by A. J. Markam
Stig, Alaria, and the robot all looked at me like I had lost my mind.
“You know, before Krypton blew up… never mind,” I said.
“Is that another expression?” Stig asked.
“No, it was a joke.”
“Don’t explain it,” Alaria said.
“Fine,” I snapped, “let’s go.”
19
We had to coax Grung to come to the end of the hangar – well, I had to coax Grung. Alaria was so distracted and frantic about her body that she didn’t participate, and Stig just watched in curiosity as the metal behemoth crept cautiously towards the sunshine.
“See? Nothing to be afraid of,” I said.
The war golem cautiously peeked his eyes around the edge and peered at the outside world.
“IT’S SO PRETTY,” he marveled.
Which was something of a stretch. After all, it was nothing but miles and miles of grassland, as far as the eye could see.
But then, I guess if your reference point was underground tunnels and Hell, then rolling grasslands might be extremely pretty.
“Come on, Grung, time’s a wastin’!” I said.
I summoned Balrog, who by that point had recovered from our earlier trip, and hoisted myself up into the saddle.
The only problem was, when Alaria tried to get on behind me, my horse neighed and bucked until Alaria slid right off.
“AAAAH!” she screamed as she thudded to the ground.
“Balrog!” I shouted. “Stop that!”
The horse quieted down, but he turned his head around and – I swear it’s true – glared at me.
I looked down as Alaria stood up from the grass. “Goddess-damned horse…”
However, there was a depression in the ground where’d she landed. Alaria didn’t seem to have noticed.
Jesus – how heavy is she now that she’s made out of metal?
I jumped down from the horse and walked over. “Hey babe? I need to try something real quick.”
“What?” she asked in irritation.
“I need to try to lift you.”
She got a bewildered expression on her face. “Why?!”
“Just to see if Balrog can support you, that’s all.”
She hesitated for a second, then grumbled, “Okay…”
I walked around behind her, got a firm grasp around her waist, and lifted.
Nothing.
I put my whole back into it and heaved.
I might as well have been trying to lift a solid metal statue out in the middle of Central Park.
“Holy shit,” I muttered under my breath.
No wonder Balrog had bucked her off.
Alaria turned to me with both fear and anger in her eyes. “Why are you trying to mess with me?!” she snarled.
“I’m not!”
“Are you saying I’m fat?!”
“No! No, you’re just too heavy for Balrog, that’s all.”
Her lower lip suddenly trembled. “So you’re saying I’m HEAVY?!”
“You’re made out of metal now!”
She immediately burst into tears – or whatever those little droplets of clear oil were.
“You think I’m faaaaat!” she bawled.
“No, not at all! Look at you – you have an even smaller waist than last time, and bigger boobs, too!”
I knew I had made a mistake as soon as I said it.
Her tears turned to fury. “So you like me BETTER this way?!”
“Alaria – babe, I was just trying to help…”
“Well, you’re NOT!” she said, and broke down into tears again.
I turned around to Stig and Grung. “Hey guys, you mind giving us a minute?”
“ALL RIGHT,” Grung said, though he stayed exactly where he was.
Stig tapped on the war golem’s metal foot. When Grung looked down, Stig waved one arm like Come on.
“OH,” Grung said, realizing what I had meant, and followed Stig with a whir of gears and hydraulic pumps as he CLOMP, CLOMP, CLOMPED about 50 feet away.
I looked over and saw Balrog munching on grass. His presence probably wasn’t helping, either, so I dismissed him in a cloud of smoke.
Once we were alone, I took Alaria in my arms, cradled her face with one hand, and forced her to look up at me. Well, as much as you can force anything that’s 100 times stronger than you are.
“Alaria, what’s going on? Why are you freaking out about this?” I asked softly.
“Wouldn’t YOU freak out if somebody took your body away from you and put you in some tin can monstrosity?!” she wailed.
“Well, yes, but it’s not like you look like Grung or anything.”
“AW,” the robot said in a dejected voice.
I hadn’t meant for him to overhear me.
“You’re a boy, she’s a girl,” I told him hastily.
“OH…”
I turned back to Alaria. “Look at it this way: you shoot beams out of your hands, you have super strength, you’re probably way more resistant to damage than you were before, and you have some pretty bitchin’ powers. Not to mention this is all temporary. We’re going to get Orlo and force him to give you your old body back.”
“But what if I’m stuck like this for the rest of my life?” she whimpered.
“You won’t be.”
“But what if I AM?” she insisted through her tears.
“Then we’ll deal with it.”
She looked up at me hesitantly. “…we?”
“Of course ‘we.’ What, you think I would leave you?”
She sniffled. “Why would you stay?”
My eyes nearly bugged out of my head. “Are you serious?”
She looked away. “My body is everything, Ian. It’s all I have. If I wasn’t beautiful or sexy, no one would give a damn about me.”
“That is absolutely not true!”
She glared at me. “The reason you fell for me in the first place is because of how I looked.”
I paused. She was right… and yet she wasn’t.
“The first time I saw you, I didn’t fall in love with you. I just wanted to sleep with you. And if I’m going to be honest, that’s all I really wanted for the first couple of days – although your spirit, and your sense of humor, and your intelligence were all huge turn-ons, even if they did annoy the hell out me sometimes.”
She tried to suppress a smile through her tears and failed.
“But I never really fell in love with you up until Abaddon. I still wanted to sleep with you, obviously, when I got enslaved and was down in the mines… but I still didn’t really love you. It wasn’t until Malfurik forced you to fight against me, and you begged me to kill you instead – that was the moment I really fell in love with you. With your kindness, your compassion, the way you obviously cared more for me than you cared for yourself. You were willing to die – forever – rather than kill me. And that has nothing to do with your body, or your face, or anything else on the outside. What I fell in love with was your soul.”
She broke down into real tears this time. Her entire body was wracked with sobs, and she held on to me like I was a lifeline in a storm-tossed sea. After about 30 seconds of crying, she finally looked up into my eyes and gave me a heartbreaking smile of gratitude.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“I love you no matter what body you’re in. I will stay with you no matter what happens. Because I love YOU. But it’s going to be all right. We’re going to track down Orlo, and we’re going to get your body back, no matter what. I promise you.”
She closed her eyes, smiled through her tears, and nodded her head silently. Then she took a deep breath – or at least pantomimed taking one, since I wasn’t sure she could actually breathe – and looked at me with calm resolution. “Thank you. It’s just… it’s really hard.”
“That’s what she said,” Stig called out.
“NOW’S NOT THE TIME,” I yelled at him, then turned back to Alaria. “I’m sure it’s really… uh, difficult.”
“Imagine if you got transported into a robot body and lost three inches off your penis.”
Ouch. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
“That would be rough,” I said with a straight face, “especially since there would be almost nothing left.”
She burst out into laughter, and it was like music to my ears.
“But, hey, at least what I DID have would be hard all the time,” I said as I gently rapped on her metal skin.
She laughed even harder. When she stopped, she smiled and kissed me on the lips.
I’ll admit, it was odd kissing hard metal instead of supple flesh – although it was interesting, too. Her lips were exquisitely sculpted and smooth, and they felt sensual to the touch.
Then she pulled back and gave me another smile. “All right – let’s go get that son of a bitch.”
“That’s the Alaria I know,” I said with a grin, then turned back to Stig and Grung. “Okay guys, time to hit the trail.”
I started walking along the flattened swath of grass that marked the war golems’ trail. Behind me I heard the whirring of Grung’s internal motors, and the CLUNG, CLUNG, CLUNG of his feet on the ground.
Stig waddled up beside me. “Why aren’t we using the horse, boss?”
“Um…”
I looked over at Alaria, whose brow furrowed with the tiniest of scowls.
I turned back to Stig. “Because if one of us can’t ride, then none of us ride.”
“It’s not my fault she’s a porker now,” Stig said.
“Hey!” I snapped.
“You little – ” Alaria roared, and suddenly the purple light was glowing in the palm of her hand.
“ALARIA, NO!” I yelled, but she was already shooting.
I have to give it to Stig – he was one nimble bastard. He dove out of the way of the first blast. Then, because he was being attacked, his teleportation powers kicked in. He kept appearing in little puffs of smoke all around Alaria, and she kept firing at him to no avail.
“ALARIA, CUT IT OUT!” I yelled until she finally did.
When Stig stopped teleporting, I scolded him, “You know better than to say something like that!”
“I don’t want to walk,” he grumbled.
“Well, too damn bad!” I snarled.
We started down the path of crushed grass, all of us in a foul mood.
All except Grung, who came to the rescue. “UM, FRIENDS?”
From anybody else, I would have interpreted the comment as sarcasm – after all, he’d only known us half an hour, and Stig, Alaria, and I were definitely not acting like friends at the moment – but I could tell from his voice that he was sincere.
“What is it, Grung?”
“I COULD CARRY YOU.”
I looked up at him in surprise, then considered it. It was actually a pretty good recommendation, considering that every one of his strides was around 20 feet long. For all of us to travel at the same speed, we would have to run to keep up with him, or he would have to basically shuffle along.
However, I had a history of abusing people who had put their trust in me, and I was a little gun-shy about doing it again.
“That’s really nice of you, Grung, and I appreciate it, but we can’t impose – ”
“Yes we can,” Stig said, and scrambled up Grung’s leg like a cat scampering up a tree. He leapt from the top of Grung’s boot to the bottom of his torso, grabbing a handhold at every riveted metal plate, until he finally sat atop Grung’s arm like a parrot on a pirate’s shoulder.
“IT’S NO BOTHER,” Grung said. “I CAN JUST CARRY YOU IN MY HAND.”
I looked at Alaria. She shrugged.
“Well, if you wouldn’t mind – ”
He lowered to his knees, then placed the back of his hand flat on the ground. The palm and cupped fingers were easily the size of a La-Z-Boy recliner.
“Um… there’s probably not room for both me and Alaria on your hand, so should one of us sit on your shoulder like Stig?”
“THAT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA.”
“Do you have a preference?” I asked Alaria.
“No – whatever you want.”
“I’ll take the shoulder, then.”
I stepped into his left hand and he raised me up to his shoulder, where I sat down and held on to the cut-out part of his chassis that made room for the head. Not the most comfortable mode of travel, but it beat walking dozens – or potentially hundreds – of miles on foot.
Grung lowered his hand again and Alaria gingerly sat down in his palm. Then he raised her up into the air.
Seconds later Grung began to walk, and the ground sped away beneath us.
“Thanks, Grung,” I said appreciatively.
“YOU’RE WELCOME… FRIENDS.”
Even though he didn’t have a mouth, I could hear the smile in his voice.
20
As Grung lumbered across the landscape, I looked over his shoulders, arms, and chest. From this close a distance, it was easy to see there were definitely panels and seams that were not riveted to the rest of his body.
“Grung, do you have some kind of weapons system inside you?”
“OH YES.”
“Like what?”
“WELL, FIRST IS MY ARM CANNON, WHICH FIRES AN ENERGY BEAM,” he said, lifting up the giant gun barrel that took the place of his right forearm. “I ALSO HAVE MISSILES.”
The iron panel I was sitting on raised up two feet in the air.
“Whoa!” I yelled as I scrambled not to fall.
“SORRY.”
“That’s okay…”
I gingerly peered over the edge of the iron plate. Beneath me was a lattice with four missiles inside. They were grey metal with rivets on them, more steampunk than 21st-century US military, but I had no doubt that they could do some real damage.
“Holy crap,” I muttered.
“I ALSO HAVE A FLAMETHROWER.”
Underneath Alaria, the floor of his palm retracted with a metallic shhh, and her ass fell into the gap with a CLANK!
“Hey!” she snapped, and pulled herself up by grabbing onto Grung’s fingers and hauling herself out of the hole.
As she moved out of the way, I saw an evil-looking nozzle attached to hoses and wires.
Then there was a click, a spark – and the nozzle burst into flame.
“AAAH!” Alaria screamed.
“For God’s sake, don’t turn it on!” I yelped.
Stig just snickered and pointed at Alaria from his perch on Grung’s other shoulder.
“OH, I AM SORRY TO ALARM YOU.”
“No problem, could you just put everything back the way it was?”
“OF COURSE.”
The flame extinguished, the cover retracted back over his palm, and the panel I was sitting on lowered back into his shoulder.
“Thank you,” I muttered. I settled down hesitantly, well aware that I was sitting atop a whole mess o’ Grade-A death.
“I WOULD NOT HAVE HARMED YOU WITH MY WEAPONS SYSTEMS.”
“I know, I know… but accidents happen.”
“Grung,” Alaria asked, “how did you activate your weapon systems?”
He thought for a second. “I DON’T KNOW… HOW DO YOU LIFT YOUR ARM? YOU JUST DO.”
“Did you always know how to do it? Or did you have to learn?”
“ORLO TOLD ME ABOUT THE WEAPONS SYSTEMS, BUT ONCE HE TOLD ME, I HAD TO PRACTICE TO TRIGGER THEM. SO I SUPPOSE I ACTUALLY DID HAVE TO LEARN.”
Alaria narrowed her eyes.
“What are you thinking?” I asked her.
“The first time I fired off these…”
She looked at the palm of her hand.
“…whatever these energy bolts are, I was trying to throw a fireball. When I ripped open the door in Orlo’s laboratory, I wasn’t trying to be strong, I was just doing what came naturally. I didn’t have to change anything to see in the dark. So if I try to summon my other powers, maybe I’ll find out other things I can do.”
“
Cool, you should try that out – but maybe not on Grung’s hand. Just in case.”
“Good idea,” she said, and vaulted off of Grung’s hand to the ground below.
It was a 15-foot drop. If I had taken that fall, I probably would have broken both of my legs. But she handled it like she had just hopped down from a foot-tall step.
“Hold up for a second, Grung. Let’s see what happens.”
Grung turned around so that we could all get a look as Alaria stood in the field.
“Okay,” she announced, “I’m going to try to summon my pitchfork.”
She thrust her hand into the air –
Nothing.
“Damn it,” she muttered.
“Try the whip,” I suggested.
She flung out her hand again, fingers extended –
Zilch.
“Daggoth’s taint!” she raged.
“How about flying?”
She glared up at me. “I don’t even have wings.”
“Maybe Orlo gave you some sort of antigravity device.”
“What?”
“Never mind, just try it.”
She sighed, shook her head like it was an idiotic idea, and then ran forward a couple of feet.
As she did, metal panels that had been flush with her skin suddenly popped out from her shoulder blades. Two small cylinders jutted out five inches, and segmented metal fins extended a foot on either side. They were curved and black and looked for all the world like miniature bat wings.
“Holy shit, Alaria,” I cried out joyfully, “you’ve got – ”
Before I could say ‘wings,’ the cylinders ignited like tiny rockets, and she blasted up into the air.
“AAAAAAH!” she shrieked as she flew in an awkward spiral up through the air.
“Whoa,” Stig said.
“Steer, Alaria, steer!” I shouted.
“What do you think I’m trying to do?!” she screamed, right before she lost altitude and faceplanted.
“Oh shit – Grung, let me down!”
The robot lowered me to the ground, and I ran 200 feet over to Alaria.
When I got there, she was picking herself up out of the ground. And when I say OUT of the ground, I mean it. There was an Alaria-sized crater in the soil.
Her face was flecked with dirt and pieces of grass, but she otherwise seemed unharmed – just severely disgruntled.