“Oh, hell no,” Meher said, eyeing this. “That’s… AWESOME!”

  “What is?” Gloria asked, more grossed out than anything.

  “No reason to waste the arm,” Death Girl said. “And… I can make it work.”

  Ria looked up at her in awe. “Are you sure?”

  Death Girl nodded, and kneeling next to Bubblegum, she asked gently, “Do I have your permission?”

  Bubblegum clenched her teeth, eyes wild with pain, and nodded.

  Next thing I knew, Death Girl nodded to Ria. What followed was difficult to watch, knowing the shock and pain that our companion was suffering. In a swift movement, Death Girl removed what remained of Bubblegum’s arm, as Ria used just enough of her healing power to allow Death Girl to do what she needed to do. As she lifted the cyborg’s severed arm to the spot where it would fit on Bubblegum, something that looked like liquid metal oozed from Death Girl’s right hand and attached the new limb to her body. I stared in shock, unable to believe this was happening. As Bubblegum’s eyes rolled back in her head, Ria took her by the cheeks and kissed her, sending yet more healing light into our fallen comrade. She was giving her another power!

  I had to reach out to Meher to steady myself, and she wrapped her arms around me, smiling as if we were witnessing a meteor shower or some other beautiful natural phenomenon. Honestly, she was starting to worry me.

  “You’ll be okay,” Ria said, stepping back

  Bubblegum’s eyes flashed green, then returned to normal as she looked down at the arm, flesh suddenly closing around the metal where it hadn’t yet healed. Her eyes darted over to me, then the others, before returning to stare at Death Girl.

  “It’s done,” Death Girl said.

  “This…?” Bubblegum looked at the arm, as she slowly worked the new fingers. “What have you made me?”

  I had to admit, it looked kind of insane on her. This metallic arm with built in guns, the cannon on the shoulder. This petite, badass waitress I’d known so long now wasn’t the type I’d ever imagined as being a weapon of destruction, especially of the cyborg variety.

  “Don’t worry, it’s hot,” Meher said.

  Bubblegum’s head snapped around, finger pointed at Meher. “That’s hardly the p…” She stared, but then realized she was pointing with the new cyborg finger, arm moving as she willed it.

  “We can always remove it,” Ria said, with a nod from Death Girl. “Find you something more fitting someday. But for the fight at our doorstep, this will prove extremely valuable, I imagine.”

  “And the power you gave her?” I asked.

  “It took,” Ria replied. “The pain, the way she was handling it told me she was ready.”

  “Guessing by what it did, a healing power?” Gloria asked.

  Ria nodded. “In a sense. It’s more like a regenerative power, meaning self-healing only, but it doesn’t apply to only flesh. Lose part of your heart, regenerate it. Clothing, metal attached to you? Same. In fact, judging from what I remember of who had that last, the arm might adjust per your liking, given time. No need for a replacement.”

  Bubblegum stared, processing this, and suddenly a smile spread across her face. “I’m probably the most badass person in this room right now.”

  Ria laughed, glanced around and nodded. “The blood power I just gave Contra is pretty intense, but… seeing as I made you almost immortal, yeah.”

  “But I mean, you decapitate her, she dies, right?” Meher asked.

  “Yes. But—”

  “I fucking dare you,” Bubblegum said, pointing her arm and making a plasma blaster appear at its side. She laughed, put the thing away, and said, “Well, what’s everyone standing around for, don’t we got places to be?”

  Death Girl scanned. “Nothing, except… Wait. One. Maybe.”

  “One maybe?” I asked, moving over to the wall, and chancing a glance out the door. “You’re not sure?”

  “It’s faint, like not really there, but at the same time, definitely there.”

  “A ghost,” Ria said.

  “A ghost?” I shook my head, trying to comprehend this.

  “Not a real ghost, of course,” she explained. “They’re basically beings that can exist on another plane of existence, in a sense, and often do before an attack. They can sense our location, and cross over at the moment of attack while staying out of harm’s way until that instant.”

  “And we’re about to get haunted,” I said, gesturing everyone to move. “That way, then. Let’s see if we can avoid it.”

  “Good idea,” Ria said. “Or… we could go into its plane, or dimension, and take it on. Shouldn’t be a problem once we do.”

  Death Girl groaned.

  “Been there before?” Ria asked.

  “Half the souls I have are probably from the ghosts. They’re… prevalent, in the right places.”

  Ria’s eyes went wide. “Don’t tell me… you? You’re the ghost hunter I heard so much about?”

  “Some called me that.”

  Ria grinned, hands on her hips. “Well damn, ladies and gentlemen, we have a celebrity in our midst. If Trinnar knew he had a chance at you, he’d be down here now with everything in his arsenal.”

  “Still wouldn’t be enough,” Death Girl said, her skull seeming to smile.

  “I believe it.” Ria frowned then, running a hand through her hair, she gestured back the way we came. “Fuck it, I mean—you all are advancing faster than I thought, and we have the legendary ghost hunter in our group. Why should we be the hunted?”

  “You’re saying we turn this around?” I asked.

  “Go on the hunt?” Meher added, squeezing my arm in anticipation.

  “Death Girl?” I asked. “And Bubblegum? We’re up for this?”

  Bubblegum stood and flexed her new arm, then laughed. “Fuck yeah. I want payback.” Her eyes purposefully avoided the spot on the floor where her old arm lay.

  All eyes turned to Death Girl, who was staring at the ground. At the arm.

  “What do you say?” Gloria asked.

  “It’s not fun there, where the ghosts reside, but…” She turned to Ria. “It will help them, won’t it? If I can collect the souls, and distribute them out instead of to myself. I’ve never done it, but in theory…”

  “Yes,” Ria said, thoughtfully. “It might act to speed things up. Kind of like filling them with additional spiritual energy to accelerate the process. In fact, that’s exactly what it is.”

  Death Girl nodded. “Then I’m in.”

  We were going on the hunt, apparently transferring over to the ghost plane, whatever that meant.

  23

  All we needed to do, it turned out, was activate the Per-Neter to enter this ghost plane, another level to our world that made everything switch. The downside, Ria explained, was that it would also act as a homing beacon to the other ghosts. Or more like a mating call, without the mating part.

  “Sounds like a bonus to me,” Meher said. “If that means more souls for Death Girl, and more advancement for us.” She glanced over at Death Girl. “About that name—”

  “Don’t bother,” I said, holding up a hand to cut her off. “Already tried.

  Death Girl simply grunted, nodding for Ria to get on with it.

  “Here goes, then,” Ria said. She called forth the strange pyramid-shaped device, explaining that, instead of unfolding it to make it work in a traveling sense, this was much simpler. She held it out, and then flipped it.

  The effect was like being on a rollercoaster that had just gone upside down. A second later all felt normal again, but it certainly didn’t look it. Although we were still in the underground bunkers of the former base, our surroundings were now filled with a red haze, like mists traveling through walls, and everything seemed to have its own glow.

  Strangest of all, was that when I looked at any of our team, I could actually see through them, somewhat. Turning to Meher, there seemed to be some sort of X-ray effect at work here, so that was as if she weren’t wearing any clothes at all, but clearer and all red. Under that, I could almost make out her organs and bones. Creepy, to say the least.

  Her eyes roamed down and she grinned. “As fucked up as all this is, at least I can see how it’s hanging. So… don’t have to ask.”

  “Eyes on the prize, huh?” Bubblegum asked, joining her.

  “Grow up,” I said, as if I hadn’t been looking their way a moment ago, and I turned to face the exit. “Where’s this gho…?”

  The question faded, because there was no reason to ask it. Past the wall, there was the very clear vision of a being, large, shaking as it moved, coming our way.

  “Now that we’re on the same plane we’ll use the same attacks as always,” Ria said. “Stick to that, and work our way back out to the main room. The name of the game has changed—lure them to us, kill en masse. Got it?”

  “Fucking A,” Bubblegum said, guns emerging from her arm as she checked the ammo she had available for her various weapons. Some didn’t even need it, relying on energy and recharges from the air and motion to build up shots. Badass.

  Once we were on their plane, these ghosts weren’t so terrifying. Anticipation often seemed worse than the real thing. The so-called ghosts were scary to look at, sure, with their flowing black robes and eyes of purple or red. Reminding myself that they were part of the alien invasion, not otherworld spirits, helped. They pulled at magic of blue, while others were more like balls of muscle that attacked in chaotic spasms. Nothing we couldn’t handle, though.

  Meher really got to practice her ice skills, throwing walls and freezing them where they stood, causing them to shatter when shot or hit hard enough. Bubblegum was going between learning how to use her new guns to causing little explosions—which worked especially well against them when they’d been frozen by Meher. Ria held back at first, mostly working the edges to ensure we weren’t surrounded, but when she saw how quickly we were dealing with the bastards, she joined in the fun.

  To be honest, it was Death Girl and Gloria, though, doing the majority of the damage. Gloria was using broken rubble and metal that had been the result of the cyborg shooting up the place before we’d dealt with him, and she leveraged it to cause explosions at the back that took out large groups of ghosts at once, while Death Girl moved like the shadows, darting about and avoiding attacks from both sides as she tore through them with her batons, gleaming gold light flowing into her skull with each kill.

  The way she fought was a beauty to behold, when she wasn’t moving too fast for the eyes to process. My blood magic, I found, could be used by processing the fallen ones’ blood into spears that would rise up and penetrate those nearby, not always killing them but doing some good damage.

  Ghost bodies were piling up, filling the entryway to the point that I shouted, “How’re we going to get out of here?”

  “Not so fast,” Gloria said, checking the room as she picked up one of the large rifles the ghosts had dropped. It worked in the same way as one of the guns on Bubblegum’s cyborg arm—energy based, and it worked really well on the ghosts.

  I was about to be jealous, when Bubblegum said, “Contra, heads up.” Turning to see a rifle flying in the air at me, I almost braced for pain absorption, then realized she’d tossed it to me. “No reason to not have a way of starting the blood flow yourself.”

  “Fucking A,” I replied, grinning like a madman. “Thanks.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “What, so soon?” Ria asked, but then held out the Per-Neter again. “Simple.”

  She turned it over and that dizzy feeling hit again, followed by the world returning to normal. It was a relief to see normality again, and to know that the ladies couldn’t glance over whenever they felt like it to see how it was hanging. Maybe they were giving me a hard time, or maybe they really enjoyed looking. Either way, I’d prefer to keep that for the bedroom. Or intimate moments, anyway.

  What struck me was that the entryway now appeared to be completely empty of ghost carcasses. In fact, two supers were there, instantly falling as first Death Girl struck, and then Gloria a moment later. The evil supers hadn’t been able to see us while we were in the ghost dimension, and all the ghost carcasses were also on that plane, so no longer existed here.

  “Remember, if most ghosts appear here, they can get the jump on us,” Ria stated as we made for the exit. “But Death Girl can spot them with her sensors, and we can always go back and forth with the Per-Neter, so we should be good.”

  Heading out, we found the guard, Mitchell, lying in a pool of his own blood. That screen was still running though, hovering in front of his dead eyes, showing the news that would never be of interest to him again.

  “We going to power up?” Meher asked. “I mean, I feel amped. I’m ready.”

  “First, we need to steal a ship, then we’ll be on our way to make it happen,” Ria replied. “We’ll have a few minutes of down time, when we won’t have to worry about being attacked at any moment, at least until they realize their ship is being piloted by us.”

  I paused beside the guard, knelt, and took the wrist device that controlled the screen so that it now appeared to float in front of me.

  “Ladies,” I said, “you might want to see this.”

  They joined me and we watched news coverage showing what was happening in Red Square. It appeared that a team of supers were fighting another group of supers. There was a man with lightning shooting out from him going up against some super with a massive hammer, others around them including a lady who seemed to have fox ears and at least two or three fox tails—it was hard to see just what she was doing as she was moving so fast. Explosions lit up the square as mechs joined in the fight, and a whole barrage of other beings of some kind appeared on the scene, but were being swatted away like flies by the fox lady’s group.

  “Now I’m really confused,” I admitted.

  “It would appear,” Ria said, looking around at each of us, “that there’s a group of superheroes trying to fight off the invasion, just like us. These ones here,” Ria indicated what I’d guessed to be the bad side, including a woman who sat in the background, kind of overseeing it all, “they’re with the enemy. The ones with the fox lady, I’m guessing, are from Oram. Superheroes, you could say.”

  “Not… aliens?” I asked.

  “It’s complicated, but no. Are you familiar with Earth’s colonization of the Oram system?” She took a moment, then chuckled. “Judging by the look of confusion on your face, I’d say no. We were briefed on this, on how Earth’s population was led to believe it never happened, even that existence of other life in the universe was a myth. Well, the quick version is that long ago humanity sent out groups to colonize other systems, including the one named Oram. From there, the colonists began to evolve and develop superpowers, some say because of effects from the local sun, though there are other theories. The main point is that out there is this whole system populated with super heroes, and they’re the main opposition to the people where I come from.”

  “Another system of supers?”

  She titled her head back and forth. “Another tough one, as many of us were once from the supers’ side, but now more like super villains, I guess you could say. But that’s not all—the main force is one generally referred to as the Nihilists. No relation to the Earth definition of the term, as far as I know. But there are many more types involved, like the Dexetilaitite, the Xanath, the… but you get the picture.”

  “Right. Aliens, supers, a big stew of insanity, and now Earth is the pot where it’ll be served.”

  “So those ones,” Gloria indicated the small group of heroes, “are Earth’s only hope?”

  “That, and us,” Ria admitted. “As far as I know.”

  “So few…” I scanned the channels, but everywhere it was showing the same footage. That, and the fact that most of Earth’s military was falling. “I’m relieved to see others, but… this is it?”

  “They need help,” Meher said.

  “They’re on the other side of the world,” I pointed out.

  Gloria nodded. “How would we be of help to them, anyway? Look at how they’re moving.”

  “Don’t sell yourselves short,” Ria said. “You’re going to help them, and here’s how—we take down Trinnar’s ship, probably find and fight Ranthem in the process, and show those superheroes they aren’t alone. When the world shows another enemy ship falling, when they see us, they’ll know there’s hope. More hope than just for one, small team.”

  “I love it,” Bubblegum said. “Only wrench in this one, happens to maybe be an added bonus. No need to fight Ranthem up there.”

  “What?” Ria turned at the same time I did, and saw Bubblegum fire up into the sky. Following the trajectory of her rocket, we spotted a large group of supers descending from the sky. Three medium sized fighter ships were among the flying supers, all landing in a semi-circle in front of us, ready for battle.

  We would’ve liked to have powered up more before taking him and this lot on, but… so be it.

  24

  After taking on the ghosts, I felt damn near invincible. But these guys looked like a force to be reckoned with on a whole new level. Emerging from the ships were at least a dozen of those goat men, snake ladies, a fucking minotaur-looking dude in full alien-style armor, more of the winged Renden and whatnot as we’d seen earlier, but also a dozen humanoid supers in fancy supervillain outfits. You know, the spandex and fancy SciFi looking ones, some in black with red stripes, others with black-ops Space Fleet style armor like I’d seen on the recruiting posters, and some with metallic appendages emerging from their backs and shoulders.

  If the saying shaking in your boots had any merit to it, I imagine that’s what I would have been doing if I’d been put up against this group the day before. But just at that moment? No fucking way. I was riding the high of all the killing we’d just done, feeling like I could take on hell itself if the devil came up swinging blades and casting down brimstone.

  The idea of taking on Ranthem thrilled me, so when he stepped out from the group, hands out like he thought he was God on high, I took my new rifle and unleashed.