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Embassy Brat – Part One

Written by shadar :: [Saturday, 18 January 2020 17:55] Last updated by :: [Saturday, 18 January 2020 21:08]

Embassy Brat

By Shadar

Edits: August, 2019/Jan, 2020

Chapter One

Jon Duncan paced nervously out in the desert, staring back down the empty road that ran long and straight back to town, revealing nothing but wavy heat. He wondered if she was going to show.

The girl he waited for was Jennie Val’spar, and she wasn’t technically human. She was from the sub-species Homo Sapiens Supremis. To be more specific, she was the only daughter of the Enlightenment Ambassador. And he was madly in love with her.

Jennie and her twin brother, Alon, had turned his high school upside down when they arrived six months ago. While non-humans were seen often enough, Jennie and Alon were Velorian, and that made them VERY distracting. Standing tall and supple and incredibly fit, they were natural creatures of flight, and stunningly attractive. Yet for all the attention their appearance drew in the hallways of Qurlan High School, their most disrupting effect was the invisible wisp of alien pheromones they sometimes trailed in their wake. In a school full of teenagers, those wisps created hormonal fire storms.

Qurlan was a throwback school, one of a small group of schools on planet Egland that attempted to replicate the schools of Old Earth. It was an experiment in old-fashioned education that the Elders insisted was worth another try.

Jennie and Alon had never spent a day in a structured classroom prior to their arrival on Egland. They’d never listened to a lecture and regurgitated its key points on a written test paper. They’d never read a book only to write a report on it. They’d never struggled to do their math homework.

Instead, they’d grown up on a Scalantran tradeship as it traveled through wormholes, making its endless circuit around a corner of the Galaxy while visiting strange and wondrous worlds. During those visits, they’d had many great adventures, the most exciting of which they’d survived only by virtue of their superhuman physiques. Being deep inside the caldera of an explosively erupting volcano was only one of their many stories.

The tradeship’s port calls were both frequent and brief within each star system on their route. They stopped at every populated planet, moon or asteroid inside those systems. And then, once their trading was done, the ship would head toward the next wormhole, often taking many months going to and from that space-bending wrinkle in time/space. The twins entertained themselves on the boring interstellar trips by hanging out with the other passengers, many of whom were not human. They tried to befriend every traveler, hoping to learn both their customs and the specialized knowledge that every species possessed. And sometimes there were Terran passengers, all of whom seemed to be inordinately impressed by the Velorian twins. Being that the Terrans were the closest species to their own, they proved to be an entirely different experience.

But sometimes there weren’t any interesting travelers, so they spent their time exploring the ship’s digital library, feeding their photographic memories. And through it all, they’d sit and talk with the ship’s Science officers. Nobody likes to talk science more than a Scalantran.

Given their free-range education, the brick walls of Qurlan High School were far too small to contain the twins. Attendance became a problem. They came and went on their own schedules. In fact, Jon first met Jennie when they collided in the dim light of one of the secret underground tunnels that Jon had discovered beneath the school. He was trying to sneak off the school grounds – which was supposedly impossible to do given the scanbots. He had no idea at first how Jennie had discovered the same tunnels, but without thinking, he grabbed her hand and dragged her after him, telling her that he was the only one who knew about the “bolt-hole” – a narrow gap in scanbot coverage underneath the old steam plant. He led her to freedom that day, and from that day on, they were partners in crime whenever it came to creative hooky.

The school Principal was tolerant of Jon’s hooky given he’d already completed all of the requirements for graduation, other than the independent work of his senior project. And when the Principal complained about Jenny’s poor attendance, her statuesque mother arrived to both dazzle and intimidate him by politely making it perfectly clear that she’d only placed her children in his quant school to improve their social adaptation to living among Terrans their own age.

Yet even that simple goal – socialization – had failed when it came to Jennie. Anyone would have expected the opposite given she was not only the cutest girl in the school, but she was clearly superhuman. The jocks and popular kids had tried fervently to recruit her into their cliques, but she’d instead dressed weirdly and hung out with the loners and oddballs, which is how she felt about herself. That caused all kinds of angst among the popular kids, but it did wonders for geeks like Jon, knowing that this incredibly beautiful and talented super girl wanted to hang out with him.

In sharp contrast, her twin brother, Alon, was doing exactly what his mother had expected of both of them. He played every sport, albeit bound in gold to limit his abilities, and was an academic leader, sharing his extended knowledge with everyone who wanted to listen. He was the Homecoming King and the Captain of every team he played on and the heartthrob of every girl. Which came as no surprise given he was a true man-of-steel, armed with a square jaw and bright blue eyes and a physique that exceeded any possible Terran perfection – not to mention trailing those pheromones that made all the girls feel like they were floating, intoxicated by their own hormones. Whenever Alon smiled, they giggled and blushed while slowly losing their minds. Grown women struggled not to swoon when he walked into a room, and sometimes failed. He was reputedly on intimate terms with half the girls in school, and even with some of the younger teachers and more than a small handful of mothers, if you believed the whispers.

In sharp contrast, Jennie dressed down and acted shy and hung out only with Jon, who was arguably the least popular guy in school. Their friendship was built around scientific discovery combined with the active avoidance of their classmates. Mostly, they went exploring together. Jennie added an entirely new dimension to that when she found a crashed scout ship on a nearby moon.

The ship had long been abandoned and stripped, leaving just a weather-worn hull made of indestructible Vsteel. It had no working engines, which along with most of the rest of the ship had long ago been stripped and recycled. Instead, Jennie used her fantastic strength and her native flight ability to carry the stripped hull to a wrecking yard on Egland. There, Jon helped her rebuild it from scrap parts, starting with a heavy cage made of surplus steel beams that Jennie had twisted into shape, and then welded to the backbone of the hull at the center of gravity. It was crude, but strong, but impossibly it was their little ship’s new engine. Standing inside that cage, Jennie could use her native flight-power to push and pull on the structure to control the ship in three-axis. That allowed her to fly the ship from inside with Jon navigating. And given that the Vsteel hull was impenetrable by most forms of radiation, it was safe for Jon to travel with Jennie into hostile environments.

He put his technical skills to work to rig up both a NavCom system and a 3D VR system. He wired-up dozens of surplus military-grade sensors and a z-crystal liquid display that was painted on the mirror-smooth anti-spalling interior of the former warship. He bought a capable VR processor and programmed it to display the sensor data using open-source surveillance software. The result was that the interior of the hull perfectly reproduced what the sensors saw from outside.

The first time they flew passengers in their cobbled-together spaceship, everyone marveled that they’d made the entire ship out of the clearest of glass. Jon’s VR was that good.

Of course, the real challenge was putting together a suitable Life Support system. Jon had built their system from the scavenged remains of a dozen other junked spacecraft. He combined that with a cold-fusion generator that was a hundred years obsolete but still worked, requiring only water and some catalysts for fuel. When everything worked, which was most of the time, the collection of salvaged junk they calledDiscoveryallowed the two of them to go just about anywhere together.

And go they did. They’d visited every planet in the system that had a tolerable gravity level, along with dozens of moons and asteroids. The school Principal agreed to their unusual field trips as long as they produced classroom presentations and artifacts for the science teachers to use in their classrooms. While Jennie seemed shy and demure in person, she was extremely photogenic, so Jon put her in front of the holocam, where she came alive. She ensured that the student body, especially the male half, were paying very close attention, no matter what planet or moon or asteroid they were reporting from.

Now Jon and Jennie wanted to take the next step and make a wormhole dive to another star system. She’d done that dozens of times on Scalantran ships. But first they had to rig up a serious anti-grav to protect Jon – skimming the event-horizon of a black hole to enter a wormhole would briefly subject him to crushing gravity. The ‘grease spot on the wall’ kind of gravity. Assuming you entered the right wormhole the right way.

“Don’t worry,” Jennie smiled. “We got ten classes of wormholes out there. Class one through three are dangerous – you gotta be crazy, desperate or in a research ship to go near them. Then you’ve got the class four through sixes. Any capable ship with a good navigator can handle those. Then we have class sevens through tens. Even a pile of flying spare parts likeDiscoverycan handle those. And the hole I’m thinking of is a 9.3. Piece of pie.”

“Ah… it’s piece of cake.”

“Whatever,” she shrugged. “Easy.”

“Yeah, assuming we have a good anti-grav. Which we don’t.”

She just nodded. They both knew that people don’t give away working Class 10 antigravs, even ancient ones. Outright stealing one was out of the question for the Ambassador’s daughter, but Jennie had found a privateer who was willing to trade a suitable anti-gray for a few special favors, all of which were either highly illegal or very inappropriate. Jennie was still working on negotiating a better deal from the pirates, but if push came to shove, she at least knew one way to equip their ship. She wanted so much to take Jon to this beautiful star system she’d once visited with her mother. It would take four months minimum to travel there, but Jennie thought it was the most beautiful place in the known galaxy.

Traveling with Jennie through interstellar space was the most exciting thing Jon could ever imagine doing.


But they weren’t ready yet. For one thing, they had to graduate. Jon’s task for today was to validate what the astronauts called “max toss weight into low orbit” for his Senior Project. His Project had focused on developing the math and physics to properly calculate Jennie’s maximum orbital lift ability by extrapolating data he acquired by measuring her strength and flight abilities down on the surface.

He’d already gotten the Best of Class Award for his preliminary submission, which got him into trouble with the other kids who were competing for the top prize. They complained that his project was unfair given it contained dozens of holos of Jennie demonstrating her abilities. Jon acted innocent when they complained, claiming that the videos were absolutely necessary to document the science. But secretly, he was enjoying messing with his classmate’s heads. Especially given that Jennie necessarily wore an indestructible Velorian flight suit when doing her demonstrations. Given that Vitamax fabric was fabulously expensive, Velorian flight suits used as little of it as was possible to meet the baseline requirements of Terran culture.

The final part of his project was to validate his calculations. He planned on doing that by having Jennie make a maximum lift to orbit. But given her fantastic raw strength, he was having trouble finding anything heavy enough to push her to his calculated limits. Frustrated with trying to piece together something heavy enough from the salvage yard, he eventually headed out into the desert to find a suitable rock. He found several that looked promising, scanning them to determine their total volume and then measuring the displacement and weight of fragments he’d chipped from each boulder to calculate the total mass. He was looking for a boulder that weighed between 875 and 900 tonnes, given that his formulas estimated Jennie's low-orbit toss weight at 889 tonnes.

When he told Jennie about how he wanted to validate his project, she was reluctant. Her mother had always taught her to never deliberately show off – and to never reveal her limits. Showing off would intimidate or frighten Terrans, and demonstrating her ultimate strength would enable the Arions to more effectively target her someday.

Her mother was always worrying about the Arions.

But Jon persisted, and Jennie finally came on board after she came up with a second agenda. Given his selected boulder was made of granite, she figured it would make for a brilliant explosion during re-entry. She would de-orbit the boulder, and after the exterior had heated to melting temperature, she’d crash into it at hypersonic speed – ten kilometers directly over the school stadium.

While her other powers were bounded and measurable, she’d convinced Jon that her invulnerability was absolute. Which was vital given he calculated that the kinetic energy of her hypersonic impact would create a two kilometer-wide fireball of shattered, molten rock, and produce a blast that was nuclear-grade.

Jennie smiled as she envisioned the molten rock fragments raining down over the entire city, blinking out just before they reached the ground. She giggled insanely every time she talked about the amazed and terrified looks they were going to see on everyone’s face given that nobody would know it was coming. This was going to be the biggest, brightest firework show EVER. And best of all, everyone would know that she’d done it – especially her mother.

That was the ultimate payoff for Jennie given her mother had been nagging her to stop “hiding her candle under a basket”, to use an old Earth saying. She was Velorian, her mother said, and she had a role to play in human society, and that didn’t involve hiding herself. She was a Supremis and it was time to act like one.

Jennie figured that exploding a meteor over the stadium would be Supremis enough.

But more than that, she wanted to get into serious-enough trouble with the planetary authorities that her mother would be happy to get her off Egland until things cooled down. There would be all manner of inquiries and safety concerns and violations of space laws and aeronautical laws and pollution laws and who knew what else. Jennie might be an adult by Velorian laws, given their age of majority was sixteen, but Egland had set its age at twenty-one, and she was in between. If she was living on Egland, she would be considered a child, and her mother would have to handle all of the issues with the authorities and suffer all the penalties. But if she was off-planet, then her mother would be off the hook given Jennie would legally be outside the reach of Egland law.

As Jennie saw it, the cost of a suitable anti-grav would be small compared to the nuisance she’d become if she was confined to the planet and fully exposed to both the media circus and the officials. But once gone, her mother could just tell the local officials that her daughter had left the solar system. End of story.

Manipulating her mother that way seemed really extreme to Jon, but he had no real idea how Velorian family politics normally worked. His focus was on visiting strange new worlds and meeting different species and all kinds of interesting people. But his real passion was simply to be alone with Jennie in their tiny ship for months at a time. Nothing could be more exciting than that. If this was what it took to make that happen, then what the hell… he was all in.

Standing alone now in the high desert with those thoughts running through his head, he walked closer to the boulder he’d selected. It appeared to have rolled down the nearby hills to come to a precarious stop on a tilted outcrop of desert bedrock. Walking under the lower curve of the house-sized rock, he couldn’t help but cower. It looked like it could resume rolling at any moment, and up close like this, it felt even bigger than when he’d first scouted it out. Impossibly bigger.

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But he remembered watching Jennie arm-wrestle her brother one time. Her slender body had expanded into a maze of hard curves, her skin heating up as she struggled mightily against Alon’s larger muscles. She should have lost the contest in the first seconds, but she had something he didn’t – a very large supply of Orgone. And as usual, Alon wanted to make it a contest, testing his strength against her endurance. He was like that with everyone, always trying to make everything a contest, even when it wasn’t.

The two of them began struggling, with several minutes of superhuman straining passing before Jenny’s blouse began to smoke as her glowing breasts grew so hot they burned holes right through the fabric, allowing a dull, red light to shine out from beneath. The Velorian twins were converting Orgone to energy at a ferocious rate to feed their muscles, but the longer the contest went on, the more advantage Jennie had. She could store many times the Orgone of her brother, thanks to being female.

Alon started to visibly to sag, so he desperately poured everything he had left into winning now, confident of his greater strength. But Jennie was bubbling with Orgone, and try as he might, he couldn’t get his sister’s hand all the way down to the steel table. Jon leaned down to table-height to make sure he could still see daylight beneath her hand – and that’s when Jennie began to ever-so-slowly straighten her arm. Her eyes blazed with blue light as her muscles flexed astoundingly, her shirt bursting into bright flames as her muscles sucked up immense amounts of Orgone energy from her breasts as she smoothly pushed Alon’s arm up and then down the other way to end the contest by squishing his knuckles into the thick steel table.

They continued to grip each other’s hands after the contest ended, hanging on to each other as they gasped for air, blue eyes burning into the others. Jennie covered her glowing chest with her free arm while Jon was shocked to see that Alon was very visibly turned on, proving that Velorians truly did respond to extreme exertion by becoming aroused. When Alon saw people glancing at him under the table, he released Jennie’s hand to dive out the door, moving so fast that only a few people observed that it wasn’t just his muscles that were oversized.

Thankfully, most eyes remained on Jennie, now that she was enveloped in flames from head to toe. Her hair lifted to swirl over her head, the red flames and smoke mixing with her short blonde hair. She finally turned and followed her brother through the doorway, leaving a trail of burned clothing behind her.

Jon forced the disturbing vision of her brother's reaction to the contest out of his head as he brought his thoughts back to the here and now. He was in the desert and the time was almost 1530, and Jenny was really late. He was thinking of calling her when his Comm buzzed.

“Yo, Jennie…” he answered.

“Sorry, Jon,” she said in her musical voice, which had more range than any Terran girl. “My dumb brother’s got a stupid problem that I’m sorting out. Give me a bit. I’ll head your way as soon as I can, I promise.”

“Roger. I’ll fire up the scanner.”

As a second part of his project, he wanted to measure how fast she could run while actually using her feet. His math said she couldn’t go faster than about 200kph using only muscle power, and only then by doing very long jumps. He set his scanner to record anything coming down the road, which was currently empty.

Long minutes passed before a massive truck began to approach, traveling at 196kph according to his scanner. The heaviest land trucks still lumbered down paved roads like this one, while everything else flew silently overhead on flitter anti-gravs. In this case, the hundred-meter-long truck was powered by a fuel cell that was outgassing a plume of water vapor as its electric motors hummed loudly, dozens of heavy rubber tires singing against the pavement. Trucks this size could carry hundreds of tons of cargo, while the biggest antigrav-trucks could barely float a tenth of that weight.

Another half hour passed after that one truck passed, with the road remaining empty. He was about to call Jennie again when she beeped him to say she was heading his way. For a girl with a photographic memory and the quick intelligence of a Velorian, her estimates of time always turned out to be way off. Her inner clock clearly ran at a different speed.

Minutes later, his scanner woke up and started to beep. Something was headed his way at exactly 623kph. He couldn’t see anything yet, but he already knew there was no way Jennie was actually running at that speed. While she easily had the raw strength to do it, she didn’t have the reflexes or nerve conduction speed sufficient to control her leg muscles at that speed. And her long jumps were limited to the friction of her feet on the road. Yet when he finally saw her approaching in the distance, her feet were on the pavement and her legs were moving in a blur with flames trailing behind her.

She gradually slowed as she approached, and her unchanged gait told Jon she’d been faking it – she’d been flying with her feet on the ground. She didn’t start to actually run until she dropped below 130kph, and even then she had to catch herself with her flight power several times before her legs caught up with her. By the time she skidded to a stop beside him, her sneakers were burning so brightly they threatened to set her dress on fire.

“You need to ditch those hot feet,” Jon laughed.

She quickly sat down on a small rock to unlace her shoes as she tried to blow the flames out. The rush of air just made them burn brighter.

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Jon shook his head, still chuckling – this was such a typical Jennie moment. Some part of her clothing often was on fire, and she always dressed in this eclectic, punkish style. Unlike every other Velorian female he’d seen pictures of, all of whom had long blonde hair, Jennie’s short, raggedly-cut hair made her look more like a Terran. She said her brother cut it while she sat bound in gold, which reduced her invulnerability just enough for Alon’s laser vision to burn it raggedly short.

It was just one more thing her mother didn’t approve of. Vels universally wore very short skirts as if they were a uniform, and they all had the perfect legs for it. They also bared their arms, abs, back, shoulders – in other words, as much skin as they could. Velorian formal wear consisted of a bit of silver jewelry and a few square inches of mostly nothing, given that dressing up for a Velorian meant dressing down. They viewed their bodies as an insurmountable work of art.

But Jennie always wore a skirt that dragged on the ground, and even weirder, she usually wore an old fashioned slip or petticoat – over her dress. The overall look was punkish, especially given the way she combined it with conservative bits and pieces of other clothing. Today, that was a yellow blouse and a blue jacket with large, white buttons, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Dark eye shadow added the final touch, with her blue eyes sparkling brightly from inside black holes.

Sitting on that rock, her sneakers still burning, she looked up at Jon’s huge boulder and then down at him, tilting her head slightly. “You have got to be kidding? That’s the rock you mentioned? It’s huge!”

“Yes it is. But you, my lady of the golden planet, have some of the best muscles in the universe.” He waved his arm toward some smaller boulders. “But, you know, if you think it’s too much for you, there are plenty of little rocks.”

She smiled, rising to his challenge. “I never said it was too much. Given how mad I am at my brother right now, I could probably toss it into orbit one-handed. Especially if he was on it.”

Jon smiled. Jennie was always cleaning up after her brother’s latest disaster. If it wasn’t some girl in school cheating on her boyfriend to be with him, which led to some public screaming matches, he was driving everyone at a party crazy with his pheromones. He wanted to make people happy, and like all Velorians, he thought sex was the happiest thing ever. He was never satisfied until everyone around him was equally happy. He was just that kind of guy.

“You do realize your sneakers are melting all over your feet?”

She looked down to casually kick her flaming shoes off, and then grabbed her left ankle to bend her foot around until she was staring directly at her sole, demonstrating her superhuman flexibility. A ring of light flashed around her irises for a second before two blue beams blasted from those black holes to burn the melted rubber off her skin – and dazzle Jon in the process. He blinked through the black spots in his vision as a small cloud of gray smoke rose from her glowing foot. Jon put his hand over his eyes to protect them as she did the same with her other foot. He’d seen her turn rock to lava in seconds with a blast of those eyes.

Satisfied, she rose to float closer to Jon, her feet still glowing as she rested her arms gently on his shoulders. She tilted her head to softly kiss him – a kiss that quickly grew deep enough to lift more than Jon’s spirits. He could literally feel the aura of power that surrounded her. That was quickly followed by the scent of warm honey and wildflower as she released her pheromones, a single wiff of which brought him a wave of desire and a surge of vitality. By the time she broke her kiss, he was fully turned on.

This was her normal way of saying she wanted sex, which was a several times a day thing for any Velorian. She loved having sex in inappropriate places at the most inopportune times. But he’d learned to resist her sexy come-ons when he had things to do. Otherwise, he’d never get anything done.

“So, ah... how about working a bit first. Once you toss that rock into orbit, meet me back in my room. My parents are away for a few days.”

“Sex in a bed? That’ll be a new one for us.”

He winked. “I’m told normal people do it all the time.”

She laughed. “Nothing about us is remotely normal. And I thought you liked air sex?”

Every guy in school had instantly become jealous of Jon after a low cloud shifted one day and revealed what they were up to, high overhead the school. Someone with a long lens took a video, which circulated virally through the school. Most people’s reaction was “What the fuck does she see in him? The geekiest wimp in school.”

Jon shrugged off his newfound celebrity, acting like Jennie being his girlfriend was no big deal. He refused to even acknowledge the video, yet he was secretly proud of all his sudden notoriety. Girls looked at him differently and the other guys stopped ignoring him, which wasn’t a good thing. Some of the jocks figured that beating him up would prove their superiority, and thus improve their chances with Jenny, who obviously was into muscles. Jock logic was strange.

Even stranger, getting beat up didn’t really hurt very much. That was the first time he realized that Jennie was somehow rubbing off on him. Her fine sense of self-control deserted her orgasm and she’d thrash about hard enough to trash a Scrumbles player. But she gave off something during sex that allowed him to survive her sexual athletics. And compared to sex with Jennie, getting pounded on by a muscle-bound jock was nothing.

But his most embarrassing moment came during his first meeting with her mother, the regal-looking Ambassador. The Embassy’s brag sheet said she was 430 Terran standard years old, but Jon saw a mid-thirties woman with the tight, strong body of a professional dancer. Her glowing blonde hair surrounded a face that was absolutely stunning. And when he nervously came to dinner at their house, she opened the door to reveal that she was dressed in an exotic outfit that revealed a great deal of perma-tanned skin.

He’d expected her to be dressed as he’d seen her on the News, wearing a dark, formal suit, her long hair tied into a thick braid. Even then, her height and slender figure made her stand out, not the least for the flowing red scarf she always wore. She made sure everyone knew at first glance that she was Velorian. During meetings, every man wanted to sit across the table from her, and most would rush to an agreement, usually on her terms, given they knew that Velorians cemented any major agreement with a wildly inappropiate bit of sex instead of a handshake. Vels were rumored to be able to sense a man’s true thoughts during intercourse, which was a very useful diplomatic skill. The result was that anyone who wanted to put one over on a Velorian would send a woman to do the negotiating, given they couldn’t be read or influenced so easily.

That was all intimidating enough for Jon without having her appear in the doorway nearly naked, and it got worse halfway through the evening with her mother pulled Jon aside for a special talk. A talk that started with her telling him that having a Velorian girlfriend wasn’t going to be all love and roses, especially given he was so inexperienced. She said that Velorian concepts of fidelity were very different than Terran. She finished with: “Jennie is really only safe for the most experienced and sexually accomplished of men. Or, in Terran terms, my daughter is way too hot for you.”

Jon just stared at her mother, unable to believe she’d just said that. Her frankness shocked him, not to mention her message, and made him wonder how much Jennie had told her mother about him. He’d very embarrassingly confessed to Jennie that he was a virgin when they first became friends, only to find that he had to explain the word to her. Twice. Once she understand that strange concept, she quickly made sure the label no longer applied to him. That had been one of the most amazing days of his life.

He pushed that memory away as her mother continued on, explaining that they didn’t even have a word for fidelity in Velorian, and that he was only going to be disappointed if he placed jealous expectations on Jennie. He might be very special to her, but Velorians constantly sought new sexual experiences, even when married. Sex was their greatest joy, and they were a very joyful people.

Jon continued to stare at Jennie’s mother as if he’d suffered a stroke. He was completely at a loss for words as he tried to process what he’d just heard. Jennie was going to sleep around, despite how they felt about each other? Her mother continued on, telling him about the other ways Velorian social and sexual customs are different than Terran, which mostly came down to “bigger and stronger is better”. That added a new layer of intimidation to his freak out, given he was neither. She seemed not to notice his distress as she finished with a lecture about the dangers of unprotected sex. By her definition, unsafe meant sex without Jennie’s gold choker. She explained the consequences of Velorian strength during orgasm in graphic enough detail that Jon thought he was going to die right there.

Clearly, she was trying to scare him away, especially when she also made it clear that having Jennie as his first sexual partner was going to ruin it for him with any normal girls, who would never measure up to her super-daughter. She wasn’t boasting, but simply stating a fact.

When he later told Jennie about her mother’s little talk, she grew angry, upset that her mother had been so blunt about something they hadn’t talked through yet. But it served to introduce Jon to Velorian “straight talk”, which tends to be frank and detailed to a fault. All forms of deliberate deception were an anathema in their culture, even what Terrans call “white lies”. They said what was on their mind regardless of the implications.

Jon and Jennie had talked about sex a lot since then, contrasting Terran and Velorian customs, which always ended up with Jenny showing him some amazing technique that no human girl could possibly perform. She might downplay being Velorian at school, but she was not without pride in her heritage or skills, or her desires. She just didn’t want to spread it around like her brother.

“So what the hell was your brother’s problem today, anyway?” Jon asked.

She shook her head. “Don’t want to talk about it now. Let’s take a look at this boulder of yours.”

She walked over to stand under the curve of the house-sized rock, working her way all the way up to where it narrowed to sit heavily on solid rock. She lifted her hands to run them over the smooth stone until she found a small protrusion, which she gripped hard enough to noisily crush it to powder with her fingers. Turning back to face Jon as she brushed her hands off, she looked impressed.

“I think maybe you’ve done it, Jon. Found something too much for me. This rock is extremely hard and very dense and consolidated. How heavy you figure?”

“890 tonnes, plus or minus 20.”

She shrugged her blue jacket off, and then her slip and skirt, revealing long, tightly-muscled legs. She was wearing just her yellow blouse now, the tails of which were barely long enough to keep her decent when she was standing straight. “I wasn’t trained like a Protector, Jon, so I don’t really know how strong I am. But I’ll give it a try. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Jon walked up to rest his hands on her shoulders, which always felt as if they were carved from sensual steel. “What if it falls on you?”

“I can handle that, but it might take some work to get out from under it. You need to stand over there by your bike in case I screw up. If it’s going to roll, I don’t think it’ll go that way.”

He slid one hand down to cup her breast, thrilling to its fullness and softness, her nipple instantly tenting her thin shirt. Her breasts were the only part of her body that had any give when she was fully empowered. “I feel very safe right here. I’ve been wondering what your body might feel like during a max lift.”

She smiled as she turned her head to kiss him softly. “But I don’t. Feel safe, that is. I’m way over my head here.”

“Such a beautiful head,” he murmured, running his fingers through her short, silky blonde hair.

She shrugged her shoulders to push him away. “Seriously, Jon. This isn’t time to mess around. This is very dangerous. For you.”

He smiled. Minutes ago he was the one saying no to sex. Now it was her turn. “Ok, Ok, I’m going.” He reluctantly released her breast and turned to trudge away, walking stiffly. By the time he got back to his bike, she’d squished herself up against the bottom of the boulder, using her flight power to hold herself there like some kind of spider, her arms and legs spread wide to increase her area of contact. Flying this boulder was going to demand that she balance it exactly right.

Jon could still feel the echo of her warm breast in his hand, which made it weird to think that she was about to balance hundreds of tons on her chest – and she’d probably not find that uncomfortable in the least. The combination of her being so incredibly sensitive to his touch while also being invulnerable was never going to get old.

He watched as she started to lift, her body tensing powerfuly as she began metabolizing Orgone, her chest glowing as she redirected that power to her muscles and flight organs. The biological anti-gravity effect of the volatai organs located beneath her breasts filled her with such lightness that the boulder wobbled a little. She gritted her teeth as she tensed further to pour even more power into her volatai, and the huge boulder wobbled more before promptly rolling foward. She tried to stop it, but couldn’t before horrifyingly disappearing beneath the boulder as it rolled over her.

Jon’s heart leaped into his throat as the boulder started rolling straight toward him, gaining speed, Jennie’s yellow blouse was merely a color splotch on the rolling surface of the boulder. He leaped on his bike and hit RUN, and the anti-grav began to whine as it spun up to flight speed. Turning back, he saw a wall of rock rushing his way. He twisted the throttle as a huge shadow fell over him, dirt and bits of pulverized rock showering him, but the anti-grav wasn’t up to speed yet. The huge boulder was about to flatten him when that yellow splotch suddenly lifted the boulder into the air, the boulder brushing the top of his head as Jennie flew it over him to crash back to the ground just beyond him.

His heart was pounding painfully as he gasped for air, his eyes wide as he realized how close he’d just come so close to being crushed like a bug. His legs were shaking as he dove off his bike to rush over and kneel beside the boulder. Jennie was buried beneath it. He had no idea how to help her, but none was needed as the boulder began to rock back and forth before rising slowly into the air. Jennie appeared, her body partially crushed into the rock. She hovered with her arms and legs still spread wide, digging further into the hard rock to secure it.

“Jesus, are you Ok?” he said.

She twisted her neck both ways before giving her head a little shake. Her body was an impossible maze of hard-edged muscle now. “No, I’m not. I’m fucking embarrassed. What a fuck up!”

Hovering while supporting the incredible weight of the boulder, she turned to look back at the long, shallow depression the boulder had left as it rolled down hill toward his parked bike. “That was close.”

“Yeah,” he said, downplaying his near miss with death. “So, I gather it’s kind of heavy.”

“Not so bad now. I just got off balance and couldn’t correct fast enough. And how about next time you get further away. I don’t want to have to explain to your mom how you got squashed.”

“Yeah, I definitely got that part. But at least you’ve got it under control now.”

The boulder looked ridiculously huge to him as it floated a few feet off the ground.

“Barely. Don’t get anywhere under my flight path again.”

Jon got back on his bike and put some distance between himself and the boulder, circling several hundred meters away. Jennie reminded him of pictures he’d seen of ants carrying a huge clump of dirt many times their size.

Convinced that he was safe, she began rising, slowly at first, and then faster and faster as she climbed a kilometer straight up before curving toward the horizon while gaining speed, soon moving so fast that the boulder began to glow from air friction. That glow became dazzling bright by the time she disappeared over the distant mountains.

His heart was still racing as he rode back toward town at full speed, ignoring all the speed limits. He finally skidded sideways to a stop in front of his house to dash inside and up the stairs to his room to check the Planetary Watch display on his PersComp. Sure enough, sensors had already picked up the new orbiting object, classifying it as an “unknown spacecraft” given it had risen from the planet.

Its initial elliptical orbit was 470km by 190km. He plugged in the coordinates of the school stadium and the exact time he wanted it to arrive overhead, and found it would be half a planet away at that time. He input that target data and timing to the Inertial Bombing AI that he’d found in another abandoned warship. It would calculate the orbital adjustments necessary to put the “bomb” over the stadium at the exact right time.

Satisfied, he sat back in his chair, leaving the AI to iterate on the sensor data as it came in, refining its calculations in real time to give him preliminary “burn” data. Clearly Jennie was clearly going to have to go back up several times to make adjustments. But given this AI had been trained to drop bombs precisely on targets from orbit, it was perfect for calculating how to deorbit the rock.

Stripping off his dust-covered clothing, he slipped into the shower to clean up. He was nearly finished, his face still in the spray, when a pair of slender arms wrapped around his waist from the back. Jennie’s skin was uncomfortable hot, but the shower cooled her quickly, but not before her very warm hand slipped down to encircle his sudden erection. She reached up to get a squirt of soap with her other hand as she now wrapped both hands around him, spreading the soap as his blood pressure rose so fast it nearly blew the top of his head off.

Based on how firm her breasts felt against his back, her nipples like bullets, she clearly wasn’t wearing her gold. Which meant that this little session was going to be just for him. Even then, she’d have to be very careful. He’d seen her crush steel in her bare hands like it was merely soft plastic.

Yet using her hands wasn’t what she had in mind. To his surprise, she released him to slide smoothly around his body to lean her back against the shower wall, floating in air as she opened her long legs to wrap them around his waist.

He looked at her, puzzled. “Ah… you don’t have your gold, Jen..” he started to say, only to have her shake her head, her blonde hair pressed wetly against her skull.

“I can be gentle.”

“But your mom said… like it wasn’t safe or… maybe even possible.”

“My mother said what she wanted you to hear, Jon. This is my present to you. Did you forget today was your birthday? You’re finally 18.”

Jon realized with a sudden shock that he had. He’d been so focused on their school prank.

She reached down to guide him to herself, smiling as he passionately grabbed her ass to pull her closer, her ass feeling like warmly rounded steel in his hands. But the rush of adrenaline and hormones from her alien pheromones were fully upon him now, and she was wet and willing, smiling cutely as she wrapped her strong hand around his shaft to stiffen as she tried to take him. He threw everything he had into a thrust, and she squeaked with pleasure, only to feel himself bend painfully. The natural muscle tension of her vagina refused to yield to mere Terran power. He felt frustrated and emasculated and embarrassed by his relative weakness, but she fixed everything by kissing her way down his body to begin an enthusiastic fellatio. The fact that she didn't have to breathe made it incredible.

A fantastic rush of power and passion flashed through him him as he quickly lost polite control to begin thrusting so hard that he slammed her head back against the shower wall. She rotated her body to hover upside down, her feet on the ceiling, his hands squeezing her perfect ass again as he tried to return the favor with his tongue. She lifted and lowered herself on him as he went insane, the two of them fusing together as one, his shouting groan merely an apostrophe in their stream of loving as she continued her ministrations, the surge of power from her body and her alien pheromones ensuring that he was able to come again and then again. He gave up on even trying to give something back, dumbfounded and scared and thrilled and exuberant and insane with desire given she was fully-empowered – a true super girl.

Chapter Two

Jon woke up in his bed, his head buried in a pillow, feeling better than he’d ever felt before. He rolled onto his back to find Jennie floating naked at the window, basking in the golden sunshine. He thrilled to the realization that they’d done the supposed impossible, even if it was just a super blowjob.

She saw that he was awake, and quickly floated over to straddle him in the bed. “So, did I break anything important?”

“Hell no. I’ve never felt this strong. Or this good. I mean, the sensation of power that I felt flowing from you, it was incredible. It was way different than when you wear gold. I feel like a superman.”

“Yeah, you kind of were for a bit, which is why this isn’t safe. Done too often and your heart will explode or something. But maybe we can make this my annual gold-free birthday present.”

His heart swelled. She was talking about future birthdays when everyone said Velorians didn’t form lasting relationships.

She leaned over him to reach the nightstand, one firm breast pressing briefly against his face, her nipple pressing between his lips, feeling like steel. She returned holding her gold choker, which he reached up to snap around her neck. She sighed softly as her eyelids fluttered, and the hard edges of her uber-fitness faded slightly as the power of flight slowly deserted her. She settled full-length on top of him while squirming a little as the last bits of superpower drained out of her. The super girl had once again became just a girl. He rolled her over on her back to guide himself to her.

“I feel bad for not being able to give back last night. But you wanna maybe discover how many O’s you’re good for today?”

She laughed. “You already know – I have no limits. So take me you big stud or lose me forever.”

Chapter Three

When Jon woke the next time, Jennie was spooned against his stomach, her slow, steady breathing saying she was asleep. She normally didn’t sleep more than an hour or two a night, but when she wore gold she became more Terran than Supremis. She got tired and sleepy, and after sex, very hungry, but mostly she liked snuggling. Given the gold, she could truly relax and not be so careful all the time.

He’d lost track of her screaming, bed-trashing O’s, the two of them out of their minds with passion. Jennie might only have a tiny fraction of her usual strength when she wore gold, but she was still superhuman. Which explained why his bed was now crooked, the frame broken. He also rememered knocking over furniture while they made love in nearly every room, including the kitchen island. He couldn’t remember how they’d wound up back in his broken bed.

As much as he loved Jennie when she was super, especially her bit of shower supersex, he was happiest when she was wearing her gold and was just a girl. A very special girl. His girl.

He very slowly slipped from his tilted bed, trying not to wake her, and tiptoed over to sit at his desk to fire up the Planetary Watch app. The “terrestrial spacecaft” had now been reclassified a “natural object of terrestrial origin.” Obviously, telescopic and scanner images had revealed to everyone that it was an ordinary-looking boulder, which made it pretty obvious that a Supremis had put it up there. He wondered if anyone was going to inform her mother. She might be an Ambassador who spent her time sitting in boring meetings, but she could easily go up and return the rock to the ground before it fell on anyone.

As he watched, the classification changed as Space Defense designated the rock as a “target for destruction” if its orbit destabilized. Which, of course, would ruin all their fun. Fortunately, Jennie had gotten it into a stable enough orbit, just as he’d intended. She was amazing.

He saw a flash of light behind him, and turned his head to see Jennie silently floating over the bed, her breasts glowing briefly from Orgone surge, her blonde hair radiating this golden light Her gold choker lay on the the night table again. The brief rush of Orgone made her ultra-blue eyes flash brightly as her super-metabolism returned to normal, and the tight, hard curves that normally shaped her body returned, which made her pert breasts rise even higher on her chest.

“So my girl-of-steel has returned.”

“Who desperately needs a shower.”

“Have at it,” he shrugged. “Can I join you?”

She shook her head. “You need to recover a bit first. You’re still running on my pheromones, and they’re going to fade soon. You won’t feel so fine then. Besides, I gotta get up to our rock and start the first course adjustments.”

He pointed at the screen. “I got the first burn data figured out. Take the bombing computer with you – it’ll help you get the vector and thrust exactly right. The AI claims we can do this with just three course adjustments, each one an orbit apart.”

“That’ll take me six hours or so. What are you going to do this morning?”

“Fix my bed and clean up the house before my mom gets back. She doesn’t know that we’re sexually active and all.”

She laughed, her eyes sparkling again. “You’re dating a Velorian girl and she thinks its platonic?”

“My mom has strange ideas about what I should, and shouldn’t be doing at my age. She lives in her own fantasy world.”

She shook her head. “Terran customs really are weird.”

“Mom’s an old-school fundamentalist, which is why I’m in that school. She doesn’t believe in sex except when required for reproduction, and only then after marriage, and I don’t want to burst her bubble. She’d be hurt and disappointed in me. I don’t ever want to hurt her.”

Jennie shook her head and she floated naked in mid-air. “Some things about Terrans I’ll never truly understand. How you can create such fantasies around you.”

“My mom would say worse if she saw you floating naked in the middle of my bedroom, reeking of sex and pheromones. She’d think you were slutty and promiscuous.”

“Which are also words we don’t have on Velor.”

She floated into the shower as Jon headed downstairs, picking up overturned furniture and spilled flower vases and the like as he went. He finally worked his way to the kitchen. He was ravenous and Jennie would be even more so when she showed up.

He was cooking enough eggs for an army when he heard a loud swish outside the kitchen window and a distant boom. He turned the stove off and dashed back up to his bedroom to find that the bombing computer was gone along with Jennie. She’d skipped breakfast to make the first course adjustments. He grabbed his PersComp and went back down to the kitchen, watching the data on the rock as he ate. He chuckled in amazement thirty minutes later when the rock’s orbital parameters began to shift, and alarms started to flash. Space Command was keeping a very close eye on their rock.

He sat back in his chair, amazed for the thousandth time that Jennie was actually his girlfriend. They’d just spent the night making love with energy and endurance that was wild and crazy over-the-top impossible, and now she was up in space pushing around a rock while he ate his breakfast – and hers. He knew he was ultimately doomed by all of this, but he didn’t care. Her mother Alana was undoubtably right about one thing – any ordinary girlfriend was going to be incredibly boring after Jennie. But he was determined to ride this wild mare until she bucked him off, no matter where it took him.

His morning thoughts were interupted by a knock on the door. He answered it to find his neighbor, Dan, standing there.

“Heard some commotion over here last night. Everything OK?”

Jon started to say “yes, everything’s fine” when he remembered Dan was a carpenter and mechanic or whatever. He might be able to fix the bed before he had to explain it to his mom. “Ah, not exactly. I mean, I’m OK, but my bed collapsed.”

Dan laughed. “Given what I heard last night, I’m not surprised. Want me to take a look at it.”

“Frame is broken. I’m going to need new parts.”

Dan pushed his way past him. “Fixing things is what I do, Jon boy. Used to fix the tunneling lasers over at the mine. Then worked on anti-gravs. Now I’m mostly doing carpentry or fixing flitters on the side, what with my disability and all. Always glad to help.”

Jon blushed as he realized the whole neighborhood might have heard them. Dan might not be the only person to come over to make sure he was Ok.

“Up there,” he pointed.

Dan went up and looked around, and then came back down to the kitchen. “Bed’s trashed, as you said. Needs a new frame. You sure everything is Ok? Place is trashed.”

“Everything is absolutely perfect,” he heard Jennie say in her muscical voice from the top of the stairs. Both men spun around to see her standing there, wearing one of Jon’s fleece jackets. Given her height, it was barely long enough to keep her decent. “But we could really use a carpenter.”

Dan’s eyes were sparkling now. “Then I’m just the man you need, darlin’. Let me get my tools. Be right back.”

He disappeared out the door, and was back in seconds to head up the stairs to meet Jennie. By the time Jon caught up with them, he found Jennie kneeling beside the bed, lifting it while helping Dan figure out what to fix. Her borrowed jacket no longer even trying to cover her backside, something Dan was clearly very aware of. She suddenly rose back to her feet, floating just above the bed. There was no hiding who she was now, and probably never had been. Dan tore his eyes from her long enough to make a few quick measurements, writing them down for her.

“No shops open yet to get parts for a proper repair, darlin’,”

She wiggled her fingers. “I’ve got a key to every door. What do you need?”

“Two 4x4 hardwood posts, four 2x4’s and four metal corner brackets, like this one.” He handed her a mangled one he’d taken off the bed.

She walked out the bedroom door to rotate head-first over the balcony railing to land in the living room below. There she shed her borrowed fleece jacket before walking naked out the door. Dan turned to look at Jon with a surprised look.

“So, she’s like your girlfriend?” He looked doubtful given Jon’s skinny, geeky appearance.

“Yeah. But don’t tell my mom about any of this. I need to get everything fixed before she gets home.”

“No problem as long as your girlfriend comes back with the parts. She’s the Ambassador’s daughter, right? Jen somebody.”

“Jennie. And yeah. But my mom will kill me if she finds out I brought her here.”

“Oh, yeah. Mrs. Holy Roller. I got it,” he winked. “Our secret.”

“Want some coffee?” Jon didn’t drink it, but he figured he could make some.

Dan shook his head. “Gotta get some more tools. Be right back.” He clambered down the stairs, walking stiffly. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. The bedroom reeked of pheromones.

He returned just as Jennie did, landing in the backyard with the wood beams over her shoulder. “Spiffy Home Improvement Center might be a bit short on inventory when they open,” she proudly announced, “and short one mangled door lock. But I’ll find a way to make it up to them.”

Dan stared at her unconscious nudity as she set the material down. Jon scrambled to find one of his longer shirts, which she fortunately buttoned at least halfway up. She then floated up the stairs as Dan followed her, staring at her amazing backside. Jon forced himself to return to the kitchen to start cleaning up. He felt strong and confident, which was strange for him, which made him wonder how long this empowerment would last. Was he getting used to her pheromones – allowing them to keep him stronger and tougher for longer periods? The last time he’d tried to do pullups in gym class, back before he met Jennie, he’d barely managed two, and not good ones at that. Wimpy was the nickname his classmates had hung on him.

Curious, he walked over to grab the old chinup bar over the kitchen doorframe, and surprised himself by quickly doing thirty. Then he did ten more – one-handed. He felt as if he could do a hundred. Obviously Jennie’s bit of superpowered fellatio had done something very interesting to more of him than just his dick.

When Jennie and Dan emerged from the bedroom a half hour later, Dan was clearly in her thrall. Jon thought it was a bit unfair of her to be taking advantage of him this way, working alongside him with pheromones in the air, but she was Velorian and Jon wasn’t complaining about the quick repair job. Dan thumped down the stairs, lugging his tools, smiling insanely as he said something about “got a hot date with my wife”. And then he was gone.

“So you’re spreading joy across the entire neighborhood now I see,” Jon quipped.

“He’s happy, we’re happy, and his wife’s going to be happy in a few minutes. A win-win-win. Don’t be so jealous.”

“I’m not.”

“Bullshit. You wear your thoughts on your face, my love. You worried about what I was doing with him the whole time.”

“You’re Velorian, Jennie. I know how it works. But the good news is that everything is fixed now. My mom will be blissfully unaware as usual. Just as long as Dan keeps his mouth shut.”

“He will. I told him it would make me very sad and mess things up for you and me if he said anything. And that I’ll be glad to help him on some other project down the road. Trust me, he’s on our side.”

“You mean, your side? He was drooling.”

She shrugged. “Most men do, but that’s their problem. Long as we’re tight, it’s all good, right? And with any luck, we’ll be off this rock soon enough.”

“You really think your mother will fall for it? Kicking you off planet along with me for our stunt?”

“This Ambassador job is her big chance. She’s worked four centuries to get this job. She’s not going to let me or anyone else spoil it.”

“So space rocks are bad, but your brother can walk around fucking every girl and woman he wants. Even his teachers. And that’s Ok?”

“That’s what everyone expects of a Velorian. And everyone likes him, even the jocks he hangs out with. Not at first, given he was stealing their girlfriends, but he gives them right back, and now they’re super-passionate thanks to his pheromones. The other guys have come to realize that Alon awakens things in their girlfriends that don’t go away afterward. Things they really enjoy. So life’s good.”

“That’s really twisted, Jennie. You know that. Starting by turning the school cheerleaders into wannabe Velorians and all.”

“Maybe by your standards. But nobody’s complaining as far as I’ve heard. Everyone in school is having better sex thanks to him. Best thing in the world for all of them.”

“Don’t try that argument on my mother. She doesn’t think any of us should be having any sex. And speaking of your brother, what the hell was his problem yesterday? When you were late getting out to the desert to meet me?”

“You so don’t want to know.”

“Actually, I do.”

She looked at him strangely, and the shook her head. “Nope. Best that remains my problem. You can’t handle it.”

Jon felt himself getting angry. “Hey, I thought we were going to be open and honest about everything. Isn’t that the Velorian way?”

“It is, but you’re Terran. I mean, you try and all, and you are more enlightened than any other Terran guy I’ve met, and you clearly think you can handle anything, but your emotions still get in the way. As they did a bit just now. Jealousy is a natural human emotion, especially for young men. It’s part of your biology from cave-man days. You can’t just make it go away by wanting it to.”

“What does jealousy have to do with your brother?”

She sighed. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”

“I want you to be as open with me as you would another Velorian.”

“You just think you want that. You really don’t.”

“Are we having a fight?” Jon asked.

“Closest thing to it. I’m just trying to protect you from yourself.”

“Don’t!” he said angrily. “Don’t ever do that! I mean, sure, physically protect me, but don’t ever fuck with my head. Or presume you know what I can handle and what I can’t.”

She shook her head, sighing. “Ok. Ok. But this is a mistake.”

“Then let it be my mistake.”

“Ok. So here’s the deal, Jon. My brother fell in with a team of female Scrumbles players. As you know, they’re all gen-hanced into extreme athletes given that Scrumbles is kind of an amped up version of Old Earth rugby. Female Amazons. Women stronger than any normal man. You know all that. What you don’t know is that the entire team was tapping into Alon’s power, and they wanted to taste it first hand, even suck some of it up, which they can only do without his gold. They wanted to feel his true power.”

“Ah, Ok. A whole team of Scrumbles players? That’s about Alon’s speed. Nothing he can’t handle. But no gold?”

“Yeah, Unprotected sex with his self control and timely withdrawl the only protection.”

“That never works.”

“No shit. You also know that some of our power rubs off during and after super-sex – you are feeling it now. Well, those women had learned about that somewhere and they wanted to test it out, especially given that getting stronger and tougher is their thing. So they took turns with him all night, sucking up his power, getting stronger, turning all of that power into even better sex, all of them completely out of their minds from his pheromones and his extreme bod. He held himself back, but it was really intense, even for him, I don’t know what he was thinkg – a dozen Amazons and all. Whatever… he began to lose it. He tried to find his gold choker, but the women had hidden it away. And he wasn’t thinking clearly enough to just fly off and finish himself in some remote location.

“No shit! And your Mom thinks that’s Ok? For him to have unprotected sex? With a dozen women at a time?”

“Absolutely not. He’s supposed to always wear gold. It’s obviously a bigger deal with him than me, given I just get unfuckable. But he could easily blow a woman’s head off. And when I arrived, he was red-faced and at the very edge of losing it. I had a split second to save the woman he was with, so I tossed his current Amazon across the room and contained him myself. My body was the only thing around that was invulnerable enough to contain him.”

Jon just stared at her, puzzled. “Contain?”

“Fully-energized Velorian sperm is dangerous to Terran women, Jon, and not only from the intensity of ejaculation. Those little wigglers stay active and super for several minutes. Couldn’t let them loose in that room. They’d dive through flesh from whatever direction in their frantic search for ova to fertilize. The thousands of tiny holes they’d punch in each woman would bring in bacteria and whatever. Bad way to die.”

“So you… contained him…” Jon said again, struggling to wrap his head around what she was saying as a sense of horror grew in the back of his mind.

“To save lives. There was only one way in that basement to contain him in zero time.”

“So you… you… ?!!” Jon gasped, unable to even say it. “Your brother!?”

A horrible image of her making it with her twin formed in his mind’s eye. Not the least for that brief view during the arm-wrestling contest of his superman qualities.

“Just long enough to get him through his release and away from Egland,” she shrugged. “Saving lives is always our priority, and this was the only way.”

Jon’s head spun, a hurricane of anger and jealousy rising to blow his mind. “You and your brother…?” he gasped again.

“Think of it as emergency containment. Would you rather I let those women die? Horribly, I might add.”

“No, of course not… but… Jesus!” Jon was gasping for air, thoughts racing to places he never wanted them to go, eyes wild.

“See, I told you you really didn’t want to know. I won’t ever lie to you, Jon, but the next time I say you don’t want to know something, trust me.”

“And that’s why you were… you were so late? And did he… did you… you know…?”

“I said there was no time, not even seconds. He had a lot of built-up energy from those damn women, all of whom were old enough to know what they were doing to a teenage boy. He might be a man-of-steel, but like most guys his age, he can be stupid and a sucker for a bunch of hot women who wanted him, and they took advantage of that. In the end, I had to take him all the way to Alpha, the closest moon, before I dumped him there. Now I’ve got an entire Scrumbles team pissed at me for stealing their plaything, and they still refuse to believe the danger they were in. Idiots. And now you’re freaking out. I’m supposed to be the hero of this story, not the bad guy.”

It was too much. Jon’s brain shut down as his legs grew a mind of their own, turning him around to walk out his own door. He jumped on his bike and rode off out into the desert at full throttle. He had no idea where he was going, just away. As far away as he could get.

He was 50 kliks into the desert before he allowed himself to think again, and then he didn’t want to. He kept imagining Jenny having some kind of supersex with her brother before his brain shut down again. He was so distracted that he missed a turn going down into a gulley and crashed. The bike’s anti-grav went into safety shutdown mode and wouldn’t even try to restart until it was checked by a technician. He kicked his bike before stalking off across the desert on foot, shouting and cursing and struggling to work through emotions more powerful than any he’d felt before.

He was incredibly angry, both at Jennie but even more at her brother. She’d done what she had to save lives, OK, he understood that at one level, but his brain couldn’t rationalize what she’d done.

He was several kliks past his broken bike, walking and occasionally running into the desert heat without any water, when he saw someone shimmering like a mirage ahead of him. He first thought it was Jennie, but as he staggered forward, he realized it was actually Ursula, her mother’s Deputy Council.

She was dressed in some kind of exotic flight outfit which consisted of a white thong that barely covered what it had to, leaving her hips and long legs bared, along with a golden-colored metallic top that was mostly cut-out, revealing a lot of skin. She wore blue gauntlets over her lower arms. A short, white cape was attached over her shoulders leaving her long, blonde hair floating free. Her blue eyes shone overly bright. Standing nearly two meters tall with acres of perfectly tanned skin on display, she was a vision of alien perfection.

Jon climbed a low flat rock to sit down exhaustedly as he looked down at her.

She tilted her head to look up and study him, saying nothing at first.

velorian 77a.044aae47a7ee4f14b5c7baa1f5bcfebb

“Did… did the Ambassador or Jennie send you out here… to find me?” Jon asked, his mouth almost too dry to talk.

“The opposite. Jennie said to give you some space, but I decided to keep an eye on you anyway. She’s sad and hurt and very worried about you. But also confused because you aren’t giving her credit for saving lives. She thought you’d understand. ”

“It… it was she and her brother… they…Jesus, I can’t even say it.”

Ursula sighed. “Have you already forgotten what you told her when you guys first got serious?”

“Of… course…” he lied. He couldn’t think of anything, couldn’t remember anything, what with his brain stuck on one thought.

“Jennie told me you said you’d accept her Velorian customs if she accepted yours?”

“How do you know about…?”

“Jennie and I talk. I studied Terran sociology years ago, and I approached Jennie for insights. I’ve always been intrigued by Velorian/Terran relationships, given there are very few that work. For reasons much like today.”

“No shit…” Jon said emphatically.

“But also because those few relationships that do work are amazing. Yet never in two centuries of observation have I seen a relationship with as much promise as yours. For reasons I can’t comprehend, Jennie wants to be in an exclusive relationship with you.”

“Exclusive?” Jon said angrily. “You mean except for fucking her brother once in a while?”

“She did the same thing any Velorian woman would have done in that situation, sibling or stranger. She used her invulnerable body to protect Terrans the only way she could, regardless of consequences. And she did it instinctively and instantly to save those lives.”

“So you don’t see that as icky? Or immoral? Or just wrong?”

“It’s not exactly sexy or desirable, that’s for damn sure, but it has nothing to do with morality. I once had a few similar moments with my my own brother as I was healing him after an Arion attack. Besides, yesterday was partially my fault. It’s normally my job to keep an eye on Alon, and I’ve bailed him out of messes several times. But I was busy yesterday and some people almost got killed. I’m proud that Jennie stepped up in my place.”

“Proud?!”

“There is no taboo about what she did in our culture. Saving lives justifies everything. Anything.”

Jon shuddered. “Anything? Maybe… maybe I’m just not cut-out to be around Velorians.”

“That is objectively true, given you are clearly in way over your head, but that’s what makes you interesting. You see things differently, and nothing stops you if you want to do something. You want to do this.”

Jon couldn’t help but chuckle. “You’re good at this, councilor. So you and your brother? By choice to save him? He’s a lucky man. But it’s still icky.” He shuddered again.

“No, he’s not lucky. A Prime killed him more than fifty years ago. If I’d been there, he’d have survived.”

“But… you’re like her mom’s assistant. Deputy Councilor or whatever. Paperwork and stuff.”

“All Diplomatic personnel have combat training, but the difference in my case is that I used to be a Protector. Thus this uniform, which you obviously don’t recognize.”

“You were a Protector?” Jon gasped. “I… I thought that was a ‘until you die’ kind of job?”

“It is. Usually. But after a few centuries of that work, after stopping a lot of Primes from killing a hell of a lot of Terrans, I wanted to help in other ways. So I resigned the Protector Corps to take a job with Diplomatic Services. I’m here as her mom’s Deputy, but my other job is to provide muscle to protect the Embassy and your world, given the Arions are getting pretty close to Egland.”

“So you’re really still a Protector?”

“If the need arises. Otherwise, I’m comfortably low-key and relaxed. Working for Jennie’s mother is an honor. I only wore this uniform today because I wanted to shake you out of your self-imposed and useless misery. As I said, Jennie is worried about you.”

Jon grimaced. Only a Vel would do such a thing, and also admit it up front.

“Well, the Ambassador must be something special then,” Jon continued. “For you to feel that way about her. So how come if we’ve got this so-called special relationship, Jennie and I, why is her mother trying so hard to end it?”

“Because of exactly this. Or one of a hundred other things related to our culture. Or our missions. She doesn’t want you to get hurt. You Terrans unfortunately retain all your primitive emotional attachments to fidelity and ownership and most of all jealousy. Things that we see merely as troublesome are absolutely existential for you guys. And for what it’s worth, Jennie believes that you are unusually enlightened and open in this regard. Don’t dissappoint her. She’s very fond of you.”

Jon looked down, tears filling his eyes as suddenly realized he was the one who wasn’t living up to Jennie’s expectations. “I… know.”

“I don’t pretend to understand why she wants a long-term exclusive relationship with you, Jon. You aren’t a top physical specimen, even for a Terran, and you aren’t experienced or even particularly evolved as today is proving. In my opinion anyway. But there is something about the way you think that appeals to her.”

“She’s in love with my brain,” Jon scoffed. “But she gets her sexual jollies at home.”

“Quit exaggerating and can the self-pity, Jon,” Ursula said sternly, her posture and voice suddenly sounding very much like a commanding Protector. “She loves everything that makes you you. And she told me your body is starting to respond to her pheromones and Orgone, so she’s very hopeful in that regard. If you continue to have enough contact with her when she’s empowered, who knows what will happen to you?”

Jon looked up. “She said all that?”

“She did. Also how she wants to fly off with you for a year to show you this star system that she thinks is totally amazing.”

“Yeah, if her mother helps us go. Which is unlikely. We need some very expensive equipment.”

Ursula floated upward until her eyes were level with Jon’s. “I can’t fix that, not without specific direction from the Ambassador, but that trip is never going to happen if you stay out here and die in the desert. And that would really make Jennie sad.”

“So you’re here to fly me home? As if nothing happened.”

“No. What happened happened, and I can’t solve your emotional angst. Only you can sort that out. But I can return you in one piece to Jennie so you two can work things out.”

“So I’m like a lab rat for you? Both of us. A sociology experiment?”

“Hardly an experiment, but you two have an unusual relationship. I’m just observing and trying to learn how an enduring relationship could work between a more evolved Terran and a Velorian.”

“You keep saying that – more evolved. Doesn’t feel that way.”

She laughed. “Well, certainly not right now, but there is hope for you if you pass this first real test of your relationship. So don’t blow it.”

“Will she do something like this again?”

Ursula shrugged. “Exactly like this? Unlikely. Alon has learned a lesson too, and I doubt he’s ever going to put her in that position again. But Jennie hasn’t met a Messenger yet, and all bets are off when that happens.”

“Great!” Jon said, rolling his eyes, remembering her mother’s advice.

“But after she follows her instincts, Jon, she’ll always return to you. Simply put, you cannot interpret her actions as disloyal and continue to have a healthy relationship. Our normal form of self-expression is sexual, starting with how we say Hello. It’s the way we connect to each other. It’s at our core. Jennie can’t deny it any more than I can. But she already limits herself in that way for you, so perhaps it won’t be very frequent.”

Jon looked at her for a moment before grinning crookedly. “You know, you could have lied and said she’d never do it again. So you guys really don’t believe in fidelity? Even in marriage?”

“Of course not. I myself have had thousands of lovers, and for some of that time I was married. To two different men at the same time on different worlds. And I’m barely into middle-age.”

“You HAVE been busy. And since when is middle age defined as two centuries old?”

“Why, don’t I look it?”

Jon heard himself laugh, which surprised him. Something about Ursula’s brutal bluntness appealed to him. “Actually, you look like you are maybe pushing late 20’s. By Terran reckoning. Except that you’re way cuter than any Terran could be.”

She smiled. “So, how about you get over this little bit of unintended and very necessary infidelity, if that’s what you want to call it, with a bit of your own? I’ve been wondering what Jennie sees in you. Might be fun to find out.”

Jon looked at her in shock, realizing she was serious. “That’s just wwaaayyy too Velorian for me,” he said, forcing himself to chuckle.

“Well, it’s been my observation that some Terrans process infidelity in such ways. And I know it would make Jennie more comfortable to find you exploring Velorian customs. And it would take the pressure off her for upsetting you.”

“You really are serious!” Jon gasped, his body rising despite himself. “But… no. Hell no, fuck no. Two wrongs don’t make a right. And as you told me, she wasn’t even doing anything wrong by her thinking. It was an emergency. But I would be in the wrong here. By my culture.”

She floated closer to wrap her long arm around him, holding him close, his face barely higher than her boobs, her skin so soft and warm, her body so firm. Her warm, blonde hair brushed silkily over him. “Well, if you change your mind, just let me know. My door’s open. Always.”

And with that, she shifted him around behind herself while tilting her body forward until he was laying on her back. He tucked his face under her cape for protection while crossing his arms over her oversized chest to lock his wrists together, holding on tightly as Ursula floated upward and began flying back to civilization.

She paused along the way to grab his heavy bike before carrying both back to his house, where Jennie was waiting nervously for his return.

Chapter Four

Ursula stuck around as a kind of counselor for the rest of the day, and she did make it easier. Right up to the point where she suggested some three-way sex to celebrate their progress.

Jennie quickly thanked her and sent her on her way, but not before seeing an instinctive pang of regret on Jon’s face. Which got them both laughing. Ursula after all was a mighty Protector. Somehow, crazy as that moment was, a bit of humor allowed them to find common ground again. Well, that and a lot of very private sex.


The following days flew by and soon it was Graduation Night. Their orbiting rock was now in the perfect setup to arrive overhead during the ceremony, although it had taken Jennie a half dozen adjustments instead of the minimum three. Now it just needed one additional hard push to slow it down enough to drop out of orbit at the exact place and time. Minutes after that, it would blaze into the atmosphere heading directly for the Scrumbles stadium, and Jennie would come the other way at Mach 6 to hit it dead-on. It was going to be nuclear-grade wonderfulness.

His only fear was that Planetary Defense would try to shoot it down as soon as Jennie started to deorbit it. That would ruin all their fun. But Jon didn’t think Defense would be able to react fast enough if she slowed it quickly and without warning. It was in their database as a rock, after all, and rocks don’t maneuver like warships.

He pulled on his graduation gown and rode his repaired but still bent flitter-bike to the stadium to take his assigned seat.

Minutes later, he rose to applaud with everyone else as the Ambassador arrived, along with Ursula and another Velorian woman he didn’t know. The three superwomen floated with their bare feet just above the ground as they followed the usher weightlessly up the side of the stadium to their seats. Standing superhumanly beautiful with long, glowing blonde hair, their otherwise formal outfits ended in scandalously short skirts that showed off impossibly long legs and bare feet that never touched the ground. Their eyes sparkled ultra-blue, visible to Jon from across the stadium. He could feel the surge of excitement and energy travel like a wave through the stands.

For the first time, Jon truly understood why Jennie worked so hard to hide herself. If she’d looked like this, he never would have had the courage to talk to her. Smiling, he thrilled to the secret pride of knowing that Jennie could look just as stunning as her mother – if she grew out her hair and dressed like that. Maybe she would now after escaping the hormonally-crazed hallways of high school. It was amazing how well she’d avoided the worshipful awe that her mother and her brother constantly received – from everyone.

Although that might change in a few minutes.

The evening sky was clear, which was perfect for their show. The sun had set and the light was failing as the ceremony got under way, alphabetically as usual. As a Duncan, he went up to get his diploma fairly quickly. Alon and Jennie’s turns came much later given her family name was Val’spar. Jon kept glancing at the time as the Principal slowly worked his way through the alphabet. It was going to be close. Jennie would have already deorbited the rock half way around the planet. It was going to appear overhead any moment now.

Finally, Alon Val’spar’s name was called, and he walked onto the podium to get his diploma. Everyone began to cheer as he waved his diploma and tossed his hat high into the crowd.

Principal Goodman looked back at his list and called out:

“Jennie Val’spar.”

The clapping and cheering slowed and then stopped when she didn’t come forth. Everyone was looking around, wondering where she was when the skies overhead suddenly exploded with light. A huge meteor appeared, flaming and glowing with a blinding light from air friction, and headed right for them. People started running for the exits just as a much smaller streak of light came racing toward it from the opposite direction. The flash of kinetic energy from Jennie’s collision lit the darkened stadium brighter than the noon sun, and the huge meteor exploded into a billion pieces, the collision sending glowing rock fragments blasting outward for kilometers, all the way to the edges of the city.

Jon was stunned as he stared open-mouthed into the sky. It was perfect! Absolutely perfect!

He tore his eyes from the spectacle overhead to look across the stadium at the Ambassador, who he found staring angrily back at him. He swallowed hard – she knew!

Ursula remained beside her, staring up into the sky. Suddenly she shouted something in Velorian at the other women, and all three Velorian women leaped into the sky. Alon followed, shredding his graduation gown he flew so fast. The Velorians began to smash large chunks of glowing rock that were falling toward the city, tossing the resulting chunks of white-hot rock into the lake next to the stadium where they hit with a sizzle and squeak, sending huge clouds of steam rising. Each of them deflected several large pieces before a smaller one landed right in the middle of the field to blast a flaming crater in the perfect grass, the impact tossing dirt and grass over the officials who were gathered at the podium.

People screamed all the louder now as they ran for the exits. Jon fought against the human wave, standing up on his seat as he saw Jennie finally arrive on the field – dressed in her graduation gown. Her hair was a mess, and her skin was glowing faintly as a thin curl of smoke rose from beneath her gown. Jon knew she was naked beneath it as she walked up to a terrified Principle Goodman and held out her hand for her diploma.

Goodman just stared up at her as he hid behind the podium, his mouth opening and closing without words, the remaining diplomas scattered across the stage. Small particles of glowing rock blinked out overhead as they cooled, and soon began to fall over the stadium like a black rain.

And then it was over. The sky cleared as the smoke of the explosion drifted away on the stratospheric winds. Jon started walking toward Jennie, who was still looking for her diploma in the scattered piles, when her mother reappeared to scoop her up with one arm to fly away with her.

This part was NOT what they’d planned!

Jon turned and started walking toward the exit when an Embassy Security Officer intercepted him. He was a local ex-cop who now worked under contract for the Embassy. “Are you Jon Duncan?”, he asked.

Jon nodded, a sense of foreboding filling him.

“You have been invited by the Ambassador to attend a special meeting at the Embassy.”

“Do I… you know, have to go? Legally?”

“Legally? No. Despite the local defense force being on maximum alert, thinking this was an Arion attack, with Planetary Defense on high alert too, your attending this meeting is strictly voluntary.”

Jon stared at him, stunned that anyone was thinking Arion attack. Space Tracking was well aware that this was just a local rock.

“However, I suspect if I fail to bring you in,” he continued, “some Velorian will likely drop from the sky and scoop you up and fly you there. The Ambassador is very concerned about you.”

“Me…?” A cold sliver of fear stabbed Jon. He was definitely NOT looking forward to facing Jennie’s mother, who could snap him in half like a twig or burn him to ash with an angry stare. And she’d have diplomatic immunity if she did either of those, especially after what he and Jennie had just done. Alana Val’spar wasn’t just a Velorian and Jennie’s mother, but she was animportantperson. And important and powerful people did whatever they wished with impunity on Egland.

Jon’s family was only working middle class. Stable and prosperous as far as it went, but his mother didn’t personally know anything about anyone in power beyond what she saw on the News.

For the first time since he’d met Jennie, Jon realized he was entering very dangerous territory. And he had no idea what the new rules were.

— To be Continued —

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