The Naked Weapon Pt. 03

I jerked my head up. "Jesusfucking What, you have a name for that!?"

"It's a common tool in-"

I clapped my hands over my ears. I didn't want to hear it.

***

My feeling of smug superiority lasted until Magnum nodded and said: "Good. Opal, Ebony, Tycho, you three use this talent and..." He sighed. "Get ready to cheat, if you need to." He tossed me one of our obsidian chip-wood swords. I caught it by the handle, dropped it, tried to grab for it, and ended up having to scramble to not get my palms sliced open on the edges. Once I was holding it, I shook my head and blinked at Magnum, who was starting to slide armor on.

The pleasure chattel were all stored in a big communal stable made of roaring flames. The pleasure chattel of the other Doyen nobles were all beautiful in their own exotic way. I saw lizardwomen with breasts the size my head, four armed snake-boys (or should I say bois) who were as sleek and exotic as I could imagine. There were women with flames for hair and skin the color of space. There was a shimmering cloud of nebula contained within a blue telekinetic field, who was dressed in gauzy silks and thrusting out what I thought was an ass provocatively. And all of them looked at us with the curious skepticism of prisoners eying the new fish.

"Why do I need a sword? Aren't we going to the gala?" I asked. Ali was, as we spoke, performing her role as Tzali in the opening of the gala that the local Doyen were throwing for her visiting. I had gone to tell the others about humanity's latest way to cheat.

"Oh, we're going," Magnum said. "The Count told us that he was going to throw a bit of an entertainment. He was quite evocative in his description of the wildlife he had found in the equatorial regions. The choice words included implanted eggs, thirst for ocular jelly, claws as tough as crystal, tree-ripping strength, a 'member that would make even the spider-queens of Orchan balnch', a-"

"I get it!" I said, then looked down at my sword. "He's trying to kill us?"

"You, honey, he's trying to kill you," Opal said, shaking her head. "He can tell you and Ali are butt buddies. He wants to get his Doyen dick in the Princess."

"Goodie," I said. "So, us killing the xenomorph's little cousin is going to be the side show, while the Doyen plot and conspire, and our three lovely ladies will be playing the part of Leia Organa?"

"I did say that I wanted to strangle someone to death with my chains when we started this mission," Opal said, cheerfully.

"The Doyen don't use physical chains," Ebony said, her voice dry.

"Then I'll improvise!"

Magnum chuckled. "We'll do our best to not need the chains. But if we're in trouble, do not hesitate to cheat." He nodded to the three ladies. Tycho grinned.

"I already have a plan," she said. And I had to admit...I really liked the mildly psychotic light in her eye. It was good to see that kind of creative maliciousness put to a good and noble purpose defending the United States of America (and the rest of the planet, I guess) against evil psychic aliens. I twirled my obsidian sword, rolled my shoulders, then nodded to Magnum. Together, we headed off. As I walked past one of the snake-bois waved to get my attention.

He stuck his tongue out at me, hissed and said: "Do not get yourself ruined, oh beautiful one!"

I blushed. Waved. Smiled. And wondered if it was gay if it was an alien snake-boi. Cause, uh, holy shit, he was fantastically pretty in a way that was normally reserved for young Leonardo DiCaprio. Like, I had heard he was a lady's man from before I was born, but it wasn't until I had seen the Titanic movie on Netflix that I realized just how true that was.

But then all thoughts about (honestly, all things considered, pretty damn good) James Cameron movies were brushed out of my brain as Magnum and I strode through a corridor that twisted itself before us like a snake. I was sure some Doyen was guiding us along. I tried to keep my nerves under control. But I was catastrophically bad at that...

And that was what saved our lives.

Ab-

Those two letters, cut off at the last second, made me tense. Magnum had reached the doorway that led to the arena itself. The arena was darkened, with only a dim blue luminescence shining from the walls. It wasn't enough to show anything but vague shapes, but the tiny warning I had was enough for me to cry out to Magnum. "Mag!" He flung himself to the side before an arrow the length of a fucking mac-truck smashed into the psionic ground where he had stood. As he rolled away, I threw up my arms and my own telekinetic shield. Debris pattered off said shield as the ground rocked under my feet. When the smoke had cleared, the arrow was already sinking through the floor. Behind it, I could see five Doyen Paladins in their warform.

In the center of them was a warform that was clearly the Count. He held a psi-bow and was already knocking another huge arrow.

Behind him, I could see Ali, surrounded by bands of telekinetic force. Next to her stood an older Doyen male – he had a crystaline beard. And next to that bearded fellow stood a figure in a thick shrouded robe, who might as well have fired off a flare into the ceiling that exploded into the words: I am the real villain of the story.

"Humans," the Count said, his voice a sneering boom. "To think you so willingly stepped into our den. Only two of you, too! It was-"

"Tycho!" Magnum boomed, running forward. I sprinted forward to join him, already forcing myself to expand into my warform. Telekinetic energy lifted me up and for a few moments, I was a fifty foot version of myself. My mind was my muscle, and my wrath was my sinews. But despite the fury I felt at seeing Ali in chains, despite the fear of suddenly being made, I was nothing next to the Paladins. But, as I had already proved...

Humans.

Cheat.

And apparently, even if Count Gonnadie recognized human males, no one had mentioned our sexual dimorphism.

Tycho, ignored as a mere pleasure chattle, snapped her fingers.

A warp opened between the capital and the distant jungle where we had landed. We hadn't landed with shitty swords and leather armor. We had dropped with a full arming kit. And without the engineers on the HQ ship, we had taken a few painstaking hours to gently put our mecha together, then shrink down to normal size and leave them. Standing there. Fifty foot tall statues, waiting for their moment. And their moment was now. So, between one step and the next, the warp shimmered around me, and then I was armored, just in time for the Count's psi-sword to smash into my shoulder.

His blade cut into almost two feet of steel, sending dribbling molten metal rivuleting along my armored arm.

I grinned behind the imposing facemask of my armor, then shouted through loud-speakers hooked to an internal microphone: "You flirted with the wrong girlfriend, fuckface!"

And I grabbed onto his wrist and flung him as hard as I could in a twisting arc. His war-form flew in the graceful, slow motion arc of truly large objects, then crashed into the bowman to Magnum's right. Magnum, meanwhile, was thrusting his metal fist up through a warp. He tugged back the main gun on an A-10 Warthog. Thankfully, said gun had a bitching rad name: The GAU-8/A Avenger. A 30mm hydraulically driven seven barreled Gatling gun loaded with depleted uranium slugs. It could fire forty two hundred rounds in a minute, and had enough kickback to almost stop a Warthog in its tracks.

I don't know if you know, but a Warthog is a fucking jet.

The carrying handle slapped into Magnum's other hand and he swung around to face another Doyen Paladin whose feet stomped on the floor, psi-spear shimmering as he charged forward so fast that jets of psychokinetic flame were bursting from his back like wings.

The roar of the Avenger filled the room and the Doyen Paladin did the chaingun cha-cha in gigantic, twitching and shuddering backwards, the bullets hitting so fast and so hard that he couldn't even fall. He skidded and smashed into the wall, cracking the psionic building and sending a shuddering through the building. Then he brought up an arm and bellowed above the sound – a telepathic bellow, really – and created a shield. Bullets started to tear into the shield, sending off chips of psychic force.

Meanwhile, the Count and the other Bowman were getting to their feet, and the other two Paladins were finished dropping their bows and getting out their swords. The Doyen Court was fleeing, Ali screaming obscenities. Tycho, Opal and Ebony were running after, their psi-swords crackling. Once they got Ali free, I was sure they'd join the fun.

Until then...

I focused and created a psi-sword in one hand and a psi-dagger in the other. My sword was formed like a rapier, and my dagger had the wide cross-bar of a main gauche. Cause I didn't just want to beat the Count. I wanted to beat him at his own fucking game.

"Lets dance," I snarled as Magnum slapped in a new ten thousand drum magazine. The Doyen he had been hammering was nothing more than a blueish splat against the wall, his war-form fizzling away now that the mind that had created it was deader than disco.

The Count charged with a psychic bellow.

The three Paladins at his back followed, forming into a V behind him. Each one lifted up their right hands and, with their powers combined, created a cow-catcher style telekinetic field. Magnum didn't even bother shooting into it. Instead, he used his own telekinetic control to launch himself upwards into the ceiling. He burst through the roof with a spray of dust. I did likewise, and the cow-catcher smashed into the weakened wall behind us. The whole castle shuddered, flashing and crumbling. I felt a moment of worry for the poor chattel.

Then all I could focus on was not dying. The Count shot towards me, his back flaring with energy. He wasn't bothering with a rapier. Instead, he had created a psi-flail. A chain of crackling red energy that terminated in a black sphere of what had to be the physical manifestation of his blue-ass ball. He swung it and it came at me so fast that I barely had time to react. I lifted my main-gauche and the two psionic weapons crackled as chain wrapped around blade and then flail smashed into the armor plate of my forearm. Armor buckled, but I felt nothing more than a faint ache as I jerked on my arm, trying to drag him into my rapier.

The Count let me drag him in – then dissolved his psi-weapon. He twisted so that my rapier skimmed past his belly, then brought his elbow smashing into the glacis plate on my armor. That glacis plate was modeled after the front armor of an M1-Abrams. It was angled to deflect away damage, multi-layered and fused with ceramics and a bunch of other complicated shit. So, it did its job very well in keeping me from getting crushed into a pulp under the telekinetic force of a pissed off Doyen Paladin.

However, it did nothing to stop me from flying backwards, out of control. My back clipped one of the flickering petals of the castle and went into a wild spin. I saw that I was hurtling towards the snow pack and ice. But I managed to get my back facing and triggered the jets with a tiny telekinetic jab. The armor on my back had a few heavy duty thrusters built into it. They flared and I slowed just enough that I could grab a hold of myself and send myself shooting back upwards.

The Count moved to intercept me. Behind him, I saw a stream of tracers flying out, and a Doyen Paladin flew into so many pieces as his warform was chewed apart by a gun made to rip apart tanks like they were skittles. But I saw the Count's mistake. He was moving to the angle he predicted I'd hit...using telekenisis. Well, fuck you douche-bag.

I let my TK drop.

He reacted – adjusting his course downward.

I hit my thrusters with a whoop. He dropped down and I flew past up, then arced downwards by firing my retro-thrusters and delivered the universe's first and finest flying missile dropkick. It struck the head of his warform with a sound not unlike two mountains being smashed together and the impact radiated along my leg armor and into my warform. My head ached, but despite it all, I screamed; "DEATH FROM ABOVE, MOTHERFUCKAAAAAAAA!"

The Count's head shattered and he flipped end over headless end, trailing a string of glowing psi-crystals. Much as I wanted to celebrate, I knew he wasn't dead. Not by a long shot. But I had disabled a big chunk of his war-form, and he'd feel a tiny fraction of the damage I had delivered to his psionic body. A tiny fraction of a flying missile dropkick from a sixty ton assault mech was enough to give anyone a fucking headache.

"Pirate Mask, behind you!"

I turned and groaned.

There had been ten Doyen Paladins on the walls. I had kinda hoped that five of them had gone inside for the planned ambush slash torture party. Nope. The ten of them outside were still outside, and they had scrambled. Now, four of them were arcing up towards me. I looked around and saw Ali and the rest of the still foot mobile group. The Doyen King and his robed motherfucker were nowhere to be seen, but I could see Ali with her feet planted against the back of some huge dude made of rock, one of her telekinetic bands wrapped a round his neck. Tycho was sparring with another Doyen, her psi-blade crackling and flashing distantly as their swords met and danced and the palace crumbled. I could see Ebony and Opal both working together to lead chattel onto the snow, Ebony waving her hand and sending out telepathic signals even I could hear.

Then Tycho managed to get her sword under the Doyen's guard. Her blade burst from his heart and I shouted: "Tycho!"

Tycho looked up, saw the sitch, and thrust out her palm. A glowing warp appeared above me. I reached up and closed my mecha's hand around the first thing I could feel. I yanked it down and saw that I was now holding a SWAT riot shield, but blown up huge and made of metal so thick that even my warform could feel the strain of it. And it seemed not a moment too soon. The instant I got it before me, the first arrow smashed home. Stone shattered and rebounded away and I slewed backwards. A warp opened to my left. I reached out with my free hand.

The shotgun was one of the simplest guns that humanity had ever made. Making it really really really really big had proved to be just as easy. It snapped into the shield as I flew to the left and the Doyen continued to fill the air with arrows. I worked the chamber and hoped we had loaded it with something good before we had left.

I pulled the trigger.

A slug nearly as thick around as my mecha's fist punched into the shoulder of a Doyen warform. Psychic crystal went flying and the Doyen went flipping and spinning backwards. His shoulder and chest hit the snow and sent up a spray as he furrowed the ice for almost five hundred meters. I worked the chamber by shoving the handle forward and working it back, the shield providing the brace. I fired again. This time, the slug caused the tornado wall to explode in a flurry of wind and snow.

The Doyen, though, were realizing that they had gotten into a contest that they could not win. Shotgun versus bow and arrow was not a great one. So, they tossed their psi-bows aside and formed swords, lances, axes. All three of the surviving ones rushed at me. I jerked my shotgun free from the shield, detached the shield with a twist of my wrist, and hurled it awkwardly at one of the leaders. He had lifted his ax up while screaming a war-cry that made my brain ache. The shield caught him in the gut and the folded around the shield, whose weight dragged him down to the ice and pinned him between the fire wall and the energy wall.

My sixth sense and Ali screamed at the same time.

Pirate!

I turned.

But it was too late.

The Count, having recovered far faster than I had imagined, shot towards me. He held a rapier in his hand, the blade resting along one fore arm, providing a way for him to aim right for my real body. He shot forward, and his voice boomed in my mind. Prepare to die, human scum!

I swung my shotgun around, desperately.

A blur shot past me. I could feel the wind through tiny chinks in the armor. My whole mech shuddered in that breeze. And the Count went flying backwards, crying out in shock as the massive chunk of castle shattered into psionic haze. Then Ali was soaring upwards, her warform glowing with a blazing red energy, like she was a star or flare. Before she had even cleared half the distance, Tycho had worked her magic and she was fully armored and armed.

Psi-sword in one hand.

Super-sized desert eagle in the other.

Was it possible to be any more aroused?

"Get the fuck away from my boyfriend!" She shouted, her voice booming from her armor mounted loud-speakers. Her blade and the Count's blade met – then met and met and met and met. The two danced above the crumbling palace as the Count desperately parried blow after blow after blow. Ali had been raised in Doyen fighting styles. But she took to human cheating the way the H'san took to cheese. If you didn't get that, Tanya Huff. Google her and thank me later.

Ali attacked without a care for her defense, and let her armor melt and bubble and hiss as the Count got strike after strike on her.

Why won't you die, traitor? The Count snarled.

"Funny, I was asking the same question!" Ali smashed her shoulder into his chest, the weight of her armor and a bust from her thrusters sending him skidding backwards and into the rotating pyramid. As the Count tried to get his warform back under control, Ali darted backwards and lifted her deagle and put round after round into his chest The Count, though, had clearly figured out what humans were about. He didn't try and stop the bullets. Instead, he twisted and shifted his real body around in the chest, so that every time Ali put a round into his warform, it zipped through a part of his warform where his real body wasn't.

"Ali!" I shouted.

She looked at me.

And I tossed her what happened when some PsiCom engineers were locked alone in a warhouse full of wasted taxpayer money. Someone had gotten the bright idea to take the old Chinese artillery shells they had stockpiled before their war-goals had shifted from "victory via overwhelming numbers" to "capitalism, but with red flags" and turn them into grenades. Ali caught the casing, which looked bumpy and lumpy and crude. But some helpful engineer had scrawled a yellow smiley face with Xs for eyes on it and the words: Up Yours, Die on the side.

One downside about shifting around your body inside of your warform?

It really gave you whiplash.

The Count was still trying to get his head to stop spinning when Ali grabbed his throat, forced the war-form's mouth open with her fingers, and then jammed the grenade so far down his psionic throat that the shell casing almost bumped his real head. Then she jerked back, holding the pin in one finger. She twirled it insolently.

"Thanks for the dance. Count." Ali said, purring as the pin caught the sunlight and glinted.

The Count grabbed at his throat, his eyes bugging.

Boom.

***

"It was a trap," Magnum said, arms crossed over his chest as we looked at the divot in the town center. I wasn't exactly happy to be back in the sweltering hotbox. But we had needed to get the now freed chattel spread out among as much of the population as possible. I hadn't been sure that that had been a good idea, but Ali had explained it pretty simply.

"The fief-lord of this place cut and run. That means that he officially gave up the claim. This planet is now up for grabs. That means that every Doyen House that wants it will put up stakes, pit warriors into it. But since they removed the gate..." She nodded to the divot that we were all glowering at. "They'll need to get here via scout-form. Fast as they are, that still takes time. And no one wants to get to a claim without guaranteeing it first, or else every other House in the Empire will team up to destroy the claim-jumper. This colony has at least ten years before a Doyen rules it again."