Incandescent Guardians

by D. R. Rosier

  She grinned, “I do. Not a comm satellite, since our advanced comms don’t need one, but it’ll give Angel, Sky, and the new A.I. eyes over the city. You know, we depend on the news and social media to track problems to respond to, and often sightings go cold by the time we get there. With a spy satellite over Chicago we’ll have an added data source, and also be able to verify other reports and track movements of supervillains from that point on if we don’t pick them up ourselves.”

  “I bet the government will love that. I’m going up tomorrow actually, so just let me know where to pick it up.”

  Angel said, “I’ll drop it off on my way home, I’ll put it on your coffee table. Sky will let me in, because we’re buds.”

  I laughed, “Fine. Coffee table? How big is it?”

  Amber said, “It’s the size of a beach ball, and weighs about two pounds. The entire sphere is coated with an invention of mine that absorbs solar energy like solar panels, and it’s supplemented by transmitted energy when needed. It has both normal optics, and infrared capabilities during cloud cover, as well as a new surveillance technology of my own design. It’s powerful enough to zoom in on the city and see the nose hairs of anyone looking up.”

  “Sounds good to me, do I need to register it with NORAD?”

  Amber bit her lip, “No?”

  I laughed.

  She explained, “The coating also makes it stealth. They wouldn’t be able to track it anyway, which would just make them nervous. The onboard systems will be able to evade any collision possibilities. This is for our vigilante super team, the less the government knows the better.”

  “That’s a really good point. You are the brains and beauty after all, I have no more questions.”

  She grinned, “Wise of you.”

  I laughed, “Nervous?”

  She nodded, “A little. But I’m also excited to meet them. I’m ready.”

  I reached out and took her hand, and she stepped into me stole a quick kiss, before we teleported to the sidewalk in front of my sister’s house.

  Casey and Ben lived in a modest three-bedroom ranch in Mount Prospect. The house was a very light brown color, covered in vinyl siding, with dark blue shutters. There were a few bushes along the front of the house on either side of the stoop. The garage door was open, and Ben was just getting out of the car with a couple of bottles of white wine. It was about five to six, so my guess was my sister had panicked and sent him out at the last minute.

  He waved us over.

  “Hey Ben, this is Amber. Amber, Ben.”

  Ben nodded, “Nice to meet you.”

  Amber said a beat too late, “You too.”

  Ben hit the garage door opener as we walked into the house and into the kitchen. The warm scents gave away that my sister had made her famous shrimp primavera dish, and there was also salad, the scent of warm bread, and a few other dishes.

  The kitchen itself was painted a warm green, and the evening sun lit up the place through the backyard window which faced south.

  I managed to drop the pie I’d brought for dessert on the counter before Casey gave me a quick hug then turned to Amber.

  “I’m Casey, you must be Amber. You’re gorgeous.”

  Amber replied, “Thanks, it’s nice to meet you.”

  Jenna came in with a smirk, “Something wrong with the front door? I’m Jenna. The best way to tell us apart is Casey is the loud one.”

  I snickered, earning a whap from my loud sister.

  Casey said, “Everyone out, dinner will be ready in a minute.”

  We moved into the living room, where I introduced Amber one more time to Jenna and Mark. My sisters seemed even nuttier than usual when meeting one of my girlfriends. I wasn’t sure what that was about, but I figured I’d find out sooner or later.

  Jenna gave her a curious look over in addition to the expected welcoming smile, which made Amber fidget, which in turn annoyed me.

  “What’s going on?”

  Jenna blushed, and then said to Amber in a faux conspiratorial voice, “Sorry. He’s just never brought a girlfriend to meet us before, like he has you. We’re both… curious.”

  Amber looked at me with raised eyebrow.

  I denied it, “That’s not true. You met all of them, of which there weren’t that many.”

  Jenna nodded, “Only after we hounded you for days and threatened horrors if you didn’t. This time you called us. That’s a first. Plus, you’re also more like your old self the last week.”

  The look in her eyes begged me to forgive her for saying that last. I supposed just in case it brought up the painful memories of two years ago.

  I frowned.

  Jenna said, “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, we’re just happy for you and more than a little curious. Anyway, want something to drink?”

  Yeah, it was a bit embarrassing, but that’s what family is for, right? She also wasn’t wrong, I’d told myself when I called two days ago that I was just going to get it over with, to avoid the harping and wheedling my sisters usually went through when I got a new woman in my life. But, had that really been the truth, or had dating Amber really changed me?

  Whatever, I pushed it out of my head. I wasn’t good at self-reflection. I didn’t think I was all that different, but I supposed the truth of it was in my actions. I had called, and I had told Amber about that horrible day. Two things I’d never done in the past.

  Hey, maybe I wasn’t emotionally unavailable anymore. Whatever the fuck that meant.

  Jenna got Amber and me a glass of wine, and we sat down around the table less than a minute later as Casey started to bring out the food. It all looked and smelled fantastic, and we dug in.

  Casey asked, “So, Amber. What is it you do and how did you meet our brother?”

  I almost choked on a shrimp, we hadn’t even discussed that. It wasn’t like she could tell them that we’d met two years ago while taking down some supervillains. Of course, we had met before that, thankfully Amber really was much smarter than I was.

  Amber said, “I’m an inventor. A mad scientist actually. Although I hate that term, because so many of us go the supervillain route, but I have to admit I’ve made some things that I have no idea how they really work. As for how we met, we met a long time ago when he set up his business. I’m Sky’s creator. The A.I. he uses in his business and to help place satellites.”

  I nodded, and took up the thread, “I was in a pretty bad place back then with the quickening, but when we ran into each other again recently, I couldn’t help but ask her out. Fortunately, she said yes.”

  Amber smiled, “Couldn’t help yourself?”

  I shook my head, “Nope.”

  We shared an intimate look, but broke it quickly given the company.

  Casey nodded, and commented, “Timing is everything, you two look good together.”

  Amber asked, “So, what do you four do?”

  Jenna replied jokingly, “I’m a corporate drone.”

  Mark snorted, “She works in purchasing for an IT company. I’m an independent CPA.”

  Ben said, “Construction.”

  Casey said, “He’s part owner and a foreman actually, and I work the books. It’s all pretty new.”

  Jenna asked, “So how does that work. I mean, not knowing how something works?”

  Amber said, “Most of the things I make I do understand. I have a doctorate in the sciences. I’m not sure on the other except to say meta-energy as a catch-all explanation. It gives us an… instinctual understanding of our universe. Like artificial gravity. I know how to build something to create gravity, but that doesn’t mean I have the answers, or the underlying principles of gravity completely understood on the data level. Sure, mass bends space-time creating gravity, but where it comes from or why it does that, I have no more clue than the next scientist.

  “Usually inventions follow theoretical breakthroughs in understanding of our universe, for mad scientists we can get there with intuition. It doesn’t make sense, but meta
-energy does a lot of things that don’t make sense. Like people throwing fire, or acting like stars, or even simply flying which breaks the laws of known physics. It just is.”

  Sky announced through the comm device, “Lady Lightning is on comms and patrolling.”

  Oh, well I hoped she didn’t run into trouble. My sisters never took it well when I had to flake out early. It was also hard to explain, since I couldn’t tell them I was Mythic.

  Fortunately, she didn’t and took down two supervillains that night on her own. My partners were far from weak. The dinner also went well, and my sisters had convinced Amber to meet them for lunch in the city the next day.

  Sure, they were nosy, but they also wanted to make her a friend.

  At the end of the night, I took her back to my high-rise condo instead of her house, and then to bed. As usual, she was wildly insatiable, and drove me out of my mind with her passion. I suppose the change back to my house was my effort to avoid recognizing just how crazy it was. I’d spent three nights in a row in her bed, and although I couldn’t get enough of her the idea of spending all my time over there felt like a crazy level of commitment.

  I supposed I was trying to baffle myself with bullshit.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next morning, I woke up to her slick heat hugging and sliding up and down me in abandon. The alluring way her generous and firm C cups bounced was rivaled greatly by the look of ecstatic pleasure on her face and in her eyes. She bounced wildly and twerked her hips on me and looked down into my eyes with a wanton level of devotion that took my breath away.

  The scent of our sex, of her arousal and sweet femininity drove me to pound up into her and meet her every downward thrust.

  She was a sex goddess, but it was so much more than simple fucking, no matter how awesome she was at it and physically pleasing. It was her deep passion and the way she looked at me that scrambled my brain and enhanced all my senses as I drowned in the pleasure of her body.

  God, I loved this woman.

  It was a hell of a way to wake up, and when she brought us both to a powerful and glorious finish, our mixed liquid completion warmed our middles as she collapsed on me and nuzzled my neck. Her whole body was slicked with perspiration and her sweet breathy gasps as she nibbled my neck teasingly while I caressed her body lovingly made me never want to move.

  She whispered sultrily, “I am your sex goddess. I can’t get enough, I needed you in me the moment I woke up and felt you holding me so tenderly even in your sleep.”

  I frowned, had I said that out loud?

  She giggled at the look of shock on my face, “Yes, you said that out loud, and a few other things.”

  I swatted her ass playfully, “You drive me crazy.”

  She nodded, “That was one of those other things.”

  “What else did I say?”

  She hesitated a moment, then whispered, “I love you too, Bob.”

  I twitched hard inside of her, “You know that’s crazy, right?”

  She smiled, “But it’s true. I was half in love with you when you asked me out. It’s the same thing as the quick jump into bed that shocked me. We were already halfway there in our deep friendship, admiration for each other, and fierce loyalty and protectiveness for each other.”

  “You’re a wise woman.”

  She giggled, “Not this time. That was something you taught me, remember? It is a bit fast, and we shouldn’t go any farther for a while. Spending nights in my or your bed is enough, for now.”

  I nodded, and then started to caress her lower back. She was right, and that had to be the answer. I was never one to be swept away by wild sex and shallow feelings masquerading as true affection and love. It was all so fast, and that’d never been me, not even as a teen. I didn’t fear commitment either, I’d always been in the middle of the road that way.

  “I love you, honey.”

  She smiled, “You said that already.”

  I smirked, “Not consciously.”

  She smirked, “So is that my pet name?”

  “Honey, beautiful, sex goddess, I wouldn’t dare limit it to one word. How about baby?”

  She shook her head, “Not if you want me to answer to it. The others are fine, dear. Though we should limit that last one to when we’re in bed.”

  I laughed, “So, no calling you sex goddess when we’re eating in a restaurant?”

  She snorted, “Like you would ever say it then, tease.”

  She slid to the side when my faltering cock finally slid out of heaven, and she nuzzled and snuggled up to me with a contented sigh that went straight to my heart.

  “Your sisters are sweet. I was worried how they would see me, with my social awkwardness, but I think they’ll make good friends. I can also get them to tell me stories.”

  I spanked her firmly.

  She giggled, “Of course, they adore their big brother. They’d both slit my throat if I ever hurt you, figuratively speaking.”

  She wasn’t wrong, they were as protective of me as I was of them.

  We got up and took a quick shower, before teleporting to her house for breakfast.

  Amber’s satellite seemed to suck the light out of the room and reflected nothing back. The coating was an inky black void rather than looking like a black surface, and simply based on what she said I suspected it also absorbed radar and obviously Lidar. It’d also be impossible to see. Space was big, and any camera aimed in that direction would just see more black space.

  My telekinesis could hold it however, and once in my space suit it didn’t take me long to put it above Chicago in LEO. The sphere used a microgravity system to maintain its geo-synchronous position instead of thrusters. Perhaps a mad scientist hadn’t yet come up with an impulse drive large enough for a manned spaceship, but at less than two feet in diameter and in the weightlessness of space, a tiny gravity field at two percent of a G was plenty to keep it stable.

  It was probably a good thing we were keeping it a secret from the government, or they’d want her to make a bunch of them as undetectable spy satellites to keep track of our neighboring countries.

  I teleported to California, to pick up the weather satellite going up from a private company. It didn’t take me long to fly to the warehouse. Their satellite was a lot bigger, the size of a loveseat, with a lot of antennas and cameras on it, and it weighed a little over a ton. It had three large solar panels on it, but they were folded up and flush against the satellite. I assumed they’d retract when I got it up there.

  There was a middle-aged man waiting for me, and as usual Sky fed me the man’s name.

  “Mr. Carver, I’m Bob Williams,” I introduced myself as we shook hands.

  The man smiled, “The spacesuit gave it away, it’s nice to meet you. We’re ready to go here, whenever you’re ready.”

  I nodded an easy farewell. The fast ones like this always felt a little strange, but I preferred those to a nervous manager who talked my ear off and asked a million questions.

  This one was going out over the pacific, about three hundred miles west offshore and five hundred north. I wasn’t sure what kind of studies they’d be doing, but that was par for the course. I was the delivery man, and they all had corporate secrets to keep.

  I sent out my telekinesis and held all of it still to prevent any vibrations as it and I rose off the ground. Then headed out the warehouse rolling door and straight up and northwest at an angle, per the course Sky had set. I flew fast, but it was a long way up. It was almost a half an hour later when I had the thing on the right course and speed and teleported back to the office.

  When I got back into my normal clothes and teleported home, I was surprised to find Sky waiting for me with a coffee. Her hover-bot body was a metallic feminine torso, arms, and head with hands for common tasks. It was just instead of legs, she got around using both gravity and anti-gravity.

  “Thanks,” I said, as I grabbed it and took a sip.

  Sky said, “You’re welcome, Bob.”

&nb
sp; “How’s the new satellite?”

  Sky replied, “Excellent. We can track several targets at once, including you and the team at all times. The Trio gave an interview while you were out, and the government has upgraded your threat level.”

  Oh, wonderful. I probably shouldn’t have done it, and teleported me and Carolina away instead, but I wasn’t sure if that would’ve worked or not. Her shields were weird.

  “Any other interesting news?”

  She said, “The bounty has been raised, anyone giving them information that leads to your arrest and true identity will now get a hundred thousand dollars, instead of twenty.”

  I wasn’t worried about that. Exactly three people knew who I was, and none of them would betray me.

  She continued, “The social media sites’ coverage of you has gone up by two thousand percent. About half of them are defending your actions and cite the Trios poor management of quickening supers in the past as justification. The bill to retract the law requiring registered superheroes to reveal their identities has failed to pass by almost three to one.”

  That last was no big surprise. Government pricks.

  Sky paused for a moment, “There’s a mass breakout in progress at the Supermax. The Trio and Venus have been called to assist.”

  The flat screen television switched on, and an overhead view of the supermax came up. Probably a satellite view from the new spy-sat I just put up. I didn’t bother asking how the hell she’d routed it to our television.

  The supermax looked similar to any high security prison, just smaller from above ground. High walls with sniper tower nests, as well as a large windowless concrete and steel building. One of the thick reinforced concrete walls had been exploded outward, and there was smoke rising out of it.

  It only appeared smaller, since the whole building above the ground was nothing but suppression equipment and checkpoints. The true prison where the prisoners were kept was all underground. Somehow, some of the inmates had gotten past the suppression devices and all the other powerful containment systems to keep them inside.

  Both that really powerful fire asshole and Gravimetric were among the fifteen or so that walked or flew out of the hole. The guards in the yard and in the sniper positions on that side opened up with overwhelming plasma and rail gun rounds. Nine of the supers went down hard, while the other six dodged and returned violence with violence.