As soon as Bookkeeper’s abilities had been confirmed, Director Swan had sent Cait’s team on patrol outside the dome. She’d been understandably worried the chaos of weeding out the sleeper Characters would be used as a cover for a larger attack. With everyone on their team being exceptionally hard to kill, they were the only real choice for a scouting party liable to come up against a force of unknown Altereds.

  -WHEN NIGHT WONT BREAK-

  -WHEN DAY WON’T COME-

  -THIS POSSE WILL RIDE-

  -TO BRING THE DAWN-

  “Oh my god, how did you get your auto-voice to sing?” Cait asked, groaning as Breastman tried out yet another theme-song for their team. “And Gwyn, I know you’re listening, if you made it that way, why make it so fucking bad!?”

  COME ON GUYS, HIT THE HIGH NOTE WITH ME

  ?TO BRINNNGG THE DAAAAAAWWWN?

  Cait groaned again as Kennedy and Qi added their voices to the chorus. To be fair, both of the women had excellent voices. Kennedy would have been at home doing clean vocals for any of the bands that adorned her shirts, and Qi had a surprisingly operatic Alto. When they sang the song, Cait thought this one might actually have some merit.

  “Next free Saturday, we’re doing Karaoke at Lynn’s,” Cait commanded. “I need to hear Kennedy do some stuff from Armstrong era Linkin Park, and Qi, you’d beat ass on Nightwish.”

  WHAT ABOUT ME

  “You ever hear that cockney idiot do a cover of In Da Club? You could do that.”

  BENEATH ME

  ILL DO WAGON WHEEL

  “Honestly, I can’t think of anything that would be funnier with your accent, so fuckin’ go for it.”

  Qi crunched along next to Cait, and she felt her tail jiggle one of her buttcheeks, looking over to see an amused expression on the Dragon.

  “What about you?” Qi asked. “You haven’t sung along to any of B-man’s masterpieces. You can’t drag us all to karaoke and just watch.”

  “I dunno,” Cait said smirking up at Kennedy and Rose circling above. “Some people just like to watch.”

  Buckshot peppered the ground around Cait, some plinking off her skin.

  “Warhawk is a bad influence on you!” Cait shouted, unable to keep the grin off her face. “But nah, I’d sing. Probably do some Xana, got decent tone but not crazy range like you two.”

  “Mmm,” Qi nodded. “The angrier the lesbian, the better the music.”

  As the conversation indicated, the emergency patrol had not been as action packed as they feared. The recent wave meant there were more low-threat Altered Beasts in the area, but Rose would have been more than a match for most of them, to say nothing of an invincible goddess, cosmic horror, and fucking dragon. Still, clearing them out before something like Ironhide could string together an incursion was worthwhile.

  More than that, it had given them some low stakes combat encounters to work on integrating Qi into the team. That had been the initial point of their scheduled Dream Lounge session, but with Rodeo Squad down another permanent member and Dreamboat on full time Character screening for now, they’d had to look elsewhere.

  The training had been exceedingly odd. By basically any metric, Qi had more experience than them, having been a Guardian since the day she turned 18. However, given the indiscriminate nature of her most powerfully hitting ability and own tendency to go overboard, most of that time had been spent working solo, since she was strong enough to deal with all but the worst threats alone.

  What little time she had served in teams had been spent working on avoiding friendly fire in the most literal sense. That would have been great, if her melee tank on this team couldn’t have given less of a shit about being caught on fire. Literally worst case for scenario was she got to show off her dick ‘n balls while her costume regenerated, which wasn’t really a punishment.

  Instead of avoiding it, they worked on making sure Qi understood that if Cait managed to get herself surrounded, that was exactly the time to open up hell’s furnace on the general area. It had actually proven to be an excellent tactic against these weaker, unintelligent foes. Visually, Cait was a regular human, albeit a big strong one. Still, she looked like an easy target compared to the humanoid dragon or eldritch horror, and Kennedy had been staying well out of range of ground targets.

  As it was, there were a few charred patches of wilderness along their path, containing the remains of dozens of beasts, and their only casualties had been a few renditions of Cait’s outfit.

  Cait’s phone buzzed.

  L: man most people are fucking boring

  L: ive scanned so many accountants

  C: what can I do to motivate you

  C: I understand that uncovering the insidious Characters impersonating our citizens is trivial work, and beneath you

  L: ugh, talking to someone that understands helps

  L: but if youre offering motivation, how bout a dick pic and a promise to eat my booty when D.S. lets me off

  C: tough, but fair. I’ll wait to regen my outfit next time Qi burns it off

  L: that slut is doing it on purpose

  C: I mean yeah, we fucking told her to

  C: I will never call in artillery that isnt danger close

  L: its less cool when youre not doing a whole self sacrifice thing

  C: we don’t have enough Guardians to glorify heroic suicide

  L: i dont make the rules

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “She’s right, I am doing it on purpose,” Qi chuckled in Cait’s ear. She actually jumped a little. Cait was not used to people being tall enough to read over her shoulder. There was an intake of breath, and Cait was bathed in a pleasantly warm flame shower. Then she was naked again.

  “Gwyn’s gonna pissed if you short this thing out,” she complained, waving at her regenerating suit before Qi plucked the phone from her hand. “Hey! Oh my god, do not make me hop!”

  Qi laughed into Cait’s glare.

  Fuck, this must be how Lira feels.

  “Just trying to help, Cait,” Qi growled in a rumbling purr. She took the wrist of Cait’s outstretched hand and wrapped it around the back of her armored neck. Against her better judgement, she gripped tight into it, leaving herself stretched out leaning back against the dragon. Part of her wanted to see where this went.

  Qi trailed a talon down Cait’s neck to her breast, cupping one and weighing it gently. Her tail snuck between Cait’s legs, snaking around her balls and wrapping the base of her very erect cock. Cait pressed back into the dragon. He cheeks flushed and breathing fast, she was a little overwhelmed by the unfamiliar treatment. Then she heard her phone’s shutter sound, and Qi let her drop to the ground.

  She landed on her feet and glared at the dragon as she tapped at Cait’s phone.

  “Motivation!” Qi said, grinning. Cait looked at the screen to see the dragon had attached the image in a message to lira. It was an undeniably hot pic, starting just below Cait’s neck, her body stretched out on display, cock held up by dragon tail to take center stage. Qi had captioned it ‘don’t worry babe, I got you’.

  Don’t love this dynamic, but that was pretty hot.

  L: oh my gooooodddddd

  L: D.S. says jilling off isn’t a good enough reason to take a break

  L: so anyway now she thinks im pooping, gonna go take care of this real quick

  “What the fuck is going on down here?” Kennedy asked, Cait looked up to see her hovering 10 feet overhead, looking both cross and flustered at Cait’s recurrent nudity.

  “Sneezed,” Qi said casually, already walking off into the forest. Cait could feel the warring lust and confusion in Kennedy’s mind.

  I gotta talk to Qi. Maybe Kennedy does have some kind of NTR fetish, but I’m not gonna be responsible for breaking her further.

  “Lira asked for some motivation, and Qi took it upon her self to help out,” Cait explained, looking after the dragon, clearly non-plussed.

  Cait sighed, feeling the excitement from Kennedy when she said that.

  “I’ll send you the pic if you want it,” she shook her head, then grinned up at Kennedy. “Lira was right, you are irredeemable.”

  She blushed, flipped her off, then shot back into the sky where Rose waited for her.

  I THINK I HAVE SOMETHING IF YOU GUYS ARE DONE DOING AN ENTIRE SOAP OPERA, said a foppish voice over comms.

  Cait immediately re-summoned her costume. She’d honestly gone back and forth on wearing it out here, since she felt like a 6’3” Amazon sprinting at you with cock ‘n balls swinging would have some pretty major intimidation factor. That said, it could also be distracting for her horny-ass teammates, so the risk probably wasn’t worth it.

  HOLD ON, DON’T MOVE UP

  Something none of them had really realized on their first expedition was how terrifyingly stealthy Breastman could be. The dark purple of his skin and insane body plan made him difficult to pick out as he swung through the trees even in daylight, and with dusk approaching, he was damn near invisible. Maybe more important, he was silent. It defied logic he could zip through the trees at the speeds he did and make absolutely no noise. As such, he’d taken advance ground scouting duties, with Cait and Qi holding back far enough not to spoil his efforts.

  GWYN, GET THEM DRONE FOOTAGE

  Nanobots swirled out of Cait’s skin, forming screens in front of Cait and Qi.

  When does she have the time to put this stuff in me? I don’t sleep.

  Among the trees stood hundreds of people, all shapes and sizes, most visibly Altered in some way. It was eerie, like an entire separate forest of still flesh beneath the canopy of the natural one.

  “Yeesh,” Cait said. “Alright, Bubb-Bill, are you seeing this? Send backup, this is more than we can effectively contain.”

  “ARMOR support is already on its way,” he bubbleman responded.

  “What?” Cait asked, exasperated. “No, you saw how well they fared, they’d just be more things we need to take care of.”

  Bill chuckled in that whiskey smooth tone that made him such a popular dispatcher.

  “Not that kind of ARMOR, Amaranthine.”

  3 blazing meteors screamed into the ground a half mile in front of Cait and Qi, and their view screens dissolved into chaos. They shared a look, and sprinted towards trouble.

  The powerful muscle of Qi’s dragon legs let her keep pace as Cait pulled herself along with sonic bounds, and they arrived to the fight. The area was now a clearing, despite being light forest seconds earlier. A rainbow spectra of attacks flew at the ARMOR units that had initiated the assault.

  The mecha were all of roughly the same make, and would have been right at home in any anime that tried to trick kids into caring about politics. They had a blocky torso, all angles and ablative plating, the function of which was immediately apparent as a blast of energy hit one off center and rebounded off into the trees. They had no heads to make obvious weak points, instead having a single glowing red light just above center in their torsos, indicating their primary sensor suite. The mech suits brandished a variety of weapons, anywhere from saw blades to arc casters.

  The mechs seemed to skate along the ground, using thrusters and momentum to move as often as they used their surprisingly thin legs. It was like watching the worlds most violent figure skating event.

  One of them truly danced. Each movement not only brought its melee weapon…

  Holy shit is that the Plasmafucker?

  …around to carve a swath through enemies, it would also line up a perfect shot on one of the harder targets its railgun was well suited to eliminate. As it spun to focus on a huge Altered that looked as if a Moai had pulled itself out of the ground, Cait realized it had angled a shoulder plate to redirect a burning laser off it towards a particularly flammable looking treant that had cornered one of its squadmates.

  In the instant it was still to aim, Cait read its callsign on that same shoulder plate.

  D-VI-L

  Fuckin’ A.

  Qi hadn’t been as stunned by the mecha ballet, and had already thrown herself into the fight. Burning pages fluttered down around her as she let loose, allowing her breath to cause the absolute devastation it was meant for. From within those pages charged a dude that literally seemed to be made of swords, and not particularly liable to burn.

  Not interested in finding out if those can make it through Qi’s scales, Cait thought.

  She pulled herself over, catching a stab meant for Qi’s lightly armored gut in her own. Whatever it may have done to the dragon, against Cait, it shattered. The Character let out a metallic shriek and began to fall back, the mind controlling it clearly beginning to understand what was a bad matchup against Cait.

  Too fuckin’ late buster.

  She shot forward, shattering the things chest as it burst into paper. She searched around for more hard targets, but this didn’t seem like it had been Bookkeeper’s A-team. Most of them were little more than civilians that happened to have ram’s horns, or something else that put them on a significantly lower footing than ‘normal person with gun’, and as such no real match for any of their team. Kennedy hadn’t even landed to link with Qi, instead staying out of reach to plink away with her guns. Rose did seem to be having a good time picking off any isolated Characters, of which there were plenty after the mech’s and Qi’s area attacks.

  Cait ended up doing much the same, and was running down a man with the lower body of a tarantula when he got cut in half by a plasma chainsaw, which then immediately slammed into her. She flipped through the air, barely catching a glimpse of D-VI-L tracking her through the air with its railgun, before another massive impact shot her back through a good dozen or so trees.

  “Devil! Stand down! Amaranthine is AEGIS!” Bubb-Bill shoutrd.

  “Heh,” the laugh was amplified a hundred times, made sinister and metallic by the mech’s loudspeakers. “My bad. Guess the bitch is lucky she’s tough. We done here?”

  Bill sighed, but the fact was it had been a heated melee, and Cait was invincible.

  “Yeah, Devil. No more contacts on Nanosmith’s tactical map. You are cleared to RTB.”

  As Cait pulled herself out of the woodchip rubble, she could swear the lead mech was glaring at her. She just smiled back, putting just enough edge in it to let her know what she said next was more threat than reassurance.

  “No worries,” she yelled, waving. “Didn’t hurt me at all.”

  The mech pilot scoffed, scorn evident even through the speaker distortion. Getting into formation with its squad, it blasted into the sky, quickly gaining speed.

  “Fuck was that about?” Cait asked, aimed at anyone that cared to answer.