“The sport revolves around two teams of six who must move their weighted ball from one side of the field to the other.” Her red eyes seemed to glow as she spoke, and her hair waved urgently upward away from her shoulders as if she was swimming. “One member on each team carries a ball through the opponent’s side of the arena. Every yard closer to the goal line increases the weight of the ball. When a team moves with a ball past the goal line, they get a point addition depending on how many of the six were involved in the carrying process. If only one woman has lifted the ball the entire way, they score the most points possible: ten.”
“I’m guessing that is the ‘lifter’ position you played,” I said.
“Yes,” she answered.
“How much does the ball weigh when you carry it over the goal line?” I asked.
“About a thousand pounds,” she said.
“Damn,” I gasped as I appraised Liahpa’s athletic body again. She was definitely more feminine than a bulky bodybuilder, but I guessed she was shorter than Sheela, and her shoulders were narrower. She was really toned though, and her species might just be naturally strong.
“Does the other team do anything to prevent the lifter from moving the ball?” Sheela asked.
“Yes,” Liahpa replied. “They can’t shoulder check or trip the lifter, but they can push the escorts with their arms or shoulders.”
“I’m guessing you don’t float when you are holding the ball,” I said as I gestured to her feet. They floated a foot or so off the grass like she was Jean Grey from the X-Men. Her bodysuit even looked like something that comic book character would have worn.
“No, we have to run during the game,” she said. “I can’t actually float when I lift the ball, it is too heavy.”
“The game sounds intriguing,” Sheela said. “I will guess that you must divide the team into those who will escort the lifter and defend, and those who will do some sort of offensive movement.”
“Right,” Liahpa said. “Each team has a ball, and the teams often collide at the line of division. Or you can choose to try to sprint around and avoid a massive scrum in the middle. There are hundreds of different tactics like pass offs or carry assists.”
“You are passionate about it,” I said as I smiled at the silver-woman.
“Of course,” she replied as she gave me a guarded look.
“I understand,” I said. “We are all passionate about what we did back on our home worlds. That could also be a reason why our captors took us. I have an idea about your ability though.”
“Oh?” Liahpa asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s called Mass, and you were able to lift heavy objects on your world. I’m going to guess that you can make things lighter or heavier.”
“Hmmm,” she said as she looked at the other women.
“The spear?” Trel said as she pointed to the weapon I had leaned against the wall of the fort while we ate.
“Yeah,” I said as I held it up horizontally. “Touch the spear and see if you can make it heavier.”
“Of course the man is asking me to touch his spear,” she growled as she floated away from me with her arms crossed.
“Come on,” I sighed. “I don’t mean anything sexual by it.”
“I see you looking at my body,” she said. “I want to be part of this group, but you must understand the legends of man. You will start with some simple innuendos and then attempt to rape me.”
“You are an idiot,” Trel spat as she rolled her head back. “It is a piece of wood, not his penis. Besides, you would be lucky to enjoy his actual penis. Just try to make the damn spear heavy or lighter so we can see if that is how your power works.”
“Here,” Sheela said as she set her plate down and presented her own weapon to the floating woman. “I will continue to hold onto it and see if I notice a weight change.”
“Very well,” Liahpa said as she reached to touch the shaft of Sheela’s spear.
For a few seconds, nothing happened, but then I saw the spear begin to drift downward in Sheela’s arms.
“It is getting heavier,” the blonde woman said as I saw the veins in her biceps tense. “Much heavier.”
“Should I keep going?” Liahpa asked, but then Sheela grunted and the spear started to drift down so that she was holding it like an Olympic deadlifter.
“Yes,” Sheela hissed as her legs, ass, and back tensed.
“Damn, that looks heavy,” Kacerie said, but Sheela could only nod as her jaw tensed.
“Okay, I think we get it,” I said as the blonde woman began to tremble like a leaf in the wind. “Can you make it lighter?”
“I will try,” Liahpa replied, and Sheela’s body almost instantly seemed to relax. Soon she was lifting her spear back up in her arms, and the silver-woman was shaking her head.
“I am thinking about making it lighter,” Liahpa said.
“It does not feel lighter than when I first held it,” Sheela said.
“So, you can only make things heavier?” Kacerie asked.
“I don’t know how it works,” Liahpa replied with a shrug as she let go of the spear. “I’m a bit amazed that I made it heavier.”
“We should try for something already really heavy, so we can see if you can make it lighter.” I looked back toward the outside wall of the fort and saw a stack of five logs that had been left over from yesterday’s labor. “Let’s go try one of those fifteen-foot long logs.”
“Very well,” Liahpa said, and we all walked across the grass of the fort toward them.
“I will try to lift while you use your ability,” Sheela said as she grabbed onto one end of a massive log. The blonde woman wouldn’t have been able to lift it alone, but she still made an effort as Liahpa touched the wood.
For a few moments, Sheela strained against the log, but then she shook her head and relaxed as Liahpa shrugged.
“It seems as if I can only make things heavier,” the floating woman said.
“Damn,” Kacerie said. “Making things lighter would really help.”
“I did not pick this ability,” Liahpa said as her eyes narrowed at the pink-haired woman.
“I know,” Kacerie said as she waved her hands. “It’s just that we have to lift a ton of shit around here, and it is very tiring. Even with all the help Victor’s dinosaurs bring, I still feel like I am hitting the gym every day.”
“The ability to make items heavier is not as useful as the other way around,” Trel announced after she cleared her throat, and we all looked at her, “but it is still very useful.”
“How so?” Liahpa asked as she raised an eyebrow.
“I have already thought about various simple machines that use weight, pulleys, and fulcrums to build more structures. If you are able to make a stone or small block weigh a hundred times more, it will make the process very easy.” As Trel spoke, she raised both hands in the air with her palms upward and moved one lower as she raised the other.
“I get it,” I said. “Liahpa might also be able to help with the gate,” I said as I pointed to where the three trikes sat. “They will be harder for invaders to move if they weigh a lot more.”
“Invaders?” Liahpa asked, and her red eyes opened wide.
“Yeah,” I said. “We haven’t seen any yet, but we think there are other tribes of survivors out there. There is also a possibility that some of them are hostile.”
“I see,” she replied as she reached up to brush a strand of silver-hair that had fallen over her face. It stood back up as soon as she touched it, and I was briefly mesmerized by the sight of it all kind of floating above her. It really did look like she was standing in her own personal water bubble or something.
“Let’s go back to the fire and finish our meal,” I instructed the women, and we all returned, picked up our plates, and got a second serving of the venison. Each of the women thanked me for hunting the stag, and I felt a warm gush of pride in my chest.
“Why do you not eat the meat?” L
iahpa asked Galmine as she cut me off a third large chunk of the venison.
“I prefer vegetables or fruit,” the gray-skinned woman said to the silver-skinned woman. “I have a few handfuls of berries in a pot in our hut, and I will eat some once I am done taking care of all of you.” Galmine’s smile was infectious, and I could see Liahpa trying hard to keep her lips from curling up in a matching grin.
Mention of Galmine’s diet reminded me of our garden, which reminded me about collecting wild berries and other plants to harvest. My list of shit to do was impossibly long, and it seemed as if now was as good a time as any to talk about the tasks.
“Now that we have our introductions done, it is time to talk about improving our camp and preparing for the future,” I said as I looked around the wide-open field of the camp. “We have done a great job with this space, but I can think of a bunch of improvements that we need to make. First, we should--”
I stopped mid-sentence when I felt the ground start to rumble beneath my feet. I looked around at the other women, and their eyes went wide with fear. Then I met Sheela’s gaze, and it seemed as if we both realized what the noise meant at the same instant.
“It’s a stampede!” I shouted as I dropped my plate and turned to run toward the wall.
Chapter 3
Sheela made it to the wall before me, and the cat-woman crawled up the wall as if she was Spiderman. Trel hit the wall at the same time as me, but she actually did have spider legs, and the limbs helped her skip up the logs like Doctor Octopus. I was a little less suited for climbing, but we had left a few knobs on the interior side of the logs. I was able to use a combination of sprinting speed, kicks, and pulls with my arm to make it almost three-quarters of the way up before I actually had to search for legitimate hand holds. I eventually made it to the top spikes, and I straddled the wall in-between the two women as the thundering sound grew louder.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be up there?” Kacerie yelled from down below. “What if they break through?”
“If it looks like they are going to hit us, we’ll jump down and--” the rumbling had gotten louder, and the first knot of running dinosaurs emerged from the cover of the redwoods. These were the gold-scaled ostrich looking reptiles I had seen during the stampede that destroyed our first meager fort walls about a month ago. They were super-fast, and they ran across the walls on the northside of our valley as if they had sticky feet. The orange birds roosting in the cave gave an angry squawk when the gold dinos ran by, but then they seemed to realize that some serious shit was coming, and half flew into the cave while the other half took to the air.
The next group of dinos were long-tailed ones that almost looked like raptors, except they had no feathers, longer arms, and tails that were thick and meaty. Their scales were a dark muddy-red color, and they were almost as fast as the golden dinos that were half their size. These red ones looked big enough to ride, but they zipped past the north walls of our fort like Nascar racers. They had to be going about sixty miles per hour, and I wondered if there was a way I could tame one.
A massive herd of parasaurs came next. There were maybe two or three hundred of them in various sizes, and with various crest lengths on their head. For half a moment, it looked like the leaders of the group were going to plow right into our wall, but then they altered course, skimmed along the edges, and trampled through the open space between our walls and the cave. Most of the group followed the leaders, but one got confused, and he slammed his ten-thousand-pound bulk into our fort walls as if he was some sort of drunk frat boy.
My breath caught in my throat as the vibration of the impact traveled through my legs, but the wall held steady, and the dinosaur shook his foggy head before he merged back into the herd.
“Yes!” I shouted, but then I gasped when another parasaur crashed into the wall.
Then another crashed.
Then another.
They were like crows flying into the window, and each one bounced off with a solid smack that made my teeth vibrate in my jaw.
But the wall held.
“Shit!” I shouted when a group of triceratops poured out of the forest and ran toward the walls. The horned dinos were almost three times the bulk of a parasaur, and while our wall was made with crazy thick logs that were buried deep into the ground, I had no idea if it would be able to withstand a direct hit from one of the trikes.
The parasaurs still led the stampede, and the trikes were following the mob at first, but then one got his horns snagged on the logs when he tried to turn, and I felt my stomach drop.
A second trike got confused, and it plowed right into the wall.
The wall shook with a single vibration that seemed to rattle all of my brain cells, and I heard a creaking noise echo up through my legs. I guessed the wall would have collapsed under the pressure of the trike slamming into it, but the wall held, and my heart started beating again.
“Yes-- oh shit!” I cried out with mixed emotions as another trike slammed into the wall with a thunderous sound that almost made me lose my balance. Now there were three giant triceratops stuck on the wall, and they were all thrashing and pulling to try to unstick their horns.
“The wall will hold!” Trel yelled as she turned to me. “It’s locked with the dowels!”
“But we need to get the trikes free, or they might get trampled and yank out a log!” I shouted as I watched the dinos thrash against the wall.
Their horns had actually slid between two sets of the logs, and while the last few dinosaur impacts proved to me that Trel’s design was sturdy enough to withstand the pounding. I didn’t know how it would fare if the trikes were hit sideways by other dinos, and their horns were used to pry the logs apart.
Maybe nothing would happen, but even the smallest hole in our wall could spell disaster while hundreds or thousands of dinosaurs were sprinting toward us.
Trel, Sheela, and I moved across the top of the wall toward where the trikes were stuck. The two women traveled over the sharpened tips of the logs like dancers, but I had to pick my way over them carefully, and I almost fell twice before I made it to where the trikes were thrashing.
“What do we do?” Trel screeched after one of the logs made a terrifying cracking sound.
“They just need to pull it straight out!” I shouted over the sound of the stampede. I looked at Sheela and then glanced at the endless mob of dinosaurs that were sprinting across the clearing. Anyone that tried to go down there and help the dinos was going to be taking a terrible risk.
Then I heard the roars.
They cut through the endless quake of the stampede like a volcano would trumpet over a car engine. The sound was incredibly loud, deep, dark, angry, and hungry.
It had to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Or maybe something even bigger.
The trikes impaled on the wall heard the roar and began to thrash even more intently. One of the other logs made a loud cracking sound, but I couldn’t see any break in the wood.
“I’ll go down and pry them free!” I shouted before my brain had time to register the idiocy of my plan.
I threw both legs over the wall, mentally aimed my fall at where it looked like the closest trike wasn’t going to trample, and then let go.
I heard another deafening roar as I slid down the wall, but I landed on the ground safely and then moved to the side of the nearest thrashing trike.
“Shhhh,” I hissed as I waved my arms “It’s okay buddy! I’m gonna get you out of here. It’s going to be okay!”
As soon as I finished yelling at the three-horned dinosaur, Sheela landed on the ground next to me and then leapt up onto the crest of the trike like an insane spider-cat-monkey. She scurried up the bone bowl on his head, shimmied up its nose, wrapped her arm around the horn, kicked her feet against the logs of the wall, and then leg pressed like she was trying to pull a telephone pole out of the ground.
“Stop moving!” I yelled at the trike as he tried to thrash against Sheela’s assistance. The big gu
y froze as soon as the words left my mouth, and I realized that my Tame ability was coming into play here.
“Back up!” I ordered, and the trike took a step away from the wall while Sheela strained against the horn. The spike pulled free after the trike took one more step, and he moved to try to shake Sheela free. The blonde woman let go at the perfect moment, front flipped through the air, and then rolled on the ground.
The trike stomped and then turned his horns toward her.
“Stop!” I yelled as my heart jumped into my throat, and the massive dinosaur froze in place as the chaos of the stampede poured across the grass some twenty feet behind his tail. “Turn around and join them. Get out of here!”
The trike blinked at me, turned away, and then ran with the herd of other dinosaurs.
Sheela nodded at me, and we turned to the second trike. As soon as we stepped toward it, I saw a silver blur fall from the wall of the fort. It was Liahpa, and she landed right on top of the horn that was stuck in the seams between the logs. Her hair twisted through the air like a mercury fire, and she grabbed the horn just like Sheela had done with the previous triceratops.
I saw her strain for a moment, and but then the trike’s horn popped free of the wall. As soon as the dinosaur was clear, it thrashed its head around like a dog with a chew toy, but Liahpa somehow managed to stay attached to its horn like some sort of shimmering banner on a waved flagpole.
“Stop!” I yelled at the trike, and it halted its movements suddenly. Liahpa took the opportunity to drop from the dinosaur’s horn, and then she and Sheela darted under its chin beside the wall and made their way to the third trike.
“Get out of here! Go!” I shouted at the second triceratops, and it blinked at me with some confusion. Then a parasaurs shoulder checked him, and the trike seemed to shake out of his stupor and darted back into the herd.
The last trike had his horn caught in the wood at an angle. He would actually have to back up into the mass of running dinosaurs to get out, and every tenth or so dino that ran past him shoulder checked him on the ass. His moves were beyond frantic, and both of the beautiful women stood out of the range of his thrashing. They were poised to dart closer as soon as they found an opportunity, but the big guy wasn’t calming down, and the press of the stampede was becoming more frantic.
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