The Naked Weapon Pt. 02

First, Opal and Ebony and Tycho. Each of them was dressed in a no shit gold bikini with tassels and bits of silk to cover their lady bits. They had each gotten five hours of marching through a jungle to get over the discomfort of having their psychic powers stripped down to nearly nothing, and were now dealing with the...other indignities. And in them, we could see the three reactions to wearing a gold bikini. Opal was having fun selling herself as a beautiful slave girl. Ebony, her taciturn clone, was looking bored. Tycho was shooting glare-daggers at me and Magnum.

But while the three girls of our Lance were in bikinis, at least they had their powers.

And weren't currently literally dying.

See, both Magnum and I were dressed in mindless guard uniforms. That meant thick boiled leather with obsidian knives at our hips and those wooden club-swords that were used by ancient peoples across Earth. The edge came from obsidian tips. And yes, the bizarre nature of the Doyen technology, where they had both faster than light travel, spaceships and planet destroying super weapons, but had never invented a better sword than stone and wood was still making my head boggle. Well, the part of my brain that could think past the fact I had marched five miles through a jungle, in a world with nearly 90% humidity, in leather armor.

Leather.

Armor.

My head wobbled slightly as Magnum stood to my left, looking as impassive as a statue carved from stone.

Fucking Magnum. Showing off. I tried to stand taller and ended up nearly falling over backwards onto my ass. Meanwhile, the girlfriend was doing the standard Doyen greeting.

Your headman, her telepathic voice echoed in my head, booming loudly. Reveal them.

"M'lady, he-" A farmer holding a hoe in shaking hands started. Tzali flicked her fingers and a telekinetic hand closed around the farmer, then lifted him into the air. He squalled and kicked his legs, his eyes bugging.

Don't waste my time, Tzali said and I nearly added my own pee to the puddle of sweat gathering in my leather kilt. Her hand twitched and I almost felt the farmer's mind being probed. And here's the creepy thing? Tzali was being gentle. By Doyen standards. I could see it and almost feel it, even with my neutered talent. See her mind rummaging through his. A pale glow surrounded his head and he started to writhe and kick. But he wasn't screaming. Or pouring blood out of his nose. Or dying. It still didn't make me feel any less icky inside. My stomach turned as a short alien woman rushed forward, throwing herself flat to the ground. She pressed her palms to the pinkish dirt and mashed her not inconsiderable, bright yellow chest to the ground.

"Please, oh honored Doyen, mistress of the stars, master of the mind, we are nothing! We are mindless chattel, here to serve you and all Doyen. I am the headwoman of this village."

Tzali dropped the farmer to the ground. He hit the dirt with his rump and looked dazed. Then he scrambled backwards, bowing his belly as far down as he could make it while gasping out thank yous. And the worst thing was?

Well, okay, the worst thing was that this was a thing that happened. But the extra bad edge to it was that everyone in the village was looking relieved.

I could metaphorically read their minds.

Oh, thank the gods, they had to be thinking. A nice one.

We require rest and sustenance, mindless one, Tzali said, her telepathic voice barbed with sneering condescension. It actually hurt to hear and made me grind my teeth. But the headwoman bowed her head low.

"Of course, oh glorious one! Please, take my home, my husbands, whatever you desire."

Tzali snorted. I have my own pleasure chattel. Take the bleating thoughts of your stud-cows elsewhere. They bore me. She flicked her fingers dismissively and stalked off, rolling her hips. Still sexy, despite being dressed in spiky death armor and acting like a despotic tyrant. But that might have just been the heat stroke talking.

***

I literally had to drain sweat out of the leather helmet and mask that I had been wearing. As it pattered onto the ground, Magnum took his helmet off and looked at the others. "You three okay?" he asked the three "slave" girls. Opal nodded, but her good cheer had gone somewhat damp and gray. She rubbed her shoulders and glanced at Tzali, who was quietly taking off her armor. I bit my lip slightly, then shucked off my leather armor, feeling the delicious sensation of some cool breeze blowing onto my skin at-fucking-last, and the slow growth of my talent. Once I had gotten the kilt off and kicked off the sandals, I stepped towards my girl.

The headwoman's house was yet another example of Doyen skitzotech. Dirt floor, wood carved bed, mattress made of straw. Glowing crystal that produced a continual stream of cool air that pumped through the room, keeping us at a comfortable temperature. Well, comfortable for the skittle aliens, which still meant Florida on a bad day, as opposed to Florida on a bad day five years from now. The instant Tzali completed her transformation back into Ali by stepping out of her crystal boots, I put my hands on her shoulders and felt the rush of emotions almost too late.

I clamped down a psychic shield around us. This was good and bad.

Good, because it prevented the rush of emotions from escaping her brain like a scream of pure psychic agony. Bad because it trapped those emotions in a bubble and bounced them back into my own brain. For just a few seconds, I felt every single emotion that had roiled through Ali as she wore her Tzali mask. And it was a brittle mask indeed. I felt her anguish at having to tear through the mind of a man. I felt her shame at throwing around her power on the weak and painful. And I felt her horror at the realization that her 'gentleness' only reflected the barbarity of her people. That went right back into shame town and intensified it to a horrifying, gnawing darkness, right in her gut. She wanted to throw up and she also wanted to make a psi-sword and start hacking off heads at the same time.

I held her as hot tears poured from her eyes, my own eyes blurring and snot running from my nose. My hands closed around her belly and I clung to her, and she clung to me.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay," I kept whispering aloud.

Opal knelt down next to us. Her hand pressed to my shoulder and to Ali's – and I felt the warmth of Opal's boundless love enfold us. Even with a gold bikini and thong, her talent was enough to take the biting edge off the emotions, to ease us gently away from the refractions. Eventually, both I and Ali could feel something other than her misery. I started to filter my own love for her into her soul. Ali responded back with a tightening of her arms that was augmented by a spurt of telekinesis that flattened my hair, crushed my balls, and almost snapped my arms.

"Too tight!" I wheezed.

"Did you contain that?" Magnum asked Ebony. Ebony shrugged.

"I'm a good telepath, and we're on the planetary surface. The curvature of the horizon and the other living beings should cover it. But if there's a Doyen whose sniffers are out, we might have been made."

Magnum nodded, curtly.

I felt tiny and crawling. Like how Barry made me feel during the worst parts of Basic Braining, when you start sleep walking and fucking everything up. Which is differentiated from the start of Basic because at least at the start, you're supposed to be fucking everything up. But before I could stammer out an apology, Magnum waved his hand.

"No. Any intelligence we get here is worth it – including how good Doyen sensing is in territories like this. PsiCom might need to carry other similar missions without a Doyen Princess helping them," he said, his voice flat. Neither warm nor harsh. I nodded slightly.

"If a Doyen arrives, I can bluff him off," Ali said, quietly.

"Okay," Magnum said. "I want Pirate and Opal to do the rounds. Pirate, act like you're checking the perimeter for the Princess. Opal, make no bones about the fact you're looking for potential pleasure chattel."

'And what's our actual mission?" I asked.

"Your mission is the actual mission. Opal, check people. See if any seem...more prone to resistance than others." Magnum smiled. "That might be the clue we need to find the source of the Event Horizon."

We both nodded.

Then I raised my hand. "Do I have to put on the armor?"

"No," Magnum said. Then he picked up the sword I had discarded. "It's dangerous to go alone. Take this."

I narrowed my eyes at him.

"What?" Magnum asked, his face still holding that damned 'if that was a joke, it will take waterboarding to get it out of me' expression of his. I narrowed my eyes further and started edging towards the door. Once I was outside and back into the bake oven crossed with sauna crossed with tropical jungle outdoors, I started to regret every decision in my life. I may have the skin and name of someone from the Middle East, but I had been raised in fucking California, in case my obnoxious snobbery hadn't made that clear enough. Do you know why California has the fifth biggest economy in the world? It sure as fuck wasn't because of the earthquakes and southern Californian water vampires!

It was because people could live here and never have to wear anything but T-shirts, god fucking damn it.

I sighed and started to pace the way to the edge of the village. As I walked, I saw farmers and villagers about their work. There was a huntsman who looked like had had downed a cthulu-pig with a thrown spear and was now gutting and skinning the creature. He had already cut the tentacles off and put them to boil in a small pot shaped stone. He looked at me, then frowned and lifted his chin. He looked me up and down, then said: "So, the Doyen are plucking hairless svenk for their guards?"

"You know it," I said, casually. "This hairless svenk happens to be three feet taller than you and armed, though."

"I never said being a hairless svenk is a bad thing," the hunter said, trying to sound casual, even as I noticed him shift slightly backwards. About to run. His whiskers twitched and I put on a big old smile and hoped that wasn't a threat gesture among these people. Either it wasn't or my dumb face put him at ease because he breathed out a quiet sigh and went back to his hacking and cutting. He winced as he pulled out an organ the size of my fist that glowed a pale green.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's this huuld's death organ," he said. "The liquid within can be turned into a poison."

I looked around the village. Two young children ran by. They, unlike their nudist parents, were dressed in almost burquah like robes that made them look like tiny piles of ambulatory laundry on the run from the vicious woman and men who would prefer to drown them if they could. As they pealed by, laughing and chittering, I looked back at the hunter.

"Isn't that dangerous?"

"Takes three moons to be anything but stinky. That's why I'm at the edge of the village, warrior," the hunter said.

I nodded. Good to know. I filed that into my 'good to know' slot. And that got me thinking about just how much there was to learn. We still hadn't even fully explored Earth. Now there were millions of Earths, each one as complex, as intricate. Each one waiting for us to royally fuck up.

It'll be fun!

The hunter paused, then muttered. "Do you know how long the glorious and holy Doyen will be staying in our humble, inconsequential village?"

He said all the right words. But with my psychic power, I could smell the loathing that emanated from every fiber of his being. He had to know, for a fact, that I was mindless to risk that kind of thought. It made me wonder how much Doyen simply refused to see, or how good the "mindless" were at controlling those minds. As I worried at that question and tried to come up with a good answer that wasn't just 'the fuck if I know', my senses tingled and the little premonition I had whenever shit was about to smash into the air conditioning crystal kicked up a hissy fit.

I grabbed the hunter and yanked him away from his job. His obsidian knife thunked into the ground and he squalled in alarm moments before a Doyen in his warform smashed down onto the hut that he had been working near. Wood splinters filled the air and I threw myself over the hunter, squashing him flat and getting a face full of alien dong. Fun fact, he smelled sweet. Like skittles. Huh. But then I was scrambling to my feet and wiping my face clean with one hand. The rubble of his house was now filled by a Doyen – a Doyen surrounded by the faint wisps of his dissolved war-form.

And what a Doyen.

He was male, for one thing. I had seen a single male Doyen up close and personal but he had been armored. This one was not. Well. Barely. His chest was entirely exposed. He was a bit like me: Athletic and thin, with toned muscles, but nothing that bulged or nothing. He was more like a gymnast than Magnum's body-builder hugeness. And, like me, he had a sligthly femmy face. Which, I hasten to add, every woman I've met has said is super sexy. Not that I'm insecure.

...is there anything more insecure than saying you're not?

Fine! I'm fucking insecure! Are you happy?

The Doyen though, was blue where I was brown. His hair was crystal shards that flared backwards like a full on anime character, while mine was...you know...human. And black. And he wore a crystal set of speedos that hung around his crotch, with a few bits of flexible fabric that made it quite clear that he matched me in another way.

Dong size.

He was hung like a horse too.

I wondered if he had used biokinesis to enhance himself too.

The Doyen also reeked with arrogant confidence so genuine and intense that it almost made me like him. Save that he had just crushed some poor hunter's house without any seeming reason, and was now swaggering towards me and the hunter like a peacock. He flicked out his hand and a shimmering psi-sword appeared in his hand. Normally, psi-swords were only as complex as needed. They were telekinetic constructs, after all. But this guy had added extra swirls and details to give himself a shimmering fencer's guard to his sword, which came to a narrow point like a rapier.

He immediately flicked his psi-rapier out and pressed it to the chest of the hunter, ignoring me. Mindless! Tell me, who here has been so unwise as to insult and besmirch a Doyen woman's honour?

Yeah. I could hear the extra u. I swear his voice sounded British and posh as balls. The hunter stammered. "W-What?"

Do not lie to me, mindless churl, the Doyen said, smacking the hunter across the face with his back hand, sending the man sprawling to the ground. The hunter spat out a tooth and coughed some blood onto the pinkish dirt. I felt her scream of pure indignation from the capital of this backwater hole!

"Ex-cuse me," I said, my voice flat.

Commander Norrington (I'd have called him Johnny Depp, except that Jack Sparrow had been cool and this guy was a fucking tool) looked up at me and curled his lip in a sneer that was augmented by his talent. It smashed into my defenses and I almost felt as pathetic and wormy as he thought I was. Then his eyes narrowed. I see I am interrogating the wrong mindless. Her psychic despair is on you like stink. His eyes flicked to my sword and he scoffed. A guard? And you fail your posting so deeply?

"I don't-"

And you talk back? Seems I must teach you a lesson... The Doyen male lifted his sword up to his chest and his voice rang with purest mockery, even as Magnum, Tycho, Midnight and Ali came spilling out of the headwoman's house. Ali was putting her armor back on as quickly as she could, but this slowed her down as the Doyen rattled off: My name is Count Gatzlon Xon Chur of the House Chur, Paladin and Scout Master. Prepare to die mindless scum. Enguard!

He thrust his rapier towards my heart with blinding speed. I flipped my sword upwards and caught the rapier tip on the wood. The blade struck. Now, if I actually had been mindless and this actually had been a normal wood and obsidian sword, I would have been turbo-dead. Battlefield tests had seen even a human scale psi-sword going through multiple layers of ablative tank armor before stopping. A dedicated psi-swordsman (or woman) could hack through the heat shield on a shuttle, or into the bulkhead of the stargate room.

Wood would have provided even less resistance than my skin, rib-cage, heart, spine, and second layer of skin.

But I wasn't mindless.

And this fucker had pissed me off.

His sword struck a telekinetic field I buried underneath the sword and rebounded. He staggered backwards, his eyes widening. What!?

And then it was on. I stepped forward and swung my sword in an upward slash. His rapier batted at it and he knocked my arm up and away, but I returned with another swinging blow, trying to remember everything Barry had taught me. Unfortunately, none of that was sword fighting, so the second blow was caught on his filigreed hilt and he twisted his sword and sent mine flying through the air. It struck a bit of rubble and the obsidian shattered. He smirked slightly, then shook his head. You may have some talent, churl, but you cannot best Count Gatz-

I rolled away. He lunged, breaking off in mid sentence as he saw me move. His sword tip struck the ground and sent up a gout of steam and left behind a line of cherry red melted glass. But he missed me, which was enough. I grabbed the death organ that the hunter had discarded, turned, and hurled it at his face. Count Dickface VonDouchebag lifted his blade up and slashed the organ in half. The searing heat of the blade cauterized the blow he struck, and the death organ struck the ground behind him with two wet plops, without spilling a single droplet of their poison gunk.

"Aww man..." I whined.

A clever ploy, mindless. May your next life be more fortunate to not end on my peerless blade. Now...die with honor! He charged forward. I didn't look away from that point, not even towards my friends. Instead I twisted aside as quickly as I could, surging biokinetic energy into my muscles. My skin and bones ached as muscles moved harder and faster than they had any right to. But the end result was that I got out of the way of his sword and smashed my elbow into his jaw. Count Fuckoff staggered to the side, blood streaming from his nose and mouth as he clutched his hand to his face.

He cried aloud – a wordless sound of gargling agony.

Stop this nonsense at once! Tzali's voice boomed out. That's my prize gladiator, Count Xon Chur!

Count Limpdick was, currently, still coughing and spitting. A few bits of shattered teeth hit the ground as he hung his head forward, trying to breathe around the blood. He held up one hand in a placating 'one second' gesture. Then he gargled out: "Owwwwwwwwwwww!"

Tzali put her hands on her hips. I told you he was my prize gladiator!

I glanced at Tzali. Under the armor and officious Doyen 'tude, she looked nervous as fuck. But Count Douchenerd simply bled on the ground for a few more moments in silence. His eyes were closed, and slowly, I realized he was controlling his pain. Then he was focusing his talent. As I watched, the blood flow slowed and villagers gasped in awe as they saw teeth regrowing, nose-bones realigning. I wondered if I could do that with my biokinetic talent – but it had to be fucking hard. Imagine doing surgery on yourself while you were in pain and conscious. Yeesh. But after about three minutes, Count Lamewad was back to 100%. He stood up, rubbed his face-