Centered and combat-ready, Yves had observed Black Cherry's descent with a calm, analytical appreciation for fine form. Black Cherry executed her leap with cliff-diver perfection. Wings fanned out, sailing into the air. Her body curled downward the moment her jump achieved apex. Fists thrust forward. Wings snapped inward, slapping together at supersonic speed. Black Cherry rode the thunderclap down.

 

She hammered into the hood, a pile-driving pillar, a fallen angel sculpted from red clay and blackest basalt. The hood and engine block crumpled. The Jeep rebounded into the air, pivoting on the immobile fulcrum Black Cherry had become. Yves saw her sneer, her pageboy hair cut flying wild, her abyssal gaze locked on Dee's face. Her voice was triumphant, primal. Demoniac.

 

"Master!"

 

Dee turned away from her, his expression stony and stolid even as the Jeep's rear wheels rose higher than the front. He reached behind and above his head, bracing himself against the Jeep's roll-bar. The trunk of the Jeep soared higher. Black Cherry's impact stapled the hood to the road. Dee kicked his left foot into the driver's side foot well. The vehicle's chassis squealed as it fought against the opposing forces trying to tear it in half.

 

Yves struggled for focus amidst madness. Dee's not bracing his body against the Jeep's roll-cage. Yves' seat belt bit into his tender shoulder. Dee's trying to brace the roll-cage against his body. Yves closed his eyes.

 

The passenger compartment buckled but resisted caving inward and crushing Yves to death. Yves turned to stare at his friend. Holy shit. The cords in Dee's neck flexed. His arms strained as he battled torque, stress, and metal fatigue. It's really true. Yves found himself very surprised to be alive.

 

Dee's a fucking superhero.

 

Black Cherry was forced backward as the Jeep hurtled upright. The vehicle's shadow overtook her. Her triumphal sneer faltered. Two tons of American truck know-how bore down upon her. Yves heard Raspberry's battle cry over the ruckus of tortured metal, plastic, and glass. "Say 'Splat,' bitch!"

 

Black Cherry set her jaw and swung her legs down, puncturing the pavement with her Mary Jane clogs. Her wings shot forward, around, and then behind the Jeep. Crimson claws pierced the undercarriage. Yves heard Ursula yelp and stamp. Black Cherry's sneer returned with a lazy roll of her head. Tension gathered within her gel.

 

Dee spoke. His voice bypassed Yves' ears still half-stoppered with beeswax. His words came from outside time and transcended other sound, as if the world paused, eager to listen. They resounded through bone, sang in the blood, rang clear as a tower bell in the brain. "Raz, to Yves. Now."

 

Two lavender arms shot in through the open driver's window in uncoiling springs. Cool fingers entwined behind Yves' neck. The bendy-straw arms cinched up slack and Raspberry's angelic face zoomed into view until her button nose dimpled his cheek. Her eyes searched his as she muttered a lightning quick, "Awfuckit," and kissed him hard and square on the lips.

 

His mouth filled with the flavors of summer as more and more of Raspberry's jellied substance poured through the window and pressed its supple weight against him. Yves had never been kissed in bullet time before. His heightened awareness let the kiss linger even though it lasted no more than a second or two. He could not fully process the experience, as his inner ear reported he was now suspended upside down.

 

The Jeep slung high over Black Cherry's head. Her arms and wings took on the full weight of the Jeep and all its occupants. She crowed in triumph.

 

I'll have to try this again, Yves vowed to himself as Raspberry broke the awkward kiss. If only the person kissing me back had a dick, I'm sure I could get it right. Outside, Black Cherry followed through, accelerating her pitch. If only I could survive the next few sec—

 

---

 

 

Black Cherry hurled the Jeep with all her strength. The vehicle flipped end-over-end once, then twice, before colliding with a ferroconcrete pylon. The blacktop below fissured. Cement chips and dust showered from the highway above. The Jeep folded up, chevron-shaped, and tumbled to the ground.

 

"Splat," said she.

 

 

 

 

The Jeep hit the pavement passenger-side down. The safety glass windshield fractured milky-white on impact. Cracks and torn seams in the canvas top bubbled and wept golden champagne froth. The carriage bled oil, radiator and hydraulic fluid. Dust settled in the quiet.

 

The driver's side door bulged outward then burst away in lavender geyser. The crest of the eruption resolved into the upper body of Raspberry herself, a bust carved from the richest amethyst. More gel peeled away to reveal Yves, slack, motionless, and cradled in Raspberry's willowy embrace. Yves groaned.

 

Raspberry startled at the sound. Yves rolled his head and winced. Raspberry's shoulders sagged and she hugged Yves close. "Shh. I gotcha, babe." Her limpid gaze fell upon Black Cherry. Raspberry purpled with rage. She hissed through gritted teeth. "I am gunna rip off your head and shit down your neck you jam-ragged, clit-clot cunt."

 

The dainty batwings poking out from behind Black Cherry's ears flared. "I'll kill you where you stand." The scarlet girl froze in mid-snarl, blinking her confusion. "As soon as I figure out what you just said."

 

The Jeep's windshield exploded. Nuggets of safety glass flew like birdshot, ricocheted off Black Cherry's creamy red, rubbery hide, and clattered against the yellow SUV in the shadows behind her. Dee withdrew his fists. "Raz," he said, "enough banter. Get Yves out of here."

 

Raspberry's bare hips and legs coalesced and she pivoted to jump from the Jeep. Black Cherry sidled and stretched a wing wide to block her path. "That's my playmate," she said, jerking a wing claw at Yves. "Master gave him to me and I only got to play with him once."

 

Dee elbowed out of the Jeep and rose to his feet, uncut and unbruised. "Let her go, Cherry."

 

Black Cherry golf-clapped her hands. "Oh, Master: name me." She giggled and grabbed her knees. "Name me like you named your stupid green whore. Name me and I will become she who eats worlds for you."

 

Something heavy clonked and settled inside the Jeep. Black Cherry craned her neck to see but Dee hustled in between, his back to the vehicle. "Let them all go, Cherry, and I will stay." He swung one arm behind his back, hand opening and closing in a pantomime yap yap yap.

 

Black Cherry clucked and dismissed the notion with a pshaw flick of the wrist. "You don't mean that, Master. You're going to stay anyway. Besides, I don't think Raspberry wants to leave. I had her made for you, you know." Dee pointed to the left with the hand hidden behind his back. "Why haven't you fucked her yet? I would smell her on you if you had. She wants you to fuck her, Master." She tipped her head, leading with her nose, breathing deep and nibbling her bottom lip. "She wants you so badly I can taste it from here." Dee pointed left again, looped his index finger around to the right before bringing his hand down flat. "But she can't handle it like I can, Master. She's so horny she can't understand you want her to feint to the left so you can flank me on the right while I'm monologing."

 

"Oh," drawled Raspberry behind him. "Now I get it."

 

---

 

 

 

Dee heard a fizzy susurrus. Sunny slush frothed down the Jeep's sideways roof and heaped onto the pavement. Raspberry's speedy recovery matched her quick temper, but Dee knew CeeCee and Eurydice needed much more time to sort themselves out after such a rough jolt. He opted to stall, hoping to Hell that Ursula and Nyx were unhurt. "X-ray vision?"

 

Head-wings rolled into cute megaphones around Black Cherry's ears. "Sonar." She winked. "Echolocation off the metal behind you, of course, because you're so impenetrable, Master." Her head-wings unfurled only a fraction before Dee spoke in his newfound voice.

 

"Let them go, Cherry."

 

Black Cherry gaped. Head-wings twitched and wilted with melt. Sanguinary brandy brimmed her lips and slicked her sex as the pylons supporting the overhead arch of the highway amplified and took up her name. Cherry—Cherry—Cherry. She rocked with each echo, dropping to one knee, then the other, and then to all fours.

 

The echoes played out a long, low, bubbling roar, leonine and almost subsonic: Cherrrry. Black Cherry keened in reply, arms trembling, wings pearling with fat drops of ruby nectar. "Yes, Master, yes. Go." The underpass still purred with the final vestiges of Dee's echoed voice—rrr…rrry—and Black Cherry fell back on her haunches. Head bowed, she waved Raspberry away. "Go. Go!"

 

Raspberry dismounted from the Jeep, her elastic legs protracting down onto the road before returning to their usual sumptuous, classical perfection. Yves, face pinched in pain, rode the gentle descent in her arms. Raspberry eased by Black Cherry, twittering and pawing at the ground. "Go, go," the scarlet girl whimpered. Dee's echo died. Black Cherry's hands curled into fists. "No."

 

Dee charged, seized a bleeding wing. He planted his feet and started a vicious twist. Black Cherry reared back and tore the captured wing off her shoulder with her own hands. The wing dissolved in a russet flood. The momentum of his planned attack knocked Dee off his feet. "Run, Raz!"

 

Black Cherry howled, "I told you I could handle it, Master!" She bitch-slapped the fleeing Raspberry across the back with the flat of her remaining wing.

 

Raspberry exploded into purple haze. Yves sailed, ragged-doll limbed, through the air. The sound was consonant with the recording of smashing glass played backward and too fast and a thousand harp strings rubbed with steel nails. Raspberry snapped into solidity parallel and inches below Yves. She threw her arms and legs around him an instant before they both hit the pavement.

 

Dee kipped up but Black Cherry clipped him on the chin with an uppercut on her backswing and knocked him flat on his back. "I should have known my minions would never be enough for you. Not like I am." Behind her, Raspberry and Yves streaked over the blacktop, trailing a greased, lavender wake. "I'm glad I stopped with the latex gimp. Where is she, anyway? Hiding isn't her style at all. Ah, well, she'll show up just in the nick of time, I suppose."

 

Dee sat up, rattling his head, his jaw pins-and-needles numb.

 

Black Cherry sighed. "Where was I? Oh, monologing, yes." She splayed her hands, crimson fluid rushing up her legs and humping her back with a burgeoning wing. Her once-nectarous surface smoothed into a polished rind of creamy carmine. "So there I was, with boxes and boxes of Jell-O gelatin, just oodles of raw collagen powder." Dee staggered to his feet. "I had to do something with it, but I'm not really the baking type." Dee charged, arms out, palms flat. He struck her in the abdomen, arms working in a peculiar rhythm. Nothing happened.

 

Black Cherry cleared her throat. Dee stared down at his hands, one on her tummy, the other sandwiched between her breasts. The geek and the scarlet girl looked each other in the eye.

 

"So I ate it all," Black Cherry smirked, and punched Dee in the gut with the force of a wrecking ball.

 

 

 

 

The asphalt dimpled into two shallow potholes beneath Black Cherry's feet when her underhand swing caught Dee's stomach right below the ribs. The pin-and-needles sensation erupted across his body, over his skin and through meat and fiber. A seismograph slung down from his butt would have recorded a 6.7 Richter scale Dee-quake with its epicenter beneath the intruding crimson fist. Dee stood motionless, eyes watering, for a long and breathless moment.

 

The laws of physics caught up with his nanomek-enhanced physique and launched Dee into the air, doubled over, a superman in sweatpants flying in reverse. His trajectory described a grand ellipse until he crashed, still ass-backwards, into a high corner where a recessed pylon met the overhead highway above the yellow SUV. The entire structure shivered, cement blocks scraping together, louder than firecrackers. The steel rebar enforcing the integrity of the overpass fatigued but held.

 

Dee fell. He belly-flopped onto the roof of the yellow SUV. The vehicle's rear and side windows blew out as the impact bent the roof at jaunty angle. Three figures, already crouched and hidden between the SUV and the pylon, dropped to their knees and escaped the spray of glass. Numbness blossomed into dull headache and honest-to-goodness, throbbing pain. He rolled his head to the side.

 

The three figures stood swaddled in shadow. Heads and arms hung low, faces covered in bedraggled, damp and filthy hair, reminding Dee of undead wet girls from Japanese horror movies. Dee thought he heard a muffled buzzing noise. He managed to mumble, "Ow, quit it," before all the lights went out.

 

---

 

 

Raspberry and Yves slid to a slippery halt. Raspberry rolled over and laid Yves out on his back. She fought off weakness, tried to be tender. Raspberry, pale and wan, knelt over Yves' inert body. The long trail of purple jelly collected into oozy polliwogs and wiggled upstream toward her. She bent close to Yves and nestled her head against his chest, eyes squeezed shut in hope. She felt a strong heartbeat, a shuddery breath. Relief flooded through her and the polliwogs raced to feed her growing, rising, darkening, furious form.

 

Black Cherry contemplated her fist, mashed flatter than a ball of clay thrown against a brick wall, less than a dozen feet away from where Raspberry, radiant with rage, made her stand. The intense silence made the scarlet girl turn and look on with mild interest. Raspberry said, "Burn."

 

She spat acid. A sizzling jet of molten violet struck Black Cherry in the face. The scarlet girl screeched and reeled, clawing at her face with her good hand. Raspberry spat again but overshot as Black Cherry fell kicking to the ground. The ejecta struck a concrete pylon.

 

"Raz," Yves called to her over the Black Cherry's now burbling screams. "Raz."

 

Raspberry sat on her knees next to him, took his hand in hers. "Yeah?"

 

Yves watched the purple sputum eat a pizza-sized hole in the pylon's concrete, revealing ribs of blackened steel rebar. "What was that?" His voice was very faint.

 

"My acid tongue. CeeCee calls me a real spitfire. I think it's one of her stupid double tundra thingies." She glanced up. A wide shape, a massive curvy mound of peach-orange ice cream, drew itself together by the overturned Jeep. Raspberry smiled. "You can ask the fat ass yourself in a minute."

 

Yves shut his eyes. "I didn't know you could do that."

 

"There's a lot you don't know about me." She felt so tired.

 

Yves reopened his eyes and Raspberry did her best to smile again. "You wouldn't happen to be a goo guy in drag, would you?" Yves asked.

 

The burbling screams tapered off into wet hissing.

 

Raspberry shrugged. "Nah."

 

Yves sighed, "Ah, well." He paused. Raspberry guessed he was waiting for a comeback. She did not feel like giving one. Yves frowned. "What's wrong?"

 

"Nothing." Raspberry stood, mimed dusting off her knees. "Hawking a loogie takes a shitload of nanomek, that's all." She thrust her hands on her hips. "And I've already spent a couple o' fuckloads saving your pansy ass. Twice. I…" She blinked, gazing off into the middle-distance. "I…" She looked down.

 

Twelve inches of curved, crimson wing-claw protruded from between her breasts. The claw curled lazily downward, dripping purple ichor, its needle-sharp tip pricking her tummy, poised to rip.

 

"Oh," Raspberry said.

 

---

 

 

Dee drifted in squishy darkness. Wait a minute, he thought, I'm not unconscious. His head bopped to a jerking rhythm. Someone's sitting on my face.

 

---

 

 

 

 

Exhaustion, fear, and horror all demanded Yves cringe, look away, succumb to shock. He refused. "Raz." He would not abandon Raspberry. "Raz, look at me." She met his gaze. "Breathe. Don't look away. Eight forces sustain creation," he told her, calm and sure, as the red claw tore through her. "Breathe." Purple nectar spurted and stung his face and neck but Yves held Raspberry captive with his unblinking, sky-blue scrutiny. "Movement and stillness. Breathe." Yves sat up as Raspberry slumped toward him. He bobbed his head birdlike to keep their eyes locked. "Extension and contraction." Yves doffed his overshirt. Raspberry sank to her knees. "Breathe. Unification and division."

 

Raspberry swooned, surface tension failing. Her features ran as slowly melting wax. Yves swooped his overshirt about her, gathered her into his lap, securing the shirt with a quick knot of the sleeves. Tie-dye splotches bloomed over the white shirt but Raspberry held together. "Solidity and fluidity," Yves smiled down at her.

 

Raspberry pressed a cooling, gluey palm against his cheek. Her leer was a vague sickle-shape in her syrupy face. "You are shit fucking hot. We're so lucky Dee chose you." Yves wanted to ask the obvious question but saved it for later.

 

Black Cherry loomed, wings held close, claws clicking above her head. Curlicues of crimson vapor wafted from her mouth and brow. "Let her go," she protested in the tones of a peeved toddler. "You're mine. She doesn't get to play with you unless I say so. She hurt me and I am going to kill her. You're my playmate."

 

"Is he now?" CeeCee's golden bulk boiled up behind Black Cherry. "Well, Raz is mine, and I say you need to take a few Midol and mellow out."

 

Black Cherry spun, wings whickering. CeeCee stood her ground. Crimson wing claws stabbed deep into the moiling gel-flesh below her breasts. Buttery pudding suppurated around the sunken claws, bleeding in little rills that scrawled over the veins in Black Cherry's webbed wings. Black Cherry smirked, hooked her wing claws deep within CeeCee's core, and tugged to rend the amber woman in two.

 

CeeCee neither split nor budged. Black Cherry's Mary Janes scuffed over the pavement as the tugging motion of her wings dragged her a few feet closer to the amber woman's viscid, endlessly flowing curves. The little rills of cheesecake pudding rolling over her red wings surged into rivulets. Black Cherry frowned, jerked one shoulder backward—and tripped a step forward. The golden rivulets wove themselves into a thickening net across Black Cherry's wings. Tendrils crept across her back. The scarlet girl growled, gnashed her teeth, hauled with her other shoulder, and lurched sideways into CeeCee's abounding flesh.

 

Soft, amber cleavage swallowed Black Cherry's neck. CeeCee chuckled, a rich, glutinous sound. She wrapped her arms around the bewildered scarlet girl, kneaded Black Cherry's devil-red little rump and mushed their mons together. Black Cherry whimpered and surrendered to the urge to grind. Her wings, torso, and legs were quickly coated in yellow cake batter.

 

"Honey," CeeCee clucked. Black Cherry's trembling chin vanished in the cloying avalanche of golden gel-flesh. "I knew you were cumming." CeeCee's maw yawned wide. "So I baked you a cake," she finished, and started devouring Black Cherry in earnest.

 

Raspberry, bug-eyed and enraptured by the sloppy spectacle, squirmed in Yves' lap. "Jesus fuck. Look-it. Look-it! Would ya look-it?"

 

Yves shook his head, eye shut tight. "I ain't look-it-ting."

 

---

 

 

 

Addled and clobbered, Dee spent a few beats refocusing his senses. He had not plunged into comatose darkness. Some girl wearing skintight black jeans had scrabbled onto the bent roof of the yellow SUV, leapt froglike astraddle his face, and sat on his forehead, knees squeezed against his ribs. She rode the bridge of his nose like a berserk bicyclist slogging out the last few miles of Le Tour de France. Her denim seat sopped and reeked of sweat and sex and a hint of oven-fresh chocolate chip cookies. After all he had been through, Dee decided, he would never again enjoy a single innocent thought or taste of dessert. Maybe I'll be able to eat a brussel sprout without thinking of wild, raunchy sex, but that's about it.

 

The mystery girl sitting on his head buried her face in his crotch and mouthed his cock through his sweatpants and underwear. Her breath basted the cotton-nylon blends cupping his shaft and balls in sweltering warmth. His dick stiffened in reflex and the mystery girl assaulted him with a fully clothed fellatio-cunnilingus combo attack. Another day, Dee thought, grabbing handfuls of the ass bouncing against his forehead, another ambush sixty-nine session. He pried her ass away from his face. The jeans were so tight her cheeks felt rock solid. Sunlight spilled across the sodden camel-toe trying to stomp his nose flat. I bet this never happens to Batman.

 

A fountain of flaxen hair blotted out the sun. A second girl—Dee recognized her, the blonde E-Z sorority sister who hit on him last night and then joined this morning's creepy carwash—her eyes blank of all expression except hunger, forced the mystery girl's ass high and rammed her tongue down Dee's throat. Dee craned his neck and took stock of his situation.

 

The blonde tickled his tonsils like an alien facehugger. She stood on the hood of the SUV. Her white tee-shirt gaped open to reveal the top swells of big, wobbling breasts. Her wide, wine-dark areola and fat nipples still stuck to the translucent, wet material of her tee. Wow, Ursula was right on about those.

 

"Honey," Dee heard CeeCee say, her voice deep and oddly amplified, "I knew you were cumming so I baked you a cake." He tipped his head.

 

CeeCee had enveloped Black Cherry almost head-to-toe and was suckling on the scarlet girl as she would slurp down a thick chocolate cherry milkshake. My God. Red wings dissolved and siphoned off in swirls into CeeCee's gullet. I should have known.

 

["…What can I say, honey, we go together well…"]

 

Great spirals of black and crimson burst from Black Cherry's slowly deliquescing body and funneled into CeeCee, her gel-flesh banded and stormy with a riot of color. Chocolate and cherries go great with cheesecake. CeeCee is going to kick Black Cherry's ass.

 

The mystery girl whined and strained against the blonde's arms, trying to smack her ass back down atop Dee's face. Dee propped his head up, the blonde still slopping her lips over his. His crotch had sprouted a bobbing carrot-top; the mystery girl turned out to be the redhead E-Z from earlier. Her fingers fumbled over Dee's sweats. She yanked the elastic waist but, like proverbial monkey with his clenched fist stuck in the cookie jar, she would not stop munching on Dee's cock through his clothes and stalemated herself.

 

A brunette, the third E-Z from last night, hopped and kicked her way up the hatchback, clawing onto the roof. It's about to get pretty crowded up here. He twisted side to side. We're a good eight feet off the ground, glass everywhere, nowhere to maneuver. CeeCee's bought me some time. How do I get them off me without hurting them?

 

The blonde sucked his face with bottomless abandon. He tried his newfound voice anyway: "Ge' mmf."

 

A collective shudder passed through the two girls ravaging him. Their ardor and enthusiasm doubled. The left-out brunette wailed and bounded up between his legs. Dee's dispassion toward their efforts became difficult to maintain and his dick fully engorged. Yeah, that worked well. What to do? I can't hurt them, even by accident. They're innocent.

 

["…innocent of this matter, I mean…"]

 

The brunette pushed the redhead away. The redhead's mouth popped off Dee's cock with an angry huff. Her hands, as if driven by some other willpower, still tugged mechanically on his pants, and she finally managed to bare his manhood. The redhead wolfed down the head of Dee's dick, angled her neck, dove for a deep throat—and thwacked her forehead against the brunette, who was already slurping up his shaft and pawing at his balls.

 

Just great. It grew difficult to distract himself from the all the tongues and teeth, the flashes of flesh, the funk of savaged sex, and especially the two pairs of lips and four hands mindlessly muscling for rank and territory on his package. Zombie cockfight.

 

---

 

 

Yves risked a peek over Raspberry's head. CeeCee dined, poised and regal, on Black Cherry's dwindling gel. Black Cherry swooned but could not escape the amber woman's engulfing embrace. CeeCee pressed forward, swelling as she drew in more and more crimson gel-flesh, a plus-sized vampire gowned in a muumuu of many colors. Black Cherry evanesced in spewing plumes, shuddering orgiastic with every rupture from her core. CeeCee's gourmandizing. His gorge rose at the thought.

 

["…my compliments to the chef, Yves. That was choice…"]

 

He turned aside. His silver Jeep squatted sideways a few yards away. The little truck looked like someone pulled a Thelma-and-Louise and drove it off a cliff. Yves squinted. Abstract green shapes, indistinct emerald cones and jade crescents, tumbled and bumped against the plastic rear window. He saw no sign of Nyx or Ursula.

 

"Hey, Dee," he called, twisting. Raspberry settled in his lap. "Listen, Dee, Eurydice is having trouble putting herself back to…whatthefuck?"

 

The yellow SUV sat in shadow under the overpass. Dee sprawled on its skewed roof, buried under three mindfucked co-eds. A redhead tried to sixty-nine him to death. She was thwarted by a busty blonde, standing on the SUV's hood and pushing the redhead's ass up with both hands while giving Dee a suffocating tongue-bath. A brunette curled around Dee's legs and battled the redhead over who could gobble Dee's cock the deepest and longest before coming up for air.

 

So that's public fuckability, Yves thought. "Dee, what the fuck do you think you're doing?" The world can't really work this way, can it?

 

Dee edged an arm out from under the redhead's thighs. He nudged the blonde's chin away from his face, uprooting her from his mouth. The blonde slavered, puckering like a fish out of water. Dee spread his fingers to hold her at bay and she nursed wetly on his thumb. "Trying not to ejaculate. Failing. Got any ideas?"

 

"Stop fucking and start fighting. Knock their heads together or something." Yves said. Dee's expression curdled. "What? Why not? Oh, Christ, is this some 'great power, great responsibility,' comic book morality crap? Or just Dark Age chauvinism?"

 

"It's Silver Age." The chill in Dee's voice dropped below freezing. "Got any other ideas?"

 

Yves thought for a second, then turned to the goo girl warming his lap. "Raz, you said something before. About Nyx saving us from being buried in zombie pussy, remember?" Raspberry nodded, eyes glued on CeeCee. "What happens to one of Black Cherry's skank-bots when she's distracted?"

 

"Automatic pilot," Raspberry answered, sounding robotic herself.

 

"Dee," Yves said. "They're on automatic pilot, whatever that means. Can you use that?"

 

The two girls feasting on Dee's dick settled into a relentless, counterpoint rhythm. The brunette humped his leg. The redhead strained to smother Dee with her ass again, but the blonde's grip on the redhead's ass held and kept it aloft. The blonde crooned and deep throated Dee's thumb.

 

Dee twitched, sweating. "Got…one…chance." He raised his free arm.

 

"You're loving this," Yves chided.

 

Dee wrapped his free hand around one of the blonde's wrists and slid it toward the center of the redhead's ass. The blonde did not protest or stop slobbering on Dee's other thumb. Her fingers slid into the redhead's ass-crack. Dee let go. The blonde stared blankly down at him but her fingers fondled the redhead's ass.

 

Dee muttered, "Bingo," and moved the blonde's other hand over the camel toe formed by the redhead's tight jeans' seam pressing into her vulva. The blonde absent-mindedly pressed two slender fingers against the seam, tracing little circles. The redhead stopped straining and started bucking her hips from side to side. She groaned, mouth full of cock.

 

"You've got to be kidding me," Yves said, watching Dee unbuckle the redhead's belt. "This is your plan?" Dee pulled down on the redhead's zipper. "I said they were on automatic pilot, not bi-curious." Dee unzipped the redhead's fly not halfway before the blonde grabbed the belt and hauled the redhead's pants down.

 

"Whoa," Yves said. The redhead wore no panties. Her bare ass bobbled free, shiny and wet with sweat and sex. "Wow, um…" The blonde squirmed her thumb over the clitoral hood hidden in a trimmed tuft of fiery red hair and sank two fingers third-knuckle deep between swollen labia. "That's, uh…"

 

Dee hoisted his suckled thumb upward. The blonde followed, keeping her mouth locked around his flesh, until the top of her head bumped against the redhead's butt. She spat out Dee's thumb like it were old gum, clawed the redhead's thighs and latched her lips on the redhead's pussy.

 

Yves gave up. Maybe the world doesn’t work this way for everybody, but it sure as shit does for Dee. "Good plan, Dee."

 

The blonde went tongue-spelunking. The redhead pulled herself off his cock to howl her pleasure. Dee propped himself up, lightning fast. He plucked the brunette's face away from his balls and very gently pressed her forehead against the redhead's. The two girls gazed deep into each other's eyes for a moment, then soul-kissed with a manic ferocity, arms entwining in a desperate clinch.

 

"And that…" Dee said, shaking his leg out from under the brunette. She took the opportunity to scoot close to the redhead and peel off her tee-shirt. Dee slipped off the roof feet-first, doing up his pants in the process. "…is how Deiter fucking Detwiler knocks heads," he finished as he touched down on the pavement, adjusting the crotch of his sweatpants in a meager attempt at modesty.

 

The blonde scrambled onto the roof of the yellow SUV, shucking her shirt. Discarded skank-wear pattered down around the vehicle.

 

Dee jogged over to CeeCee. The amber woman swallowed down the last of Black Cherry, noshing on a literal piece of ass like slice of watermelon. "CeeCee," Dee said, beaming, "you're amazing. How long can…" His face fell. "CeeCee?"

 

CeeCee swayed. Her gel-flesh churned with licks of red and black brume. "Not long, honey," she said. She glanced up, not at Dee, but at Raspberry, and added, "Master."

 

Raspberry spoke, "Back in the kitchen, you said you would never eat Black Cherry, only me." Her face was a child's and Yves thought she might cry. "Why not?" She sounded so plaintive Yves could not resist hugging her to him. "Why now?"

 

CeeCee's weary smile was stained the color of blood oranges and cinnamon. "Because it costs too much nanomek," she answered. Her canary-yellow eyes misted over. "And I knew I'd have to do it to save your fool life someday." Her eyes dimmed into a dull, abyssal black. When she spoke again, her voice as not entirely her own. "And I think I can only do it once."

 

 

 

 

"Hold out as long as you can, CeeCee" Dee said, "and we'll stick to the original plan." CeeCee bobbed her head and Dee turned. "Yves. You mobile?"

 

Yves nodded, making the world spin. He fought to stay upright and nodded until the vertigo went away.

 

"Alright," Dee said, "you get Raz and your own ass the Hell out of here." He turned to CeeCee. The amber woman's face scrunched and fists trembled. Her gel-flesh reddened. "I'll take care of the rest," he added.

 

"Fuck you," Raspberry spat, "I am not leaving CeeCee." Her brow furrowed. "What original plan?"

 

Yves consoled her as Dee hustled over to the Jeep. "We're just going a little bit back down the road where we came, that's all. Can you walk?"

 

Dee stuck his head in the Jeep's skyward-pointing, driver-side window. Yves heard several muffled voices in a murmur of quick conversation. "Raz," Yves said, giving her the gentlest of shakes, "can you walk?"

 

She pulled her shoulders out of his arms. "How the fuck should I know, motherfucker? I've never been this motherfucking low on fucking nanomek before. Besides, if I walk..." Her anger dissolved into tears. "If I walk away from CeeCee right now, like this, I'd die, I'd just die. Yves, what are we going to do?"

 

"Stick to the original plan," Yves told her before calling out to Dee, "We good?"

 

Dee pulled his head out of the Jeep's window. Lime green frosting ringed his mouth. A black lip-print of a chaste kiss adorned his forehead like some ceremonial third eye. "We're good." He shuffled to the rear of the Jeep, testing handholds.

 

Raspberry sniffled. "What original plan?"

 

Dee found a handhold and pushed. The Jeep scrapped forward. Dee blinked and started, an expression Yves readily identified as Dee's Holy-shit-that-was-easy face. Yves glanced at CeeCee. Two big, ludicrous lumps of amber gelatin gathered on her, like sideways Bactrian camel humps. Her eyes were jammed shut, but he knew that a meliae's senses did not always correspond to anatomy. He decided to risk it.

 

Yves pointed left, then circled his finger around to the right, and brought his palm down flat.

 

"I thought I screwed that up," Raspberry said. The Jeep inched nearer to the mouth of the overpass, trailing flecks of metal, glass, and silver paint.

 

"Black Cherry doesn't know Dee like I do, no matter what the psycho-bitch thinks," Yves told her. "Watch."

 

Yves pointed left. Raspberry followed his finger, saw the little copse of trees felled by the preternatural vigor of Dee and Eurydice's doggy-styling less than two hours earlier. Yves circled his finger around to the right. Raspberry followed it, as if hypnotized. Yves ended up pointing at the concrete pylon with the lavender-stained pizza-sized hole eaten into its face.

 

Yves brought his hand down flat.

 

Raspberry thought for a moment, her face blank. She paled to periwinkle and tilted her head up to gawk at the highway above them. "Oh, fuck me."

 

"Hopefully, it won't come to that," Yves said. He tried to stand with the lavender girl in his arms but his legs kept folding up under him, or the road kept slipping around beneath his feet. He could not tell which.

 

Raspberry managed a small laugh—"Ha"—but her eyes were wild and worried. Dee shoved the Jeep out from under the overpass' shadow. "Yves. Get up," Raspberry said. The humps on CeeCee's back thinned and stretched, first into discs, then webbed wings. "Get up, Yves." Dee pushed until the Jeep listed against far side of the on-ramp, well clear of the overpass. "Get up, babe," Raspberry pled, her arms trapped inside the overshirt tourniquet holding her together. "We gotta go."

 

Yves hung his head. "I'm so tired, Raz. There are things you don't know about me, either."

 

CeeCee's eyelids flittered up. The polished coal buttons of her eyes were too small for her round, wide face, fixing her visage in a silent but perpetual scream. "Dee," she said, arms searching blind. "Master. I. Black Cherry." She fought to hiss out each word. "I'm lying. She's lying. Black Cherry. About Galatea."

 

 

 

 

Yves sat up fast. Raspberry sloshed against his lap. Dee whirled around. Come on, Dee, Yves thought. Keep it together, don't fuck this up. He watched Dee watch CeeCee struggle for control of her own mouth. If there was ever a time for one of your hallmark flashes of intuition, it's now. Yves realized he was holding his breath.

 

 

CeeCee spluttered and coughed out words. "I didn't…she…"

 

Dee's open palm shot up. "That's enough, CeeCee. You're running out of nanomek and I need you to do something else."

 

"But she never—"

 

Dee's new voice crackled in the air. "Enough!" The yellow SUV's car alarm blared, hazard lights flashing before the alarm wound down. The three sorority sisters, a half-naked pile of tangled limbs and lips, cried out in lusty chorus. CeeCee quailed and fell silent.

 

Yves exhaled, slumping. Raspberry, bound by Yves' overshirt, flopped over to peer up at him. Yves shook his head. Dee can't know Black Cherry's secrets until she's ready to tell him, he thought, but only whispered, "Later." If she decides CeeCee's spoiled her fun, it's all over. She'll stop playing the supervillain game and any advantage we have will be lost. "After I get you out of here."

 

"CeeCee," Dee said, pointing to the moist three-way on the SUV's roof, "Can you control them? Through Black Cherry? You've got to get them out of here."

 

Nascent claws, little red nubs, hooked out from the raw scarlet wings stretching from CeeCee's back. The wings battered the air, powerful but uncoordinated, each attempting flight independent of the other. CeeCee lurched, arms raised.

 

The three coeds floundered their slippy way down to the ground. Only the brunette had retained her panties. The greasy silk underwear looked like she had worn it for weeks on end. The three sorority sisters collected their clothes in silence and shambled down the road, extras from a Romero movie.

 

The embryonic wing-claws grew long and sharp. One wing stabbed down, its claw piercing the pavement. The whorls of crimson and black sucked inward, gradually draining from CeeCee's turbulent surface, leaving behind a sallow yellow. Dee paced around her, keeping out of striking distance of the free wing, walking in a careful semi-circle until he stood with the purple-stained pylon directly behind him.

 

"Aw, shit," Raspberry quavered as Dee backed up a step, then two. "We've gotta go right fucking now."

 

Yves hoisted the lavender girl in his arms and rose to one knee. His vision danced with silvered sparks of snow and fire. Oh God, he thought, sagging his weight against his leg, not an aura. Not now. He blinked but the colorless pyrotechnics persisted. At least that explains the way I've been feeling; I'm not cracking up. The world filled with silent video static. I'm pre-migraine.

 

The lavender girl stretched to plant a soothing kiss on his neck. "What are the eight forces that sustain creation, Yves? I forgot."

 

Yves set his jaw. "Movement," he said, and stood straight.

 

"And stillness," Raspberry said, nestled against his chest.

 

CeeCee's free wing flopped in a wide circle before slamming into the pavement. Licks of red and black whipped around the amber woman's surface and vanished inward. Dee took another step backward.

 

"Extension," Yves called, striding forward.

 

"And contraction," Raspberry answered, hugging herself tight until she fit perfectly in his arms.

 

The red wings clawed at the pavement. CeeCee rocked forward to stay on her feet. Her black button eyes sunk into her head before she squeezed them shut. A red bolus rose up on her back between her wings. Dee stepped backward again. The pavement beneath his feet inclined to join the pylon behind him.

 

"Unification," Yves said, and broke into a run.

 

"And division," Raspberry whispered, gazing over his shoulder as the distance between them and the amber woman grew. "I love you, CeeCee. Run. Run."

 

CeeCee burst like a water balloon. Black Cherry fell away, fully formed and furious, sweating blood-nectar from every pore. CeeCee's shapeless remnants slithered over the pavement in honeyed waves. Black Cherry sprang to her feet, howling in rage, wings swooping in for the kill.

 

"Cherry," Dee's voice reverberated and the scarlet girl staggered.

 

Yves cleared the mouth of the overpass. The mid-morning sun overwhelmed the fading aural sparks. "Solidity," he said, and turned about.

 

Dee stood with his back to the tall, ferroconcrete pylon. Black Cherry swiveled to face him. Sanguine honey dripped from her quivering wing claws, her arms, her pouting mouth and flush sex. "Master."

 

Dee raised his arms high, left hand curled around his right fist. He poured every ounce of his strength into a backswing. His fist smashed into the pylon, blasting off chunks of cement spiked with shorn rebar. Yves ears rang in the roar. There was an instant of quiet.

 

"And fluidity," Raspberry said. CeeCee flowed away from the overpass in a creamy gush.

 

A jagged crack raced up the side of the pylon with a ripple of sharp noise, overlapping pistol shots. The pylon split along its length. A half-column of concrete ripped free of rebar and thumped down onto the road hard enough to bounce Yves off the ground and knock the silver Jeep an inch forward. The bridging highway above rocked on its foundations.

 

Black Cherry gazed upward, worry melting into wonder and delight, as the pylon began its slow topple toward her. Her lips curled in a lazy smile, heavy lidded eyes sliding shut. "Oh, Master."

 

"Splat," Dee said, and several hundred tons of concrete pylon crashed down upon them both.

 

 

Superman never made any money For saving the world from Solomon Grundy, And sometimes I despair The world will never see Another man…like him.   —Crash Test Dummies, Superman's Song