by Jamie Hawke
“Sorry,” I said. “It didn’t occur to me that it’d be an invasion of your privacy.”
“You all seem to lack an understanding of privacy,” she said. “What did you see?”
“You can do portals?” I asked.
She held a hand to my mouth, glancing around to see if the others were listening but they were still investigating and clearly hadn’t heard. Then she whispered quietly, “Could. Past tense. They took it from me.”
I nodded, intrigued. “But… I thought only one super could do portals. What was his name? Haden?”
“Hadrian,” she replied, nodding. “And that’s the last we’ll speak of it.”
“But—”
“The last.” The look in her eyes was fierce enough that I backed down. “And if you ever scan me again, I don’t care if I have powers or not, you’ll regret it.”
That was a threat I didn’t doubt for a second, not coming from her. In a way, I was glad when I heard a shriek from Charm, as disturbing as that sound was in a place like this. There wasn’t a need to ask why, because as soon as I looked, I saw three skeletons up and moving for her.
“What the fuck?” I swore, already pulling on my tempest powers.
Gale blasted them back with wind, but couldn’t get her lightning to work down here. Mine worked differently, however. Blasting apart skeletons had always ranked high on my cool meter, though usually it had been in dungeons of classic games like Diablo, or more recently the one they’d made based on the Modern Necromancy books. After a long day of welding and soldering, nothing had been more fun than kicking back with my headset and some friends, then jumping in to challenge another dungeon. Even better when we were all in one room and had nachos and Coke, but I’d recently tried to avoid both. Lucky me, they were rare in space.
Even more lucky me, I had all my new ‘friends’ in this room, and we were bringing the pain to these skeletons. My tempest took down two and knocked back a third, while five more appeared from around a corner. Charm was kicking ass, tearing skulls off and using them to throw, while Twitch found she could rearrange them with her coding, so that they had a hard time moving to attack us at all.
Shimmer found she wasn’t all that useful here, so she stayed with Gale and gave us an illusion of fireworks and cheers every time a wave of the bastards collapsed.
Finally, no more were coming and all of the bones lay scattered.
I was about to join in the fake cheer when the floor started to glow. The glow rose from the floor and carried on into the bones of those mostly still in one piece, pushing them up to fight again. It had to be some form of superpower working here, and my video game nerdom came into play as I found myself incredibly envious of any super with a necromancer-style superpower. Even if that wasn’t entirely accurate—for all I knew, they could liven any sort of inanimate object—it was still awesome.
“We can’t do this forever,” Charm said, falling back to my side.
“Actually,” I turned back the way we’d come. “If we can get them locked away…”
“Brilliant,” she replied and then ran off to Gale to pass on the plan.
I used the ground to travel over to them, a split-second later using the tempest powers again to clear a small semi-circle around us.
“Ready?” I asked Gale when she stepped up to my side.
“Watch me dance,” she said, and then was conjuring up all manner of winds—impressive, considering the fact that we were now likely some ways beneath the ground and inside of a metal pyramid.
The others worked with us, pushing the skeletons back. It was most effective to tear them to pieces and then have the winds blow their bones individually away from us and toward the opening.
“Everything you’ve got!” I shouted when the last of them was through, and then Gale thrust and the rest of us grabbed onto whatever we could.
Gusts of wind pushed at us from behind and then were pulling us as well. My hair whipped about atop my head, my lungs seized as all of the air seemed to flow past us. Charm flew forward, and I grabbed her arm so that we were locked together, struggling against the wind. Her cheeks puffed out as she tried to hold her breath and I laughed, though doing so hurt.
Pink energy fields appeared, locking the skeletons away, and more flames kicked up past them. Some skeletons escaped the inferno, others came charging with flames on their backs, but they hit the wall of energy and couldn’t pass.
“It won’t hold them back for long,” Twitch gasped, and we were all moving, charging for the far wall.
“Next time, more warning,” Shimmer said beside Gale.
“Does there have to be a next time?” Charm asked.
“There’s always a next time.”
“I’m not used to working underground,” Gale admitted as we reached the wall and skidded into the downward sloping sections at the end that seemed to be the only way out. “Air works differently on a prison ship, oddly enough.”
“Fake air versus old air,” I said, sliding down. “My guess would be that the ships have built-in contingencies for situations with less air. In a sense, their machines could feed your powers.”
We reached the bottom and found ourselves in a complex room of shifting blocks. We all fell silent. As we watched, they started to form a large face on the wall. This time it wasn’t Daos, but a female.
The lips moved, but no sound came, at first… and then the metal pulled back, returning to being a wall again.
“Help,” Charm said, her voice hushed in awe.
“Excuse me?” Gale turned, looking around us.
“That’s what she said,” Charm replied. “Her lips, when they moved it was clear she was asking for help.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
Charm shrugged. “Years of spying on people, for one. My intense fascination with lips and mouths, for another.”
Twitch was already moving about the room, assessing it. We took a moment to hydrate and snack, as the room seemed relatively safe. Something about that face appearing, as creepy as it was, made us feel more secure. Like we had someone on our side in here, even if she was in need of help herself.
“Here,” Twitch finally said, brushing aside dust and revealing a pattern in the floor. It looked like several sets of arrows. Some of them lit up in barely a glow but were still visible. “If that lady is really in need of help and is trying to guide us, this could be part of it.”
“Or a trap,” Gale pointed out.
“Don’t always assume everything’s a trap,” Charm said, moving along the arrows, being careful not to touch the unlit ones. She looked like she was having fun in the schoolyard with a game of hopscotch. “It makes life so dull.”
“It keeps me alive,” Gale said dryly.
Charm came to the last of the glowing arrows, put both feet down, and pouted. As she started to say, “Nothin—” the last block lowered, causing a section of the wall to slide down and reveal a passage.
The rest of this place so far had been dark and eerie, but this one had walls that glowed light green, almost yellow. A sort of humming was coming from the far side, and we all hesitated. It definitely felt like a trap, but also was too damn intriguing to pass up. Preparing my powers in case we were walking into an ambush, we stepped through the opening.
14
Once we were in the green, glowing room, we could see that the walls weren’t simply walls, but displays. Not in full, but as if the light emitting from them was changing colors to give us views, so that it looked like watching people through a series of strange lens filters on a camera. The whole thing reminded me of a security office, with cameras watching various parts of the pyramid.
We could see Daos moving about, screaming at someone. He was in a strange room with lines of light connected to him and coming at him from all directions. As the angle moved, a few other supers came into view, cowering before him. More supers moved about through the pyramid, seeming to search—my guess was that they were looking for us.
&n
bsp; “I don’t understand,” Charm said.
“Maybe I do,” I said, watching closely as a group of supers came up against something in one of the rooms. It appeared to be wires at first but was now forming an almost human shape, attacking them. The presence was getting pushed back but was becoming stronger by the minute. “He thought he’d have us in here. Maybe the pyramid never put up much of a fight against him before, but… for some reason, our presence here is changing that. It’s turning against them.”
“This is the strangest tour I’ve ever been on,” Charm said, but then gave me a grin to show she wasn’t serious.
Oddly, the screens started going fuzzy, darkening as the voice of Daos came through, calling for us, saying he was going to destroy us. Acting on a hunch I pulled up my screen and attempted the troubleshooter skill, and right away his voice died out, replaced with the color displays again.
This time they started shifting, moving about in a way that actually seemed to connect. There was a door from one, a similar looking door on another. It was showing us our path!
“Holy shit,” Charm said, grinning. “This is awesome!”
As we watched, the group of supers was pushed out of the strange robot room where Daos was, and they were now in a room apparently just three away from ours. There was a long air duct or something along the way, which had a large fan with circular blades that could cut a person in half. Past that there was one room where shots of flame had just emerged, as a couple of the other supers had tried to retreat farther.
That’s when I noticed I only had three screens active, instead of four.
“Uh oh,” I said, scrolling through and seeing that I had the powers of Charm, Twitch, and Gale. “Looks like I’m missing one power, and we might need it for those flames like before.”
“Shimmer’s or mine?” Twitch asked, and I grinned at the way she bit her lip, already knowing what that would mean.
“Shimmer’s, actually.”
Twitch looked let down, considering Shimmer before turning back to me. “You really need it? Here… now?”
“I’m not sure. Just looking at the fire, wondering what our best options are.”
“The shields might work,” Gale said to Twitch. “But… hard to be certain. It’s probably best if we play it safe.”
“We’ll need as much help as possible getting out of here,” Charm pointed out. “Seeing as we’re trapped and this power got us out of the fire last time… No harm.”
“You’re all twisted,” Andromida said. “To be clear, you’re discussing whether Shimmer should fuck this guy right now so that he has more power to get us out of here, if that power of his is required again?”
“What, you’d rather find out when it’s too late?” Charm asked. “What then, she tries to go down on him real fast, but we all die before she can even get his cock in her mouth? Come on, be smarter than that.”
Andromida’s mouth fell open, her eyes narrowed, but then she just scoffed. “Do whatever you need to do. I’m finding a way out of here.” As her words came out, a section of the floor on the far wall moved down, creating a staircase. “Huh.”
“Yeah, do what you need to do,” Charm said, moving over and pulling at my pants. “I’m getting mine.”
I laughed, taking her hands and kissing them. “What’s happening, exactly?”
“If her powers faded, then ours are about to as well. Think about it—we all powered up in the pool, right? So, maybe some hold longer, I don’t know, but I’m not letting you down.”
My eyes held her gaze for a moment, then moved to Twitch, who tried to hold back a laugh but nodded.
Gale shrugged, looking around. “It might be our only moment to rest for a bit. Who knows what’s ahead.”
“I…” Hell, I had nothing to say, and quite liked the idea of taking a moment to regroup and ‘power up’, as Charm had put it.
“But just in case,” Shimmer said, pulling her hair back and tucking it into her suit as she came over and wrapped one arm around me, another around Charm, “since my power’s already gone, I think I should get in there first.”
“In there?” I asked, scooting back.
She laughed, pulling me back by my pants. “You know what I mean.”
“Do be quick about it,” Andromida hissed, standing in the doorway. “I’d hate to venture off too far and be killed while you’re all back here, moaning away.”
“Join,” Charm blurted out.
We all looked at her with surprise, especially me.
“What?” Andromida said, as if she hadn’t heard her. I was quite certain she had.
“You know, I mean… you’re here. If you have any powers in your DNA or whatever, he could absorb them and I’m sure it would help the fight.”
“Are you sure about this?” Twitch asked leaning against the wall and looking back and forth between the ladies. “I mean, we don’t want it to be something about him getting powers and then you getting all jealous.”
“The rest of you wouldn’t get jealous?” Charm snapped back. “Plus, the last time I got jealous wasn’t exactly a circumstance I approved of to begin with, so maybe we could just never mention that whore and stop referring to it?”
“Ah, I’ll pass, anyway,” Andromida said. “No offense, Breaker, but… I’m not here for that. I’m here for revenge and, I get that this might help you, or even us, but—”
“Oh, shit,” Charm said, turning to her now. “You’re the big V, huh? Don’t worry, when I first met him I was a virgin too. But Breaker here? His superhero name really doesn’t mean anything in the sack—he worked it in nice and gentle… still hurt a bit, but—”
“No, Charm,” Andromida said, exasperated. “I’m not a virgin.” She stood there for a moment, then turned from the room and walked out.
“Then what’s holding you back?” Charm asked. “We’d love to have you, isn’t that right, ladies?”
“Sure?” Shimmer said.
“Why not,” Gale agreed.
Twitch smiled and shifted her head back and forth in a noncommittal way. “I’m an open kind of lady.”
“Tell you what, Shimmer.” Andromida put on a smile, though I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one to know it was fake. “You can take on my look, if you all want me so bad. I’m not ready for this.”
She gave me a hesitant look, then walked out of there. There had been an expression of sorrow creeping across her face, about to win out before she turned. I wanted to go to her, to see what was going on, but also thought she might want some space.
My decision of whether to go or stay was made for me when Shimmer sighed next to my ear right before starting to kiss it, hand massaging my cock. She started to transform to look like Andromida, but I shook my head, waited until she was herself again, and then kissed her.
The other ladies took a few moments, but soon all were joining in. Shimmer knelt and took me in her mouth, while Gale and Charm took off my top and started caressing my front and back, kissing me and touching each other’s breasts. It was hot, and even more so when Twitch knelt next to Shimmer and started fingering herself while licking my thighs.
The fact that they could do this in the middle of all this chaos blew me away. Earth ladies, and even Earth men—no way. But here, a bunch of supers? Yeah, I was convinced yet again that supers weren’t only super-powered but super horny. If someone could bottle up that aspect of the sun’s powers and sell it as a libido enhancer back home, they’d be rich.
Soon the ladies had a bed of clothes beneath me and were rubbing their breasts in my face and across my body as they each took turns riding me, and I pulled Shimmer over to taste that honeysuckle goodness. I came with her on my mouth, and lay there panting as Charm helped Gale finish for the second time, so she’d be even with the others.
I chuckled again at the thought of where we’d just done that, wondering if there was a term for fucking in a crazy living pyramid thing on an alien planet, similar to the mile-high club but way more insane. The joke ne
ver made it out though, because the walls were starting to close in on us! Andromida appeared in the doorway a moment later, cursing, shouting for us to hurry. She even ran over to help us dress, as at least two of the ladies’ legs were still wobbly.
“Remind me to tell you all to wait next time,” Andromida said as we escaped the room.
“Something was off there,” Charm noted. “Like, why’d the room wait until we’d finished to do that?”
“Giving us our privacy?” Twitch said with a grin. “Maybe the pyramid understood the need, but wanted to nudge us along?”
“Must’ve been reading my mind,” Andromida said.
Moving into the next room, we entered the drop. Using Twitch’s ability to help us float down and into the side opening there, we burst into the room of fire and I canceled out the flames. One supervillain was still alive, the other two, crisps. When she saw us, she glanced back at the door and decided to throw her life away by trying to take us on by herself. Her thrust with what seemed like long snakes emerging from her hand ended as fast as it began, with Charm tearing through them with her claws while Andromida took it old-school and charged forward, grabbing the super by the head and slamming her into the wall over and over until it was done.
“Fuck,” I said, looking at the bloody mess.
“She was… I’m sorry.” Andromida stood, tried to compose herself, and motioned for the door. When none of us moved, she added, “She was one of them. One of the supers there when they experimented on me… I still hear her laugh.” Another look at the corpse and Andromida sneered. “Not laughing now, though, is she?”
“No, she’s not,” I said, and led the ladies to the door. As disturbing as it was, I was somewhat into this whole kicking ass without powers thing. It reminded me that these ladies weren’t just powerful because they had superpowers, but were badass on their own as well.