El Sexorcisto!

by Yuli Ban

  She pulled herself up and said, "Well then, let's start a conservation effort— be economical with your ammo!"

  She looked back into the dark hallway. The damage from the Gatling guns had been enough to tear out the lighting and reduce the hall to a spooky hole of darkness with flashing malfunctioning fluorescent lights. For a moment, she considered using a Gatling gun, but there was no chance that she was in the right weight class to properly wield one.

  She swore and said, "We're gonna need some help. Something like a poorly established deus-ex-machina."

  As gunfire continued beating against the night, she shouted, "I said, we need a deus-ex-machina!"

  "What are you talking about?" Olga shouted.

  "I thought I could tempt fate."

  "Oh, we really are fucked, aren't we?" Olga said.

  Maria chuckled. "It's not hopeless yet. We still have a shot. But if we want to get out of this alive and in one piece, we're going to have to take a really massive risk."

  Ana held up a plastic shield and stabilized the shotgun. "I don't like risks. They're too risky."

  "That's what makes them fun," Maria said with a shrug. "Besides, it's our only shot. Things aren't going to magically improve for us."

  Things magically got worse for them when a platoon of mechs dropped in, transforming from Harrier jets into humanoid battle machines.

  "Oh, we really ARE fucked!" Olga shouted ever more loudly.

  Then she fell back as a cloud of blood spurted from her stomach. The girls started towards her, crying her name, but Maria held them back and pointed to the red dot.

  "Ana," she whispered. "Use your cat vision. Where's that coming from?"

  Ana ducked and crawled prone to a hole in the wall. Then she flexed her corneal muscles and gazed in, Tatiana crawling behind her to grab her comrade.

  "It's coming from... nothing!"

  Maria turned to her. "What?"

  "It's materializing out of nowhere."

  Maria's face sagged for a brief moment. Then a wide-angled grin built itself upon her cheeks.

  "Thank you, deus-ex-machina."

  Ana lifted her brow, but before she could ask, a second bolt crashed against the opposing wall. The mechs stomped, opening craters where they walked.

  Maria pushed Ana down and said, "Those must be Phantom Snipers. All we need to do is to take one out and use its invisibility cloaking to sneak out of here."

  Ana's eyes and tail lit up, which earned the tip of her tail a blast from the mech's vulcan cannon. She yelped and grabbed the sizzling end, feeling where the cartilage stuck out. Before they could react, a second vulcan shot exploded where Ana sat and all the girls jumped away and retreated back into the hall.

  "They shot my booty!" Ana whined as she cupped her hands around her bleeding ass.

  "Bastards will pay," Maria shouted, clutching her arm. "All these bastards will pay for this!" Then she turned to the room. "Goddammit, Alex, why did you have to go El Sexorcisto before we could teach you about it?"

  Olga spat blood and said through half-open eyes, "You know, that's kinda your fault. You should've taught him about all this stuff."

  Maria growled. "It's not my fault! He should have had more self-control!"

  Ana added, "We all could have done a lot better than we did. It made no sense to send him off on a motorcycle mission before he had adjusted to the game." Every rub of her cheeks brought a new wince.

  Maria turned her head down and sighed. "I know. I thought that... if I did things different from the way we worked with Sam, things might..."

  Tatiana pat her comrade on her free shoulder and said, "Don't beat yourself up like this." She smiled. "It's all a crazy game of guns, sex, and explosions anyway, so who cares whose fault it is? What matters is what we do next."

  Olga coughed blood onto her chest. "You know... I should be more freaked out by this massive wound, but..." With a heavy, watery sniffle, she added, "Can I just say how weird it is that three of us are buttnaked and bloody, and the one wearing clothes is still standing? Does that mean something?"

  "That would be a real enlightening observation when we're not being shot to smithereens," Ana moaned. "God, this is gonna suck for years. My ass, my beautiful ass!"

  Maria beat her head back against the wall. Then she jumped up. "Oh Christ, Alex." She jogged to the room and looked upon the spot where Alex should have been. He was still there, but he should have been anyway. "Thanks for nothing, 'Godfucker'!"

  "You're welcome, Maria."

  As that voice echoed off the walls, all the girls peered into the room. Their motions unhurried, several gulped while Maria's mouth twitched.

  Olga pointed. "D-did... he just..."

  Alex slept in his beautiful, corporate-sponsored coma. Yet they saw his entire face move and heard the words.

  Olga, spitting half her insides onto the floor like a decaying zombie, said, "I dunno, I think I'm just delirious."

  Maria stepped forward and used her bloodied arm to press upon Alex's chest. "Is he still in the form somehow...?" Then she looked up. "Wait, doy!" She started feeling around on his body and began pulling larger and larger objects from his pants, including health pills, psychedelics, cannabis, and censored items.

  “Oh crap, are you serious?” Olga said, struggling to keep her insides within her. “How did we not think to check him for his stuff before now?”

  Maria grinned and said, “Don’t knock fate— we’d have just wasted it all by now and screwed ourselves in the long run anyway.”

  Ana went, “Jackpot!” at the same time as she set a giant blunt on fire with a hammerspace lighter. Then she sucked in and choked on purple ash, each gag and wheeze refilling a chunk of her health bar. Yet before she had fully recovered, she brought her lips around the joint for more and swallowed as much smoke as she could. Every cough afterwards spewed storm clouds’ worth of the vaporous haze.

  Tatiana snatched the fist-sized blunt from her and choked herself on the haze, only for Ana to wiggle at her to get it back. “No! Kitty needs to suck hash!” Tatiana kept her back with a foot to the waist and then passed the megablunt to Olga. Olga sucked some and tasted her blood mixing with the holy smoke that began to seep out her stomach wound.

  She coughed over and over again, “Holy god damn,” and passed it over to Maria. Ana resumed her scratching against her, but only received a palm to the face while Maria used her bum arm to take in some electric hash.

  “Oh, that hit the spot,” she said. When she gazed upon her bicep, she smiled as she saw a bloody stain and no wound. Finally, Ana snatched the blunt and shoved it as far into her mouth as she could so she could taste every bit of the foul vapors.

  Maria, Olga, and Tatiana smiled at each other and reacted at a slow speed to the continued suppressive vulcan fire.

  “You’d think they’d conserve their ammo,” Olga wheezed.

  Maria went back to Alex and looked into his inventory once more.

  “Don’t give ‘em any ideas, sister. Whatever makes it easier for us.” Then she pulled back and gasped. “Oh my…! I didn’t know he had this.” From his personal space, she pulled a wig of spiky blond hair, one which stretched a full head from end to end.

  Tatiana’s eyes boggled and she said, “Is that the Golden Mane of Maximum Power?”

  Ana coughed hard enough to spit out her insides as she tossed the remaining stub down and beat her chest. Through her gasps and coughs, she asked, “I’ve heard of that! But don’t you have to be a wizard of a certain level to use it?”

  Olga laughed blankly. “Elves get to use it for free!”

  “What the fuck, I love elves now!”

  Again, all the girls stared at Alex.

  “Are you sure he’s in a coma?” Tatiana asked, pointing at Ana.

  Ana backed up. “Why are you asking me?”

  “He likes you. You saw how he was ogling you.”

  Ana halved over right as another 500 pound bomb shook the earth, her coughs aligning perfectly with
the explosions. “God!” Then she said, “Really? I never noticed. I thought he liked Maria.”

  Maria’s eyes lifted and she turned to Olga. “She really does scare me sometimes.”

  Ana whined, “Don’t limit me!”

  The light flickered. All four looked to the ceiling and Maria said, “Alright, Olga. You know what to do, hopefully.”

  She saluted and lifted the wig over her hair. All at once, the elastic sides slapped the sides of her head and the hair began to glow a lemony yellow. Her body took on a similar lemon sheen as her skin lost all shadows and hues. She thrust her arms out by her sides and clenched her fist, letting out a warrior's yell as the ground cracked and lifted by her feet.

  Ana tapped the back of her head and said, "Don't show off! Leave some for us to blow up!" before another coughing fit overtook her and she left half her lungs on the floor.

  “Shush! You don’t even have any ammo left!”

  As a gold-white aura wrapped around her body, white smoke lifted from Olga's taut skin, rolling off in curls. Her natural hair lifted, and her breasts also disobeyed gravity. She set her hands forward beyond her face and yelled, "Fireball!"

  A massive bolus of fire exploded from the space in front of her body, boring a hole through the walls. For but a moment, the gunfire paused.

  Tatiana clapped. "Whoo! You go, girl!"

  Olga grinned and dashed forward. The others followed, unable to keep up.

  Outside, a mech shifted its chassis as its pilot searched for any of the Wytches. As it turned over the landscape, the entire top disappeared in an explosion. Below, Olga recoiled her body and aimed her hands towards the next in line. The next mech activated its jumpjets, and tongues of fire spat from its back to propel the machine into the air. Thrusters on its feet gave it more stability and mobility. It circled above.

  Olga fired. The first fireball missed, but the second shocked the mech and the entire landscape as a wave of smoke and dust lifted off the ground, expanding away from the fireball.

  This did not deter the last mech, who charged forward in a ballistic dash.

  "Take cover!" Maria shouted from far behind. Olga leapt out of the way and rolled behind a jutting slag. She wiped beads of sweat from her face as the mech's thrusters shot nearby and brought the giant machine further and further down the base. Once it stopped, the entire thing aboutfaced and the jumpjet on the back shrieked ever more fiercely.

  In the seconds she had, Olga ran to meet her comrades and toss the mech an action glance. She said, "Maria, is there any way to distract him? Did Alex have anything else on him?"

  "Just a lot of drugs. But that's alright with me. We only need to find a Phantom sniper— don't worry about that last mech."

  Ana dug herself into debris, her claws tearing at wires and plaster. "Wait, I think I see..." With one mighty tug, she pulled from the burnt heap a black case. Along its side ran curved letters and symbols of a hurricanized Black Sun. "Please, please, please, please... Oh pleasey-please!" When she unzipped the case, her eyes lit up. "Yes!"

  "Anastasia, what are you doing?"

  Ana pulled out a 4-barrel rocketpod RPG, lifting it up her head like Link.

  "Was that seriously just laying around in the base? That's so irresponsible!" Tatiana said. Maria reloaded her machine pistol and smacked her lips.

  She said, "Don't jinx it. Next thing you know—"

  "Aww..."

  "See?" Maria added, throwing her hand out to Ana.

  Tatiana tilted her head back and inhaled. "What is it?"

  "No ammo." Ana dropped the rocketpods and pouted. "I don't deserve to be out of ammo."

  Maria repeated her motion while Tatiana scratched her nose.

  Olga smiled and said, "It's alright, I still have enough firepower to take out the mech."

  Olga's hair stopped glowing and her skin returned to its normal pasty tint.

  A vein throbbed on Maria's temple, then two, then three. "You all need to just stop talking. Seriously, whenever you feel a word about to come out, just kill it."

  Olga looked at the approaching mech and said, "Oh no, how are we going to escape without any ammo?"

  Tatiana snickered.

  "What, what's so funny?" Tatiana's answer was drowned out by the wail of the mech.

  Once she had a moment to respond, she repeated, "Wasn't that just the cheesiest bit of dialogue ever? I don't think I've ever heard someone say something like that before? It was, like, straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon."

  All eyes slanted against her.

  "Was that really so amusing?"

  Again, Tatiana laughed. "You know me."

  Suddenly, luck shined upon the women as Ana managed to find a single spare rocket compatible with the rocketpods conveniently located behind a box near a wall next to an RPG-wielding shocktrooper whose now impaled back was turned one half mile away.

  For their troubles, they had to abandon Alex for the moment and scrounge up not just the rocket but also 100 rounds of SMG ammo and one last spare grenade.

  "Do not miss this," Maria shouted. "You hear me? Do not. Miss. The mech."

  Ana missed.

  However, they still had the opportunity to get away by stealing the half-track— which had remained on the lookout for them and opened fire as they hopped from cover to cover.

  After a few minutes of coverhopping, fate once again smiled upon them as Olga's hair resumed its glow.

  Maria repeated her rant to Olga, telling her to fire blindly and wildly at every nanometer of space near the mech and to not stop firing until she was once again out of energy.

  Olga nodded and aimed her fist forward. The mech, which possessed infinite fuel in its thrusters, circled around and came down for another rush. However, Maria grinned as the machine lined up. She could see the whites of the pilot's eyes when she screamed, "Eat me!" and threw a blob of explosive fire at the cockpit. The impact hit so hard that the entire mech shifted upwards into the sky. For several minutes, the remnants of the pilot rained down, showering the landscape with his giblets.

  Another Nazi wearing skin-tight black leather roared towards them, brandishing an MG-40, only to be vaporized as the flaming wreckage of the mech brought death from above.

  Maria snatched the grenade away from Ana and said, “Listen to me. If you toss this grenade into the cockpit of the half-track, am I going to see that tent over there explode?”

  Ana vigorously shook her head as, behind her, a Nazi flailed his flaming arms. “No, no, no! I swear, it’s just being naked that’s getting to me! I’m usually not this ditzy! I’m not that high.”

  All the women stopped and stared right at her. Those stares could bore holes in steel. Olga loudly smacked her lips. The Nazi stopped, dropped, and rolled straight into another fire.

  “What?” They all rolled their eyes as Ana set her finger on her chin. "Or am I really that stupid to you guys?"

  "No, sweety, that's not it at all. You just have certain tics that cause you to do stupid things," Maria lied. Then she pushed Ana forward and said, "Now come on and bring it all home for us. Let's take that half-track!"

  "But what about the Phantom snipers?" Olga asked.

  Maria said, "That's exactly what I'm about to mention— Ana, I need you to run out into the open in a zig-zag. Then, Olga, you have to keep your eyes peeled for the laser."

  Ana twiddled her fingers and ran her tail between her legs. "Don't I get a say in this?"

  "No!" they shouted.

  “Get out there!” Maria cried, pointing towards a road.

  "Aww shucks."

  The plan went into effect— Ana jogged into a clearing, the edges of her body silhouetted by fires. The whole time, she made sure to keep her pace slow and deliberate so as to draw attention upon herself. She looked back over her shoulder several times, sticking her tongue out at her comrades who waved her off. And then Olga's eyes squinted when she saw the distinctive red bead dance across Ana's fur.

  "There," she said as she pointed towa
rds a hangar. She fired an explosive shot from her finger that obliterated several hangers at once. The laser sight twirled about the air as a man materialized from the ether, a fabric fluttering about him and disappearing from reality at the same time.

  Maria shouted, "Ana, use your catspeed!"

  Ana obeyed and sprinted off in that direction. She skidded to a stop right before the fallen sniper rifle, then dropped to her knees and licked her feet. "Ouch! Ouch! Shouldn't have done that! Should not have done that!"

  As her mates caught up to her, Maria screamed, "What are you doing?!"

  "Hurt my feet."

  "Oh my god, we need to put on some clothes," Tatiana said as she facepalmed. “And then we need to get Ana detoxed, pronto. I’ve never seen her this soft in the head before.”

  Maria reached to the ground and snatched a robe that shimmered in the night, throwing off the background like a fuzzy haze. "We'll start with this." With a toss and a snatch, she peered down the scope and popped several shots at a few remaining survivors in the field. Once she spent most of the sniper rifle’s ammo, the only enemy unit left to deal with was the half-track.

  She looked to Ana. "Though it's probably not a good idea to keep relying on you when you're so high, I'm gonna trust you to wear this and drop a grenade in the half-track. Then we can break out of here."

  Ana saluted and smacked herself in the nose and said, "Aye-aye, capitana!" Then she staggered to her feet, slipped her arms into the cloak's sleeves, and threw the cowl over her head. All at once, she vanished from sight save for her snout. She twiddled her whiskers and smiled. "How do I look?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Olga's hair returned to a plastic yellow and her skin lost the unnatural lighting once again, and she used this instance to take off the Golden Mane of Maximum Destruction. "You want Tats and I to get Alex?"

  Maria nodded. "I'll stay with Ana just to make sure she doesn't use the grenade as a vibrator or some shit."

  Ana guffawed and slapped her knee. "What? No! I’m seriously not that high!"

  Maria retorted, “That’s what’s scary!”

  Tatiana said, "You think there'll be a last wave coming in before we're in the clear, Ms. D?"