Stranger Things on Heaven and Earth

Festina snorted. "Quite a way with words, our Malik Fong."

I grinned at her, shyly.

"It's easier to say that when you have an oversexed space elf jumping you every day, isn't it?" Festina asked.

"God yes!" I sagged against the punching bag.

Festina burst out laughing. Then, shifting to her fighting stance, she lifted her hands. "Lets dance, porno boy." She said. I stepped onto the mat -- then slammed into my attack pattern. I punched at her head. She jerked her head backwards, catching my wrist, then kicked at my gut. I jerked out of her grip, twisting, and then sweeping her leg. Festina leaped over it, then landed. She jabbed twice at my face -- and each time, I batted her blow aside. Festia shook her head and stepped backwards, panting softly.

"Damn," she muttered.

"What?" I asked.

"One second..let me try and hit you," she said. She punched at my face. I jerked backwards, ducked to the side, and saw an opening. I punched out, stopping short before slamming my knuckles into her gut. Festina stumbled backwards, laughing.

"What is it?" I asked.

"That clever son of a bitch trained you real good," she said, nodding. "Basically, you keep leaving this...subtle opening." She punched at me. I blocked it -- but it was easy. It was like I knew exactly where she was going to strike. "It always looks like a weakness I can exploit, but then...bam." She grinned at me as I gripped her wrist. "You block it."

I nodded.

"Okay," I said. "Festina, can you do me a favor?"

"I am not fucking you," she said, her breath coming steadily. Too steadily. I noticed the hard nubs of her nipples, thrust out against her tank top. My cheeks heated.

"Not that favor," I said.

CHAPTER FIVE: Strange Bedfellows

Master Li, Tali and I stepped through the edge of the recrusion -- the recursion that concealed the third part of the admin key that we had been searching for so long. Rather than entering into a large grassy field or a bustling city, we stepped into a narrow corridor that looked heavily industrial and mechanical. Piping and tubes ran along the ceiling and the air smelled of ozone and cordite. Festina had set this party in because, well, we didn't know much about the recursion beyond what the Normandy's scanners had picked up: It had technology, it had magic, and it had the third part of the piece.

So, Tali knew technology.

Li knew magic.

And I was the best at adapating. We had gone in with a cipher -- a kind of one use gadget - that Twi had built that would let us communicate back with the Normandy in case things went utterly pear shape. I looked down at myself to see what I looked like -- and I saw I basically looked like myself -- as did Li. But Tali was exclaiming in shock, her hands going to her face -- because she had changed to look like a lizardgirl.

A really...curvy...

Hot lizard girl.

Her hands cupped her muzzle and she hissed. "Why do I always look so weird out of my suit?" she waited, her tongue thrusting into the air as her short, stubby tail snapped from side to side above an ass that remained one of the greatest in the galaxy. I noticed that she, like me and Li, were wearing a red and white T-shirt with gray leggings and red boots. They looked uniform, which meant we at least could blend in with the local army or kid's sports club or wherever we were.

"At least you're out of the suit, no?" Li asked, frowning. "I don't see anything my translated skills recognize as magic here. Do you detect the artifact?"

Tali grumbled and began to rummage around in her belt pouches. She pulled out what looked like a handheld tablet and began to tap at it with a single claw, which clicked like a stylus. She hissed. "This way!" She started forward, her hips rolling naturally from side to side, her ass jiggling with every clicking step. Li and I watched her go. Li glanced at me. I glanced at him. I arched an eyebrow. He smiled enigmatically, then gestured after Tali. I followed, quickly.

We walked through the mechanical corridor -- occasionally striding past narrow, long windows that looked out in a blasted wasteland of technological horror. Or, in other words, like a moderately habitable Imperial hive world. I tried to not judge too harshly -- even as we walked past several guards in sleek gray armor with face concealing helmets. Okay. That looked less than comforting. They seemed to pay us little mind, even as Tali took a left, then a right, then a left again as we came to an open door that led into a room that looked as if it was laboratory. In the center of the laboratory was a single huge red-black crystal, surrounded by wires and cables and connection ports.

"That's it!" Tali said, stepping in through the door.

"Uh, Tali!" I said, starting forward. But as I stepped into the room, something dark and fast dropped to the ground behind me -- and a wicked set of black claws touched to my throat as a quiet, husky voice purred a question.

"See...last time I checked, I was the one who had final say on who can access this room."

My back tensed. I had no idea where Master Li was. But I didn't think he'd be able to get to me nearly in time to save my life if I fucked this up. Infront of me, I saw Tali turning to face me -- when a darting fast scorpion tail slammed out and punctured her shoulder. Tali's lizardy eyes widened and then she collapsed, face first, onto the ground.

"Ooh, uh...I should a, uh, caught her, shouldn't I?" A tall, burly woman with massive scorpion claws instead of hands emerged from the shadows, her claw-tips tapping together nervously. "Sorry!"

"It's fine," the voice behind me said.

The voice I recognized.

Force Captain Catra leaned up against my back grinned as she said: "I've never seen either of you before. Which makes me wonder...who sent you?"

My mouth went dry as a bone. I tapped my fingers together and tried to control my massive, raging boner. My porno senses felt as if they were being jammed -- like normally, when a girl pressed up against me, I instinctively knew how to seduce them. And bring them to orgasm. It was just an innate part of who I was, like Festina's toughness or Tali's smarts or Twilight Sparkle's adorability. It translated from recursion to recursion without me even trying. But my porno sense ran up against a kind of fuzzy brick wall when it came to Catra. Now, either, this was just what happened when I met a lesbian, or Catra was...Catra.

Honestly, I'd have gone either way on this.

Still, I didn't need to seduce Catra.

...even if holy shit, I'd have wanted to, because Catra.

I just needed to get her to not slit my throat and roll me into the bog.

"Kyle said you were here," I said.

"Goddamn it Kyle!" Catra said, releasing me with a scowl and a push. I stumbled forward and almost fell onto Tali. I looked over at Scorpia, who was looking sheepish.

"Oh dang," she said, while Catra sighed and flopped bonelessly onto a large, comfortable chair that was set up in the corner of the lab -- within poking distance of a huge computer, where Entrapta was seated. The skinny, brown skinned girl was looking utterly enraptured by the spread of symbols and letters that was sprawling across the screen she was looking at -- and her hair, long and purple and prehensile, was busy tapping away at dozens of buttons every second. Her hands were clasped in her lap, fiddling with a large screw driver.

"So, what did you need me for, you bringing message, or are you just here to waste my time?" Catra asked, scowling at me as she slid her arms behind her neck. I coughed.

"Uh..." I said. "Uh...Hordak...wanted to...know how the research is going..." I stammered.

"Same as it always is. Slowly," Catra said, frowning slightly. "But you're not going to tell him that."

"I'm...not?" I asked, glancing back down the corridor. No sign of Master Li. The dude was supposed to be a sifu, not a fucking ninja. When I glanced back, I saw Catra was cheerfully filing her nails.

"No," she said. "You're going to be telling him things are going just peachy."

"Right!" I said, nodding.

"Oh, also," Entrapta said, leaning her head back and looking at me. "When you head back to your secret spaceship, can you bring more extradimensional artifacts with you? They're so fascinating!" She clapped her feet together as she did so.

Catra and Scorpia looked at her. "What?" Catra asked.

Tali groaned -- and then Master Li dropped from the ceiling. I had no idea how an old guy had moved so quickly. Nor gotten into the fucking vents. But however he had done it, he landed behind Scorpia and brought both of his hands smashing down to either side of her neck, in a classic 'knock someone instantly out by hitting their weak spots for massive damage' move. Scorpia staggered, her tail thrashing. "Ow!" She said, rubbing her neck -- looking more woozy than out. Catra responded with an instant, terrifying, fluid grace: She rolled onto her shoulders, planted her feet against the wall, swung herself upwards, grabbed onto one of the hanging pipes, then swung herself directly at Master Li.

Master Li reacted with his standard grace and alacrity. He ducked and Catra instead skidded along the ground. She snapped her shock-stick out with a growl. "Entrapta, hit the alarms!"

"Uhhhh, alarms, alarms..." Entrapta said, looking down at the buttons.

Scorpia wobbled and started to stand back up before Master Li grabbed onto her back and swung her at Catra. Catra hissed and leaped away, her palms smacking to the ground, and then finished her cartwheel standing on one of the narrow shelves that lined the room. I, meanwhile, ran straight for the massive, obviously magical crystal. I started to grab at the sockets that connected it to the computer systems. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Master Li and Catra were locked in a wild, furious melee. Catra might have not had the same expertise as Master Li, but she fought dirty and she fought fast. I saw her dodge, twist, trip, spring around, forcing Master Li to continually remain on the defensive -- despite him perpetually being the one to attack.

Finally, Entrapta cried out. "Aha! There it is!"

She stabbed the alarm button and the whole base started to wail with red alert.

Tali groaned. "Not...that!"

I looked down at her.

She had managed to lift her arm and was pointing at Entrapta. And at Entrapta's...screwdriver.

Her shiny. Perfect. Desirable screwdriver. My eyes widened.

Master Li staggered backwards, crying out, his hand clapping over his face -- blood dripped from a trio of slashes across his eyes. The only reason why he wasn't currently minus one eye was that he had jerked his head aside at the last second. Catra smirked, standing, her claw dripping with blood.

I grabbed onto Entrapta's chair. It was one of those swivel chairs. "Entrapta, show Catra your Adora nudes!" I said.

"I definitely don't have spy cameras in her shower!" Entrapta squeaked as I shoved her with one hand and yanked the screwdriver from her lap at the same moment. Master Li stumbled back and away from Catra and the still staggered Scorpia. All three girls went down in a heap. I grabbed Li with one arm, Tali with the other, with the screwdriver clenched between my teeth. I sprinted for the door, dragging both party members after me as the entire base wailed.

Fortunately, no one knew exactly who or what to look for. That's how we got to the landing bay -- which was full of the Horde's hover skiffs. A few members of the horde -- including Kyle and Rogellio, his lizardman husband, were near the skiffs, tending to them. I pointed at them. "Force Captain Catra said we need that skiff ready! Now! Now! Now! The prisoners are escaping!"

Kyle, the dopey whipping boy of three seasons, sprang to feet. And in remarkably short time, the hover skiff's ropes were untied and the engine was purring to life as I shoved Master Li and Tali onto it. Then I scrambled up, grabbed onto the rudder controls, and slammed the skiff forward. It wobbled wildly to the left and right as I struggled to control the unfamiliar craft -- and then we cleared the hanger bay, just as Catra and a whole fuck of a lot of Horde soldiers came spilling out after us. Beams of green light shot into the air -- but then we were clearing the Fright Zone.

And, faintly, I could hear Catra's voice.

"Kyle!"

***

The hover skiff puttered along, flying over the vast forest that separated the Fright Zone from Castle Bright Moon as I finished binding up Master Li's forehead wound and checked on Tali. She had fainted from the combination of the stress of the escape and Scorpia's paralytic toxin. Her pulse seemed strong and Master Li, once he could actually see without blood dripping into his eyes, seemed to think that she would be fine.

I breathed out a long, slow, happy sigh of relief. We had the last of the three admin codes.

"You did quite well," Master Li said, nodding to me as I stood.

"Thanks," I said.

"Do we have all that we require?" Master Li asked. "For this...admin code?"

"One credit card, one water monk amulet and one...screw driver," I said, wriggling the screwdriver around in my hand. "That's all we needed."

Master Li chuckled softly. His voice was soft. "So. You have played Jade Empire," he said, his eyes growing cold as they looked into mine. "I wondered if you knew."

Oh. Shit, I thought.

The magical amulet that Master Li had protected -- I had let it slip that I knew exactly what it was. I shifted my stance -- trying to get into a combat ready position. Master Li, though, swung his arm up, then thrust it outwards in single, devastating blow that slipped through the weak point he had trained into my martial art posture the same way a knife would slide through the visor of plate armor. The impact crushed my ribs inwards and I felt my heart stop for a beat. I stumbled backwards, my eyes wide, my jaw hanging open.

Then...

I laughed. "The same trick rarely works twice," I wheezed.

Under my breast, my heart kept beating. Protected, as it was, by a handy little trick that Festina had gotten me -- after we had discovered that Master Li was trying to pull the same trick he pulled on the hapless (if hot) protagonist of Jade Empire.

Master Li, though, smirked. "I know that you and Festina Ramos stopped by the Shadowrun recursion to get subdermal armor. I asked Tali to show me how the security systems on your ship work. Trusting fool. And I know the added weight has thrown off your stance, my student."

He swept his leg out and caught my knees -- I tumbled and he caught me, then flung me, and the forest rushed up to meet my face.

Blackness.

***

When I woke up, I felt a hand cupping my cheek. For a heart beat, I hoped that I had gotten some good luck. But as my headache faded and my eyes focused, I felt the hard tips of claws. Catra looked down at me, purring softly. "Well, well, well. Looks like your friends didn't like you so much," she whispered.

Behind her, several dozen Horde troopers stood -- their shock-sticks at the ready, clearly ready to blast anything that moved or disturbed them. Catra wasn't quite doing her 'lets sprawl against Adora' post to me. She kept more of a distance -- crouching beside me as she cupped my chin and rasped her claws against me. Her laugh was as charming as it was on the show.

"Now, Entrapta says we should bring you back -- something about being a dimensional anomaly that she wants to study," Catra said. "So be sure to thank her once we're back in the Fight Zone."

She stood -- and as she stood, three arrows shot by overhead. They each burst and expanded outwards into a set of nets, which scooped up and pinned three Horde soldiers each. Catra, seeing the impacts, flung herself to the left, evading a net by the hair of her ankles. As she tumbled hand over heels, more arrows flew through the air and a glowing, golden figure sprang outwards and smashed into the ground with the impact of a small comet. The earth rocked and bucked under me and I saw that the Horde had brought several large combat robots with them -- and those robots were sent flying through the air.

The golden figure stood, revealing that they were...

Well.

She-Ra.

Duh.

She-Ra, up close and not animated, was terrifying and awesome. Not awesome in the colloquial sense of the term, but awesome as in she inspired awe. Maybe I wasn't enough of a lesbian to get a sexual vibe from her, because she didn't really inspire any thirsty thoughts. But I still couldn't take my eyes off her figure -- she was nearly seven feet tall, glowed a brilliant gold, and had hair that was nearly the length of her whole body, which billowed behind her like a golden cape. Her sword hummed as she shifted it into a one handed stance, jerking it free from where she had slammed it into the ground.

"Hey Adora," Catra crooned.

"She said it!" I said, thrusting my fists into the air.

She-Ra and Catra both looked at me. I rubbed at my still aching chest.

"Who is this punk?" Catra asked.

"I...that's my question!" She-Ra snapped. "Catra, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Girls," I said.

"This is the spy you sent...are...you...did you forget which ops you're running?" Catra asked, smirking. "Or does Queen Angela just use you as a big muscly hammer now?" She grinned. "Since you are just a-"

"Catra," She-Ra growled.

"Girls!" I said, louder. So, we're pre-season 3. Good to know. I thought.

Neither of them even glanced my way. "I have never seen this guy before in my life," She-Ra said.

"Neither did I!" Bow called from the tree branch he was standing on.

A shimmering flare of purple light exploded beside me and the stocky, powerfully built Princess Glimmer appeared beside me. She put her hands on my body. "Just hit her, Adora!" She said, and I got to feel what being teleported was like. It was really fucking disorientating, but not as disorientating as being translated by Festina. We appeared beside Bow, who grinned at me.

"Hey," he said. "My name's Bow."

"Malik," I said.

He gave me the cutest thumbs up.

Catra and She-Ra both glared at one another and I could see that Catra was doing her mental calculation: Stay and try to violently flirt with my ex, or retreat to get better odds? I rubbed my chest, feeling the deep ache from Master Li's attempted deathblow, then shook my head. I grabbed onto the branch, staggered up to my feet, and cupped my hands.

"Yo!" I shouted. "Just fucking bang already, we have a universe to save!"

Catra and She-Ra both gaped at me. She-Ra was so shocked that she flared with golden light -- returning instantly to her Adora form. Her cheeks were nearly as red as her jacket. "W-wahoahoa ahahht!?" She yelped, not quite forming either the word 'woah' or the word 'what.' Even Catra was blushing.

"Good, that got your attentions," I said, then looked at Glimmer, then at Bow, who were both trying to not laugh. I looked back down at Catra and Adora. "I'm from another universe. And I know that at least Catra knows that other universes exist cause Hordak is working on a portal. Which is exactly the thing I need right now. A big bad motherfucker-" Glimmer looked like she was simultaneously jazzed and scandalized by my language. "-is currently going to fuck over my friends if I don't stop him."

Catra and Adora blinked at me. Adora frowned. "I...that's...bad, but..." She looked at Catra. "What's that about a portal?"

I looked at Glimmer. "Can...we..." I held out my hand and she let out an 'oh!' and took my hand. We appeared before Catra and Adora.