She shrugged.

  “Ah, right. Sorry.” I bit my lip, wishing I hadn’t spoken, having momentarily forgotten that her memory wasn’t in great shape.

  “My dad is just a normal nobody,” Cheri said. “A bit of a fucker, but not a super.”

  “For some reason, I figured your dad would be either a Tier One or maybe some supervillain,” I admitted with a chuckle.

  “He tried to beat my mom, once, the story goes. He’s missing half his face because of that, so he always wears a mask. It gives him a supervillain look, but nope. No powers. She left him after that, of course, but I’m not sure if it was the guilt over having done that to him or the hatred regarding what he tried to do to her. Maybe both.”

  A long silence followed, and I took her hand, giving it a comforting squeeze.

  “Don’t pity me,” she said to the room. “In a world like ours, that seems to be fairly tame, I’d say.”

  Considering some of the horror stories I had heard when it came to domestic issues and powers being involved, she had a point. They all turned to me, waiting, so I sighed and said, “My dad? Honestly, I’d rather tell you about my mom. A legend, in some parts of the galaxy. Ever heard of Trattoria?”

  Erupa gasped. Excitement shone in Tink’s eyes.

  “Who?” Mer asked.

  “No shit,” Cheri interrupted as I was about to answer. “You’re telling me the Scourge of Redalia was your mom?”

  “She had a bit of a reputation on both sides,” I admitted. “That specific title had to do with her darker days.”

  Cheri started going on about how much she had heard about the legend that was my mom, but I only half listened. Those stories were usually as much hype as anything else.

  I was surprised that I was talking about my mom with them but I supposed that was a sign of how much they truly meant to me. When Erupa asked if I had been close to the woman, I even told them about the time my mom had taken me to watch a famed group of supers perform cliff-diving off the waterfalls of Mokal, a region known for the dangerous cliffs but also the even more dangerous wildlife in the area.

  “We had been under protection, of course,” I continued, “but watching those thrill-seekers nearly lose their lives—one of them lost an arm—gave me a new perspective on life. Although that hadn’t been as life-changing as when she had walked out amid the thunderous applause and battled a squid-like creature for the cheering audience, then taken me out for tea afterward. It was the first time I had begun to understand her fame, and the first time I had realized I could actually lose her.”

  “Damn,” Think said, all of them staring at me excitedly.

  “She sat me down, looked at me with eyes full of a zest for life, and asked me how school was,” I told them. “Which was another sign altogether, since I had dropped out of school two years prior, at ten, to study on my own. The teachers at the schools I could get into couldn’t keep up, and my empath abilities made puberty surrounded by all those adolescents too awkward.”

  “Holy shit, I bet!” Cheri said, and my empath ability told me that her mind had immediately gone into horn-dog mode.

  “Not so different from now, actually,” I added with a wink.

  Erupa burst into laughter. Tink grinned, while Cheri punched me. Mer, however, had a very confused but interested aura about her, and simply smiled pleasantly. That one was going to be a tough nut to crack.

  “Of course, that was all before the fame sucked up so much of her time and life,” I added. “It’s always the same story, isn’t it? If we had a child, I mean…”

  Everyone went silent, nobody making eye contact for the longest time.

  “Why is that an awkward conversation topic?” Mer asked. “Which of you all are romantic?”

  I bit back a smile.

  “We all fuck him,” Cheri stated, never the type to be shy about such things.

  “All…?” She turned to each of the three ladies, then to me in turn. “With you? Wow, I mean… wow.”

  “It’s not a bad situation,” I admitted.

  She stared, eyes actually moving to my crotch and her aura shifted for a moment before suddenly switching to amused. “You all are fucking with me. I get it. Jokes, haha.”

  She actually said the “haha” part, too. I shook my head, and Cheri suddenly looked very serious.

  “Is that weird in your mind?” Erupa asked. “Because to us…” She shrugged. “I don’t see a problem. It’s not just him—”

  “Oh, there are other men? Like a shared thing?”

  “No,” Tink interjected. “But… we kind of have feelings for each other.”

  “Or at least are sexually curious.” Cheri beamed as if that hadn’t been a sort of insult in some way, but the other two either didn’t notice or didn’t seem to care. “Other men would be… weird, though.”

  “Weird.” Mer grinned at me, gave me a ‘good job’ nod, and then jolted slightly, looking at the display. A series of shots went off nearby, nearly hitting Breaker’s ship, and a moment later we were being hailed. According to the screen, we had basically arrived at the Paradise Planet.

  This time, Twitch called with Letha and Trunk on the comms. I had to laugh when Trunk’s image popped up and a head moving over his lap, clearly someone on his team going down on the guy.

  I didn’t say anything, but glanced around to see that Cheri was there, licking her lips, eyes darting to my crotch.

  “Not now,” I whispered, humored but not about to go to that level of unprofessionalism. If I wanted to really be part of the Citadel, even a representative of the law as I hoped to be, that wasn’t the best way to start it.

  Far as I could tell, Trunk didn’t give a flying fuck about any of that.

  “Any ideas would be welcome,” Twitch said, indicating the display where she showed the many ships and defensive systems below.

  Letha, however, was apparently watching Trunk, as her eyes were moving up and down. After a second, she said, “Trunk, really?”

  “It isn’t hurting anyone,” he replied.

  The lady there, one I had seen earlier on Abaddon I was pretty sure, lifted her head and said, “Hurting me a bit, but I love it.”

  “Fucking hell,” I said, realizing his huge cock was now taking up the lower half of his screen. I hoped the proximity of the camera was adding size to that thing, because otherwise that was just… wrong. I’d seen it limp, but this was a whole other level. “We’re all gonna die.”

  “Exactly,” Trunk replied. “That’s why I’m going out in style!”

  “IDEAS!” Twitch interjected, clearly done with that topic.

  “Retreat,” Erupa offered.

  “How does that help us?” Breaker asked.

  “We don’t actually retreat,” she clarified. “Just make it look like we are. Turn the ships back, exit atmosphere, but not until several of us have made a break for it. We get down there, shut down their monitoring equipment, and the ships come back to join us.”

  “Us, meaning you’re in?” I asked.

  “Best way to get in, I figure, is with my shadow strike. Me and Gale—Gale, you can use your wind power to let us fall and then swoop us up at the last minute so we don’t die… right?”

  “Well, shit,” Gale said. “Maybe?”

  “I’ll take maybe.” Erupa held my shoulder, giving me a ‘trust me, I’ll be fine,’ look. I nodded but sighed with frustration. Any of my ladies going into danger without me would have me worried, even if they were badasses like… all of them.

  The others agreed and signed off as we prepared Erupa on our side.

  “You’re sure about this?” Cheri asked. “I don’t get why we’re not all going.”

  “Strike force,” Erupa replied.

  “In and get it done without putting too much attention on us,” I added. “Makes sense, as much as I don’t like it.”

  “Tell me not to, and I won’t.” Erupa turned my way, hands on her hips. “Right now. I’ll call them back up and say I changed my mind. But… we need to play our roles in this, ensure success, so keep that in mind.”

  “No, I know you’re right.” I put my hand on hers. “Doesn’t mean I won’t worry.”

  “Good.” She leaned over to kiss me. “And no offense, but I hardly need protecting. In case you didn’t hear, I’m a badass.”

  3

  Our first step on this Paradise Planet was to send the group down to shut off the enemy’s monitoring equipment. Their systems were alerted to our presence and firing on us, but not able to land the shots.

  I watched as first Gale went, then Breaker and Charm. Erupa charged out to join them, bullets and explosions all around them as I took my ship to join others in the counterattack. On the display, Charm cloaked a second before shadows consumed them all and Erupa was there, pointed straight down for a free fall.

  “Enjoy the ride!” Erupa said, voice starting to crack up via comms. “And you better save us, Gale! Don’t you pull that shit like last time.”

  “What’s that about?” I asked, glancing around at Cheri and Tink. Neither seemed to have a clue, so I made a mental note to ask her about that comment later on. Mer wouldn’t know, but she was off resting again, maybe even trying some of the meditation techniques I’d been showing her, techniques I had learned during my time training at the temple. I hoped to help her recover her memories in this way.

  I leaned back, using my wrist device to look over my leveling up and stats. Having reached level four before, I could now actually push my empath ability in a way that would attack the mind. Pretty cool, if you asked me. Even do a bit of mental and stamina healing. A bar showed how close I was to the next level—still a bit, but it hadn’t been long since my level four upgrade, so that made sense.

  “So, here we get Trunk’s dad, and that’ll be the key to locating and getting into the Orion Corp. military complex?” Cheri asked.

  “Far as I know,” I said.

  Tink chuckled when I looked her way. “Hey, I’m just here to kill when told.”

  “Fight, fuck, fight some more,” Cheri said, and then laughed as if that had been some great joke. At our looks of curiosity, she shrugged. “A psychobitches life for me.”

  “Yo ho,” I said, grinning.

  “Did he just call me a ho?” Cheri hissed to Tink, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “Maybe both of us?” Tink replied.

  “It’s… no.” I facepalmed, then noticed another round of defensive shots coming our way and put the ship into defensive-maneuvers mode. “Not everyone shares my fascination with Earth history, but you two should at least get into it a bit. Shared interest and all.”

  Tink scoffed. “And when’s the last time you even asked me what my interests are?”

  “Yeah!” Cheri added.

  “Shit.” I ran a hand through my hair, adjusting it so it didn’t flop down onto my forehead. “What are your interests?”

  Tink considered this, then nudged Cheri. “You first.”

  Cheri grinned wide. “I just said, actually. Fight, fuck, and fight some more!”

  We all laughed but then turned to Tink, waiting, while I continued evasive maneuvers, along with some of the other ships who were drawing the attention of the planet’s defensive systems.

  “It’s been so long since I was able to even think about it, but… dragons.”

  “Wait, what?” Cheri asked.

  “You know, dragons. Also hypogryphs, unicorns, animals like that.”

  Cheri was staring at her wide-eyed, giving me the feeling that I needed to intervene.

  “She means mythology,” I explained. “Or rather, mythological animals.”

  “They aren’t myth,” Tink countered.

  “You’ve seen one?”

  “No.”

  I held out my hands, waiting for an explanation.

  “Listen, you don’t have to see something to know it’s real.” Tink indicated the screen to remind me to focus on keeping us alive, although honestly it wasn’t hard work with the ship’s defensive systems in place. “This Tinkerbell you named me after, right? You never saw her, never met her, but she’s real.”

  “No, actually… that was a story. Fiction.”

  “Seriously?” She pursed her lips, frowning. “Fine, whales, right? And the narwhal—I’ve studied up on those, too. Real or myth?”

  “Whales, real. Narwhal…?” I scratched my chin, trying to remember that one.

  “Like whales, kind of, but with a long horn or tooth or something similar to a unicorn.”

  “A whale with the horn of a unicorn?” I scoffed. “Come on, Tink… of course that can’t be real.”

  She shrugged. “You believe what you want, I’ll believe what I do. Unicorns, narwhals… dragons. All of it. Hell, I’m going to say Tinkerbell was real, because fuck you for saying dragons aren’t.”

  I sighed, knowing this wasn’t an argument I could win. As I continued to pilot the ship, I decided that humoring her couldn’t hurt and asked where her fascination with dragons came from.

  She scrunched her nose, apparently not buying my interest, but finally said, “I’ll show you all something,” and used her finger to trace light in the sky as she did with what we’d taken to calling her pixie dust, and drew a dragon in the air.

  The drawing was impressive, and it was too bad to see the light fade away, the drawing gone.

  “Always been into drawing them, actually,” Tink admitted. “When I was a little girl, I’d read something about them, I think, or maybe it was a story my mom told me. I don’t remember. Anyway, I got super into drawing them, first with my finger in the dirt, then burning images into our fence. When my mom came out one day and found our entire fence covered in those drawings, I thought I’d be in trouble. She actually laughed, and immediately got me into classes. Told me I could be the best artist in the world someday, if I wanted.”

  “I believe it,” I said.

  She offered me a thankful smile. “Well, life has taken some strange turns, hasn’t it? Instead of drawing dragons, I’m out here fighting off alien invasions or whatever it is that’s happening.”

  “Maybe…” A timid voice came from the doorway, and we turned to see Mer standing there. “It’s just a thought, but maybe you could draw me, someday? In mermaid form, of course.”

  “I’d like that,” Tink replied.

  They shared a smile and then Mer entered, taking her seat and watching below.

  “No more attacks?” she asked, and it wasn’t until then that I realized we were in the clear. Erupa and the others on the ground must have been successful.

  It wasn’t long before we all landed. We disembarked, finally getting to meet everyone in the flesh. Erupa was apparently ecstatic to see me. She sprinted over, picked me up, and smothered me in kisses before I had a chance to ask how it had gone.

  “Fuck, it’s good to come back to your arms,” she said, setting me down and laughing.

  “My arms?” I grinned, feeling her taut muscles. As far as women went, I liked them in all shapes and sizes, and she definitely had a unique angle with how buff she was.

  Breaker and team got us all together and he explained that they had managed to hack into the planet’s surveillance system, and a super named Shimmer—from his team—was using her illusion powers to keep us hidden from above.

  I clasped forearms with Trunk, accepted an embrace from Letha, and approached the man I now recognized as Breaker.

  “Ezra, it’s a pleasure,” the man said, seeming more timid than I had imagined him. Sort of… nerdy, almost?

  “You, too,” I replied, holding out a hand.

  He shook it with vigor. “Erupa is quite the lady. You’re lucky to have her on your team.”

  “I am.”

  He gave me a nod, turned to say hello to Letha, and then I noticed Andromida nearby. Having seen her bounty contracts so many times, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet the legend.

  “The famed Blue Lady,” I said, stepping up to her. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “And you, bounty hunter,” she replied with a hint of humor in her eyes, but no smile.

  “You’re familiar with my work?”

  She shrugged. “Not well enough, although I made sure to make note of who was after me in my time.”

  “Smart. And your role here?” I asked. “Sorry, but I always took you to be more of a force of nature, bringing havoc and chaos wherever you went.”

  She finally smiled. “All part of a grand strategy. In this case, it involves Muerta… maybe also the one they call Asterisk, and more.”

  I nodded, told her I was excited to be part of it all, and turned in time to see Cheri approach Charm while getting that mischievous look in her eyes I knew could spell trouble.

  “What the fuck are you?” Cheri asked the woman.

  “Just another super, trying to do my part,” Charm muttered, glancing over at Breaker, who was mid-conversation with Letha.

  “A super-fox?” Cheri asked.

  The way she turned to me with a look of ‘Pretty cool, huh?’ was enough of a distraction for her to miss the flash of anger in the fox-lady’s eyes, and the punch coming her way. Charm’s punch landed and sent Cheri flying back, even as Cheri tried to throw a counterpunch but only hit the air.

  Breaker was in there a moment later, trying to separate them. I rushed over, too, along with a hybrid I recognized from one of the other ships. He was unmistakable due to the white fur that covered his body.

  Cheri and Charm squared off. I held up a hand to Cheri, giving her the look that told her to back down. She didn’t need to be told twice, but it had been Charm who struck first.

  “What’s going on here?” Letha called out, walking into our midst. I liked the Asylum guard outfit she now wore, giving her a look similar to mine.

  Sword pointed at Charm, Cheri spat out, “She-wolf over there punched me!”

  “Fuck,” Twitch said with a laugh. “Watch it.”

  “Charm,” Breaker said, approaching his lady. “Can we try not to start a fight with our new friends the first time we get to actually meet them?”

  “You hear what she said?” Charm growled.

  “I did, and…” Turning on Cheri, Breaker frowned.