Arch Rivals (Super Hero Academy Book 2)

by Simon Archer

  She moaned with each and every kiss and every shift. First, they came as soft whimpers until her cries crescendoed into a pleading gasp. Sweat already slicked her skin, and I could feel it bead on my brow as well as I ached to get inside of her… but neither of us was quite ready for that yet. Before I gave into my own temptations, I raised both my hands to direct her flight, revelling in the dance of our two powers as I maneuvered Aylin into a horizontal position before bringing her arms in front of her, held together as if she were bound, then spreading out her legs straight as an arrow.

  “P-please, Starlight,” Aylin gasped out. “Make me yours. S-stretch me out, twist my body and my power, but p-please, come inside me.”

  “So soon?” I said, my voice husky and thick with desire even as I tried to master it. “I would have thought you would want to play longer.”

  But even as I said it, I knew why, why she wanted it so badly, and she confirmed it as another pulse ran from her heart through her patterned skin and straight between her thighs.

  “Y-your strength, the endless b-bright inside you,” she moaned. “It’s overwhelming, it’s so strong... I want to f-feel it all, feel your s-strength before it consumes all that is me.” I allowed Aylin what I felt her want, to look up into my eyes from her suspended position. “Give me your love, Starlight.”

  Pure, unadulterated need blazed in her glowing eyes, and I could tell she was close to unraveling as the link the rings provided flooded her with the surging power inside me. I pulled her to me in a single beckoning gesture and wrapped my arms around her as soon as she came within reach. As I kissed her deeply, I focused on easing the control the rings provided me and pulling back the power it fed to her from inside me.

  Despite the fact she had all her strength and all of mine was locked away at that moment, Aylin shivered against me like a newborn kitten as I cradled her and peppered her with kisses. I guided us over to her bed and gently laid us both down on top of it, the alien princess below me as I straddled her.

  “I… I have never felt so much power from the rings,” she whispered as she reached up for me. “I could never have another, Starlight.”

  “You won’t ever have need of another, that I promise you,” I replied as I centered my hardened dick over her entrance, teasing the slick folds only a little. “I will always be here for you, my Stars.”

  “Then make me yours,” Aylin moaned out, and before she could say another word, I obliged her, plunging inside her as I captured her mouth with a searing kiss.

  19

  “I’m not going to ask what exactly you did with Aylin last night,” Andie purred into my ear as we sat back in our seats, “but I’m definitely calling dibs for the victory celebration when we win this whole shebang.”

  I followed her brilliant blue eyes to where they landed on our alien princess curled up in her luxury-class seat opposite of us, her head leaning on Eric’s as his rested against her forehead. Though we had only done one session with the handanu rings, we had gone three times in more conventional lovemaking, and even I was feeling a bit tired the morning after. Thankfully, Andie and Kara had made it their sworn duty to make sure we made it to our morning pick-up to the transport.

  “Well, trust me, she needs the rest,” I assured my Sun as I leaned in to give her a quick kiss. “Now, are you going to explain why our livewire is out of juice this morning?”

  She laughed, and as always, that sound brightened the room. “Well, while you and Aylin were having your fun, we went to the apartment, and Matt picked up some booze on the way. Some beer and wine for the lightweights and some heavier stuff for those of us with healing factors.” Andie leaned in a bit more and whispered conspiratorially, “I don’t know if you’ve seen the Barbur twins serve up drinks, but they not only know how to mix a great cocktail, they can make some really stiff ones that taste like fruit juice.”

  “Let me guess.” I grinned as I watched Eric snore, each one rustling his blonde-and-blue-streaked hair more and more. “Somebody got a hold of a Barbur special and got carried away?”

  Kara, who was sitting on the other side of me, looked up from her tablet with an amused shake of her head. “No. Somebody got a hold of two of them and chugged them like a maniac.”

  I snickered and leaned back into my chair, thankful for light-hearted conversation before we found ourselves in the Brand, literally Bad Guy Central. “I hope no one took any pictures, for Eric’s sake… though I bet he was hilarious until he keeled over.”

  “I can’t say for sure,” Kara mused, “but I doubt it. Besides, even if someone took one on accident, we’d never embarrass the poor guy with them. Even with him getting knock-out drunk, he really did enjoy the party until that point.”

  I nodded slowly as I looked past Kara and across the aisle of the hover-jet. For what was essentially a military transport, the accommodations were really nice. Gemma had said something about this being a diplomatic envoy’s jet, which meant all the niceties of a luxury flight and all the protection of a bleeding-edge military craft. The Barburs were facing each other in matching banks of seats across the way, Kristen studiously writing in one of her notebooks with only an occasional sidelong glance at us while Matt had a tablet of his own.

  “What are you looking at, Matt?” I asked. He had been even quieter than usual this morning with the look of someone who hadn’t slept well himself. I half-expected him to snap and snarl at me for asking, but he instead frowned thoughtfully as he kept his eyes on the screen.

  “Just going over footage from the rescue tournament,” he answered wearily. He leaned back, tapped the tablet to pause the footage, and rubbed his eyes before looking over at me. “I just want to be ready for this defense event. It’s one thing to think about these folks as enemies, but as allies? Gotta rethink the whole strategy.”

  “More than that,” Kristen added as her pencil never stopped writing. “We have to think about how to best work with them while still topping out our scores in the three categories. Rescue, property defense, and combat.” Her pencil finally paused as she looked up over the top of her notebook. “I wonder if maybe we shouldn’t figure out one of those things to focus on, huh?”

  “That’s a good idea, Kristen,” Kara said eagerly. “We have a first place win in the rescue tournament, so that gives us an early advantage, but ultimately, the first event is worth the least overall points. Our win gave us twelve, but that’s only three points ahead of Carter and five from the Brand. Each defense category top spot is with twelve points on its own!”

  She tapped on her tablet and scanned over it. “Worse, there are only points awarded for the top three spots in each category. If we try to maximize our points in all three categories, we might spread ourselves so thin that we don’t earn solid marks in any of them, and that might drag our standings down to where we don’t make the cut for the nemesis round.”

  I saw exactly where this was going. “But, if we focus our energies and take one of the categories, we’ll definitely make the top four overall and into the final event.” I smiled at both of them. “Great thinking, ladies.”

  Kristen grunted and descended back down into her writing while Kara blushed a little. “It’s just simple math, Nick, but thank you for saying so.”

  “So, co-captains,” Andie chimed in as she stretched out her arms to settle on both my and Matt’s shoulders, “do you have any thoughts on what approach we should take? Is it kicking ass and taking names? Rescuing civvies? Or keeping all the pretty buildings or whatnot from turning into rubble?”

  Matt and I exchanged glances, and I could tell he was thinking as hard about this as I was.

  “I dunno,” he began. “Like, with Nickie, Eric, and Aylin, we have a ton of raw firepower. If sis here can get enough metal to spread and direct Eric’s lightning, it can get crazy fast. Plus, the rest of us aren’t slouches either. Maybe offense is the way to go?”

  The way he said it held an undercurrent of uncertainty as if he was already doubting it the moment he s
aid it. I nodded slowly, then offered a counterpoint.

  “You’re not wrong, Matt, but there’s more to racking up a body count than pure power.” I shook my head slowly. “I hate to put it like this, but I think we’re just too, well, heroic to really cut loose in a way to maximize offensive points.”

  Instead of arguing, Matt was already nodding in agreement with me. More and more, we were starting to think alike, at least in the important ways, and I couldn’t be prouder to see Matt really upping his game like this.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he said firmly. “We’re heroes, dammit, not killing machines. Leave that kill trophy for the Brand psychos or those Carter dicks.” Matt waved a clawed hand dismissively before flashing everyone a fanged grin. “Let’s play to our strengths.”

  “Rescues?” Andie asked with a gleam in her eyes.

  “Rescues,” I said with a firm nod. “Any objections, Kara? Kristen?”

  Kara shook her head before tucking a strand of fire red hair behind her ear. “Not at all, Nick. I came to Valcav to be a hero and save lives, not blow stuff up.” She blushed a little sheepishly as she looked back down at her tablet. “Though blowing stuff up with a big gun is a nice perk of the job.”

  “Ha,” Kristen laughed, “I was about to call you out on that, fireball.” She glanced at me and smiled lopsidedly. “Yeah, let’s kick ass by saving asses.”

  We all got a good chuckle out of that, but as if magically timed to kill the mood, the in-cabin speakers crackled to life.

  “Attention, passengers,” the gruff-voiced captain called out. “We are now crossing over into Brand airspace. We are fully cleared for this trip, so don’t be concerned.” He cleared his throat roughly as if he were trying to swallow down his own words. “In fact, if you want to see a bit of a show, a squad of powered villains, er, heroes from the First Fist of Flame is going to be escorting us to our destination at Phoenix Imperial Spaceport. You should see them off both of our wings for the remainder of our flight.”

  I frowned deeply at that. While I wasn’t surprised that Dad would want to escort every academy’s vessel in, it didn’t mean I had to like it. Especially to send the First Fist, his most elite border guard… of course, he would do that for our ship. I was on board, right?

  You know, for a guy who accidentally killed his son for a moment, my father was awfully protective.

  Kara and Andie both caught my expression, and like the twin angels they were, they both gave me a hug while Kara stole a quick kiss to even up with Andie from earlier. Even Matt gave me a sympathetic look, while the announcement seemed to have roused Eric and Aylin. The sparkplug rubbed his eyes, yawned, then quickly scrambled over Aylin to look out the hover-jet’s viewports.

  “Holy crap!” he cried as he pointed with a mix of excitement and dread out into the sky. “Is that Fulgurite?”

  As if it couldn’t get any worse. I let out a sigh as I pulled myself out of my chair, making my excuses to my loves to get a look for myself. Aylin joined me, and all three of us crowded into the space to take a look.

  Sure enough, at the apex of a triangle formation of five powereds all in the black-and-red colors of the Brand was our old ‘friend.’ How she was free from custody, I couldn’t say, but I suspected it had something to do with the ceasefire accords. No doubt there was a prisoner exchange to sweeten the pot for both sides. The caped weather manipulator seemed to notice the attention and blew us a kiss before summoning up a burst of wind to push her ahead of our ship.

  I just shook my head and forced my emotions down. “You know what?” I straightened back up and put my hands on my hips. “I don’t care. I just don’t. We have bigger fish to fry.” Aylin still put a hand on my shoulder, and I flashed her a grateful smile. “Besides, Dad won’t let her get up to any horseshit in the middle of his capital city. He’s crazy, but he also cares about his people… and he doesn’t want to look like a maniac with the entire world watching.”

  “Why not?” Matt countered as he went back to his tablet. “It’s never stopped him before.”

  “The difference in this, Matthew Barbur, is that Lord Inferno views this as his own. Hence, he feels an obligation to protect these people,” Aylin said firmly. From the sound of her voice, she spoke as if she had hard experience with situations like this, and from what she had hinted to me, she had. “He will not let them come to harm, not directly.”

  That made Matt glance up from his tablet, ready to argue, but our entire discussion was cut off as Gemma walked in from the rear compartment. All eyes turned toward her as she leaned forward on the seat backs behind us.

  “I don’t have to be the smart, intuitive heroine that I am to figure what all this is about,” she noted with a grin. “Look, I want you all to forget about the fly-by, forget about the fact there are five people who would normally be your enemy escorting us, and forget about the fact we’re going into the most dangerous city on the planet.”

  Kristen coughed and rolled her eyes. “Seriously, teach, that’s about the worst pep talk I’ve ever heard.”

  “Well, I call ‘em like I see ‘em, Ms. Barbur.” Gemma stretched back up to her full height and arched her back to a notable pop. “Sorry,” she quickly added as if to ward off any concern, “we teachers have been going over the matches from yesterday in the back, and it’s cramped in there. Anyway, my point is that everything is unimportant if it isn’t about winning the World’s Finest.” A big smile crept across her face. “If you want to bloody Inferno’s nose and slap Mother in the face, win this thing and flaunt it in their faces.”

  The thing was that she was, at the end of the day, right. Worrying about everything going on, about Carter’s lies and the Brand surrounding us, weren’t going to help us win… and that was all that mattered right now.

  “You can count on us, Gemma,” I said with a firm nod. “Right, team?”

  Kara returned my nod and added a pump of her fist, while Andie stretched her hand out to give Gemma a giant-sized thumbs up. Kristen let out a grunt that was probably an assent as she hid back behind her notebook, and Matt, well, he impressed me again.

  “Yeah, no distractions, no bullshit,” he growled. “We beat ‘em, and we go home with the gold, easy as that.”

  “Indeed, Matthew Barbur,” Aylin agreed as she snaked her hand into mine. “We shall do this together and share the plant-babies of victory!” Eric was about to join in her cheer but stopped himself at that.

  “Plant-babies…?” He rubbed his bleary eyes as sparks crackled across his fingertips.

  “She means fruits, Eric,” Kara noted astutely before smiling over at Aylin. “The expression is ‘fruits of victory.’”

  Aylin let out a soft “oh.”

  “Well, that’s settled.” Gemma chuckled and shook her head. “Good thing the actual defense event isn’t until tomorrow with how beat you all look. Why don’t you guys try to relax some? We still have an hour before we touch down in Phoenix.”

  Eric let out an immense yawn before flopping back down into his seat. “That sounds fantastic, Ms. Corcoran. Thank you!”

  “I must agree, that sounds most delightful,” Aylin murmured as she leaned her head on my shoulder. “I would only wish there was room on your aisle, Starlight, but I could not ask Andrea or Kara to--”

  “I think we can arrange something,” Kara was quick to point out. “Nick, sit back down and, well, Aylin, you can just curl up on our laps.”

  Gemma took that as her cue to go back to work. Meanwhile, Andie grinned like a cat and patted her lap. “Yep. You just lay your head down here, Aylin. It’ll be like a pillow, better even, because I can mold myself to fit your sleepy little head perfectly.”

  “Trust me,” I said as I guided Aylin over to our row of seats, “it really is that nice.”

  I thought for a moment Eric might be sad not to have his beautiful alien headrest anymore, but instead, he let out a tired cheer as he flipped up all the armrests and sprawled out over the entire aisle. “Score one for the Meyer-meist
er!”

  “The… no,” Matt declared. “That isn’t going to fly.”

  As Eric quickly mounted a rebuttal, I chuckled and took my seat before gently guiding Aylin onto my lap. “You just sleep now, okay?” Without any more hesitation, she did so, shimmying a few times as she managed to find a comfortable position laying over all three of us. “That’s a good girl. I might even take a nap myself. It’s peaceful, with my Sun, Moon, and Stars around me.”

  My eyes were already closing as Kara said something that sort of faded into fuzziness, and before I knew it, I was out like a light myself.

  20

  As we stepped out onto the tarmac of the Phoenix Imperial Starport, a name that was only half as pretentious as it sounded, an intense wave of nostalgia rolled over me. It was strange. However much I never wanted to come back here, there was a part of me that would always see this place as home. I had spent a good seven years here, almost a third of my life, and for most of that, only fed the propaganda of the Brand, I had loved it. My dad was here, and until I grew old enough to see through the bullshit, I didn’t know any better.

  We were greeted by the same international press corps that had covered every moment of the rescue event, and as Triton, Amazoness, and Judgment intercepted them to shield us from the rabid wolves, I scanned the skyline and refamiliarized myself with the city. While a lot had changed in my years of absence, quite a bit had stayed the same.

  After all, unlike the free city-states, Phoenix was insulated from the direct fighting that plagued the rest of the world. They hadn’t been forced to rebuild on a monthly basis, so the older buildings I remembered still soared tall in the sky. The Tower of Justice, a building that was anything but just, stood as a brimstone sentinel that loomed over the city. It housed the primary powered teams under Lord Inferno’s command, no doubt where Fulgurite hung her hat. In front of that, dominating downtown, were the Arches of Industry, a combination manufacturing complex and dispensary where ninety percent of the city got their food and physical goods from.