Fuxer 9 – Chode Attack
Xander's and Zack's black shadows dashed over shining sand as they played catch around the headquarters.
Okay, technically this was 4X and Nova in a training exercise, since they both struggled with their turning accuracy, but Xander kept falling behind on purpose, to get a look at Zack's ass, packed precisely into his sky blue singlet.
Zack flew with knees a bit bent, causing his hole-print to be clearly visible on the uniform's taint. Xander didn't use 4D vision. This tease was more fun.
Neither wore their helmet, so Zack's new hairstyle was on display. The teen hero had shaved his shaggy, black hair at the sides and now wore a mohawk, tied near the back of his head. The little tie swayed as Zack changed direction.
He was too slow.
"Gotcha," Xander growled as he crashed into the bigger flying brick with a force that would have broken the bones of a normal person.
Their limbs entangled and Zack chuckled – even giggled – as he tried to escape the grip of his captor, five stories above the island.
A shirtless, blond twunk appeared next to them, slightly transparent, standing on air at an odd angle. Vince-B11, the astral projector.
"Put your helmets on," Vince urged. "Aqua's orders. You need to defend earth."
The two A-list heroes pulled their masks from their utility belts and slipped them on. Meanwhile, Vince said, "The Manly League shot down a giant asteroid from Chodia Prime but some fragments made it through. Spaceoid is handling the situation in orbit but there are Chode spores coming down everywhere."
Zack lead the flight to the opening in the dome. Boi Wing One and Two were already gone, teleported out by Todd on the main catwalk.
The com in Xander's mask crackled.
"Can you hear me?" said Aqua's voice.
"Loud and clear, sir," Xander answered.
"I'm on my way to Shanghai. We're spread thin. Bolt, 4X and Nova, you'll have to handle the spore that came down close to the headquarters. It's looking ugly but I think it's not threatening a settlement for now. Take with you whoever's left. Good luck."
Bolt dashed down from the apartment floor. Hugging his waist were the ability enhancing blond jock Reuben–B3 and the short but wiry Katashi-B2, who struggled to pull the mask over his ringed nose with one hand, holding on for dear life with the other.
"Let's go," Bolt said, breathless. "North east. I'll send the waypoint to your visors."
The three flying bricks and their two sidekick headed out.
The Chodian creature was visible from far away. It was mountainous, dwarfing the rocky reef it had taken root in.
Its fleshy white body rose from the sea like a skyscraper – a fat, fat skyscraper. The alien was topped off by a rosy head, like a mushroom as wide as it was tall. And it was fucking tall.
It looked like, well, a short, comically fat dick blown up to the size of a minor city.
From its submerged base grew a dozen pale tentacles, longer than its main body. One of those was slung around a tiny fishing boat, while the other had burrowed itself into the side of a cruise ship, threatening to push it underwater.
Bolt wasted no time. Purple orbs trailed toward the creature's center with the speed of a missile. The steam of bright purple comets doubled as B2, Katashi, duplicated Bolt.
Now B2 was wrapping his naked legs around the doppelgänger's broad torso, hooking his shin protectors into each other.
B3, meanwhile, had stayed with the original Bolt and augmented his abilities, tripling the output of now even brighter and faster energy orbs.
It was like lobbing grenades at a mountain.
At least stone would have shattered, but the soft alien flesh blunted every impact – yes, it even contracted around the damage, seemingly healing itself from an infinite supply of mass.
"Fuck!" Nova said. "Four Exer, follow me. We're saving that ship."
4X headed straight for the cruise ship, purple comets lighting up the Chode as a near constant stream to little effect.
From up close, the tentacles, which had looked relatively thin, were clearly thicker than a truck. Nova shot heat rays through his one-way visor and severed the flesh. Mass was pumped in from the main body to repair the tear before the tentacle could break apart.
"Keep going," 4X shouted and flew in. He punched his arms deep into the tentacle, breaking pale, mushroom-y meat under his assault, and kept going.
His body's impact tore the alien limb at the heat-ray induced fault line and 4X sank halfway into the faux-flesh as he drove the severed limb into the ocean.
The swaying cruise ship had a three deck high hole in its side, but the damage was too far above the waterline to sink it.
Two more tentacles came toward them when he broke loose from the Chode-meat.
"Get the people out of here," Nova said and flew at the nearest tentacle.
"Gotcha," 4X said and headed for the crushed remains of the empty fishing boat, embedded in a wildly twisting tentacle.
He scanned the ocean with 4D vision and saw five people floating in the stormy water below.
He took a dive to grab the person who had sunken farthest, the water cool on his invulnerable skin. He grabbed the collar of a barely moving child on the way up and carried them both into the cruiser's gaping hole. He dove down again to snatch the other three, who clung to him like the lifesaver he was.
Unfortunately, one of the struggling survivors ripped his singlet's left strap as he dropped them on the ship's deck.
4X glanced at Nova – who held one tentacle in place with telekinesis and punched-burned chunks out of the other.
The ship's motor howled to life but it barely moved.
4X flew to the very tip at the front and pulled. The metal plate came loose. Of course he couldn't pull the ship from a single point. What had he been thinking?
His torn singlet flapped on his chest, distracting him until he collided with a tentacle and the fishing boat's remains within. The impact did little to blunt his flight but he also did little harm to the Chode's limb in return.
His singlet was now pushed down to his utility belt, sea water making his torso glisten.
The tentacle aimed for the cruise ship underneath him but two streams of purple comets tore into it, making charred bits fly off at a rate just above what the creature could heal.
Finally, 4X arrived at the end of the ship and slammed his weight into it. His spread hands punched through the hull – and so did his forward pointing crotch – but he had enough surface to keep the denting metal from breaking.
With the motor and his super strength, the ship moved away from the alien invader.
4X couldn't breathe. Why?!
He realized that his face was stuck in the hull and he had instinctively switched to 4D vision to look into the engine room.
He tore himself loose, turned around and kept shoving the ship with his back.
His 4D vision showed him the nearly uniform interior of the Chode spore. There were only a few dozen distinct strands going up the inner third.
Maybe...
Nova emerged from the Chode, gasping for air after having tunneled through it with the aid of his heat vision.
"Nova," 4X shouted. His mask crumbled around him, having smashed into the ship. His com was gone. "Nooovaaaa!"
The muscle god from an alternate past flew up to him.
"Four Exer?" Nova said as he gave the ship a shove with both hands. His uniform was dissolving from rubbing against the harder parts within the mushroom-y flesh.
"It's got an internal structure," 4X said. "Maybe that's the brain or the skeleton or what-the-fuck-ever super shrooms have."
"Here," Nova said and pulled his spare Com from his belt. "Let Bolt point."
"Bolt," 4X said. "We have a plan. Descend a bit. A bit more. Aim your shots to the left. More. Stop! Right a notch. Nova, that's the spot. Bolt, hold fire."
Nova flew perfectly straight into the closing wound Bolt had left, heat vision and telekinesis tearing the way free.
The opening closed right behind him but 4X could follow his crush with 4D sight.
Nova ripped through one of the strands, then incidentally another on the way out the other side.
The Chode screamed. No, it depressurized. Its body dented inward at the spot Nova had entered. A tentacle dropped into the water, internally severed, splashing like a freight train hitting the ocean.
"Bolt," 4X said, grinning. "A bit to the left. Down. Nova? Right there."
Ranger teleported onto the wobbly corpse of the slain Chode because there was no other place to stand.
"Great job, bois," the Australian said, hoarse. "We need you to do that again."
They teleported without further talk.
It took up the entire field of vision.
4X couldn't tell what city this was, because only a few suburbs still stuck out under the pale shroom's base. His 4D vision revealed a town buried by the alien spore. Where the previous Chodian had been large enough to be a mountain, this one reached the clouds. And it was fatter than tall.
Wiz hovered above the pink head and summoned fire rain. He was a tiny dot, causing tiny bits of damage.
A hero from the Manly League had constructed a hollow drill that dug deeper and deeper. 4X could tell they weren't even close to the critical strands.
Most tentacles were as thick as the first Chodian's main body had been but a plant-power hero had incapacitated most of them by growing trees on them and rooting those into the ground.
Zeal was using his masterful telekinesis to wrap entire roads around the still moving limbs to tie them down.
While 4X and Nova rose into the air, Zeal appeared next to them too fast for 4X's eyes to track him, stunning the boi into speechlessness.
Katashi hopped from the Bolt duplicate – which vanished – onto Zeal's back and created a copy of earth's greatest hero.
"Well?" Zeal said. "Point us?"
4X shook his head to clear it. "Uh... right, follow the drill-tunnel down, then go about as far down again, ten degree to the left."
The real Zeal, his duplicate and Nova all flew ahead.
He was giving orders to Zeal. He was giving fucking orders to fucking Zeal.
The speedo part of 4X' singlet, which was all that was left, poked outward in a totally obvious way as his boner strained. 4X muscled down until his dick wasn't grotesquely large anymore. The other heroes would chalk his heavy breathing up to excitement from the fight.
Chapter 10: The Homo-Verse
NOTE: after 18k words of wonky character building it's finally time for things to get real. Real gay, that is.