1995, during Sukebe’s War…
I
A homeowner by the name of Bruce had crushed himself into a cranny within his laundry room. When he had bought his house, he had discovered an opening in the laundry room that led through the wall to behind the refrigerator cavity and never bothered to do anything about it. The hole was low to the ground like a crawlspace, and it was just big enough for himself to cram himself inside and move some laundry and boxes he had in there for storage to wall himself off and disguise his presence. It was his fleeting hope that hiding away, he would be able to emerge safely after the invaders had left. If he was fortunate, they would leave the area and not return anytime soon.
Now Bruce was a big guy. He had time to exercise and play sports when he could, but he was getting older now. Grey hair had sprinkled its way throughout his hair, and his vision now necessitated some reading glasses. In this late evening, stubble was already on his face. Throughout his adult life, Bruce had needed to stop by the restroom on his lunch break to shave again since the damn follicles would already be poking out, making him look like he had forgotten that morning. Little, careful acts like that were subtle in the way they affected one’s influence in the world, but he had clawed his way up to a high paying and low-hours job and planned to stay there. Now, the most important part of his job mostly involved him maintaining his position unless he saw a genuine opportunity to affect positive change, a rarity with the way organizational politics worked. Still, he was just big, a tall, broad shouldered man whose bone structure got broader with passing time like most of the men in his family. The decidedly cramped cranny he had crammed himself into was murdering his spine, but he ranked discomfort above potential death.
The possibility of them having taken over the town in the middle of the night was horrifying and drastically reduced his chances for survival. It would also mean that all the years he had spent working as a teacher and putting up with terrible, barbaric children raised by incompetent and equally savage families of drug-addled jelly brains, criminals, and minorities with the withering hope that they would become better people than when he received them was for naught, it would mean that ingratiating himself to odious union bureaucrats and delicately trying to sidestep or better self-serving policies only to find out that he had to prove loyalty above all to advance himself was for naught, it would mean that becoming the head of the state teacher’s association only to find out that all his attentions instead of being directed towards positive change would be consumed by rewarding his essential supporters in order to maintain his own position would be for naught, it meant that strong arming policy change in favor of popular opinion rather than efficacy in order to maintain power and able to only sneak in watered down real change upon occasion was for naught. His modest but well positioned house, and all the moneys he had secreted away- through perfectly legal means of course- was for naught, and his not inconsiderable power base, fabulous pension, and accumulated wealth stored elsewhere would soon be out of reach or meaningless. Here he was reduced to another man scrambling for life.
Bruce was divorced, cynical, and quickly giving way to pessimism for the tides of this damnable war. Worse, enemy forces were soon to be knocking at his door. He could not even get a signal on his cellphone from his hidden cranny, so he turned it off lest it make a noise at an inopportune time. It was small in there, and he was a big guy curled up on his side. So uncomfortable it was, he knew that he’d be sore for at least a day, maybe two, if he managed to escape unharmed. Bruce would take that over the alternative. Like any good citizen, he kept weapons and had had just enough to grab his gun before he had hidden himself. Some of his colleagues would have been appalled by the fact that he owned a gun, but his organization’s politics would not deprive him of common sense. However, he was not the least bit reassured by his firearm; this was not a simple trespassing burglar or miscreant looking for trouble. His part of the country was wide open and flat, so he had seen them coming up the road to his abode, three short figures. One of them was a woman or at least looked to be one, and the other two were- there was no other way to say it- monsters. Sure, they were vaguely humanoid, but even from a distance he had been able to see what was off about the two flanking the lead woman. One had a rack of horns that would look at home on an antelope and was pitch black. He had even been able to see solid gold-orange eyes gleaming in the starry night. The other was a sickly green and was sprouting whiplike appendages every which way, giving her the appearance of a particularly dangerous weed. Even the otherwise human-looking ones had eyes that glinted in the night.
The news throughout the last couple years had showed nothing but the superwomen that were made by the mad scientist seeking revenge on the world, or at least that was the line that had been used. He being a red-blooded man had had a few fantasies about them which he was more free to do nowadays since his divorce. One such fantasy brought an amusing scenario. Would it not just be delicious to marry a poor, sweet war victim of a surprisingly sexy genetic experiment in a show of liberal compassion? He had needed to remarry soon anyways lest people go looking for a scandal that probably was not there, but he found most potential mates to be either untrustworthy or unworthy. Had such an opportunity arisen, it would have been a dangerous gamble, but his progeny was already sent to the best schools the country had to offer- a former public school employee sending his children to a public school? Never- so if it ended his life, his legacy would be secured and at least it would be an interesting way to go.
That fantasy seemed much less appealing now, especially once he heard the ringing clang of his security door’s knob being broken off. He was not so foolish in real life, and this encounter brought his own mortality to the forefront of his thoughts. Perhaps his children would survive this crisis far away. His grip tightened on his weapon. He could hear footsteps and feminine voices.
Just on the other side of the wall, the three monsters walked in as casually as can be, seemingly oblivious to the terrified man hiding away inside. At the front of the three naked women stood a mostly human looking specimen. Her hair was jaw-length and a brown, almost black, which hid the absent ears on the side of her head. Instead, her ears were located a tad higher than was normal, and the cartilage fanned out into pivoting, animalesque organs reminiscent of a domestic house cat. A swishing tail emerged just above her buttocks and swished in a- if one would forgive the expression- catty manner. Her skin was a ruddy brown and slid gracefully over toned muscle. She had a svelte, athletic, leggy build. Her eyes had a black dot of pupil that reflected in the low light although not as brightly as one of the monsters neighboring her. Surrounding the dot was a sea of honey yellow with no visible sclera. She was lazily strutting forward, seemingly incautious.
“Hmm,” she said, sweeping the open space of the sizable abode’s greeting room with her leonine eyes, “This is nice. I knew we should have gone for the biggest one first.” As the ranking member of this troop, all good things that happened were to here credit regardless of who suggested it to begins with. Such were the benefits of command.
One of the two girls flanking her rolled her eyes without any attempt to hide her feelings on the matter. Her skin was the same green of a young sapling and had floral-pink irises on otherwise human eyes. Her “hair” was composed of thickly clustered vines braided tightly together. Sprouting from the vines were pink, white, and orange flowers in various states of bloom with a good number in full bloom. From behind her voluptuous hourglass figure, several longer vines and curling, prehensile, branch-like limbs whipped about lazily. They arced through the air in a serpentine manner and acted in a curious, probing manner which contrasted against the haughty disdain on the green-skinned woman’s face. She stood with one hip cocked and a hand planted firmly on it. This had the added bonus of exaggerating an already curvaceous form which she knew the others to envy.
She said nothing. She was subordinate to the catwoman and knew her superior to be more than willing to turn this building into her pyre should she seem to be bucking her authority. That was one reason why the cat was her superior, and not one of the cat’s own superiors would so much as bat an eye. Rather, they would save the information for leverage to pressure her into even more tyrannical command and as a good excuse to oust her should the need arise. It was the nature of things. The fact that she would have decreased their ranks by one would not matter as it would make the cost of dissent too great for all but the most desperate or insane to consider. One thing most people were not was suicidal. even their questionably engineered brand of people. Especially when the fate had been witnessed and became well known, this was true even of the particularly stupid unless extreme events colluded to make the risk of rebelling against the Generals and the right hands of the Master himself worth the worse-than-death consequences.
The third among them was the most monstrous. She stood at an average height with a mostly humanoid bone structure, but that was where the similarities ended. She appeared to be stretched thin with unnaturally long limbs. The entirety of her body was covered in a fine coat of jet black fur. This fur grew in density around her forearms, shins, back, and the ruff of her neck. Her face protruded into a blunt, rounded, u-shaped muzzle with a feline split lip, creating the iconic smiling face of a smug cat. There was a hint of pocks and follicles where whiskers would be, but there were none. Above it, a sheep’s nose. The bridge of the muzzle was broad and connected to the brow in an aquiline fashion. The brow was hardly pronounced and looked very human, raising into a Caucasoid cranium. Below the brow, large, almond shaped eyes with the appearance of opaque and reflective orange-gold lenses without any sign of pupil or iris. The tear duct, lid, and lush lashes were present. Above the brow, a mighty rack of antelope-like horns emerged. The bases were thick and charcoal black with notches formed naturally in the keratinous growth. They moved straight back, formed a slight bend, and continued their journey backwards until suddenly pinching off into a sharp point. Likely, they had been sharpened. From her scalp and down to her upper back, a shaggy mane of needle-like hair much coarser than the rest of body’s fine coat came down and and was currently laying down.
Of the three, she was the most attentive and perceptive. While the other two were casually exploring the home, opening cupboards, and generally snooping, she plodded forward with thick claws emerging from the point of her tarsals clicking on the floor. They were dulled from her lifetime of treading but still unfriendly looking. They looked out of place on the otherwise human foot. She proceeded with purpose and ignored the idleness of her peers. She cleared each room by scanning it and quickly ruling out possible hiding spots. Each spot she peered under was punctuated by a delighted wiggle that started in her shoulders and moved down to a sashay in her hips. Her whiplike tail moved like a scarf in the wind behind her. It too had her fine coat down it until ending in a tuft of the same type of coarse hair in her mane.
While the others lackadaisically inspected the premises, she cleared the rooms on the first floor before spidering up one of the walls to check on the second. She did not even bother with the stairs. The raptor claws emerging from her carpals and curving wickedly danced along the surface, barely touching the wall. Not much of ever touched the wall actually, just barely and with a hair’s pressure. She continued upward, but once she was upstairs, she paused and focused. She could sense her peers below as unfocused an unobservant as ever. Unlike her, when they were alone on a mission, they took it as an opportunity to slack while looked busy to maintain her hand-crafted facade. She personally did not need do this busy bee nonsense. Not all of her breed could just sense the presence of others, but she could. Her breed of the Master’s supersoldiers was highly variable and did not have a solid baseline even for subbreeds like most. No, she could feel the man hiding downstairs in the back of her skull where the brain stem joined the rest of the body. It was impossible to describe to others. It would be like trying to explain synesthesia to neurotypicals or sight to the congenitally blind.
The pungent odor of a man was all over the place lying underneath a layer of floral scents and other coverups which did nothing but aggravate the olfactory senses of the likes of her. She knew their squad leader, the Hellcat, would smell it too, but the cat’s nose was not quite that sensitive though. The scent was so omnipresent, it was not clear what was new or old. Those who specialized in tracking and had better senses may have been able to track him, but for once, she was glad that her peers did not seem to have noticed this opportunity aside from the cat burying her face in some of the man’s dirty laundry and going at it like a pile of quality cocaine.
After gathering herself, she went through the motions of clearing the rooms. She knew no one else was there besides the three members of her squad and the human man hiding himself away. Well, there was always the possibility of a dark-type skulking around, but quite frankly they were allies and thus were not a threat unless they had gone feral. No, she had to proceed business as usual, and even though she only ever cleared things so thoroughly to make herself look good, if she suddenly changed her routine behavior, even her peers downstairs would know something was up. Biding time was easy for her; she was unnaturally patient.
She went downstairs the normal way, Rounding to the living room where she knew her peers to be, she saw her squad leader stretched out on a sofa and hogging the whole thing. Apparently she had found some food in the pantry and was munching some kind of crackers straight from the box. Crumbs were getting everywhere. The plant-type was sitting in an armchair with one leg crossed over the other. She was examining some unnoticeable detail of her hand’s appearance.
“Hey Sixer,” the squad leader said addressing the plant-woman. Six was her number within the platoon. Their squad leader was Four, and the black-furred, most inhuman one was Seven. There was a Five in their squad, but she got hit with shrapnel the other day when a human suicide bombed the Legion after all hope of escape had been cut off. There was not a healing unit nearby since the power-guzzling monstrosities would singlehandedly kill the humans’ powergrid and needed the special sources of power in one of the Master’s labs to function. So, she was out until they could get her to one or she healed naturally. No one in the Legion of Terror really knew healing magic save just enough to tickle nerves in just the right way to make someone sing a very lovely, shrill tune.
Six gave the squad leader, Four a sideways look. It was wary. The Hellcat had been staring at her tits and watching her breath for some time while she was stuffing her face with the pantry-pilfered foodstuffs and rubbing the man’s sweaty shirt in her face. Six said nothing, but she was looking back at her superior now.
“C’mere,” Four said, curling a finger with finger curling towards herself in a come hither gesture.
Six was unable to hide her unhappiness but complied. Four dusted the crumbs off of herself and spread her legs. It was clear what she wanted. Six knelt down and began lapping at her inner thigh but quickly worked her way into Hellcat’s sex, and with a sadistic glint in her eye Four reached down and pawed at Six’s massive tits. She manhandled them roughly with no consideration for the pain she inflicted and more likely than not was only doing it add injury to insult while she received her subordinate’s services. Six was well-endowed. Her hips were wider than anyone Four or Seven had seen besides the Succubi in the upper ranks of the Legion. She also was gifted with a plump rear and a bosom that sagged under its own weight. Six often used her prehensile vines to support them. Of course, no one liked her because of that.
Seven knew that Six hated the treatment she got from the upper ranks but could not really do much about it. Six had few friends or backers among the Legion and was just a grunt. Superiors often forced their subordinates to do them sexual favors, and the subordinates resisted at their own peril. Six had the disadvantage of being pretty and having her vine-like appendages, some of which were smooth enough to penetrate a woman safely. Four exploited this often when she had time to kill, and right now, no one expected them back in a while.
Four leaned back and began purring softly into the sweat-soaked shirt covering her face. Six had already penetrated her with one of her vines, obviously hoping to get this over with fast. Seven knew that Four would force herself to go a second round just to get at Six. Personally, Seven was not the least bit attracted to women or anything feminine, and she doubted a lot of the Master’s creations were, but often sex was used for intraorganizational dominance. All of them needed it to stay lucid and in control of themselves, and abstinence led down the path of madness. Yet, being on the receiving end more than just having a courteous or friendly hand tossed your way was a sign of status. The upper ranks and commanders used it to establish their dominance over their lessers. Four might not even be attracted to women and is just punishing Six for being pretty and leers at her to keep her off-balance. At least, that’s what Seven thought. She tended to get feelings about people’s motivations that tickled various parts of her cranial cavities.
Sometimes, Seven wondered if she should be thankful that she was not forced to have sex outside sessions for the purpose of staving off the feral state mandated by the brass. Those were less humiliating than what uncouth and socially inept or unfortunately pretty ones like Six were forced to go through. They threw a erotomania-inducing powder commonly referred to as “orgy powder” or “lust dust” in everyone’s faces, everyone blacked out, and the next thing they knew it was hours later and they all stunk of sex. However, Seven also knew that she was not pretty; most considered her to be ugly and would not touch her given the option even to put her in her place. She had no breasts to speak of and only a flare of the hips to mark her as feminine. Maybe it was not worth it to be pretty. Either you got full of yourself and put too much stock in how much better you looked than someone rather than how much better you were than them or you get exploited by the envious like Six.
Right as Four was making throaty, groaning noises climbing in pitch, volume, and intensity, Six foolishly jammed another one of her vines right up Four’s ass. Four yowled in pain and writhed uncontrollably. Six kept her lips latched to her clitorous and moved her tongue in exotic shapes under where her lips had locked while a vine wriggled within both her orifices. Mentally, Seven scoffed. Four may have been squirting all over Six’s face, but the humiliation would not go unpunished. The Cardian would face the Hellcat’s wrath at a time she could pretend it was unrelated and that Six had not so blatantly bucked her. Yes, Seven was glad she was never put through that nonsense. It was then that her mind drifted off to the man she sensed hiding away. She tried not to think about it too hard. If they caught him, he would just be passed up the ranks, used, and then killed in some wretched way to inspire fear in the human forces. That was how the Legion worked. Seven had not actually had much- or any- sex that she could remember though. Orgy powder caused her to black out, a common side effect, and she never remembered a damn thing.
Some time passed, and Four and Seven shot the breeze amicably while Six sulked. Unlike Six, Seven had actual social skills. Seven poked fun at Four finding a new kink with Six’s surprise near the end. She had obviously was stimulated to the extent of having a powerful if mostly physical reaction even if it was mostly pain-driven, and it helped Four save face. The suggestion was made in a way that was neither mocking nor cheeky but as casual sex-talk. Sex was of central discussion as it indicated relationships and power dynamics, and regardless of whether or not you were getting any, it was foolish to admit to not lavishing in the experience or worse yet getting none. That sort of thing was how you ingratiated yourself to your superiors. Even your squad leader or fellow grunt having your back could help. Six was tumultuously moody, cantankerous, and onery like most Cardians and never seemed to be able to get passed being a haughty cunt long enough to make friends. Most Cardians could not even like each other.
Later, they cleared out. This house seemed as good a spot as any to hand over to the commandant. The major egresses from this small concentration of human life had already been cut off. Any intelligence gathered by the squad was just a cover for finding the nicest-looking house for the officer in command to shack up with a small harem of civilian prisoners from the town. It was a shame really, because she had an unfortunate habit of disfiguring her pets to get herself off before any samples could be used to reward her coalition. Likely, she would be replaced with another commander who would better treat her key officers such as giving them intact pets, even if they themselves sought to personally disfigure them for their jollies.
The house they had picked out was huge and already furnished well. Rather than wasting time beating around the bush, Four, Six, and Seven had just headed straight for the biggest domicile since they knew that was the one that would get picked by the commandant anyways. They crept away in the middle of the night with many of the residents none the wiser. A few hours later, the combined intelligence from a few scouts would give the Legion an excuse to turn the sleepy town into a mass grave. The officers needed to be kept happy, and raiding a place for supplies or getting a quick lay before the goods were passed up the chain was the best way to do that. The rewards for loyalty needed to be gotten from somewhere.
Before they had returned to base completely, Seven paused and said to the others, “Four, I’ve forgotten something.” Four and Six gave her an odd look at the statement. “I’ll be back,” Seven continued.Seven’s voice was clearly feminine but was deep and had a naturally husky tone which was incongruous with her otherwise inhuman appearance. “If you don’t see me, I’ll just teleport back to base once I recover, yeah?”
Four sniffed in disdain. “You still need to work on your stamina so you can teleport others with you,” she reprimanded, as she often liked to remind Seven, “You’re not coming out to your full potential, and it would be an asset to our unit and commander.”
“Oh, yes,” Seven lamented, “I have practiced and practiced, but I cannot get past the hurdle of carrying just myself. I’m yet to even manage to take any items with me.” She cast a shameful look to the side, averting her eyes in an exaggerated gesture since no one could ever tell where she was looking due to the lack of physical irises or pupils visible in her orange-gold and lense-like eyes. Internally however, she had one thought: like hell she would show off and sacrifice not only her only means of getting away from the others but render herself a glorified pack mule and taxi service just so these twits could cut work. Flubbing a teleportation was not fun intentional or not, but it was worth it to keep the rest of the Legion seeking to commandeer her for it. Seven had a hard time making it look like she was actually working because of her natural talents, and she did all the actual work, but it provided opportunities.
Four’s lip curled in disgust. Her entire face wrinkled into an ugly expression, and her face shifted into a much more feral look. Even her face protruded into the showings of a muzzle and her teeth changed. When Four got mad, she got much more frightening than that, but so long as she remained calm, her face would remain the pretty humanoid rather than the ugly, beastial monster she actually was. Fortunately, she calmed herself and returned to near the human norm rather quickly. “Be quick,” she commanded. It was one of those commands someone tacked onto the end of something to simply make it clear that their will was being done even if it was not really.
Seven nodded, did an about face, and in that moment was gone.
Bruce was crammed away in his hidey hole not daring to come out, not yet. It had not been that long, he knew in the back of his mind even if it had felt like aeons. If they came back now before he could discretely skip town, he would be done for. What if he got in his car and they waylaid him? No, the only option was to contact the authorities. They were the ones who supposedly knew what to do in this situation. He doubted the police were prepared for such an encounter since they were designed to police civilians not endowed with superhuman abilities. The news made it look like the superwomen could shrug off small arms fire too, but there had been a few recordings of them succumbing to higher caliber weaponry. The national guard would probably be called in to sweep up this mess.
It had sounded like they left some time ago. Perhaps he could turn his cell phone on and call out. He picked up the device and held it to the ceiling as much as he could with twisting his body in the tight space. His collared, button-down shirt strained against his broad shoulders and, neck, and back in his position, and he felt constrained. Hopefully he would not get stuck like that. The rubber antennae protruding from the top of the device was much more sensitive than the crude, brick-like devices with ten pound batteries and gigantic antennae from the previous decade, the eighties. Hopefully this time, it would pick up a signal.
Just as he placed his finger on the power button, the boxes hiding him away were stripped away by a Demon sent to punish him for his past sins. Its clawed hand lashed out and wrapped around his arm. Wickedly curved claws dug into his flesh. He was pulled, yanked by the demon’s strength, out of his safe haven and through the void. Just as he tried to scream for his life, the air was sucked out of his lungs, rendering him incapable. His body lurched into a trajectory previously unknown and alien to his body, something his conscious mind was unable to process. He felt like he was pitching, rotating, and yawing in previously unknown directions and in never-before felt and still uncomprehended trajectories. Truly, he must have been dragging downward to his fate in the pit to burn in the lake of fire.