Amaranthine- Horny Heroes

CHAPTER 9

With a quick look to Breastman, who responded with two thumbs up and one on his hat for good measure, Cait nodded.

"What can we do?" 

"Bill, after she's dropped those two off, direct her to the Coliseum for a pickup." 

A second later, a gorgeous Indian woman in what Cait could only see as a militarized belly dancer's outfit stepped out of a glowing, spinning mandala next to Director Swan. Her eyes barely widened as she saw Breastman, before scanning over Cait to the Director. 

"Are they commed?" She asked Director Swan, who responded with a sharp shake of her head. The woman, Samsara, Cait inferred, fished into the black webbing of the bandeau she wore over a ballistic bodysuit and tossed a small earpiece each to Cait and Breastman. Cait popped it in, while Breastman just held it in a tentacle, managing to look confused. Samsara didn't even wait for her to adjust it in her ear, grabbing one of Cait's arms and Breastman's tentacles. 

"Dustdevil, Sonder, reinforcements incoming." She said, the statement echoing in Cait's earpiece. Then another glowing mandala appeared in front of them and spun over all three. For an instant, Cait's vision was overcome by a vortex of those spinning mandalas, every color Cait knew and many more besides, before the scene resolved back into something maybe less chaotic, but much more concerning. 

Dustdevil stood in the middle of the road, his duster flapping as his power created his namesake around him. He blasted thin, high pressure lines of sand forward, towards the single most disgusting sight Cait had ever seen. A massive, gelatinous blob of sewage heaved and shook as it extruded tendrils of itself, swiping out in all directions. The force of them alone was enough to take chunks out of buildings, but it was worse if they hit a person. Cait watched in horror as a fleeing man took a glancing blow, knocking him to the ground. Far worse than that, he screamed as the disgusting remnant began to eat away at his flesh. 

"Fuck." Samsara whispered under her breath, and in a flash of color was at the man's side, and with another they were both gone. 

"Hey new blood, hell of a first outing," The sound in her earpiece came in crisp, and Cait recognized Dustdevil's voice from earlier. She was already running towards another civilian penned into an alcove by a creeping tentacle. "We're just treading water here. We can sandblast those tendrils apart, but this thing is fucking acidic and there is a whole lot of shit in this city for it to draw on." 

Cait reached the person in the alcove, a young man pressed back as hard as he could against the wall. Hoping Lira had been meticulous enough in her tests, Cait crossed her arms in front of herself and charged through the tendril blocking him in. With a truly disgusting squelch, she burst through. 

"Go!" She yelled at the cowering man, turning to tear at the tendril as he ran. "Dustdevil! What do you need us doing?" 

"More of that!" He responded over comms, approval audible in his voice. "Until we know how to take this thing down, civilian safety is priority number one. I assume the thing with the hat is on our side?" 

Breastman had started whipping out tentacles so fast they became like blades, cutting off tendrils as they left the main mass of the horrid slime. It was effective, but Cait winced as she noticed the flesh on those tentacles start to sizzle and melt. Breastman hissed in pain, but credit to him, he kept it up. 

"He is, and he's more useful than me." Cait answered. "He's not going to be able to keep this up though." 

Seeing a tendril impact a building in the path of a group of fleeing women, Cait put on the afterburners and managed to get her body in place and joints locked to catch a falling piece of masonry that would have made strawberry jam of the civilians. She was doing what she could, but compared to the human sandstorm and rolling blender, she felt mostly ineffective. It had been less than a minute since they got there, but already the situation seemed out of hand. 

"Metric to the rescue!" Lira's voice rang out over the earpiece. "I've got eyes on that slime over drone footage. My reading says it should have a core dead center, take that out and it's done!" 

"That's great info," replied Dustdevil, "but even with Sonder linked up to me and blasting from the other side, we can barely blow it away as fast as it makes more of itself!" 

"Okay. Plan." Lira said, "Cait, I need you to go inside." 

"Oh, fuck me!" Cait groaned. 

"Later, and yeah, that is a promise." Lira responded, her voice business even if her words were all flirt. "Dustdevil, give that thing all you got on my go. Cait, you're not going to be able to see in there so I'll guide you best I can." 

While she was saying that, Cait had run over and assumed a sprinters stance next to Dustdevil. 

"Okay, go!" On Lira's signal, Cait took off, and Dustdevil let loose with a sandblast like a fire hose, pushing back the horrid effluence and making a sizable divot Cait aimed for. 

"Breastman! Give me a push!" She yelled, and just before she hit the slime monster she felt a massive impact on her back and then she was in. 

She'd never been as grateful for anything as she was that her new powers meant she didn't have to breathe. Eyes closed tight, she fought through the disgusting muck surrounding her. 

"Cait," Lira said in her ear. "Breastman gave you a pretty good push but you're still about 20 feet from the core. Keep going, you're right on target." 

It was a uniquely horrible sensation to be fighting through sewage that was actively fighting back. However, with Cait's newfound strength and mass, she kept forging onward. It helped that she no longer tired, otherwise she knew she would have been gassed almost immediately. She fervently hoped that this invulnerability of hers extended towards disease, or this was probably the end of her either way. Lira stayed in her ear, coach mode fully active, pushing her forward. After what felt like an hour but couldn't have been more than a minute, she started giving directions again. 

"You're right on top of it. Wave your arms around, feel for a big squishy ball." 

Cait complied, feeling a lot of squishy semi-solid lumps she didn't want to think about, before her fingers brushed against an oddly cold sphere about the size of a beach ball. 

"Yes! Thats-" 

As Cait pulled the ball to her chest, she felt the earpiece disintegrate in her ear. 

Fuck. Should have seen that coming. 

Despite the effort of getting here and the general horror of the situation she'd been dropped into, it was only now that Cait's heart rate skyrocketed. She tried to crush the core and end this, but it squished and deformed in her hands, not breaking or popping. Panic pushed at the walls of her reason, and her mind screamed for her to open her eyes, take a breath, to hyperventilate. She stood in the center of the solid shitstorm holding its core, every ounce of will dedicated to regaining her calm. 

She felt something then. It wasn't physical, but mental, and maybe more accurately emotional. Someone had linked to her, and she knew intuitively they were accepting her into them, and she was receiving from them in turn. Through the link, she felt a soothing wave, calming her mind. Following this was a beckoning and, one foot in front of the other, Cait moved towards the call. 

Again, it felt like a trek of miles, when it couldn't have been more than a matter of yards. There was a point when Cait could feel the horrid mass surrounding her start to thin, and she knew she was reaching the outer edge, but she couldn't seem to break through. 

It's trying to keep me. It won't let go of the core. 

As the panic started to break back through the soothing influence of the link and Cait's own willpower, she heard a deafening rushing sound. The next second she felt the rough crash of sand blasting against her skin, clearing away the muck surrounding her and knocking her onto her back. 

She lay there for a moment, clutching the core to her body, not quite believing the ordeal was over. She felt a sandblast hit her in the chest, melting the core as the slime lost cohesion. The clomp of a pair of boots approaching pulled her back to reality, and she opened her eyes. Above her was an angel in black, eyes gold like honey looking down at her. 

"Hey," said the goth girl from every dream Cait had ever enjoyed. 

"Hey," came Cait's witty rejoinder. 

"Can I ask you a question?" 

"Shoot." 

"How can someone be in the middle of a shitmonster, and still be even a little bit horny?" The girl's sly smile was warm, the upward curve of her lips revealing adorable dimples under her sculpted cheekbones. 

"Hah! It's a curse!" Cait grinned wide in response. "Can I ask a question too?" 

"Of course." 

"You got an extra pair of those leather pants?" Cait's grin widened as she gestured to her naked body, her clothes having been destroyed for the third time that night. 

Bringing a hand to her mouth, the girl giggled. Cait started to chuckle too, and both grew until the goth was bent over laughing clutching at her stomach and Cait pounded her fists against the asphalt. Tears collected in her eyes as the tension of combat left her as laughter.