Brash and the Schrodinger Snare Ch. 10

"So," I said. "What kinda form do you want? Dragon? Human?"

Kira flushed. "Uh, you know...both are good."

That was the flush of someone who had a super definite idea but was super embarrassed about it. I grinned, reveling in the sudden sleek smoothness of my movements. It was like I was quicksilver fast and glacier strong again. Glaciers are very strong, have you ever seen what any of them can do to a country? Like, don't mess with glaciers, man. I leaned over and nuzzled up against Kira's cheek, breathing in her smell. Her arousal. Her excitement. Kira drew in her own gasp, her eyes fluttering half closed.

"Orc," she whispered.

My eyes widened and I drew back. "Orc?"

"Orc," she said, nodding.

"...like...green orc?" I asked.

"Like..." She bit her lip. "Like...big burly just kicked down the front door of the castle orc."

I grinned. "Oooooooooooorc!"

"Now you're just having fun saying orc, aren't you?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Orc. Orc. Orc. It's starting to sound weird now," I said. Kira picked up a pillow and smacked me with it. Since it was a UNN issue pillow, it struck like a low yield tactical nuclear weapon. I grinned, then focused and tried to find a good balance of orc and sexy. Okay, that sounded mean. But there were sexy orcs and there were less sexy orcs. Too much tusk could ruin a good jawline. But too little tusk and you were just a green elf. Not that there was anything wrong with a green elf. Holy shit, a green elf would be sexy. So, I needed just a bit of tusk, a bit of pointed ear. A little broader in the nose - but not full pig face. Added some extra bulk to my muscle, so I was on the upper edge of shonen protagonist muscle. Then I turned myself nice and green.

I didn't need to change my cock.

That was already orc big.

I grinned at Kira as she gaped at me. Slowly, her palm reached out and she caressed my abs, feeling the sleek curve of muscle. Her whole body quivered and I murmured. "So, how orcy orc do you orc orc?"

Kira giggled. "Uh...l-lets say an...eight out of orc?"

I nodded. "Okay! Do you want a safe word?"

"How about, um...stop?" Kira asked.

"That is a terrible safe word!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, uh, good point," Kira said, biting her lip. "How about molybdenum?"

"That is my fifth favorite trace element!" I said, beaming at her.

Kira clapped. "Okay!" She breathed in, then out. "So, I'm just your average dwarven princess when suddenly-"

I grabbed her and shoved her back onto the bed. The mattress squeaked almost as loudly as Kira did. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open in a nearly perfect O of shock. Before she could speak, I forced my mouth against hers. My tusks lightly grazed her chin and her tongue struggled against mine as her hands went to my shoulders, gently pushing at me. But I was too big and too strong and she was also not actually trying that hard. Like, it was almost silly. I drew my mouth back, panting, then grinned. "So, you're a cute little dwarven bitch," I rumbled, making sure to pitch my voice nice and low while also sounding totally swagger. As I spoke I casually reaching down and tweaked her nipple with just a bit of roughness. Kira's back arched.

"Molybdenum!" She gasped out.

I jerked my hand back. "What? What?"

"I just...whoa..." Kira whispered. "I just need a second to get over my...fucking shock."

"What!?" I asked.

"I mean...you just turned on a switch and went all...hardcore..." She shivered. "I mean, I'm trying to imagine you calling me a bitch in that tone of voice, and I can't get over the mental image of your cute kitten form threatening to cut me if I don't snuggle his belly-fluff."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "Well! Well!" I couldn't think of anything more to say, so I just said: "Well!"

Kira giggled and blushed. "It was really hot, though. Just...surreal."

I grinned despite my effrontery. "Thanks. But I mean...you know, I act cute as a choice, right? I'm not brain damaged or immature. I just choose to see the world in the best possible light. I'm allowed. I have superpowers."

Kira reached up, caressing my cheek. Her thumb slid along my lip, teasing one of my tusks. Her eyes were soft. "That's kind of inspiring, you know?" She smiled. "Now, uh, lets get back to the roleplay. I'm ready. No more safe words. Unless I need to." She nodded.

I grinned at her, then smacked her wrist away. Her arm went wide and she gasped as I put my hand on her hair, yanking her head back. I leaned down and bit her neck fiercely, growling as I swung one leg over and settled myself over her. She squirmed and tried to sound defiant. "W-What are you doing?" I drew back, grinning at her, looking at the hickey I had left on her. My hard cock slapped against her belly, almost bumping against her breasts, thanks to our posture and her being a dwarf.

"Marking your cute ass for all the world to see. You're about to get fucked by an orc, Princess..." I slid my thumb along her lips, forcing it into her mouth. Well. Forced as much as I could, considering her lips closed around my thumb tip as eagerly as any girl would suck on my dragon cock. I grinned down at her. "And I'm going to ruin you for every other man you ever meet. Years later, on your wedding day, you're going to have to bite down on your pillow to not moan my name."

Kira trembled beneath me like a leaf. And I was so goddamn turned on by the mixture of fear and pure arousal in her eyes - play or not, it was hard to ignore a big, muscular, growly orc sitting above you. It was hard to treat that as anything but real. I grinned and drew back, sliding down Kira's body. But my balls still caressed her belly as I moved down, and my hands cupped her knees, then spread her wide. I used just enough roughness to add a tiny twinge to her thighs as she spread herself wide. She didn't fight me. She opened her mouth and managed to whisper.

"I...need to stay a virrrgiiiin!" She cried out, her head rolling back as I mercilessly plowed into her. My balls slapped her ass like a palm, and the wet smack of ball to ass rang out in the room almost as loud as Kira's moan. Her back arched so hard that the only thing touching the mattress was her scalp, as I was holding her hips and ass off the ground to properly angle myself for her. Her back slumped down a moment later, her shoulder blades pressing to the pillows. She looked fucked absolutely silly and I hadn't even started thrusting.

I grinned. "Oopse. Guess you're gonna have to lie your way to the altar, bitch."

Kira's sex tightened around me so much she nearly forced me out. Instead, I shifted my hips, then started to thrust. Properly, actually thrust. My hips slammed home and my balls clapped against her deliciously cushy ass. Kira moaned again and again and again, unable to actually make words. She just cried out in pure bliss as I fucked her brains out. Almost literally, I have to say. My eyes half closed and I watched her breasts jiggle and slap against her chin. I added an eager growl to the thrusting - wanting to fully fill Kira's fantasy.

"Yeah. Yeah you like some orc cock, don't you? Yeah, I'm barely even-"

The door opened and G282 came in. "So, I bro- GET AWAY FROM HER!"

"Whoa! Whoa!" I yelped as G282 leaped onto my broad, muscular back. I didn't stop thrusting, even as G282 beat her golden hands against my chest and bit my neck, snarling as she chomped at me. "Molybdenum! Molybdenum!" G282 punched me in the throat and bit even harder, snarling. Kira chose that moment to climax so explosively that her juices squirted along my belly and I couldn't help but cum myself. My balls clenched and I cried out as G282 actually managed to draw some blood.

And the worst thing?

She didn't even apologize, later!

She was too busy checking to see if Kira was preggos while Kira was still dizzy.

***

Twenty four hours sounds like a long time.

But that's just peanuts to an immortal lifetime.

I spent most of the time on the bridge, watching as the two Beast infected ships drew closer and closer and closer. They grew larger and larger as the crew of the Von Braun got her fighters armed and prepped. Missiles were reloaded. Guns were re-armed. Fuel was slotted in. Pilots were prepped. The main guns of the ship were sighted in. But there was a grim sense to everyone. The galaxy was a big place, and slipstream travel was unpredictable. We had no idea if anyone would get here in time.

So, I ate raw materials.

And I prepared mentally.

"We're going to have to drop out of spelljammer speed in fifteen minutes," one of the officers said.

"Any signal from the rest of the fleet?" Captain Ryan asked.

"No, ma'am. But...it's possible we're being jammed. The Beast ship is emitting enough raw energy and high frequency radiation to blanket our every sensor," the officer said.

Captain Ryan nodded. Then she picked up the PA of the ship. I stood up from the seat I had taken and walked over. I could see the rest of my harem - P90, Cindi, G282, and Kira, all of them watching the two of us. Ryan clicked on the PA and spoke into it.

"This is Captain Ryan speaking," she said. "In ten minutes, we're going to stop running and force the Beast to engage us at ranges greater than its infection beam. Our fighters will engage any strike craft they have and we shall attempt to buy time for the fleet to arrive. I know you'll all do your jobs. Good luck and goodspeed." She clicked off the PA. Then she set it down. I hugged her. She tensed, then frowned. "Brash, do not hug the CO of a ship on the bridge."

"Sorry!" I said, stepping back.

"Can you help us out there?" she asked. "or is there a chance you'll get infected?"

"Not a chance!" I said. "I have my full on shapeshifting and all of my guns. I'm going to be nuking the shit out of them. Until I run out of nukes."

"Then I want you to focus fire on the Rickenbacker. Believe me, you'd be doing Commander Fontain and his crew a favor," Ryan said, her voice grim. I inclined my head, then turned jogging off. I was caught by my wrist by Kira. She looked at me. The entire harem looked at me. I grinned at them, then made some finger guns.

"Smoke me a breakfast, I'll be back for cippers!" I said.

"What?" Cindi asked.

But then I was gone.

***

The airlock opened and I exploded out with a whoop. I pulled a quick corkscrew, laughing as I shrank myself to my standard kitten-dragon size. I still had all my weapons and my breath weapons and such, but I was considerably smaller and harder to hit. As I winged away from the Von Braun, I could see her fighters launching from the side mounted launch bays. They were all airplanes that had been designed by the United States, Britain, and China years and years ago. But thanks to the magic of spelljammers, they treated space exactly the same way the Von Braun did - like a big ocean with more stars.

There were a lot less of them than I remembered.

I looked over and saw that the Beast ship and the Rickenbacker had both come to a stop about five hundred kilometers away. The Rickenbacker was advancing like the worlds most evil looking brick. It had changed utterly since I had seen it last - the old shape was covered with reddish growths and protrusions and grotesque musculature like structures. But as it flew forward, I could hear a warbling, hissing wash of radio static...like a thousand voices mashed together and put on a remix from hell. My scales burst into gooseflesh and I wriggled my whole body in disgust before winging to the right, joining in with the chevron of strike craft flying towards the beastified ships.

"This is Red One, I can see you off my wing, BTD," a cheerful sounding Scottish voice said.

I turned so that I could peep over at Red One. The pilot waved at me.

"This is BTD!" I said, using my head computer to send the transmission radio style. "I read you Red One. Keep your formation at a distance - I want to engage them first, to see what they can throw at strike craft."

"Got it, BTD."

"Give em hell, little guy!" someone else radioed.

I beat my wings hard, shooting towards the Rickenbacker, which was picking up speed.

The front of the Rickenbacker began to flash. The fuckton of rail guns that the ship flew with, all of them firing at moi. I spread my wings wide, like I was about to hug the ferrous metal slugs shooting towards me at a bazillion miles an hour. Instead, I vanished and appeared five hundred meters ahead of where I had been, letting the rail gun slug shoot past me. Then I put on a new burst of speed, flying straight for the Rickenbacker as its forward point defenses started to scythe through the void. I twisted and spun, letting the lasers play over my scales. They heated me up, but I never let a single one land on a single point long enough for it to hurt.

Then I was over the Rickenbacker and it started to throw up hideous red tentacles of muscly tissue. They groped through space for me, moving with lightning speed and stretching out to thin whips that were nearly invisible. I was utterly sure that if one touched me, I'd be mossed. And so I teleported upwards and backwards ten meters - using the teleport to cut my momentum to zero. They reached for where I would have been going...

And I...hit the Iron Giant button.

Ever see the Iron Giant?

Remember that bit where he thought Hogarth was dead and just...got out all the guns?

Allllllllllllllllllllllllllll the guns?

My shoulders unfolded and the plasma beamcasters put several dozen petajouls downrange. They scythed in a grid-pattern, plasma energies ablating away armor and boiling off Beaststuff in a haze of devastation. My wrists opened and twenty four glowing red dart-tips were revealed as the bowcasters started up. They peppered the entire front of the Rickenbacker with tiny specs of anti-matter, which annihilated tiny specs of regs matter, which unleashed the force of, like, at least two nuclear weapons. The front of the ship was glowing cherry red and huge chunks were so much ablated vapor. But then my spinfusor went onto fully automatic, shooting disk after disk of monomolecular explosive plasma into the drive section of the ship. Blue-white explosions set off secondary explosions as the reactor overloaded and unfolded like a flower. My hips opened up and the four squat barrels of my bolt guns came out. They would have made a racket like the end of the world as they fired their .75 caliber self propelled mass reactive mini-rockets. But since we were in space, the only thing I felt was the subsonic rumbling through my entire all of me.

The bolts tore through exposed deck plating and pulsating Beast-stuff, detonating with tiny flashes that were nearly lost in the fury and furor of the rest of the barrage. But they were doing serious structural damage. Meanwhile, my elbow hardpoints were where the vol-tech ray emitters had emerged. They were set to their widest frequency and biggest intensity. They bathed most of the Rickenbacker with raw, killing heat. What parts of the ship weren't already glowing white hot were now. My fingertips opened and the death wands started to scythe out. They were just super strong lasers, and I wriggled my fingers like I was trying to play a hacker on INCS. Rickenbacker cubes started to float off into space, where they were then targeted by the under slung shrike catapults that emerged from beneath the beamcasters. Disks of white hot metal sliced through those cubes, turning them into spreading hazes of molten goop and plasma.

I skimped on the anti-personal plasma missile launcher, the tactical nuclear landmines, the goblin sphere catapults and the water-cannon.

I mean, there weren't even any vampires on the ship.

My weapons folded back into my body and I grinned, slowly.

The Rickenbacker had, effectively, ceased to exist. My HUD scanned the area and responded with a tiny ding.

BEAST LIFE FORM DETECTED: 0%

I grinned. "And that's-"

And that's when the huge, goopy hand that had been launched from the primary Beast ship wrapped around me and retracted like one of those goopy hands on the end of strings.

***

The hand opened and I squalled out in fearfusion, looking around wildly. Once more...I was on the bridge of the Doomship. Once more, I was looking at the throne. Once more, I lacked my roller skates. I had left them at home. All of the similarities to the last time I had been here only made the differences more stark. The ground was covered with glowing moss. The walls were made of muscle and meat and eyes - staring, gaping eyes. Mouths opened and closed on the ceiling, muttering and mumbling to one another in many languages. Drool dripped from their reddish lips and nearly pattered onto my shoulders. I was seated in the open palm of the mossy hand that had grabbed me - but to my surprise, I was not currently mossified.

That was good!

The less good thing was the thing on the throne.

It looked like someone had filled the throne with a big goopy mass of red muscle. It was covered in eyes and dripped with goopy, drippy yuck. I gulped slowly and started to stand. Then, wisely, I focused and flew up and off the ground. I floated in the air using my flight abilities, shifting myself to my humanoid form. I focused and brought up my psi-sword, then angled it at the muscly yucky.

"Okay!" I said. "Beast, you tranch...we meet face to...eyeball."

"Oh...we've met before."

My brow furrowed.

The mass of red muscle opened with a sound like tearing gristle and popping bones. And seated on a throne of bone...was Dr. Palladium.

Dr. Palladium as drawn by H.R Geiger or the Zerg campaign of Starcraft. Her black skin shone as if she had been oiled slightly, and her breasts were concealed behind a bone-carapace corset that clung to her. It was pale white bone, intermixed with red muscle that stretched between each joining of rib-cage and shoulder bit. Her arms were covered with more of that red muscle leather, and her fingers were covered with segmented bone gloves. Her feet were in high heeled bone shoes, and...and...she had feet. And legs. Actual legs, not a spidery drider booty. She beamed at me, then stood, her arms spreading wide. The moss around her seemed to glow more intensely.

"How do you like my new look, Brashie?" she asked.

"Very Kerrigan!" I said, nodding. "Uh, what the wiggy what? I thought...I mean..." I paused. "Aren't...I mean...why are you...here and not all mossified and gross?"

"Oh, I am part of the Beast gestalt consciousness," Dr. Palladium crooned, reaching out. She caressed one of the drooling mouths over her head, her finger tracing the lips almost sensually. "But did you think I'd keep even a single spore of the Beast without making sure that it was never going to be a threat to...me?" She grinned slowly, her eyes glittering. "And so, I tweaked its assimilation matrix. It took me into its gestalt consciousness - I just happen to be more central to its decision making and primary goal orientation than other parts."

I gaped. "You Voyagered the Beast!?"

"Excuse me?" Dr. Palladium looked confused.

"Well, in Star Trek Voyager, they had the Borg show up a bunch. But because Voyager was written by hacks, they had to constantly rely on the Borg Queen, even if the Borg Queen doesn't really make sense unless you handle her very very very properly. And they were, uh, hacks? So they didn't, so rather than having her be, like, a focus for the Borg, she was just this domineering crazy lady who kept blowing up Borg cubes-"