last.”

  He gave us all one final glance, then turned and in a flash was back in the sky, He’d left something behind though. At first, I thought he’d split in two, but then I realized it was like a husk of the man, similar to the way a snake sheds its skin.

  The husk knelt, hands out, and light formed in front of it, swirling at first, and then becoming a projection. In the light in front of the husk a man appeared dressed in gold, with green wrapped around him in spiraling patterns. If I were to see him on a movie poster, my first impression of him would be as a hero, or even the ultimate hero. Maybe a god of nature and healing.

  Except for the eyes. His eyes were cold, blue but deep, cobalt blue and staring in a way that spoke of hatred and death.

  “These miscreants?” the man said, looking us over. “You’d leave us for them, Ehrianthus?”

  Ria stood tall, glaring. “You could never understand.”

  “And when you and all of them are dead or slaves to our kind, there will be no need to.”

  With a shout of rage, Ria stepped forward and slammed her fist into the husk, ending the transmission and sending the remnants of the incubus to dust.

  Everyone stared at it for a moment, then outside where the figure had vanished back into the sky.

  “Who exactly was that?” Meher asked, voice shaky.

  “The incubus was our team lead,” Ria explained. “Goes by the name Ranthem. The other is Trinnar, a man above our little team. If Ranthem is gone and Trinnar felt the need to communicate, I can assume he wants to now deal with me, personally. If that were to happen, it would not be pleasant.”

  “But on the plus side,” Meher said, eyeing her, “we won’t have to deal with any of it until the main invasion arrives?”

  Ria nodded. “Trinnar travels with the pack, no doubt about it.”

  She went over to Bubblegum, checking a bloody cut on the woman’s forehead, and ran her hand over it, causing a rapid healing to begin. Meher had to take a seat, and held her stomach, where she said she’d been hit. Ria did her healing on her, too, but the rest of us were good.

  “How are they tracking you, exactly?” Gloria asked, after confirming Meher and Bubblegum were feeling better.

  “I gotta say,” Bubblegum chimed in, “the way the other one back there, and now this?”

  Ria glanced around, then turned to me and sighed. “I took something. They want it back.”

  “Oh, shit,” I said. “What? Where is it?” Looking over her body and that tight, flowing dress, I couldn’t imagine she’d stored it on her person.

  She hesitated, then moved her hands as if to form a circle out of air. Light flowed, gold sparkling light, and then she was moving faster until an object appeared in the light. Her hands stopped moving, now reaching out underneath waiting. Then the circle of light faded and the object dropped into her waiting hands. It was a simple, gold pyramid.

  “They call it a Per-Neter,” Ria said. “It’s used to help travel. As I have it, it’ll mean only a portion of their forces can make it through. Still a pretty large portion, though, unfortunately.”

  “I had a suspicion you had something up your sleeve,” Meher said, eyeing the Per-Neter with awe. “How could our little team stand against a whole invasion, but… okay.”

  “How many are we talking?” Gloria asked. “I mean, based on you taking that thing, with the force that’s left behind, what do we face?”

  Ria shook her head. “A lot. Billions.”

  “Fuck me in the face,” Bubblegum said. “Sorry, not an invitation. Just… holy fuck. Damn.”

  “Yes.” Ria turned to the sky. “Maybe a billion less because of me, but, no, we can’t take the rest alone. We’ll have to hope Earth can pull something out of its ass. Otherwise, we do what we can, then use this to get out of here when the moment comes.”

  “I’m not leaving,” I said.

  “Even if we’re all clearly doomed? Even if there’s no doubt about the enemy’s victory?”

  I nodded. “This is my home.”