You Only C.U.M Once (Pt. 08)

Sparking.

Crackling.

Wireguns.

Tasers.

I swept myself around, then tossed one of my pokers to the side. The first of the drones did a cute little jogging motion to bring itself to a stop and then fired its left wiregun at me. I twirled my poker like a staff and the wires wrapped around it, sparking and popping and not biting into my flesh. I yanked, hard, and the wire strained and the drone almost collapsed to its side before it released the wire with a click and the whole shot came free in the air. The three other drones fanned out, clearly following a fairly simple flank and flush protocol.

"Wheee!" Michelle laughed, emerging from the left side of the clearing. It was more like a valley, or a divot, really, in the forested landscape. And Michelle had come at it at a speed indicating she had gone quite a way up the mountain before sweeping down on me -- meaning that she shot out over the edge of the clearing's left side and flipped upside down in the air, her pokers dropped and her pistols in her hands. She spun in the air like a helicopter and fired down at the drones, her pistols roaring as the acid-tipped rounds she had packed bloomed across the backs of two of them.

The drones twitched, fizzled, and started to fall, but the other two of them were trying to target select and you had time enough to draw your pistol. You sighted and fired, but unlike Michelle, you weren't a fucking psychopath and load your gun with acid-tipped rounds.

The explosive bullets you put into the drones were just as effective, thank you very much.

The two drones collapsed, smoking and sparking, while Michelle, who had landed safely, skiied down to where I was standing, grinning.

"I think I should get partial credit for those two, I was distracting them," she said, frowning.

"I mean, by that logic, I get partial credit because I led them directly into the line of your guns..."

"Ladies!" Rose called out from the front of the clearing. "If you're quite done measuring your girldicks..."

"I'm bigger," I said, grinning as I took up my pokers and began to do some cross country skiing, pushing myself over to Rose as Michelle grumbled under her breath and skiied after me. The two of us approached Rose -- and we saw that the clearing was the last bit of level terrain before there was a steep plunge down, a small chasm, and then the black face of the bunker. It was definitely an old war bunker: Concrete and steel, with narrow gun slits and a heavy duty black metal door. There were a pair of those drones perched out ahead of it, waiting for just about anyone to get close to it.

"How do we deal with that?" I muttered, thinking to myself, as Michelle drew her pistol and sighted.

Rose glanced back at the two of us, then yelped. "That's six hundred meters, that's a rough shot for a rifle let alone a pistol, and it's night and-"

The pistol twitched, the suppressor turning a loud roar into a loud bark. The first of the drones twitched, then stumbled, then fell, smoke rising from it that was visible even from six hundred meters at night. The pistol twitched again. The second drone sprang away, looked up and then the next three rounds slammed into it and it fell, visible even from this distance.

"...you wanted to show me up, didn't you?" I asked.

Rose snorted, quietly. "You two and your guns..." She said, then pushed herself forward -- and as she swept out, she picked up speed, roaring down the path and then hitting the chasm, shooting up and over it and landing again to come back to a stop right next to the door. Me and Michelle followed -- though I did throw a little twist in the air, just to show off myself.

The door itself was closed and locked tight -- but as I put my ear to the freezing cold metal, I frowned and my brow furrowed. "I don't hear any alarms through it, but if she doesn't know we're here, then I'm a monkey's uncle."

As I spoke, Michelle knelt by the keypad that had been recently added to the wall beside the door. Her fingers punched in some buttons, while a small wire led to her watch. She frowned. "This security is insane, it's going to take me a while to hack through it."

"Well, fucking hurry, then," I said. "If Anarchsex knows we're coming, the longer she had to prep, the worse it gets!"

As I spoke, Rose stepped up, then twitched her hands. She rolled her shoulders, then swept her arms up, then brought them down. I could hear the rasping sound as sparks exploded from the sides of the door and Michelle's eyes widened. She stood, then stepped backwards as Rose gripped onto the air. The moonlight glinted off the monowires that lead to each corner of the doorway, showing that she had grabbed onto the whole dang door with a single movement of her hands -- and then she tugged backwards. The door groaned, creaked, and moved grudgingly...then faster and faster as gravity took control and the entire thing swung forward and smashed down, the edges glittering with a mirror smoothness where the monowires had sliced through steel.

"...Christ, Rose," I said, grinning at her.

She did a cute little bow, then stepped off her skis, onto the door, and into the facility. I drew my pistol and followed.

***

The interior of the bunker was undercoated and unadorned. There were no signs of Anarchsex's logo or history -- it was more grim and creepy and dead than anything else. Without the moonlight from outside, we had to rely upon the flashlights that we had brought with us, sweeping them around ahead of us. Michelle and I walked with our pistols in our hands and the flashlights clipped to their barrels, while Rose simply held hers in her hand, her monowires the only thing she needed for her weaponry. We walked past old concrete doorways that were left open and mute.

Ancient bloodstains showed that this place had been fought over before, a long time ago.

We came to a central, circular room -- and there was no sign of Kate here, either. Or of any piece of advanced technology. There was only ancient looking electromechanical computers that had been left to rot, tucked here and there in the chamber. An old map of Europe that clearly had been last updated before the Berlin Wall fell was laid out in a circular table in the center of the room. Our flashlights did a terrible job of illuminating the place, but what little they did shine on showed nothing but the skeletal remains of the old world.

Then...

The beam of my flashlight settled on a logo over the far wall.

"T.A.S.K," I said, frowning.

"This is one of their old bunkers," Michelle said.

"Abandoned, during their civil war."

The new voice came from everywhere at once -- echoing and bouncing off the walls. I recognized it from the video.

Anarchsex.

Me and my friends put our backs to one another, so no one could sneak up on us. My flashlight played slowly along the walls, but I kept my ears perked as well. Did I hear a faint rasp of metal on concrete? A little click of movement?

"Where's Thorton?" I asked.

"Oh, the good little soldier is still out cold. I will deal with her later."

The voice seemed to be coming from above me. But I didn't sweep my gun up. Instead, I kept my slow tracking, my ears perked. Behind me, Michelle hastily reloaded her weapon -- swapping out the green tipped acid rounds for something a bit less horrifyingly deadly.

Click click click...

To my left. "You have no idea what Thorton's all about, do you?" I asked, then shook my head. "We've gotten an inoculation for Project Mata Hari -- your plan won't work, not after we're done laying our way through the eligible wealthy."

Clickclickclick!

The movement was fast and from my right. I swung my pistol to the right -- and saw nothing. Nothing at all.

Impact.

White flash.

Pain.

I crashed into the ground, skidding, and a dark figure, glittering oddly, flashed by over my head. She had come at me from the left, using the acoustics of the room to trick me. That thought didn't so much as come to me in a blinding blaze of insight as it crawled through my ringing head like a concussed sailor. I bit back some vomit and tried to get my hands to work under me as Rose whipped her monowires through the air. Concrete powdered in my dropped flashlight beam and Michelle dragged me to my feet.

"Fuck!" I hissed. "Ow."

"You all have your chance. You can join me." Anarchsex said.

"Fuck you!" Michelle snapped -- which wasn't precisely the way to seduce Anarchsex to our side.

Thunk!

Michelle jerked backwards, just barely avoiding the impact of the quivering needle that had launched in from the darkness. She didn't dodge the second one quite so well. It skimmed along her shoulder, slicing into her clothing and leaving a faint scratch on her arm. She hissed and I swept her leg out from under her with my leg -- so the last dart whipped past her and thudded directly into my shoulder. Numbness began to spread through my body, but I had a direction. I sprinted straight at Anarchsex...

And then threw myself to the right, spreading my arms wide. In the darkness, I had just a fifty fifty shot, and my luck held: My body crashed directly into her lithe, strong form. We both went down just as the stunning dart did its work and my whole body went slack and limp. That made me actually quite a bit better at pinning her down -- she snarled and wriggled, then got her feet against my chest and I realized that they came to strange, curved fin-tips. She had prosthetics?

She shoved against me, rolling me onto my back, and my head flopped limply. It was an annoyingly good stunning dart: I could see and think and breathe just fine. I just flopped there. The only reason why I saw anything that happened next was sheer fucking good luck.

Anarchsex was caught in a beam of a flashlight. She was a dark skinned woman, with lovely white hair (dyed, I think) that flared around her head in a short, frizzy afro, making her look almost halo'd. Her bulge was the only thing that was different from the video. Of course, the video she had put out had essentially only showed the bulge. But since a glowing pair of nuts wasn't what one wanted for a covert battle with three S-agents, she had clearly put some extra shielding on it. Other than that, she was all darkness and flowing movement, with a black leotard. Those fin-legs I had felt hadn't been prosthetics at all: She was wearing a pair of leg braces and the fin-legs were now folded up against her calves, freeing her foot to deliver a dizzying, rapid fire series of kicks to Michelle.

One kick sent Michelle's spare magazine flying, the second kicked the pistol from her hand, and the next three thudded into Michelle's forearms as she parried, blocked, and then tried to counter attack with a quick jab at Anarchsex's throat. Anarchsex, though, ducked low, then deployed her fin legs like springs. They shot her upwards and she flipped over Michelle's head and came down behind her, cracking her elbow into the back of my lovely comrade's skull. The clunk was loud enough that I tried to wince through my paralysis, and Michelle sprawled onto the ground.

Anarchsex rolled her shoulders. "Two down," she murmured -- and I had to admit, she was really fucking hot. If I wasn't currently paralyzed by a stunner dart, I would have a hard on.

"Saving the best for last, then," Rose said, her voice firm and not showing a hint of fear.

Anarchsex turned to face Rose, and despite my position, I could feel her sneer. "How fitting, my last fight for the day is against a dyed in the wool imperialist."

"I beg your pardon," Rose said, drawing herself to her full height and adjusting her collar. "This?" She unzipped her parka, sliding it off to reveal her gorgeous three piece suit, perfectly coiffed and not even mussed despite a bunch of cross country skiing and a chasm jump. Her hand swept along her body, taking in her entire form as she looked down her nose at Anarchsex. "Is purely aesthetics."

Anarchsex flung out her hands. A haze of darts shot into the air, and Rose swept her hands up, her monowhips slashing through the air, turning the darts into a showering fragments. But Anarchsex was already in her guard, bringing her heel up above her head, then smashing it down onto the back of Rose's palm. Her glove shattered with a spray of sparks and a cry of pain. Then the two of them were out of my line of sight and I heard nothing but thuds, thumps, impacts, blows, cries of anger and snarls.

I closed my eyes. I was not spending this battle on my back, limp and useless.

I started to focus my breathing. I tried to wriggle my hand. With enough focus, with enough gritting of my teeth, I felt my fingers twitch. Twitch. Clench. Unclench. My hand began to move and I focused on breathing faster and faster, hoping that by making my heart beat faster and my blood to pump quicker, my metabolism could burn through the stunner dart's toxins. Rose stumbled back into my line of view, blood dripping from her lip as Anarchsex sprinted past her, whipping into the darkness.

"You think you can stop global liberation?" Anarchsex snarled from the darkness.

"I can stop mass murder," Rose said. "I can stop useless gestures -- if you don't get the basic idea of how state capitalism works, I don't really trust you to start a massive revolution!"

"What would you know, running dog of the British Empire?" Anarchsex dropped from the ceiling -- her fin legs having been formatted into a pair of bladed knives. Rose yelped and rolled out of the way, barely evading being sliced and diced.

My hand could actually move now. I fidgeted. Twisted. Breathed faster.

Faster.

My arm was numb, but my fingers could draw themselves across the ground bit by bit, literally finger walking. I had to use the strength of my grip and my grip alone to move my arm -- closer and closer towards Michelle's pistol, which had been dropped near me.

I saw her hand, reaching towards it, moving in the same glacial pace. She and I both exchanged glances. I saw that she had a pair of darts in her shoulder -- at some point, Anarchsex had decided that she needed to be down for the count, not just elbowed.

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

Anarchsex kicked out and the blade at the end of her leg punched into the stone right to the left of Rose's head.

Michelle flicked her finger -- and pushed the gun just a half an inch, close enough that I was able to open my palm and I gripped the gun. It was so heavy. My strength felt so distant and forgotten. I panted heavily, my eyes narrowed to thin slits. Rose hit the ground right ahead of me, skidding a few feet and coming to a stop. She wheezed and coughed, clutching at her chest, trying to sit up and get her feet from under her, but she's clearly stunned. Anarchsex stalked over to her, then slammed down her fin-leg extender onto her wrist, pinning it down with the flat edge.

"You lose," she said. "But don't worry. You three will all see what I mean to do -- you'll learn why-"

"Hey," I said.

Anarchsex glanced at me.

"Read some theory," I said.

Then I pulled the trigger. The gun barked and twisted out of my head, the bullet whipping through the air and smashing into her shoulder. Anarchsex spun off Rose's chest and hit the ground, groaning, her hand going to her wounded shoulder. Rose, sitting up, groaned and rubbed her chest, then immediately leaped onto Anarchsex.

I closed my eyes.

In darkness, and in pain, Anarchsex's vision of a better world came to an end.

"Hey, Anarch, Thorton is awa-" A male voice cut into the darkened room, then paused -- and then lights came on, flooding the room with brilliance. I opened my eyes and saw that Anarchsex did have a goon. He was an older looking guy, but he had a uniform, an anarchist A logo on his chest, and a pistol at his hip. He blinked, looking at everything that was laid out before him. He saw me, he saw Michelle, he saw the prone, zipcuffed Anarchsex, and he saw Rose's fist smashing right into his nose. His head snapped backwards and he collapsed to the ground with a sprawl.

Rose shook out of her hand, panting, then turned to face us two, beaming at us.

"And that's one goon!" she said.

By now, I was able to push myself up. I could just barely speak. "Two..." I hissed. "Me two."

Rose smiled.

It was a new smile.

The kind of smile that she had learned only recently.

"Ah, I believe those...were drones, Miss Woods. Not goons at all."

***

"And you think she can be reformed?"

Alex leaned back in his office in the headquarters of T.A.S.K, beaming genially at Kate Thorton, who -- being the mission head -- was giving the final debrief. I was sitting next to her, trying to look professional. Michelle, miracle of miracles, was doing just the same. Kate gave Alex a cheerful nod.

"I believe Anarchsex -- real name pending -- has her heart in the right place. After all, she was only exploding right bastards," she said, her eyes sparkling. "I think with proper explaining of our ideals and our goals for a better world, we can see about bringing her into the T.A.S.K fold."

"Excellent," Alex said. "Shame about Marcus Eton...right?"

"Not necessarily, sir," I said. "We knew he was dabbling into supervillainy. He might have been a baseline, but we all know that being a baseline doesn't make you not dangerous."

Alex nodded, slowly. "Quite..." he grinned. "We all learned that recently."

"You did?" I asked. "Did...something happen?"

Alex chuckled, and looked quite enigmatic as he leaned forward, clasping his hands over the desk. "But lets move onto the most important part of this little escapade. Kate Thorton, how did Michelle Archer and Kimberly Woods shape up under your tutelage?" He arched an eyebrow at the three of us, looking quite serious. Kate drew herself up.

"I believe there are no finer agents in T.A.S.K than these two," she said, honestly. "Not only did they successfully capture Anarchsex, but they also secured a fortress island, wiped out an army of goons, restored some proper relationships with MI69 and...on a personal note, they also restored my own faith in what we do."

Alex nodded, then slapped his palms against the desk.

"Excellent work! Michelle, I believe Tabby has a new gun for you to check out in the lab," he said, causing Michelle to sit up excitedly, her eyes shining. "And Kimmy, there is a certain special someone in your-"

I was out of the door and down the corridor before he finished the word 'rooms.'

I came to my door and thumbed open the doorway and there, laying in my bed, with the biggest, smuggest grin on her face, was Amanda O'Neill. Her hair had been cur down to a cute little pixie frizz and she was dressed in what looked like an...a...an Australian flight suit. She had the shoulder patch and everything. And a medal with a purple star burst on it, glittering on her chest. She had one of her legs up over her knee and was kicking her foot while she bobbed her head to music that was playing in her earbuds. Upon seeing me, she pulled out her earbuds.

"Well, well, well," she said. "Kimberly Woods..."

I crawled onto the bed, and kissed her. Fiercely. Hungrily. My tongue thrust into her mouth and my hands swept along her sides, drawing her close to me. Her legs scissored around my back as she rolled her hips and forced me onto my back. I sprawled there, groaning as she broke the kiss, pulling her teeth along my lower lip as she purred down at me.

"I see you missed me." She licked her lips.

"What the heck happened to you?" I asked, laughing.

"Hey, you know all those UFO sightings the US government has been talking about?" She smirked. "A subterranean arctic base controlled by a cabal of eugenicists had created an entire fleet of top of the line s-tech airplanes. That was what the various armed forces of the world were spotting and they were planning to unleash an air blitz until I led a rag tag fleet of top secret fighters against them. Shot down the control ship, swept the skies clear, made a double ace, and came home just in time for my deadbeat girlfriend to pull in a third rate terrorist." She leaned forward, her forehead pressed against mine. "I missed you too."