Chapter 9

After being strapped to an atomic bomb by a cackling supervillain, running into microbes that could induce a jaunt through the astral plane, and getting an alien space princess for a girlfriend, you’d think that I’d be out of things to find utterly surreal. Heck, I’d taken banging a sexy spider chick in stride. Gigantic lizard monster? Pff! I could handle that. Galaxy sprawling alien slave empires? Passe!

But some part of me still rebelled at the idea of a sexy neanderthal. It just didn’t make sense. And yet, here she was.

The neanderthal greeting party had arrived a few seconds after we had finished toasting their kaiju that had been threatening their fair city. Their arrival had been just as dramatic as ours had, though they had replaced ‘psychic wormholes and mecha’ with capes, spandex, and sonic booms. Five of them flying over the city, then swinging down to land before us in classic movie style superhero poses. Like, fist to the ground, arm out swept, leaving behind tiny craters in the sidewalk surface. I saw the concrete was already starting to knit together as their leader walked towards us.

She was the aforementioned sexy neanderthal. Her body was curvy and muscular in all the right ways, and her face was less uncanny valley than Doctor Oblivion or the placid faces on the biometric scans we had been given. Animated with life and intelligence, a neanderthal looked way closer to us homo saps than you’d expect. Her costume didn’t hurt either: It clung to her curves like a coat of paint, outlining every single muscle group and every curve of hip and chest. The shoulders were gold and the arms were black, while the chest was an interlocking pattern of geometric shapes done in gold trim, with black making up the interstitial space. Her boots were nice, quality ass-kicking boots, but they shared the same general coloration as the rest of her suit.

And to top it off, the cape. The inside was gold, the back was black. Very Batman.

She thrust her finger at me. “Who the bloody hell are you and what the bloody hell are you doing and where are your pants!?”

I grinned, weakly. “Uh-” I waited, half a beat, for Magnum to step up and do the explaining before ... right ... I coughed. “As I said. I’m Abby. Er, Abadai Hatem. Homo Sapiens.” I inclined my head slightly. “This is, uh, Beli Lapran, Diamond White, Tasmin Khan, Victory Smith and Tzali.” I gestured to Opal, Tycho, Ebony, Vicky and Ali in that order. Each one had stepped out of their war forms. Beli was letting it all hang out without any sign of embarrassment. Ali had crossed her arms over her chest and was frowning at the neanderthals with a look of consternation. Vicky had simply shifted herself to not have external sexual characteristics. Tycho had gone for the old ‘curl up and hide behind someone else’ strategy.

Ebony had picked the more straightforward strategy of just not giving a fuck. She didn’t hide anything, but she didn’t pose like Beli, which did more to make her seem sexless than ten thousand signs saying ‘i am ace as fuck.’

It was a lot more space efficient too.

The woman scowled at me. “And why the bloody hell did you show up in some blacktech suits and blow away our Cat-2?” She stepped forward. “I-” She paused. “Wait...” Her brow furrowed and she sniffed slightly. She looked back at the other. “Omniack, you smell that too?”

“Their genetic structure is distinct from ours in a way deeper and more pervasive than genejacking,” a neanderthal wearing a pair of thick goggles and a suit of gleaming plate armor. It didn’t look like it had been built by any earth culture, but it still had the same general concept: Curved metal to turn aside weapons. I could see anachronistic touches, though, like servos and tiny radio dishes and computers built into the wrists. “I think when he says homo sapiens, he’s referring to a species...”

The woman looked back at me. Her eyes narrowed.

Then she gasped. “Holy fuck they’re not from the Race!”

I pointed at myself. “Like, uh, no shit?”

“That’s why they smell so weird!” One of the neanderthals was, quite suddenly, standing right next to me. He was dressed in a lurid green, skintight outfit with a large gear symbol emblazoned on his chest. He sniffed my hair. “Not bad, mind!” He grinned. “Not saying that they need some Blazon spray.” He winked at me.

I blinked slowly. “Are you fucking pitching me hairspray?”

“Blazon!” the woman shouted. “we told you!”

“Hey, just cause you all hate endorsements...” Blazon said – suddenly, he was standing back by the rest of them.

I pointed at the woman. “You!”

“Paragon,” she said, frowning.

“How many tons can you lift?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“ ... Pirate, what the fuck are you talking about?” Tycho hissed from behind Beli, who was starting to clap her hands excitedly.

“A lot,” Paragon said, angrily.

“AHAH!” I laughed. “Superman, Iron Man, the Flash!” I pointed excitedly. “And I bet he’s a shapeshifter?” I pointed at the guy in the gray and purple uniform with the face covering mask. “No, no! Laser eyes!”

The guy in the face covering mask grunted. “My question is, why the fuck do they have an unarmored Doyen with em?”

The entire group of neanderthal superheroes turned to look at Ali. Ali glared at them, sticking out her chin. “I’m not unarmored,” she said, angrily. “I’m just naked. As is just and proper as a member of Bravo Squad. And you!” She pointed at Paragon. “You should be happy. We saved this city. Before a single thing was damaged!”

Behind her, with malicious timing, one of the tankers that had been overturned by the kaiju’s splashing around in the harbor exploded with a distant krrump.

“ ... before a single important thing was damaged,” Ali snarled.

Paragon frowned.

“Do you guys have, uh, a Hall of Justice where we can maybe discuss things and I can, er, we can get pants?” I asked.

“Hall of Justice?” Paragon asked, snorting disdainfully. “What an absurd name!”

We all sat in the main meeting room of the Tower of Utopia and Honor and waited for the refreshments to show up. I was not comfortable wearing neanderthal pants. Not because they were uncomfortable. Far from it! They were made of a cotton-ish fabric that felt nice and comfy around my butt region (which, I’ve been told, is the fifth most important region of a human body.) No, it had more to do with the fact that, previously, we had been psychics dealing with superheroes. Now, we were just regular humans dealing with superheroes.

“They’re pretty quick to take off,” Tycho muttered as she shifted in her seat. “I’m ready to drop trow and warp us out of here.”

I nodded to her as the door opened and a cheerful robot walked into the room. They looked like a cartoonish neanderthal made of plastic and blue painted metal, and they whirred forward with a gay whistle. Since they weren’t a living being, the psychic translation we all used reflexively (fortunately, this power was low impact enough that it’d still work even while we wore pants) didn’t work on it. But from the C3P0 tone it used, I was pretty sure it was telling us how delicious the tea and cakes it was serving would be.

The tea tasted like water that had once been told that tea leaves existed, and thus, had an idea of what it could possibly be flavored like. That idea of a flavor ghosted across my tongue, while Opal made a face as she bit down into one of the crackers.

“That bad?” I asked.

“I mean, maybe my taste buds have been sandblasted from a childhood of vindaloo...” she said, shaking her head slightly. “But to me, this tastes like cracker flavored with cucumber.”

“Man, fuck cucumbers,” Tycho said, angrily.

“Did cucumbers kill your family?” I asked.

“No, they just take three times the water of most plants and they taste like fucking nothing. They’re garbage plants for garbage people and, more importantly, what the absolute fuck is going on!?” Tycho glared at the rest of us.

“It seems that the Doyen Empire has an implacable and highly dangerous enemy,” Vicky said. “For generations, we’ve been trying to determine what kills Doyen that try to travel outside of the Empire’s territories.”

“Whose us?” Ebony asked.

Ali sighed. “Non-Doyen who have some stake in the Empire, like Vicky,” she said, her voice bitter. “Most Doyen are themselves too focused on trying to get a toe hold over one another.” She shook her head. “I was a prime, one of the chosen who would inherit the future of my House ... and I only vaguely knew that such a threat existed. My education was more about who I could assassinate without being called out for it.” She sighed and leaned on her palms, her elbows resting on the table. “And half of those were other family members.”

I reached over and drew Ali into a hug. She needed it, and as the team leader slash lucky guess guy slash face, that meant it was my duty to hug her. Plus, boyfriend!

The door opened again and in came Paragon, Omniack, Blazon, and the two others who I hadn’t gotten names for. Paragon was dressed in her civies. I was hoping that her being sexy as fuck had more to do with the fact that she was wearing five cans of spray paint and a cape, which just so happened to be one of my fifty eight billion fetishes. But nope! Even in neanderthal T-shirt and neanderthal jeans (both of which looked hand crafted and made to fucking last. Like, I could see the switching that was how thick and sturdy it was), Paragon radiated a ‘come fuck me’ aura that hit me even harder now. Her breasts seemed fuller and more inviting, her face more charmingly beautiful. Her continually radiating tsundere aura just made me want to...

Senpai notice me wasn’t what you responded to tsundere. Fuck. I fail at anime!

Whatever it was, I wanted it way more now that my psychic powers were offline, which hey wait a fucking second! I scowled at Paragon.

“Are you mega-hot?” I asked.

“Pirate!” Ali hissed. “I’m normally all for you seducing another woman while I’m right here and can watch, but I don’t think that the blunt strategy will work.”

“No, I mean...” I held up my hands, then placed them down on the table, parallel to one another. “Are you, Paragon, gifted with a superhuman ability to be physically attractive?”

Paragon ratcheted up the glare from 6 to 9 on the Torin Kerr ‘pissed off badass female sci-fi action hero character’ scale and leaned forward. “How about I interrogate you, Abby. Lets start at the beginning.”

“Like, big bang beginning, or beginning of human history beginning?” Opal asked, leaning forward.

“What’s the big bang?” Vicky whispered.

“Later,” Ali hissed to her. “Humans are very clever. They’ve discovered a lot of things.”

“Big bang theory?” Omniack leaped into the multi-directional conversation. “You believe that outmoded trash theory?”

“What’s your explanation for the red shifting of the cosmos?” Opal shot back.

“Any race capable of space flight and those combat vehicles should have obviously spotted the evidence for a cyclical steady state universe!” Omniack said, slamming his palms into the table.

“Everyone shut the fuck up!” Paragon shouted, leaping to her feet, her palms slamming into the table. Her wide nose flared and she glared at me with ... well, with the exact same kind of glare I had gotten from Sergeant Barry, which was far far far scarier when attached to a woman both superhumanly attractive and able to bend steel bars with her bare hands. And maybe shoot lasers out of her eyes, I didn’t know. “How the flying fuck did a dying species on a dying planet survive and get mobile armored walking fighters and how the fuck did you not get wiped out by the Doyen Star Empire?”

I blinked. “Dying planet? Dude, Earth’s fine. I mean, yeah, there’s a little bit too much carbon and fifty thousand nuclear weapons-”

“Nuclear what?” Omniack leaned forward excitedly, before Paragon lifted her hand to silence him.

“According to our historical record, our ancient ancestors dwelt on a world that was growing progressively colder,” she said, frowning. “Food sources were dying out, and our sister species, the ... uh...” She coughed and had the common courtesy to look somewhat ashamed. “The Small Nosed Idiots...”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Oh. I see how it is.” I muttered.

“Well, they lacked Sparks!” Paragon said. “That’s a, uh, percentage of the population that is capable of tapping into quantum effects. According to Spark science at the time, your brains were too small. Not enough room.” She tapped her temple slightly. Neanderthal heads were bigger than ours. I frowned slightly.

“Even a super-genius can be wrong,” Ebony said, thoughtfully. She rubbed her chin. “And even if they had five Lex Luthors and a Tony Starke, there’s a limit to what they could have done with neolithic tools and knowledge.” She looked at me. “But that doesn’t explain how they got off world.”

“Sparks’ inherent powers are chaotic and determined by many factors,” Paragon said. “Mine are inhereted. Blazion’s are based off a quantum charged clock he had.” She pointed to Blazion, who waved at me cheerfully. “Omiack gained his when he hit puberty. Eyebite’s eyes were gouged out in an industrial accident and that was how his powers activated.”

“Eesh. Sorry,” I said, looking at Eyebite.

He shrugged. “Teaches me to not wear goggles.”

Paragon sighed. “A few had the power to bridge space and time. They evacuated their tribes – not every tribe. Many hated Sparks, others had, uh, what did you say your race was? Homo Sapiens? They had Homo Sapiens lovers and family and didn’t want to leave them.”

“Aww!” Opal cooed.

“So, uh, after your people left Earth,” I said. “The remaining neanderthals interbred with humans. Apparently, not enough to give us any Sparks.” I frowned, leaning my chin on my hands. “Then, uh, we shot down a Doyen scout about twenty years ago, reverse engineered how to give ourselves psychic powers, and have been fighting a secret war with them ever since. If they figured out where our homeworld is, we’d be totally hosed.” I paused.

Everything crashed home in a single, shattering moment of revelation. I didn’t think it was all or even mostly precognition. It was dozens of tiny clues and big clues, crystalizing into one big plan pointing to one big gigantic ‘you are totally fucked’ sign. My stomach turned to ice and I felt like I was about to vomit. My heart raced and the only thing that I could think or say was...

“Oh fuck.”

“What?” Paragon asked. Everyone else at the table looked concerned.

“You have Sparks...” I whispered. “You also have supervillains, right?”

Paragon nodded. “A few are in prison, but several are at large. Lizardes Maximus is one, his monster was the one that you blew away. By the way.” She thrust her finger at me. “Don’t use projectile weapons on El-Em’s critters! They bleed toxic sludge on purpose! That’s why we punch them. We’re not idiots, you know?”

“What about Doctor Oblivion?” I whispered.

Utter silence drew on the rest of the table.

“What do you know...” Paragon growled, her fingers drawing furrows in steel with a noise that made my hair stand on end. Her eyes glowed a brilliant red and I felt a faint heat growing on my face, like looking into a search light. “About Doctor. Oblivion?” Her fingers punched through the metal as if it was paper, compacting the chunks of the table she had grabbed so hard that molten steel started to drip around her fingers, sizzling on the ground.

“He’s building a Doyen army,” I whispered. I sprang to my feet. “That’s why he was going to various Doyen courts. He was trying to get as many on his side as possible.” I slammed my fist into the table, my brain going a mile a minute. “Let me guess: he’s tried to take over this planet dozens of times, hasn’t he?”

The others nodded.

“So, he goes to the Doyen to get muscle. He kicked our asses, but I’m betting there are way fewer Sparks than there are psychics, right?” I nodded.

“Well, there are about one to five million Paladins in the Empire,” Ali said. “More, if you count squires, nobles who are learning other trades. Then there are Doyen artisans and slave takers, and then the auxillery.”

“How many of you are there?” I asked.

Paragon blinked. “Five of us. The Defense League is five Sparks. The rest are all private citizens. Most Spark powers are more useful in civilian life anyway. Then there are the supervillains.” She smiled. “I like that term. Much more to the point than our anti-social and maladapted Spark.” She frowned. “Even a hundred thousand Doyen Paladins would be more than we could handle.”

“And he’ll have way more than that if he gives them Earth on a platter,” I said, dragging my shirt over my head. “We’ve been pissing in the entire Doyen Empire’s soup for twenty years!” I looked at Tycho, was already tearing her clothes off as well.

“D-Do you have to be naked?” Paragon asked, covering her eyes with one hand.

“Yes! We’ll explain on the way,” I said, pointing. “Warp us to the mecha!”

In my warform, it was a matter of fifteen seconds to get Omniack to hook us into the communication network the League used. Paragon was talking with the neanderthal equivalent of the United Nations, while Tycho talked through the issue with Omniack.

“Fascinating!” Omniack whispered in my ear, his breathy excitement sounding far too sexual for right now. “Your brains are too small to contain the reservoir of power that Sparks need. Plus, without the circulation of our bodies, you can’t dump enough waste heat. But your psychic powers, since they draw on repeating memes that have imprinted themselves in the subquantum strata of the universe, they-”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s cool, doc, can you just wire my brain up so that I can warp us across the galaxy without my head exploding?” Tycho snapped.