First and Twenty

Noxo was a bitch. A lungful could drop a man for a couple of hours. Without help. The best option was to drive a syringe full of counteragent straight into the heart. Yet, it was difficult to deliver that to oneself. The other solution was to build up a tolerance.

Amy blinked and coughed as her eyes and throat fluttered and spasmed into wakefulness before her brain could catch up. She’d been out for sixty-two minutes, not her personal best, but she wouldn’t be alert for another nine. She rolled her neck and shivered on the lumpy steel floor. She had been defeated, captured, and imprisoned.

At least, it was her fault. Setbacks were always easier to take with someone to blame.

Amy’s first rule of getting captured was: “What are you getting captured for you dumb bitch?” Her second rule was: “What’re you waiting for? Get uncaptured and payback, you dumb bitch!” She usually didn’t add the “You dumb bitch!” to rule two. Usually she had Simon to back her up. If she was caught, he knew it. It was her job to get free so she wasn’t some damsel.

She clanked her handcuffs on the steel table leg splitting her asscheeks. It was riveted to the floor on four brackets. She stood up; her wrists hit the bottom of the table. She was still bent forward and over.

Inventory. She counted her teeth, clacked her nails, wiggled her toes. She cricked her neck, flexed her stomach, and clenched her ass. She had her sports bra, a military tank top, and her pair of boy shorts. Her hair was ripped loose from her combat pigtails. Shit, she had had Loju fit small explosives in her hair ties. She had wanted to hide them in braces, who would take her braces? Then she saw those pictures. One crooked incisor wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

What didn’t bother her was that they’d taken her boots, socks, body armor, guns, ammo pouches, toolkits, and everything else. What bothered her was that Derek and the slut had been the help! The hench! She’d lost to the lunkheads and still had no idea who she had been chasing down in the laboratory mall.

She did have her environment. She seemed to be in a vault. One dull red lamp illuminated the room. Steel and glass cases lined the walls she could see and a massive blast door stood imposingly straight ahead. She heard the low hum of air fans. At least she hadn’t been left to suffocate.

The one thing she didn’t see were video cameras. They’d been in the hall, logging who came and went, but inside the labs and the vaults, there weren’t records. What did they even do here? R&D for Barrett Maxwell could be anything from new synthetic fibres for workout clothes to a new robotic chassis for attack drones.

At least she wasn’t at some WinterPharm facility. She wouldn’t want to be a guinea pig for some new drug trial.

“You’re captured Amy. You can’t rule the worst out yet,” she said, cotton still sat between her neurons damping her thoughts. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been speaking to herself.

No cameras to see didn’t mean they weren’t monitoring at all. The cabinets were much too far away, even stretched to her limit. Usually, she found a hundred eighty-five centimeters was too much for a woman. Right, now Amy could’ve used another fifteen.

Option two. The table overhead. She showed off her flexibility rocking herself up and sliding her calf across the empty table face. Fuck. She rotated back down to her seat on the floor.

She had the cuffs and the leg then. She raked her fingernails across the chain of the cuffs, she’d bet on them surviving longer than the plate steel leg roughing the split in her ass. She felt around. Four rivets held the brackets to the floor and four more held the brackets to the leg. Rivets, not bolts. There was no unscrewing anything to unscrew herself. Her fingernails dug into metal. Her specific brand of nail polish was straight from Great Justice, but it was one thing to cut through zip-ties and another to carve apart steel.

Last option then. She wiped her foot and toes as clean as she could on the inside of her thigh. With another look for cameras she couldn’t find, Amy reached into her mouth with her left foot. Pulling out her back fake molars was a pain in the ass, and the gums had grown in tight around the mounts. She could feel the blood welling on her tongue as she dropped both back upper teeth onto her tongue. She twisted her head and carefully pushed the teeth looking capsules onto her shoulder. She bent far forward, and rocked and flexed, trying to roll the teeth down her arm and into her palm.

The trick to being a superhero was more practice than an autistic stage magician. No, it was having Simon to back you up, you dumb bitch! She laid the first tooth against the rivet, looped it and the chain of her cuffs against it. She pulled it forward cracking the enamel. She yanked her fingertip away from the bubbling acid.

Loju had taken care of the acrid metal smell. The problem was chemistry moved at its own time. Not Amy’s. She tried to think. Where was her gear? What about the vault door? Did it even open from the inside?

It began to ripple, the massive metal structure under the red light before her eyes started to warp like a placid pond that just had dozens of little stones dropped into it. The waves interfered, constructively until at first pinpricks of soft fluorescent light shone over Amy. She dropped her head.

“Motherfucker.” She had shaken off the Noxo.

“There you are,” the cackling voice was bright and jovial. The little pinpricks had coalesced into baseball sized holes. They rolled as warping ripples through the steel into a vague oval big enough for the armored and becaped devil grinning at her.

Baseballs collided and became basketballs. Amy could just watch over the four minutes it took as the oval emptied of door and Devilchild stepped through.

He was shorter than her, even with his armored boots. He wore black and violet segmented armor. Broad pauldrons sat on his shoulders and his scarlet lined cape floated down to his ankles. His dark hair was slicked back from his forehead and a laughing devil mask covered his face and eyes. Blueeyes lenses blocked her view of his mockery. The emblem on his breastplate was a more stylized version of his mask, but with the eyes vivid red rather than pale blue.

“Look at you,” he tutted happily. “You have quite the figure under your little body armor, don’t you?”

He squatted down over her. She immediately went to kick him in the stomach. He eased himself around her blow and slapped his clawed gauntlet on the bare skin of her thigh. “Not soft like a woman,” he shook his head. “Except maybe here?”

He grabbed her left breast and she turned her defiant face away from him as he laughed. “And who left you for me?”

“Go to hell!” Amy grumbled.

“Oh, so sad,” Devilchild said. He swiftly snatched her chin and turned her face to his. She closed her knuckles tighter. The clink of her cuffs against the table rang out in the room. “Well, I can trust the others to attend to the rest. I have an open schedule to fit you into.”

“Simon’ll--”

“You didn’t bring Simon,” he laughed. “Or I wouldn’t be here with you in this quiet unwatched place.”

He stood up, pulling off his devil’s mask. He had a boyish face, blue eyes, fair skin, and a wicked smile. He tossed his mask, pauldrons, cape, and gauntlets far out of reach behind him.

“You’re awful confident,” Amy said, very worried.

“Because I have my squadron behind me,” Devilchild laughed. “And you before me.”

Amy clenched her teeth. Her cheeks flushed against her will. She hated showing that weakness, but the door had sealed itself closed so only the lurid red lighting of the vault shone on her face. The blush was hardly visible.

He grabbed her leg this time when he approached and shoved her knee into her chest. He grabbed her mouth, thumb in her cheek and pulled his face straight to his.

“Mine. Mine. Mine.” He whispered threateningly. She yanked her head backwards and he let her go. It was blind luck that she didn’t cracked her skull against the table leg. He reached down and ran his hand over the lump of her sex. She gasped and shivered.

“I’m gonna make this hurt,” he said. “I do so love payback.”

“I’ll get you for this,” Amy said, on a fiery whisper.

“You’ll try,” he laughed. He slapped her pussy and she winced. He reached up and grabbed the hem of her tank top. He yanked upwards, grabbing under her sports bra as he lifted her clothes from her large round breasts. He grinned. “Soft, like a woman.”

“Shut up!” Amy said, but he slapped her tits right and left, always smiling as he did. He dropped her leg onto his thigh. His armor was pressed against her sex as he pulled on her nipples until her breath changed from a growl to a moan.

“Good,” he slapped her tits again and reached for her jaw. “No biting.”

“You giving me ideas?” she asked, sweetly, tilting her head and fluttering her eyelashes. He pushed her head hard back against the table leg and kissed her. She didn’t bite, her mouth responded like the way her shaking legs and wet pussy responded. When he pulled back, she could see he knew what was happening to her.

“Little by little, you give everything to me,” he laughed. He slid his hands down over her tits and across her washboard stomach. He grabbed the hem of her underwear, athletic boyshorts, and stood up. She couldn’t help but kick her ankles free with her knee against her chin. Her bottoms landed with his gauntlets.

He stepped down on her thigh and pinned her left leg to the ground as he towered over her. He unlatched the sides of his armor and tossed his breast and backplates away. He pulled down his pants and his cock hovered in front of her face, but he left on his boots and greaves. He pressed his foot down harder.

She winced. He laughed when the rapid clanking of her handcuffs on the table leg behind her rang out madly in the room. He grabbed her face, shoved his thumb back inside her cheek and pulled her forward eye to eye with his erect cock.

“No one gets that lucky twice,” he decided, rubbing the tip of his cock over her distorted lips. He removed his hand, running his thumbnail across her clenched teeth. He pushed her face away from his cock. He climbed down on his knees pushing her legs further open before him.

Amy glared daggers.

“Patience...” he laughed. “Like I said, we’ve got time.”

He ran his fingers up her wet slit and tossed the golden blonde hair over her clit. “You’re not all hard and muscles in here, are you?”

“What’re you--”

Amy chomped down her voice when Devilchild’s fingers curled up inside of her. She thrashed at the invasion. She brought her knees up with her heels pressing against the floor as she flinched and fought. She cursed as her index fingernail cracked. She swung her head madly at Devilchild’s face. She stabbed her middle finger into metal and shouted in pain.

“Yeah, I got in this job for the screaming women,” he said. Devilchild dashed his mouth forward. Amy gasped as he skated his teeth across her throat. She brought her knee up but she had no direction or leverage. She could barely rub her thigh across the tip of his dick. He was in control.

His hand jabbed and twisted inside of her. She bellowed as he pinned her back against the table leg. He pulled his hand from her pussy. It ran out with a slick pop. He dragged her desire up across her stomach and over her tits.

“Look at what I do to you?” He waved his wet hand in front of her face and sucked them dry with a smile. “Maybe I’ll keep you tied up forever? You belong like this.”

“Goddammit--”

“Shh...” He shut her up with a wet finger across her mouth. “Be a good girl, and maybe I’ll even fuck you.”

“What?” She frowned. He reached down and started circling her clit. He had his cock in his other hand. He aimed himself for her, but then he pulled up at the last moment and ran himself over her sex. Then he did again. “Just fucking do it!”

“You don’t get to say when,” he said. He pushed his face to hers. “I say--”

She slammed her wrists forward as the acid-rotted and fingernails-cut the chain links between her cuffs shattered. She lunged forward as The Devilchild wailed. She kissed him hard, grabbed his shoulder and slammed him hard onto his back.

“Amy!” He shouted when she let him up but she put her knee down on his thigh, reached under her for his cock and lined him up for her pussy. “For fuck’s sake! No fucking topping from the bottom!”

“You were killing me there, Nathan!” She growled and slammed her hips down onto his cock. “Oh-hoh-ho! I haven’t been that turned on in my life.”

“I would’ve done more if you had let me keep edging you up on it!” He growled, but he grabbed her hips and started fucking into her hard pussy as she rode him, spittle dripping down her chin.

“So, oh, I take it the door’s on a timer?”

“Ten minutes to open,” he said, he tried to roll her over and get on top but she slammed down his neck.

“I’ve been on the cold steel too long, it’s your turn,” she said, gasping lightly as she bounced her hips. “Oh my god! Oh my god! I can’t believe they sent you here to get me. She knows we’re together, she had to know this would happen.”

“X’s laid up,” Nate had given in and started fucking Amy as best as he could. “Red had to form a new team.”

“New team? I thought Lincoln wasn’t gonna happen until YD took another member?” Amy gasped, her heart sinking. This was her fault. “Trials were coming in four weeks. I’d finally qualified for my place.”

“That’s not it, Amy,” Nate said, but Amy was shouting at herself.

“It’s because I fucked up! Stupid bitch!” She snarled through clenched teeth. She closed her eyes hoping to stop frustrated tears from forming. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

“Amy! Amy, stop!” Nate said, worried. She kept going. She kept cursing. She rode out with all of her energy and rage. “Amy! It’s Simon! Red gave Lincoln to Simon!”

Amy stopped dead and looked down. Nate had never seen his girlfriend look at him with that level of bright excitement. If he didn’t know what he knew today, he’d have been more jealous of Simon and distrusting of Amy than could be healthy for any relationship.

“Oh my god!” Amy said. “You gotta go help him! Simon’s up there fighting with his--”

“Amy shut up!” Nate grabbed Amy’s face. “Simon’s not alone. Tailwind has his back and she’s an absolute powerhouse.”

“Tracy?!” Amy worried. “She’s totally green!”

“He’s in good hands,” Nate said. “I’m down here with you, so he can have his full focus up there.”

“Yeah,” Amy nodded. “Of course you’re right.” She smiled. Her eyes shone and she grabbed Nate’s neck tightly. “Simon’s leading Lincoln? The Young Defenders? Finally?!”

“Yeah,” Nate said, looking up at the sheer excitement burning in Amy’s features. She exploded in energy. She rode forward and bent crooked to line up their kiss. She grabbed Nate’s head and lifted him by the hair as she kissed him. He gasped into her mouth in time with her rippling sex muscles. She ground her clit hard into his pelvic bone. The vault was properly soundproof. No one heard them cumming. They never heard the battle.

For a superhero, Simon excelled at running away. Superhero. He was a gadget slinging sparkless normie. He couldn’t tank shockwaves, he wasn’t fireproof, he couldn’t phase through shrapnel. Hence the running.

Simon was lucky. When he wrote up the report, he could say he was chasing the bad guy, the mad scientist, the supervillain. Doctor! Victorious!! raced away from his catastrophically failing island bunker. The cobblestone walkway was heaving and shifting under their feet. Eruptions of sand shot into the air like cannon blasts. Ventilation mushrooms achieved low Earth orbit.

Running wasn’t only about speed, speed mattered, go too slow and the fireball ate you. The same was true if you kicked the tail of the burnt out robotic triceratops husk and face-planted as well. Superheroes ran so that nothing could stop them.

Simon cut the straps of his grenade belts. He had left his gas launcher behind him. His armor had a twenty pound breastplate he’d have cut off, if the backplate would’ve stayed on as well. He was twelve years younger than Doctor! Victorious!!. Simon couldn’t catch up. The madman was running with two eight litre brass gas tanks on his back.

Chalk and concrete dust streamed out of Doctor! Victorious!!’s hair. His lab coat would’ve been flared out like a cape if not for the tanks. He zigzagged like he knew where every single explosive failure was gonna blow.

Maybe he did? Simon didn’t know. He just had to make his best guesses and hope Amy was still behind him. “You can’t save your partner by killing yourself.”

“Amy!” he squeezed the microphone button in the palm of his glove.

“Coming! Calico’s right on your ass!”

“Shit!” Simon didn’t have the opportunity to spare a glance to tag Doctor! Victorious!!’s right hand henchwoman had escaped. “I thought you called taking kitty down!”

“Meow!” Calico snapped snidely as she flying-cartwheeled over Simon’s head. At least Calico had clear superpowers. It wasn’t so embarrassing to be out performed by someone with super reflexes and muscles. Calico’s left hand of clawed fingers stabbed into Simon’s backplate. Good thing he hadn’t dropped the armor.

Adrenaline and attraction seemed to stop time for Simon as he looked up. Calico’s white-gold hair was streaming out behind her. Her perfect figure was amplified by her black and red skintight catsuit. The brocaded shouldered red pirate’s coat flared off of her. She had amazing blue-white eyes and smirking darkly painted lips. If the last thing Simon had to see was so deadly, at least she was beautiful.

Her momentum shifted and she whipped herself about, yanking Simon’s feet from the ground beneath him before stomping her armored spiked heel down into his other shoulder. He crashed, face down, into the walkway. He had to use every greatly honed instinct to land right, on the flats of his forearms, and shift himself onto soft sand rather than through the gulching pathway stones.

“You dead?” Amy asked in his ear.

“Dead-ish!” Simon swore. He squeezed his fist and replied “No.” Amy skidded to land at his shoulder on both knees. She grabbed his arm and he helped launch himself to his feet with her.

“Oh come on!” Simon said. They were approaching the beach where they had stashed their modified Zodiac raft. A giant arachnidian submersible was stomping its eight legs out of the water as its giant scorpion tail folded up over its back. The tail was tipped with a glowing laser cannon.

“Run! Cover!” Amy said. Calico was the first to the scorpion-sub. She leapt onto the head and wrenched open a porthole. She twisted to grab Doctor! Victorious!! by both hands as he flailed his way up the pincers and mandibles. Amy pulled out The Butler, the bigger of her two modified pistols and wrenched the revolver chamber two clicks anti-clockwise and shot.

The pepperball of Noxophene smashed into the brass tanks on Doctor! Victorious!!’s back. He dove headfirst into the scorpion head as Calico covered her eyes and held her breath. The amber gas cascaded harmlessly down the scorpion’s back.

“Shit, I only got fire suppressors and a universal key still loaded up.” Amy said as Doctor! Victorious!!’s galoshes slithered into the submarine. She holstered The Butler and spun The Princess up in her left hand. Simon watched the light in the tail cannon glow from red to white.

“Too late!” he yelled and tackled Amy out of the line of fire. The air didn’t open up in ozone smelling plasma. They bumped and skidded along the sand as Simon squeezed himself tightly breastplate to tank top. Amy had pitched her armor and had kept her guns when Simon had ditched his grenades and kept the body armor.

“Dammit!” Amy tried to push Simon off of her as Calico slipped and collapsed, but into the head of the scorpion-sub. She screamed and pulled Simon down. The air exploded, arcs of chaotic lightning vined around a column of burning energetic death.

It was always like this, Simon thought squeezing the stuffing out of Amy. If it had been Calico, she might’ve re-aimed but Doctor! Victorious!! seemed just willing to say goodbye and leave a singed and glassified line of the beach over and behind Amy and Simon. The sub started walking back into the sea. Doctor! Victorious!! popped his head up and pulled the hatch closed but not before the first waves of saltwater poured in around his hips.

“Stop laughing,” Amy pushed up Simon but she was smiling as well. She tried to sound angry but she was pumped full of excitement and not death by scorpion laser. Disappointment and anger she couldn’t manifest. “Oh my god! He got away again! Red Viking’s going to kick us back down the ladder!”

“We won! We scuttled his weird satellite doomsday laser and blew up his robot factory,” Simon said, letting himself climb up to his knees. He almost reached for her hand to pull her up as the whole nameless island exploded in a vibrant magenta mushroom cloud.

They’d stop squeezing and hugging each other until they were certain those weren’t aftershocks but the other’s heartbeats.

Rosa jumped with the knock on the laboratory door. She put a hand on her chest, it raised and fell with her ribbed black sweater. She looked down. She wasn’t used to wearing clothes that cost this much, that looked this good. She worked in a lab. Through her undergraduate and master’s courses she had worn bleach-pitted sweaters and thrift store jeans. She looked up. He was at the door. Dr Astaire had recruited her from her university doctoral program. She had never expected entomology to be lucrative, just infinitely fascinating. She felt an unfamiliar surge of confidence. The clothes helped. She made a note to thank Erin.

She raised her index finger, begging for a moment. Dr Astaire nodded, smiled, and looked down to his tablet.

Rosa turned back to her work station. She picked up the dragonfly nymph she was examining and returned it to a slot in the large glass terrarium. She closed the flap.

Confidence wasn’t the absence of nerves. She brushed her hands down on the skirts of her Barrett Maxwell branded lab coat as she crossed the floor to the door. She may have been wearing a nice sweater and professional slacks, but she was in a lab. Her shoes were comfortable cheap trainers. She wore no jewelry and no makeup. Her hair was tied back in a bland ponytail. Her safety glasses were prescription.

She opened the door with only a heartbeat’s hesitation. She smiled, crookedly but honestly. Dr Astaire blacked out his tablet and slipped it into the pocket of his lab coat.

He was a man in his late 50s. Tall, square shouldered, and healthfully fed. He smiled, his teeth were perfect and his skin was warm and ruddy. His gray flecked hair was cut short and sat high on his head above tall widow’s peaks. He wore a pale blue shirt and black pants stuffed into white Barrett Maxwell branded galoshes.

She was just shy of half his age. Half Columbian, half Texan, she had smooth brown skin and thick black hair. She smiled up, from her five feet to his six.

“Dr Astaire! I’m happy to see you!” she said, brightly. Her stomach turned. Way to suck up, Rosa! She leaned her weight awkwardly back from him as she berated her puppy dog excitement.

“And I you, Ms Veranes,” he said. “Please, show me what you’ve been doing.”

“Of course!” she said, jumpily. “Come, I have just dissected one of the females.”

He gestured her to go first and she cut across the lab. A large magnifier on a three-jointed arm was settled over a white metal tray. She stopped one pace past the tray, standing with her back to the first of her terraria. Dragonflies buzzed about in strange flight patterns behind her.

Dr Astaire stopped in front of the tray. He gestured to the arm. “May I?”

“Oh! Of course!” Rosa said. “Or, you can use the camera there and use my tablet to aid in magnification.”

“Thank you,” he said. Rosa dropped her smile. Of course he knows how everything works! He provided the lab to you! God!

Dr Astaire preferred the magnifier to the technological means. Rosa picked up a glass rod and pointed out what she had been looking at.

“Here, and here, these glands are normally about 1/10th this size in females,” she pointed to two structures on either side of the heart. “And even smaller in the males.”

“It seems to be in the way of their wings,” Dr Astaire frowned.

“It does impede their flight, they don’t turn as quickly as dragonflies normally do,” Rosa said. “However, they don’t hunt the same either. Males quickly begin become agitated when the females are hungry and begin bringing her food. The biggest problem we’ve had is the females overeating.”

“Not the males competing and fighting?” Dr Astaire asked.

“That’s the thing, they don’t fight!” Rosa laughed. “They simply provide.”

“That’s very surprising,” Dr Astaire said. “What about over mating?”

“Truthfully, the females are mating less than usual,” Rosa sighed, thinking. “I think that might be because the males are fighting less. The lack of competition provides no clear preferred male to excite the female.”

“Interesting,” he said. “But, I believe there’s more.”

“Yes! When a second female is added!” she exploded in excitement again. Clearly Dr Astaire had been reading her reports and reading them carefully. Hannibal Astaire was a legendary man who had created dozens of medical technologies used in the stabilization and correction of hundreds of superhuman accidents. If he was interested in her work, maybe she could make a real difference. She didn’t know how insect mating would do this but she was less well versed in human anatomy and mechanisms.

“Yes?” Dr Astaire said, smiling as he waited for her joy to die down.

“In the presence of one augmented female and one natural female, the males will completely ignore the natural female until she approaches the augmented female too closely. Then all of the males will tear her apart.”

“The natural female,” Hannibal clarified.

“Yes, like they’re acting as guardsmen to their new queen,” Rosa said. She frowned. “Not insect queen queen. I was using a more human royalty metaphor.”

“I understand,” Dr Astaire nodded. “And if both females are augmented?”

“That’s when it gets strange,” Rosa said. “The beta males will kill the beta augmented female while the alpha males attempt to defend her. However, if the alpha female comes too close to inspect, the alpha males retreat and let the beta males tear apart the opposite female.”

“You used your tear apart aphorism twice.”

“It wasn’t a figure of speech. It’s quite gruesome,” Rosa said, she was way too excited to convey just how gruesome it actually got.

“Interesting,” Dr Astaire said. “Very interesting. Your most recent findings are on the cloud?”

“Everything is, always,” Rosa said. “I don’t see how I could keep this to myself ... Though I’ve learned there’s very few people who want me to tell them about bugs.”

Dr Astaire’s laugh was short and polite. Rosa’s eyes widened like her smile. She blinked and Dr Astaire looked appreciatively up her and down her.

“This is good,” he said. “I’m very happy at how well, and how quickly, your ideas are paying off. You do great work, soon-to-be Dr Veranes.”

“Soon?” Rosa said. She was 26, she expected to be 30 or more before she would be near that level of success. “Soon?!”

“The next stage of life is always sooner than you’d think,” Dr Astaire said. He pulled out his tablet. He pressed a few buttons.

“Ahoy Doctor!” That was Derek’s voice, Rosa recognized. He was the front desk security guard for the building. Rosa found him very attractive and he was always happy to let her tag along when they went to the bars after their Friday shifts. Erin said it was because Rosa was hot, so of course the entomologist would always be welcome. Rosa was even starting to believe Erin. Though no one was as hot as the unrepentantly bitchy friend Rosa had made.

“Mr Koszosk, please arrange for experiment phase two,” Dr Astaire said. He hung up on the guard as Derek attempted to say yes. “Ms Veranes. I’ll see you again shortly.”

“You’re always welcome,” she said, smiling. She was sincere. She even managed not to second guess herself as he nodded and left. Rosa watched with her tilted head until the door closed. She then shouted and pumped her fists dancing spastically in a circle.

The Escher spat out The Butler and The Princess. They went spinning down the industrial steel ramp and skipped across the hewn stone floor. Amy’s pistols were white with gilded plates. The Butler was the larger: large enough to fire a two-hundred foot half-ton rate grappling hook cable. It was loaded by drum, quickly able to switch between a variety of tactical ammo. The Princess was shorter, more slender, and magazine fed. The Princess was most often loaded with Noxo or rubber bullets. Though Amy loved glue-balls and incendiaries too. She never overspecialized.

The Escher whirred on. It was a huge industrial machine built around a twisted brass tube pointing into the cavernous command center. The aperture was two and a half meters to the micron. Its joints were riveted with polychromatic glass pegs stabilizing the barely Euclidean Gordian knot of feeding pipes.