The Naked Weapon Pt. 07

So, Tycho's missiles were out. Opal was trying to find a new angle of attack, but looked hesitant. And Ebony's big fucking gun had been dinged up enough that I saw her trying to check the firing mechanism.

Time for plan F.

For fucking desperate.

"Abby?" Ali whispered.

"I'm going to do something stupid," I whispered as I stood - my feet only half healed. Hey, you try and biokinetically repair your feet while still in agony. But doing this was more important. I focused and stepped forward, growing into my warform as Victory Smith smashed a cautious jab from Opal aside. My warform was unarmored - and with Tycho out of it for the moment, that wasn't likely to change. But that was fine.

I didn't need armor for this.

Victory sensed my approach. She spun, swinging a psi-dagger in a curving arc that would have slammed into my chest and impaled my physical body. But I grabbed her furred arm, tugged her upwards, so that her dripping mandibles and many eyes were on the level with mine. And then, forcing back every sense of disgust or horror that I might have felt, I leaned forward...

And I kissed her.

Right on her mouth-parts.

Don't ask about the taste. And yes. I could taste through my warform's lips. It was a psychotelekinetic transduction of flavor senses through the psionic expression of my body. And don't ask me about the texture. Don't ask me about any of that. Only know that I was holding a massive, building sized spider to my chest, with my cock pressed against her belly fur (like a tarantula) and it took every iota of my willpower to cram a lid over the screamy voice in my head going: Spiiiiiiiduhrrrr...

My voice changed mid word.

Becuase, quite suddenly, I was not kissing mandibles and dripping toxins. My lips were pressed to the rubbery black lips of a humanoid woman, and my hands were cradling the dark black wrist of Victory Smith in her sexy dominatrix drow form. Just. You know.

Building sized.

I drew my mouth back.

"W-What?" Vicky stammered.

"What!?" Magnum's voice was muffled by webbing.

"Whaaaaaaaat!?" Tycho shouted through megaphones damaged enough to add an electrical warble to her words.

Opal nodded, her helmet clinking as her armor whirred. "Noice."

Vicky still looked good in her humanoid form. She blinked slowly as she looked at me, her hair-spines clicking and clattering in a rippling pattern like the folical version of a double take. Her psi-dagger crackled, then buzzed, then dissolved from her fingers as her hand went to her mouth. Then she smacked me. Hard. I staggered and almost fell to my knees, my feet sending up clouds of semi-volcanic ash.

"How dare you!" She hissed.

"Hey!" I exclaimed, standing up, rubbing my still glowing cheek with a glowing telekinetic hand. "You were the one who injected me with knockout sleep poison after banging!"

"I was paid too!" she snarled.

"Technically, I'm being paid by the United States Government to not let my friends fucking die," I said, shaking my head. "What the hell is El Robey-"

"Doctor Oblivion," she interjected.

I blinked, then jerked my head. "Doctor what?"

And that was when Victory Smith's chest exploded, showering me with smoldering chunks of flesh, bits of chitenous exoskeleton, and blood. Her eyes widened, then closed as she slowly slumped into my arms. I held her, too stunned to do anything for a few seconds as I looked past her and at the streak of purplish splotching that had seared into my eyes. It led straight back to a dot floating in the sky, about a half a mile away. That dot started to float closer as I looked down at Victory. She coughed, blood dribbling from her mouth as she clung to me.

"I would have expected such a betrayal from any simpleton thug paid a pittance to swing a sword for an unknown master - but to see it in one I paid so highly is...disappointing..." That gloating voice that was now the single most infuriating sound in the universe filled my ears, booming from the dot that was drawing closer and closer. "But as you have escaped from my trap, it seems that I must reveal myself in full to not only you, but the rest of your pathetic troupe..."

The figure was close enough that I could see that Fucking Gonna Die had grabbed onto his robes. He cast them aside with a dramatic flourish, revealing a humanoid face and build. His nose was broad and wide, while his eyes were set far apart. His hairline receded back showing off a whole bunch of his forehead, and his skin was a brilliant purple-blue. But more than that. He was dressed. He was clothed. He was a non-Doyen psychic wearing clothes. His clothes were perfectly skintight, with a black and red color pattern, complete with a the symbol that Ali had said was used by the Event Horizon faction. The final piece of the accountant was a cape, flapping behind him, and a single large gauntlet that rested on his right hand.

"I am Doctor Oblivion...and you are about to meet your e-"

I grabbed onto a boulder and flung it at his head, snarling as I did so. Doctor Oblivion didn't grow to warform size. He simply flew left, dodging the rock, then thrust a finger at me. A searing bolt of pure heat shot at me, causing the air to turn white. I flung myself left, and the impact still struck my shoulder, causing my warform to crackle and spark as my telekinetic field lost my arm entirely. I rolled as Opal lifted her shield and sprang between me and Doctor Oblivious.

"I see everyone in this backwards chunk of the galaxy lacks respect for a proper monologue..." he tossed his head. "No matter. I suppose that I will give you what you so clearly wish...a quick DEATH!"

Three things happened at the same time. Ebony shouted: "Look out!"

Opal ducked lower behind her shield.

And Dicktor Oblivious let loose with a stream of those heat blasts. They smashed into Opal's shield, turning steel into mist and burbling slag. Streamers sluiced along the shield and pattered to the ground as her heels dug into the obsidian covered earth, filling the air with shrapnel as she screamed out a war cry, then swung her psi-spear up at the small dot.

Doctor Oblivion caught the spear.

We all froze.

"W-What?" I whispered.

His hand. Not his gauntlet clad hand. His hand hand had grabbed onto the edge of Opal's spear-blade. Crackling psionic energy that was hot enough and sharp enough to cut through solid battleship armor buzzed against his palm as he sneered impressively, then twisted. Opal didn't have time to let go - she was dragged with her spear, then launched into the air. She twisted, spun, then came down half a mile away in a cloud of dust. Tycho leaped forward as Ebony worked the chamber on the cannon. She started to fire shells at Dr. Oblivion, who yawned and flew in a twisting, diving pattern, evading every shell, even as they burst in the air around them.

I got my arm back together.

Tycho clapped her hands together.

Dr. Oblivion flew straight into a warp.

"Where'd he go?" I asked, snarling.

"I warped him into the fucking sun," Tycho said. "Screw fucking around."

"Holy shit, Tycho..." I said, actually taken aback. "Hard core."

Tycho wobbled, then fell to one knee. "Ow..." She whispered, her hand going to her armored head with a resounding clitter and clatter. I let myself drop to normal size, my feet slapping the ground. The healing process had finished, and I ran forward on tiny telekinetic shoes until I got the side of her mecha. Tycho's armor settled, locking into place as her warmform inside shut down. She warped out and sprawled against me, her head hanging forward as I grabbed her, trying to start fixing the damage that pushing her powers had done to her.

"Thanks..." Tycho whispered.

Magnum grunted and struggled, then finally got his arms free. He started to stand as Opal limped back, one of her armored knees locked together by the damage. Ebony sighed.

"One of my ammo feeds is fucked. I don't want to risk shooting this thing again."

"Ali, are you okay?" I asked, looking around. Ali waved at me - she was walking around one of Vicky's huge feet. Looking at Vicky's corpse made my heart twist. I closed my eyes, then looked down.

"Guess she regrets teaching you biokinesis, huh?" Ebony asked, her voice solemn.

"What?" I asked.

"You didn't use biokinesis on her?" Ebony asked.

"No," I said, honestly. "I just figured that if she got horny, she'd shift to a fuckable form. You know. Instinctively."

"That was your plan?" Ebony shouted.

"Hey, I said it was fucking desperate!" I shouted. "In my internal narration!" I shook my head. "If I had known her biology well enough to use that kind of biokinesis on her, I'd have tried healing her..." I closed my eyes.

Boom.

Air smashed into each of us. Air and heat and light. I lifted up my palm, crying out in pain as the light stabbed into my eyeballs. But my confusion turned into disbelief and horror even before I heard the sound that came after the boom finished echoing and reverberating.

"Muahahaha...Ahahahahaha...AHHHHHAHAHAHAHA!"

Doctor Oblivion floated in the air, smoke roiling around his body, his hands on his hips as his cape snapped and crackled in the air. His teeth were spread in the hugest, most shit eatingest grin I had ever seen. His eyes flashed as he looked down at each of us.

"Very impertinent. But I, Doctor Oblivion, have faced dangers greater than a chronosphere, little girl." He smirked. "For your cleverness, though, I will let you live." And before any of us could react, he swung his hand around and fired a stream of burning heat into Magnum's head. The armor plating turned white hot, then burst with a resounding boom. Fragments flew off in every direction and Magnum slowly toppled to the side, sprawling in boneless death, his mecha armor crashing against the ground. Tycho, despite the fact she had only just been healed, leaped to her feet, screaming.

"Fang!"

Dr. Oblivion laughed. Laughed harder. Laughed hardest.

And got completely fucking cold-clocked by a bolt of lightning smashing into his chest. My ears were upset about yet another resounding boom smashing into them. The rest of me leaped to my feet and thrust my fist into the air as Dr. Oblivion staggered backwards. Lightning crackled along his body and my heart fell as I saw that he actually looked unharmed. Then my heart leaped again as smoke started to roil and puff from between the joints in his fucking glove. He quickly grabbed at his wrist, twisted a dial, and behind him, a shimmering portal opened. It looked...subtly different from Tycho's warps. The edges were brighter, and the portal didn't show any destination. Instead, it showed a tunnel of kaleidoscopic light.

"You haven't won yet, meddling heroes. I'll be back! And you will rue this day!"

He flew backwards and the portal snapped shut right before Ebony's cannon - which she had hurled like a javelin in the Olympics, impaled him. As the cannon smashed to the ground, I spun around.

Vicky was sitting up, her hand on her chest - which was still pretty fucking blasted open. But I could see new flesh starting to knit together. She hissed, then snarled as her body started to shrink slowly. "Next lesson, young one. If you become giant...build redundancies into your giant form." She smiled wanly as she finished shrinking. By now, her wound had completely healed as she moved organic bits around during the transition from being huge to merely being tall. Most of it had gone into subspace, but there had been more than enough left to plug the gap.

I sagged in relief, then turned to Tycho, who was sitting on her knees, tears streaming down her face, dripping off her chin.

"Tycho," I said. "Magnum's not in the head - we pilot from the chest. Magnum, great acting, by the way, he totally...bought..."

Magnum wasn't moving.

I started forward, then ran.

But by the time I reached the chest piece, I could already see the rivulets of blood pouring from the seams.

***

There were six of us on the Angel Grove.

But Beta Squad wasn't. It couldn't be, without Magnum. I had needed to biokinetically remove my ability to vomit to even go into his armor - but what I had seen had still been enough to leave me shivering, even as Ali leaned against me. The exploding helmet had contained the cameras and electronics of the mecha-armor, to allow Magnum to see. But those electrics had needed to feed into the chest piece, where the projectors sat before Magnum's physical body. That had left a...gap.

When the storm of superheated shrapnel had filled the air only a tiny fraction had gone down, tearing through telekinetic fields and flesh with the same abandon. But when a head the size of a Volkswagen exploded, even a tiny fraction was enough to...to...

We had buried him in his suit, using our warforms to scratch open the ground.

We had stood there, in silence.

Tycho had been the one to break the silence. "W-Why did I wait so fucking long to make my move?"

Now, we were on the Angel Grove. And I realized everyone was looking at me. Even Vicky.

They were expecting me to do something. Or maybe they just had their eyes focused on the reason why this had all happened. If I had thought with my head instead of my dick...I'd never have been captured. We'd never have run into Dr. Oblivion. We'd...we'd...I closed my eyes, hung my head forward, then breathed slowly in. I took every second guess, every worry, every doubt, and packed it into a box with a shove that I almost felt physically. Once I had shoved it away, I lifted my head.

"We know what Event Horizon is now," I said. "They're an organization fronted by this Dr. Oblivion. Which means we can now ask the Abyssal Archive the important questions. How the fuck do we beat a psychic that can survive in on the surface of a star?"

"I can help with that," Vicky said, her voice somber. "He's not psychic."

That jerked everyone's heads up. Tycho wiped at her red eyes. "He's not?"

"No," Vicky said. "I may not bee best telekine or telepath, but I can sense when someone is using powers. Especially when they are as powerful as him. But whatever he does, it doesn't tap into the same powers we do."

"Oh. Great." I rubbed my fingers on my face.

"That's impossible," Ali said, her voice quiet. "The Doyen have traveled hundreds of light years, visited thousands of planets, enslaved many races. There's only psychic powers."

"Not impossible," Opal said, sounding dull. Cheerless. "Just improbable. But once one set of quasi-physics becomes possible, whose to say how many other forms of extra-normal bugfuckery exist?"

Ebony nodded.

I looked at Tycho. "You ready to bring us back to the city? So we can head to the Abyss?"

She nodded, her face grim.

"Wait," Vicky said. "I...I owe each of you an apology." She looked aside. "I almost got you all killed for the payment offered by Doctor Oblivion. I thought..." She shook her head. "I thought he was merely eccentric. I didn't know that the device he had strapped you to was so deadly, Pirate Mask." She looked at me, her voice serious. "I had no idea."

I groaned, slapping my palm on my face. "Of course you don't know what a nuke is. And you weren't even trying to kill us, were you?"

"No," she said, looking down - her hair clittering in a slow wave. "If there is any way that I can make it up to you all, please...tell me."

"We could use a giant spider," Opal said, trying for a smile. It was weak. "And having someone who can heal faster and better than Abby-" she jerked her thumb at me. "Would be nice."

Ali nodded.

"Then let us remember your leader Magnum," Vicky said, holding out a series of glowing green spheroids. I took one and saw that it had a small drinking nipple, rather like the microgravity cups that we used. As I held it, Vicky hefted hers, then drank it down with a slow sigh. "Among my people," she explained. "When a friend dies, we drink intoxicants and remember him."

"Oh!" Opal exclaimed, then started to drink. Tycho did as well, slower. Ebony sipped. Ali leaned against me and started to drink.

My brow furrowed. 'Where did you get these from?"

"I secreted them using biokinesis." Vicky paused. "What?"

***

Getting to the Abyssal Gate was almost pathetically easy with Vicky's help. The plan was mine: "Vicky, can you make us into Doyen facsimiles?"

Ali had gasped. "D-Doyen? But, that's a crime! A crime punishable by death and...and...you're all already on kill on identification status in the Doyen Empire..." Her face had flushed. "Right. Good thinking, Pirate Mask."

And so, we had entered the city not as a Doyen and her group of slaves, but as a group of Doyen Paladins. Vicky had used what she had learned by examining me to carefully sculpt the externals of our bodies to look Doyenish, without actually changing the bits inside. This had been a slow, painstaking process, and had left her panting and sweating. Now, she walked behind us, in the posture and pose of a submissive servant.

"Let me do the talking," Ali whispered as we came to the Gate. I nodded to her, then focused purely on emitting a Doyen-ish style emotional make up. I hoped that if a Doyen tried to read my mind, they'd just see what a Doyen would expect to see: Thoughts of torture, murder, imperialistic hegemony, that kind of thing. The Gate itself made it slightly hard to focus on that sort of thing...but I did hope that even a Doyen might feel a bit of supernatural dread, looking at that.

It was a curved pair of prongs, reaching towards one another, the edges decorated in shiver-inducing patterns that looked like biomechanical flourishes. But I had this uncanny feeling that what I was looking at had a purpose. Each seemingly irrelevant knob, each out-thrusting bit of ribish bit, all of it radiated an ominous potentiality. Touching the wrong thing on that gate felt like it could cause the world to explode. Again.

The Gate guard seemed to be used to it. He simply looked Ali over, then at us. "So, House 921 wishes to enter?" he smirked. "I thought you had gone missing, Prime Tzali."

Tzali scoffed, in pure Doyen Princess mode. "Just let us through."

The guard inclined his head. "Walk through the portal. And remember, whatever price the Stygexians ask, you alone must pay."

Tzali waved her hand with a sneer. I swaggered past the guard, casually shoulder checking him as I did so. That felt pretty Doyenish. He staggered backwards, shook himself, then glared at me. But by then, we had stepped through the gate...and into the Archives of the Abyss. I had expected it to feel like stepping through Tycho's warp. Instead, it felt more like being torn to pieces then reassembled, bit by bit, while being aware of being torn apart every single micro-second of the transit. I shuddered as I emerged from the gate - and yelped as I saw my body was human looking again. Vicky was in her monster spider form. Even Ali was stripped off her princessly armor, leaving her naked.

We stood on a vast gray plain. Spreading outwards in each direction, it stretched outwards and outwards and outwards. I couldn't even see a horizon. The air tasted stale and dead and empty. Every breath made me want to walk outside, into the fresh air. Except there was no outside. I looked up slowly and drew in a quiet gasp, despite the air quality.

"Whoa," Opal whispered.

Floating above us was the accretion disk of a black hole. Which meant the hole itself was visible. It was a circle of pure and utter blackness surrounded by a light and heat that was only a few notches below a sun. Planets and stars were being slowly drawn into that disk, spiraling closer and closer towards eternity and oblivion. My skin prickled and I shivered as I tried to tear my eyes from it...but couldn't. Ali was the only one of us who didn't gape upwards. Instead, she slowly knelt down and bowed in the general direction of the black hole.