by David Burke
“And is everyone feeling okay?” As Jay asked he noticed that Jessie had what appeared to be gills on her neck.
She smiled at his look and said, “I adapted some animal breathing systems to create my own filter. There is a bunch of crap in the air but I think everyone will be fine for a while.”
Jay looked back. Hanna and Rosa were talking while a few feet from them Bella and Zuri were talking. He definitely wanted to put an end to this. After months of being on Team Jay together people still seemed to gravitate towards those who originally came from the same clusters. Having friends was one thing, but Jay wanted them all working together.
“What about you all? You feel okay here? Able to breathe?”
Bella jumped up and down a couple of times. “The air is a little thick but I can breathe. I really think that refining thing you did to me is helping out.”
Jay glanced at each of the other girls who nodded in turn. Then Hanna said, “Unless you just brought us here for a little moresome fun.” Zuri and Bella giggled while Rosa’s brown skin turned two shades lighter as she paled.
“What did I say, Hanna?” Jessie asked, sternly.
“No hitting on the boss while we are on a mission,” came the reply. The words sounded sullen but Hanna was still smiling. Then she added, “But you never said anything about afterwards.” Once again Zuri and Bella giggled.
This time though Jessie added in, “Oh don’t worry. You will like my plans for afterwards.”
Jay just shrugged. He didn’t seem to have much control over some aspects of his life. Certainly not if Huong ever thought he had a free moment. It actually made these little trips all that much more appealing.
“Okay well we are gonna move out then. Rosa with me, Jessie with Zuri, and Hanna with Bella. Jessie, you two take the left behind me, and Hanna, you take the right so that we form a triangle,” Jay ordered.
He was pleased to see no real hesitation as they all moved into place. From there they moved out. Jay led them winding around through the different vents of gaseous explosions. His precognitive sense gave him plenty of warnings. Every so often they would hear a building sound like a pressure cooker and a spurt of flame would shoot up from the ground.
A couple of times Jay had to warn the other pairs but once they got the feel for it they could all tell ahead of time and avoid the vents. That made it easier to relax a bit. He telepathically asked Rosa, “How’s Sara? I haven’t gotten to see her yet today?”
Rosa always warmed up when he brought up Sara and the bond, temporary as it was made, that more obvious. “She ate well this morning and is being taken care of by Oma while I’m gone.”
“Hopefully, I will get a chance to play with the kids in the nursery tonight. I hate to let a day go by without them seeing me,” Jay replied.
“As long as you stay the guy you are now, you will be a great dad. Don’t stress it too much. We all know how hard you work for us,” Rosa said and ran her hand against his. It was as much genuine affection as he had ever gotten from her.
But then when they were about a half mile from the gate, Jay caught a blip on his life sense telling him that there were a couple of creatures ahead. The heat still seemed to be distorting the sense because he didn’t see anything where the sense said that something was there.
“Careful, there is something incoming, but I can’t see it,” Jay shouted.
His precognition warned him that it was coming. It was close but he just couldn’t tell what it was. Then it was almost like the waves of heat which were distorting the air were peeled back and a creature leapt at Rosa. It was about five feet long and moved on four feet. Its body was low to the ground and it had a long sinuous tail extending from its back. The tail looked like nothing so much as a piece of concertina wire but it, like the rest of the creature's body, was on fire.
As the air parted, the creature lunged through. Rosa stepped forward whipping out a short sword implanted with an electrical crystal. The blade cut a shallow line across the creature’s snout and then suddenly Rosa wasn’t there any longer. She had moved forty-five degrees to the side and lashed out with a second swipe of the sword.
The infuriated creature leapt at her again. Jay almost intervened but something inside him screamed that he needed to see how well Rosa could handle herself. There would come a day when he wasn’t there to protect her and better to know now when he could stop things before they went too far. As it was, her sword lashed out again and the creature’s direction of travel was suddenly shifted and it found itself moving at a ninety-degree angle to her.
Jay watched as time and again this played out. The creature would lunge in one direction only to move in another. Each time the blade with lightning dancing along its tip made it pay for its attacks. He had to signal the other girls to wait and they began shouting encouragement to Rosa rather than intervening. On the ninth pass, she moved forward and then suddenly shifted so she was above the creature and slammed her blade down into the back of its neck, severing the spine.
It was masterfully done and Jay smiled but then suddenly worried as her body began to fall onto the creature’s still-burning carcass. But it was for naught as her motion was shifted just as the creature’s had and she fell sideways instead of down. It bought her enough time to tuck her legs underneath herself and land on her feet next to her slain foe.
The other girls cheered for the display as Jay said, “Very cool. Now I understand better how your vector step and trajectory deflection work. Your power is somehow shifting the angle of the motion. Beyond me how that actually works, but cool as hell to see in action.”
Rosa looked a bit fatigued from the fight, but more mentally than physically. She wasn’t even breathing hard despite the fifteen seconds of intense activity. Their evolved and now refined bodies were so far beyond anything that a human had ever been on Earth that such mundane activities couldn’t make her break a sweat so to speak.
“Thanks for letting me do that. I know I’m not one of the powerhouses, but it felt good to prove that I can stand up for myself. Too often my life has been about deflecting attention away from myself. My parents were illegals and I was taught to keep my nose down and stay out of the limelight. Attention could bring trouble was what I grew up thinking,” Rosa said.
Jay realized that was probably the most that she had ever shared with him. It didn’t matter that they had been intimate together or anything else. This fight, his trusting her to stick up for herself, had somehow brought out more openness from her than anything else.
“We, I mean my wives and I have a theory that intention has a great deal to do with how our powers work. We think it explains much of why one person gets a particular power but even more so how those powers develop. There may be some exceptions or it may simply be that we haven’t yet figured out how those exceptions fit into the rule. Either way it is a good bet that your powers developed from that trait you learned as a child.”
“I’ve heard that theory before from Jessie, but I think you are right,” Rosa replied.
“Oh really, I didn’t know how much you all talked about things like that,” Jay said with a shrug.
“Contrary to what you may think, we don’t all sit around pining for more of your time,” Jessie said laughing.
Somehow, despite being a veritable superman who was up to his ears in more hot girls than he knew what to do with, Jay realized he had once again managed to stick his foot in his mouth. “Uh…, that isn’t what I meant. I mean… I didn’t think that was all you sat around doing.”
Jessie just laughed and then looked at the others as she said, “See, I told you I could get him stumbling all over his words. Now you have to pay up.”
Bella frowned and said, “Fine.”
Now Jay was really confused. “Pay up?” He asked.
It was Hanna who answered, “Jessie tried to bet all of us that she could get you tongue tied and tripping over your own words within an hour of us getting here. The loser has to do the other’s laundry
for a week.” She was laughing as she answered.
Zuri added, “And she told us you would be super cute when you did it too, like apologetic and tripping over your feet trying to make it right with her. But, it’s even cuter than she said it was.”
“I knew better than to bet her though because I still remember when we were first sparring and I learned what a sweetheart you are. You may be able to punch your arm through a stone wall, but you're all mushy-gushy on the inside. Rosa wouldn’t bet her either. She said she already has enough laundry to do with the baby’s diapers and Zuri was too embarrassed to bet against you,” Hanna said.
Jay just shook his head. “Well, at least I’m glad to see you all having fun. This place should probably be taking that all away from us, but you all are finding joy in the little things and you are getting closer together. That honestly makes me happy.”
“Well, just so you know, I instituted daily pod meetings. We may all be a part of Team Jay, but we are also all part of one pod and the girls of Jessie’s pod are gonna end up being your favorites.” She gave him that wicked smile that she made sometimes with the canine teeth that made her look so fierce.
“I can’t help but think I should break into song here about how I want Jessie’s girls,” Jay said.
They all stared at him and then Hanna said, “Keep to being sweet and so delicious to look at, comedy really isn’t your thing.”
He started to protest but then got an overwhelming precog warning. “Watch out,” was all that he had time to scream even though the words may have come out funny as he sped into motion. All around them a dozen monstrous fire rats jumped at them, the waves of heat hiding their approach until the last second.
Two razor-edged burning tails lashed out at Rosa’s and Zuri’s necks but Jay was there first and instead of catching the girls the tails entangled his arms. He grimaced as they started to burn and cut into his arm and forced him to pump hardened skin up to the maximum.
Then with powerful yanks he removed tails from rats even as he was conjuring psionic blades that he used to remove heads from bodies. From there he rushed around slicing down five more of the creatures in under two seconds. It was laughably easy once again and made him wonder about what this dungeon would have been like without all of his advantages.
Behind him he heard what could only be described as a pair of sonic booms back to back. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Bella kicking one and then punching another of the rats. Their bodies were caved in and hurled thirty feet away.
Seeing she was okay Jay turned to the other side and saw Jessie in action. She was at least twelve feet tall and the B.O.B. armor had grown with her, but over most of her body she had formed what he would call rhinoceros-like armor plates. She brought her hands down on one of the creatures and broke its back before charging into another that was leaping at Hanna’s back and driving her shoulder into it.
The sound of bones crunching under the tremendous power that Jessie could generate was both inspiring and for some strange reason a bit of a turn on for Jay. Maybe it was simply that the better they could take care of themselves the less he had to worry about them and that in turn freed up his mind to think of other things.
Hanna was having a great deal more trouble with her two. She danced around them with great skill and was pounding them down with a pair of fighting sticks that she kept moving at incredible speeds. But she lacked the defensive powers that Jay, Jessie, and apparently even Bella possessed. She was giving better than she got but that didn’t mean she wasn’t taking cuts and burns repeatedly, each time that she clashed with one of them.
She was trying to drive the monsters back but they acted ravenously hungry and didn’t seem to have much of a sense of self-preservation. Jay moved to intervene but was reminded of how happy Rosa had been. He questioned whether she would want his help or to prove she could do it herself.
Just as he was about to intervene, Jay felt a surge of PSI energy from her. The more time he spent refining the girls the more attuned he became to them and their bodies. Hanna was one that he had pushed more than almost anyone other than his wives. She was in there with Char and Maddy always seeking as much refining time as he could give them.
So he felt the burst as she triggered her summoning ability. Jay wasn’t sure what she had in mind to summon that would stop these monsters but then he saw. The two snapping mouths that were coming at her were suddenly full of jagged caltrop-like metal shavings. The creatures’ own biting tore their mouths apart and even forced some of the deadly pieces down their throats.
The move might not have been enough to finish them off on its own, but it gave her the time to side step one and deliver a blow squarely to the top of its skull. Again Jay heard the sound of bone breaking, likely crumbling beneath her baton. She hopped over the one she had just killed and struck out against the other flaming beast that was even clawing at its own throat trying to get the metal out. It didn’t suffer much longer though as Hanna caved in its throat.
When she finished, Hanna stumbled to a knee and Jay was at her side. As he caught her he took in the full scope of the burns and cuts she had taken. Before the brutality that this experiment had exposed him to, he might have wanted to weep at seeing a girl he cared about so sorely abused. Hanna was fun to be with, fun to spar with, and just the kind of person who could find joy in even bleak times. She certainly didn’t deserve this.
A moment later Zuri was there saying, “I can heal her, but the way my power works is that I need someone to project energy at me and I can convert that into healing.”
Jay said, “How quickly can you handle me pushing the energy at you?”
Zuri held one hand against Hanna and the other hand up the air with her palm facing out like she was saying stop. “As narrow a stream as you can make pushed into my palm. Start slow and then increase it. I will tell you when I need you to stop.”
He moved one step at a time pushing more and more energy until he hit the third boost. Then Zuri started to whimper and even though she didn’t ask him to stop Jay could tell that she was starting to feel pain, so he backed off a bit.
Wondrously, when he looked at Hanna her wounds were almost completely closed; the burned flesh had healed up without any scars. “I was so worried about hurting you that I didn’t even notice how effective your healing is, Zuri. Thanks for helping out, Hanna.”
Hanna gave Zuri a big hug and Jay leaned in to hug them both as the Slavic beauty said, “I appreciate it. Wouldn’t want to be stuck with all those scars or how was I gonna get this guy’s attention.” Then she pinched Jay’s backside, which of course resulted in another round of laughter.
Jay just shrugged and thought to himself, “Team building can be so much fun.”
Chapter 5- Out of the Frying Pan
Jay finally broke the embrace and stood up. “Well at least we’ve handled two of the threats the fire swamp has to offer.”
The girls stared at him not following his meaning.
“C’mon. Don’t tell me I’m the only one that noticed. First we had the flame spurts. They even come with a distinctive popping noise. Now we just dealt with the R.O.U.S.’s so as long as we can avoid the lightning sand we should be just fine.” Jay smiled as he explained.
Jessie, Bella, and Rosa all started to laugh, but Hanna and Zuri seemed confused. Finally Zuri asked, “Is this some kind of American thing?”
“Yeah, I don’t get the joke,” Hanna chimed in.
“Don’t worry, Jay is just trying to be clever. He is quoting a movie. He means rodents of unusual size,” Jessie answered, still grinning.
“You mean the fire rats?” Zuri asked.
“Oh no, not fire rats. We are definitely going with R.O.U.S. Remember, I have naming privileges,” Jay replied.
“Just when I think you are so amazing, you remind me what an overgrown child you are,” Rosa said. The roll of her eyes was so extreme that Jay thought he could hear the sound of them knocking around inside her skull.
“Wait, I am amazing and besides, if we can’t laugh at all this, then we are gonna end up crying. Talk about an experiment, then. How long can one man last surrounded by sixty crying women?”
“I don’t cry,” Hanna said abruptly.
Jay looked at her and said, “It’s okay to cry. I was only joking. Any of you can cry any time you want to. But, I feel like it is better to try to make the best of this all.”
Now it was Hanna’s turn to shrug. “There is no making the best of it. Life just is what it is. It was like when I was a child. You can only cry from being hungry so many times before you realize it doesn’t accomplish anything. Crying only gets you the wrong kind of attention where I grew up. Crying means you are soft and soft means you get taken advantage of.”
“Fair enough, a good reminder that we all have different backgrounds,” Jessie said, obviously trying to change the subject. “Now are we going further into the dungeon or are we done for the day?”