So, you ever want to know what to do when you're stuck on a undead-infested, formerly drowish space-frigate and your wife has been kidnapped and also your only friend is actually an evil dwarf in a gimp suit?

Well, firstly, grats, dude! You're living one crazy, out there life! Nose-Five! A nose-five, in case you aren't a dragon, is where you bump your nose against another dragon's nose. All dragons do it and definitely not just me.

Secondly...

"Nightcore!" I said, cheerfully as I walked down the narrow, angular corridor. Behind me, Blackheart was fiddling with the collar that was still strapped around his thick, muscular neck.

"Nightwhat?" Blackheart asked.

"Nightcore will cheer this place up!" I said, nodding, then started to tab through my internal music list. I had Queen and Weird Al and some nu-metal, and also two and a half albums by 30 Seconds to Mars (did they count as nu-metal or screamo?) Then I also had that numa numa song, and the Terrible Secret of Space, two tracks by M.C Fontalot, Attack of the Clonefucker (that song was naughty) and did I mention the Queen? But most importantly, I had two albums of Nightcore, which I had split into Fastcore Nightcore and Sadcore Nightcore.

Man, I had said 'core' so many times, it was starting to sound weird to me.

But then I ran into the first of many technical problems: I had no external speakers and I had just walked into a mob of zombies. The room that the zombies were all in looked like it had once been an armory, considering the number of drowish weapons on the walls. The zombies themselves were all drow. Their desiccated flesh and their sunken in eyes now glowed with yellowish light, and they gurgled as they saw me and Blackheart.

"Why...do we...hunger?" one drow gurgled, black bile bubbling from around their lips.

"Cause you're hungry?" I suggested. "Have you tried some...lightsabers!?" And with that I summoned up my psi-sword and slashed it right through the drowbie's neck. As his head hit the floor, the other zombies started to slouch towards me, their arms outstretched. I stepped back up against Blackheart, who clutched onto my shoulders like the worlds least sexy and least fun princess. Don't get me wrong, I was fine with dudes. I even liked shifting into a girl sometimes and riding the D. But I preferred boys who didn't have beards and chest beards and butt beards. Maybe if Blackheart shaved? And stopped being evil?

"What is a bloody lightsaber?" Blackheart hissed, his beard tickling at the back of my neck. "That's a psi-sword!"

"Yes, good, we'll say that when Disney sues us!" I said, cheerfully, then realized that I was holding my sword in a fencing pose. Pff! Zombies. I held out my wrist, removed the bones that would prevent it from rotating three hundred and sixty degrees, then started to spin my wrist on a socket. The psi-sword flashed and whirred as it formed a perfect, ruby red circle in the air. Like a big old crackling, hissing Cuisinart made of lasery death. And I walked forward and the zombies walked forward and they met my psi-sword and hissing, bubbling blood started to froth into the air. I winced and hissed and groaned as gore splattered my face and my shoulders, until finally, I was stepping past the pile of twitching bodies. I banished my psi-sword, coughing and spluttered.

"Ugh! God! Ew!" I wriggled. "Jesus Christ, this is foul."

"Y-You just killed thirty drow zombies!" Blackheart exclaimed.

I started to flail my hands. "Auuuuh, it's in my hair! It's in my hair!"

"It's urk!"

"Urk!?" I spun around to look down at myself in the light shining from one of the barely functional consoles that lined the walls of the armory. "Urk? What does urk mean?" I looked at my face, wincing as I saw just how much black zombie-blood was splashed across my bishi features. Ugh! Urk was right!

"Gnhhh!" Blackheart said from behind me, his feet drumming against the ground. He was dancing in disgust, I couldn't blame him for that. Then, suddenly, a laser burned a hole in the wall above my head. A spurt of ruby red, molten metal splashed against my forehead and I yelped, then spun around.

"Blackheart!" I said, angrily, seeing him flailing around with the laser rifle, clutched in his left hand, the beam sputtering in a ruby red spray of death. More wall started to melt and pulp as the pulsing beam bit into adamantine and steel. "What the flip!?"

"Brash!" He choked out, and I realized that his hand was gripping at his beard. I sighed, rolling my eyes.

"I knew it! That dumb beard-" I walked forward and grabbed said beard, tugging it up to reveal that a thick, pulsating mass of intestines were wrapped around his throat. I made a noise somewhere between an 'urughghgh' and 'bleaaagh!' and immediately used my immense super-strength to tear at the intestines. But the intestines refused to budge. I blinked. Then I swore, heatedly. "Fiddlesticks!" My shapeshifting powers were all focused on keeping the Beast from consuming my body in a massive wave of red spores. No shifting? No super-strength. No ability to become a kitten either!

"Uuuuh!" Blackheart opened his mouth, his face going purplish gray underneath his bristly black beard.

"Uh, one second!" I said, then focused, creating my psi-sword. "I'm going to cut the intestines off from your neck with an extremely accurate sword swing!" I nodded, gripping my psi-swords hilt, readying myself.

That was when the stomach sack dropped from the ceiling, wrapped itself around the upper half of my head, and started to dump zombie stomach acid down the back of my shirt. I started to flail. "Auuuuuuuugh!" My psi-sword whirred and vrred as it cut through the air and I heard Blackheart staggering and stumbling around, squeaking inarticulately past the intestines strangling him.

"Okay!" I shouted, my free hand gripping the stomach, which kept trying to wriggle further along my face like the worlds least sexy facehugger. Which was saying something, facehuggers were inherently unsexy. "Okay! I'm going to hold my sword out and you can just...walk the intestines into it! Okay?"

I paused.

"I can't see you nod, Blackheart, just...hurrrryyy!" I squeaked as the stomach managed to slip past my fingers, meaning now my left palm was mashed up against my cheek and my arm was trapped in the stomach too. Acid sloughed along my back and it was going from being just gross to actually sting a little.

There was a faint sizzle, then a gasping: "Gotcha! Brash, ya daft bugger, hold perfectly still!"

"Okay!" I said. Well, I tried. The stomach was starting to slurp down my face and had covered my mouth hole. So, it was more like 'mfffph!' I remained as perfectly still as I could. Then a flare of bright red light filled my eyes, filtered through the thin membrane of a zombie's stomach. Then the stomach exploded off my head with a flare of smoke and hissing steam as it turned into so many little bits. Blackheart lowered the laser rifle he had used, adjusting the barrel with one hand.

"You okay?" he asked.

I lifted up the hand I had used to lawnmower the undead to give him a thumbs up. Instead my hand hung loose and limp, sagging around on a wrist that looked all scrunched up like a slinky that had been owned by Egon Spengler from the mirror universe. I blinked slowly. "...oh! Right! I can't shapeshift anymore. I just powderized every bone in my wrist!"

And that was when the pain hit me!

***

Good news! Medi-kits worked on dragons, even if they were currently unable to shapeshift. Better news? Blackheart had a suit of armor now, and a laser rifle, which meant he'd be able to help. Best news of all? We had managed to stomp a few more masses of zombies and they were no longer quite so gross. For one thing, we had lased them from a distance, and nothing makes zombies easier to clean up than flash-boiling their blood with high powered laser rifles. It causes their brains to explode, but there's almost no splatter! Win win! Plus, it gave my splinted up wrist time to heal a bit.

"Pff, more like Litch Lame!" I said, cheerfully as we checked another doorway.

"Brash, you jammy bastard," Blackheart muttered. "That's even worse than Lich Loser. And Lich Not a Nice Guy. And Lich Totally Not Good At Being Scary And I wasn't Really Scared I was Just Faking."

I scoffed. "LTNGABSAIWRSIJF is a great burn!" I put my hand on my chest. "It just rolls right off the tongue!"

Blackheart rolled his eyes. "My question is where is the vampire bint."

"Hey!" I said, scowling at him. "That vampire bint is my...wait, no, vampire was accurate. That vampire bint..." I prodded Blackheart's chest with one finger. "She's my wife. To be. Eventually. I think. How many times do you have to nut someone with a wedding ring on before you get married?"

"Why are you asking me!?" Blackheart flung one arm wide as he rested his laser rifle against his shoulder. "We duergar don't get married."

"Aww..." I said.

"We don't want to get married!" Blackheart snapped. "Love is weakness, you- what are you? Stop that!" He squirmed as I wrapped my arms around him, hugging him tightly, chest-beard be damned! He started to shove at me - and in the distance, a low grinding rumble could be heard. I drew back, clutching my rifle to my chest as I frowned.

"I heard that..." I whispered.

"It's a bloody ship grinding against another ship. Sounds like docking clamps," Blackheart said.

I pumped my fist in celebration. "Woop woop! That's gotta be the UNN Rickenbacker docking with us. Or maybe the Von Braun!" I said.

"I gotta know, why do humans name their ships such stupid shite?" Blackheart asked as we started to trot down the corridors - he was slower, being a duregar, so I made sure to give him plenty of time to keep up with me by doing a little skipping dance as I jumped down the corridor.

"What's stupid about naming a ship after a scientist who built super-weapons for the evil fascists who wanted to take over the entire world?" I asked, then paused. "Oh my god, Werener Von Braun's historical legacy is complicated."

"Okay, now that actually makes sense. But what's a Rickenbacker?" Blackheart asked.

"We idolize a man who invented V2s for Nazis!" I whispered, my hands going to my face. "What other historical figures have complex histories we sweep under the rug!?"

"You know what? Nevermind." Blackheart shook his head, and I swore he started to mutter under his breath about 'daft ass humans and their bloody crazy dragons.' Which did make sense, humans were pretty weird sometimes. I started to follow after Blackheart as he came to a corridor that opened into a room that itself looked like a control platform for a series of gravity-cranes that were mounted along a catwalk that ringed around a huge launch bay. Several sleek, needle-like drow strikecraft were still parked there, two with their pilots still slouched in their cockpits. But what drew my attention were the pair of plasma torpedoes that had been placed on their ends and had two girls strapped to them.

Specifically, Alexandress the Vampire Princess and P90 the bubblegum golem!

Standing next to them was a skeleton (or, as Jim Sterling might say...a skellington) who was checking a big clicky pocket watch.

"Hey!" I shouted. "Get my girlfriend and also my other girlfriend off those plasma torpedoes!"

The skellington looked up at the catwalk. "Ah, there you are. Took you long enough," he said.

I held up the tiny phylactery that we had been using to track the living souls. "It'd have been longer if I wasn't so clever, wise, and sexy."

"Mmmphh!" P90 shouted through the gag that had been jammed into her mouth. Alex, meanwhile, was looking very groggy. I zoomed in using the advanced technology and leaning my head forward and narrowing my eyes. Since, uh, I couldn't shapeshift anymore. I noticed there were several necklaces around my wife-oh's neck, and thick bundles of something pale white were dangling against her grayish chest. I bit my lip slightly.

"Is that garlic?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

"Of course not. This is a highly advanced anti-vampiric contra-necromantic life foci!" The skeleton shouted back.

"...it's garlic, isn't it," I said, scowling. "Well, good news, Mr. Skellington, you just gave me the topping for my next pizza." I grabbed onto the edge of the railing, jumped down, and then hit the ground with a loud thump. And nearly snapped the bones on both of my ankles because fuck I hated being depowered. No flight! No shapeshifting! No super-strength! No rad-ass super-guns. It fucking sucked. But fortunately, I had been genetically engineered with some pre-programmed dragon martial arts. That included how to tuck and roll when needed, and so I came up with only a few heavy bruises rather than snapped bones.

"My name is Garry," the skeleton said. "The LK set me here to tell you if you take one step closer..." He held up a detonator. "The girls get it."

I crossed my arms over my chest. P90 made a muffled shouting noise through her gag.

"So, what does the LK want?" I asked. "The Quantum Hoard's secrets are known to Princess Kira, not me. I don't even know what a quantum is, even if some guy in my dreams tried to explain it to me, like, five times. But I don't even own a fedora!" I flung out my arms. "So, you just killed a bunch of drow and captured me to no end! Failed plan! Bad plan!"

"Failed...we..." Garry shook his head. "We've deprived the Princess of her most able protector. Both of them! And we captured the Princess of the Necronox Necrocracy! In what possible definition is that a fucking failure?"

"Well, the part where you let a gravity crane carry a five ton cargo crate over your head," I said, snickering. "While debating with the sexiest dragon in the universe. Which is me."

Garry had time to look up just before the five ton cargo crate I had mentioned dropped from the gravity crane and turned him into so much bone meal. The impact caused the floor to jump under me and I winced as my poor ankles both twinged. I turned around, then gave Blackheart a big old thumbs up. "Thanks, Blackie!"

"Don't call me that," he snarled.

I walked past the cargo crate, hopped up, and grabbed the gag and the garlic and tossed both as far away as I could. Then I had to actually get out my psi-sword and carefully cut the nylon cables that held both things to the girls, since I was no longer actually super strong anymore. Grumble. But once P90 could speak, she laughed; "Holy shit, Brash, I am glad to see you."

"Thanks!" I said, then held up my wrist to Alex. Alex opened her mouth, her fangs already distending.

"Brash!" P90 hissed. "The Beast!"

I jerked my wrist back just in time and Alex's chompers chomped down on open air. Her eyes flared red and her face became ever so slightly more bestial. "Sorry!" I squeaked. Behind me, a faint whirring announced that Blackheart was descending from the catwalk on the elevator that I might have maybe should have used. He jogged over, puffing slightly.

"Now, we just need to-" he started.

"Hey, wanna donate some blood to my wife?" I asked.

"What!?" Blackheart asked before Alex, who P90 had just cut loose from the plasma torpedo, tackled him to the ground.

"Thanks!" I said, cheerfully.

I turned to P90, who was rubbing at her jaw. "Fucking assholes," she muttered. "When the Lich King started doing his spooky shit, we both got grabbed by some kind of variation of Bigby's Grasping Hand combined with a phase shifting spell. But...Brash, I want to ask you something: Do you hear that?" She held up her hands. I listened. I could hear Alex muttering under her breath about stale, overly-aled duregar blood. I could hear the faint whirr and hum of the ship's life support. I shook my head slowly.

"Nothing," I said, then squeaked as Alex pounced onto my back and started to hug-nuzzle me. Her nose sniffed up against my neck and she whispered sweetness in my ear. I squirmed and reached back to try and hug her back. Normally, I'd grow some sick rad back-ceps and hug her with back arms, but instead, I made do with regular arms. I blushed as I saw Blackheart sitting up and looking quite disgusted at the two of us.

"Exactly," P90 said. "No laser cutters. No boarding pods. You're not getting telemetry from either UNN ships."

I nodded.

"Now, unless my magic detector is on the fritz, or we're not in a dampening field," P90 said. "Which leaves..."

I paused. "Faraday cage?" I suggested as Alex wriggled off my back and stood next to me. She slid her hands into her pockets, looking faintly ashamed of the quick glomp.

"Nah," Alex said. "A Faraday Cage would have cut us off right from the get go."

"Which means..." I whispered.

"Yes, Brash the Dragon," a booming, echoing voice came from the darkness at the far end of the cargo hold. The lights suddenly burst into full life, filling the room with a light that I was pretty sure fucking uncomfortable for the Drow. But the Drow were all dead. And at the far end of the cargo hold, standing in a very intimidating formation, was a mass of troops, all armed, all aiming those arms at us. Most of them were clad in bone white power armor with snarling orc-faces caved into their face plates, the snout-like muzzles capped by breathing grills. Their guns were plasma-casters, and all of their focusing mandibles were extended and crackling as they sustained green orbs of ready plasma fire. Mixed among them were people in similar armor, save it was colored blood red and came with cool capes.

Those guys were all armed with their own unique spin on a killamajig. Some of them had polearms tipped with chainsaw blades. Others held plasma chakra in magnetic gauntlets. Others still were carrying brutal looking crystalline tetsubos, their handles spindle thin compared to their jagged, massive heads. And some had big huge punching gloves with wicked spikes on their knuckles. There was one uniform thing about them, though?

They flanked the biggest, meanest, ugliest looking Beholder I had ever seen in my life.

Which was not hard, since I had never seen a Beholder before.

But still! This guy was mean. Furrowed scars slid along the curved edge of the Beholder's body, causing its massive central eye be permanently narrowed in a suspicious squint. Its face was covered by a cow-catcher style grille that concealed its mouth behind a breathing apparatus, even as tubes sunk into its ugly brown-gray hide, pulsating with nutrients and liquids. It didn't float freely. Rather, it sat in a throne-like construction that was suspended on a pair of digigrade legs that looked remarkably similar to a Madcat's legs. No, not a Timber Wolf. They were angry mechs that looked a bit like cats, that was why they were called Madcats. Read your Battletech lore, people. The throne also had a pair of arms. But my HUD started to bleep as it identified concealed or recessed weapons.

Tactical nuclear weapons. Plasma beamcasters. Hellwhips. Shrike catapults. Jeeze, who needed this much firepower?

...shut up.

"So!" I said, trying to sound brave. "Lord Darkeye, the Cyber-Beholder. Here to try and capture me?"

"Why, Brash the Dragon!" Lord Darkeye said, sounding quite jovial in a kind of Bane from the Dark Knight Rises sort of way. He spread his arms wide with a loud whirring sound. "I captured you thirty five minutes ago!"

I gasped. Alex, who was standing next to me, turned her back to Lord Darkeye, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at him. "Man, get a load of this tranch, huh?"
"Wait, wait, wait!" I said. "A frigate this size needs a whole dang crew - a living crew - to get itself into subspace. Which is why I think you think that you captured us." I scowled. "How the flying flip have a bunch of brain dead zambles done it? Zambles can't fly ships. Unless they're smart zombies. But these were not very smart zombies. I mean, you'd think they'd figure out to not try and chew on a megadamage capacity creature like moi!"

Lord Darkeye chuckled, stomping forward. Each movement of his body radiated a kind of strength that would have once been amusing but was not kinda scary, since I could no longer be stronger. I gulped and then forced myself to stand perfectly still as he drew closer and closer. This meant I got to learn something about Beholders that I had never learned before: They're flipping huge. This guy loomed over me, his single eye swiveling down as all his eye-stalks flared around him like a constellation of murderkillers.

"The answer is quite simple, Brash the Dragon," Lord Darkeye said. "Do you know that drow ships, like many elven vessels, are partially organic in nature?"

I blinked, slowly.

"What happens when a ship dies, Brash?" Lord Darkeye hissed.

"...oh." I whispered.

A low, crackling laugh started to echo from each of the PA speakers in the cargo hold. They echoed and bounced off the walls and even the orctroopers looked a bit uncomfortable. The door leading into the cargo hold from the depths of the ship hissed open. We all looked at the darkness - and it was a darker that seemed to grow darker and darker with every second. It had gone from the absence of light to something that was present. It was a thing and it was concealing something far...far worse. A thin crescent of white appeared in that darkness.

It was a smile.

A pair of eyes shimmered into being above that disconnected smile - and each element of the face bobbed and moved at a slightly different pace, as if the whole construction was a big fake placed onto a rippling curtain. I shuddered - and then it got worse. More eyes started to open as that rasping, hissing, dead-thing voice came from the PA speakers.

"I would like my payment now, Lord Darkeye..." the Lich King hissed.

Lord Darkeye nodded by bobbing his eyeball. Then he snapped his eye-stalk around to glare right into Alex's face. A reddish light flared across her face and she opened her mouth, her hands clenching. She shuddered and I shoved her out of the way, leaping at her. The two of us hit the floor and I scrambled to my feet, glaring at Lord Darkeye. "I'm going to rip you apart!" I growled, a psi-sword flaring to life.

"Brash!" P90 shouted.

I spun around.

Alex, her face slack, her eyes unfocused, was walking towards the wall of blackness and the dozens upon dozens of gleaming eyes. I yelped, then sprinted after her. I grabbed her wrist - but Alex still had all her vampiric strength. Every step forward she took dragged me. "Alex, Alex, Alex!" I hissed. "Snap out of it! Come on!"

My feet dug against the metal. I'd have once been able to punch my heels through steel and root myself like an anchor. Now? Now my bare feet skidded along the smooth surface of the cargo hold without finding purchase. I snapped my psi-sword out and slammed it into the deck, trying to anchor myself this way. But that just left a furrowed red line on the ground behind me as the blade effortlessly melted the hull plating.

"Alex! Babe!" I said, my voice desperate. "It's your husbando here, I'm gonna need you to make that will save! Now! Right now!" I tugged harder.

Alex kept walking forward. The door was terrifyingly close to us. Tears of desperation blurred in my eyes and I yanked my psi-sword from the ground. Vampires were tough as hell. They could take a lot of damage. For example...losing their feet. I readied my blade as Alex started to walk without dragging me behind her. My muscles locked up...and I...I couldn't do it. The humming blade crackled near my ear as I hefted it up.

Come on, Brash! Greater good! You've done this before! I thought. But it was one thing to fling yourself between a doom-beam and an entire planet. IT was another thing to hurt someone you loved. My entire brain and my entire heart screamed at one another.

Then...

My brain won.

I swung the blade.

And a tentacle of black gristle and jutting, rotting hands emerged from the blackness, wrapped around Alex, and dragged her in. She didn't even make a sound.

She was gone.

Lord Darkeye started to laugh.

My left eyeball...twitched. Twitch. Twitch. Twitch. The world was starting to go...very red.

"Brash the Dragon. Savior of the universe, huh?" Lord Darkeye asked. "Now. Dismiss your psi-sword, or else-"

The doorway was empty - the blackness that was more than blackness was gone. Alex hadn't even left behind a single shoe. My hands clenched. The handle of my psi-sword started to creak. Which was kind of impossible. Huh. Like. It's made of psychic energy. The blade was growing wider and more...incoherent. Flames crackled and licked along the edges of the ruby red blade, while two hissing streamers of red energy thrust out of the hilt, like a cross guard made of pure...fucking...INCOHERENT FUCKING FURY.

I had roared, as a dragon. A few times.

But I had never roared like this before. I turned and sprunted at Lord Darkeye. He shut up - and his eye-stalks swung. A beam of pure black light shot at me. I twisted aside and the beam bit into the deck plating behind me, leaving a massive, gaping hole where metal had been. The gravity generators underneath the metal vanished, and with it, the artificial gravity. I kicked myself off the floor and, for just a few moments, I flew, corkscrewing through the air as the roar turned into a scream, and that scream had a single name.

"Darkeyyyyyyyyyyyyye!"

I hit the the ceiling of the cargo-hold, then kicked off, shooting out of the null-gee field and straight at Lord Darkeye. His stalks were retargeting. Red light washed over my face and the urge to be friends with him evaporated like water on the sun. A teal beam skimmed along my shoulder, but my flesh didn't stiffen and turn to stone. My sword-tip angled right at his eye.

Run: //D._SHUT_DOWN.PRG (Admin: *******)

I hit the deck, face first, my entire body feeling like nerveless soup. My jaw hung open and my tongue lolled out and my eyes didn't focus. Everything had become a wild blur. I wasn't even breathing. This would have been bad, if I had needed to breathe. But it felt like everything I could be and do was...gone. And then, slowly, I felt a reddish fuzz start to grow over my whole body. Soon, I only saw red.

"I see it worked," Lord Darkeye said, his voice sounding muffled and distant.

"Oh, yes," a female voice I didn't recognize purred. Faintly, I heard a faint click click click. "Do move aside, Beast. I wish to see my darling Brashy properly."

Something pushed against me and rolled me onto my back. I was trying to be angry, and it was absolutely working. I wasn't scared at all. Nope. It was all fury. And then the reddish moss over my face retreated. A few clicks sounded and my eyes focused themselves and I saw that there was a drow-elf looming above me. Her face was pinched and narrow, and she had a pair of glasses that perched atop her ears, which had been replaced with cybernetic antenna. Her eyes were pale red, and her chest was covered in a lab coat, which flared out around her hips. Because her hips weren't girl hips. They were spider hips. They flared out into a huge red and black spider body, and two of her narrow spider-legs were planted against my shoulders. Others were resting near my back.

"Oh, yes..." she murmured. "He developed just as I promised them. Though with a worrying habit towards independence." She tapped a device on her wrist. "Unit BR-45.H, subdesignation, Va'Lamp A-Thoris, I do have a great deal of questions for you."

I glared at her. Well. Tried to.

Lord Darkeye loomed over the both of us, his huge eye focused on me. "He's pacified, Dr. Palladium?"

"Without a doubt!" Dr. Palladium said, then grinned. "But you, Brashy...you can call me..." She reached down, pinching my cheek. "Mommy."

Orctroopers dragged me up and slammed me - none too gently - into a restraining tube. As I was now upright, I could see that P90 was struggling against five orcs who were using every bit of their enhanced strength to hold her in place. She was also crying - tears of glittering candy, dripping from her eyes as she glared at Darkeye.

"You piece of-" she started.

Darkeye swung his disintigration beam around and blasted her. I wanted to scream - but I couldn't. In a single instant, P90 was reduced to so much bubbling, hissing pink goop. As Darkeye turned and started to stomp away, Dr. Palladium waved one of her hands, her drider body moving in to walk beside my containment tube. "You two, proles, collect up that goo. I've wanted to study how those damn gnomes get their golems to be so...feisty." She chuckled. "Now, Brashy, I'm sure you're wondering where I've been your whole life?"

I'm actually wondering how best to fucking kill you, I thought. The Beast had started to grow inside of the tube, which meant I was now firmly propped up inside of the containment unit. Which did mean I had a great view of the cargo hold as the orcs trundled me along with Dr. Palladium.

"You see, I was hired by Lord Xosh, the late, lamented Lord Xosh to design him the perfect weapon. I did manage it, after I created you." She smiled. "You were my little prototype. Slightly stronger than the average D-suit, slightly more flexible in terms of your shapeshifting. But far too independent and far, far, far too prone to self-reflection and that pesky sentience thing." She waved one hand. "But you had one feature Lord Xosh was rather excited about."

Maybe a boot to the head? I thought. The corridors beyond were wheeling past and Dr. Palladium was walking backwards, beaming at me.

"You had the ability to manifest psionic and arcane powers. A side effect of sentience. This meant that I could tie control routines to the other D-Suits into your brain."

I know all this. This is how humanity kicked Lord Xosh's scaly butt when he tried to take over the earth! God! Shut up, you fucking TRANCH!

"But what Lord Xosh didn't know, my darling Brashy," she said, cooing quietly. "Was what this psionic feature could mean when paired with that marvelous head computer I designed." She tapped my forehead. "Which is why I am going to give you some little muscular control, and I am going to ask you some questions, okay?"

She tapped her wrist. I wriggled my mouth, stuck out my tongue, said the word 'ahh' and 'oooh' a few times to make sure that my mouth bits were working. This pleased Dr. Palladium, who beamed as we came to an airlock, which hissed open to reveal a bright red corridor. Lord Darkeye and his cronies strode into there.

"Have you been having some weird dreams lately?" Dr. Palladium asked.

"Oh, totally," I said, nodding. "Like the dream where I rip your head off and punt it out of a fucking airlock so you get to enjoy the sensation of your eyeballs exploding before your brain dies."

Dr. Palladium clicked her tongue. "Brashy! Do your kidnappers let you talk like that?"

I growled. "My parents never fed my FUCKING WIFE to a FUCKING LICH!" I snapped my teeth, trying to jerk forward and bite her nose off. But Dr. Palladium was a good distance away and I couldn't move my neck enough.

Dr. Palladium shook her head. "Brashy, darling-"

"Don't call me that!" I growled. And...Dr. Palladium actually looked slightly frightened. She tapped at her wrist console - and everything went black.

***

I was in the mansion, running away.

And you know what?

Fuck it. I turned around and saw the huge, machete carrying, welding mask clad maniac, advancing towards me. And I leaped at him, snarling as my wings flared behind me. I eschewed all tactics, all shifting, all teleporting, and just relied on the impact of my body against the mask. My hind claws bit through metal and my fore claws grabbed onto his scalp. I tore and bit and snarled furiously as the massively built figure swung his machete wildly, trying to chop at me. He knocked over a vase, he slashed a portrait in half, and then collapsed as I managed to get my teeth onto his spine and cracked it. I leaped off his body as he collapsed and landed on the small pedestal that the vase had been on.

The maniac was dead.

"And stay dead and stay out of my dreams!" I shouted.

A thumping of footsteps announced the arrival of the guy in the fedora-

"It's a trillby!" he snapped at me.

"I don't fucking care what fucking hat you wear!" I shouted, leaping off the vase stand, shifting as I did so. I landed, my body humanoid, and started to advance on him. "My wife is dead, one of my girlfriends got melted, I've been kidnapped, and I'm losing superpowers at an increasingly rapid rate. And you know what?" I grabbed him by his fancy lapels. "You've been telling me since day one to avoid something that you can't even FUCKING explain!" I started to shake him. "So tell me, Trilby, how the FUCK do I get out of this FUCKING situation, you POSH PRICK!" I shook him even more, his head bouncing against the wall. His hat was knocked askew, then off, and his collar started to come undone under the force of my grip.

His eyes closed and he held up a hand, palm facing me.

"Brash," he said. "The progenitor's proximity to the nexus point makes everything far, far, far more serious." He shook his head. "We don't have time for your snits. You need to get out of there before they open the Hoard."

"They don't have Kira-"

"They don't need Kira! They just. Need. You!" Trilby hissed the words at me. "That's what I've been trying to tell you this whole time. That's what Kira discovered. That's what she's been keeping from you."

I blinked slowly. "Keeping...but...I..."

"What? You didn't notice?" Trilby grabbed my wrists and shoved me backwards with his hands. My fingers felt as if they had lost all their bones and their nerves. Trilby adjusted his tie with one hand, frowning a bit. "I can't believe someone so astute as you wouldn't notice something that a princess, trained from birth to manage the Great Game of intergalactic politics, wanted to keep secret. But why do you think she sought your help. Not the help of any of the elven kingdoms, not the United Nations, not even that of her own father. She looked to you."

"B-Because-"

"You are quite powerful, but an army would have done better at keeping her safe," Trilby said, lifting his narrow, horse-like face. He glared down at me. "An army and a fortress, squirreled away somewhere in the multiverse. No. Kira wants to use you to get at the Hoard."

"W-Why?"

"I don't bloody know! I'm not a mind reader!" Trilby pinched the bridge of his nose, then sighed. "I am a Guardian, Brash. Sent by certain forces that want to ensure that the Hoard is not opened."

"Great! I won't do it!" I said.

Trilby arched one eyebrow.

"...somehow!" I said. "I'll figure it out."

Trilby sighed. "I am filled with confidence," he said, in the kind of tone of voice that meant he was absolutely not filled with confidence at all. I scowled at him, but then he continued to speak. "After all, you're a dragon who has forgotten they have a bloody-"

***

I snapped awake. Bloody what!? Bloody what?! My eyes widened and I saw that I was strapped to a medical table. I was buck naked...and I wasn't covered in red moss! I was in a laboratory. It was a sleek, beautiful looking place - if you could call an evil laboratory owned and operated by a sociopathic drider a beautiful place. But it really was! The walls were smooth and silvery, and the apparatus were all appropriately futuristic. There was a small chemical dispensary on the far side of the room and a large bucket of pink goo.

P90...

And, of course...there was Dr. Palladium. She was looming over me, beaming at me with alarmingly sharp teeth.

"Hello there, Brashy," she said. Her finger started to slide along my chest, causing goosepimples to flare to life. She licked her lips. "I must admit, this human form you have chosen is quite...attractive. I appreciate the magnitude of your endowments."

"Dude!" I yelped - glad to see I had control over my voice.

"What?" she chortled, then stepped backwards. I saw that one of her hands held a syringe that was full of glowing red spores. Seeing my look, she chuckled. "The Beast has served its purpose. I've removed the spores from your body - though I have still shut down your shapeshifting powers, so don't even try." She waggled her finger at me. I glared at her. Seeing that glare, she smiled. "And, Brashy, I see no reason why the fact I'm your Mother should dissuade me from wanting to have you fuck me."

"Because of all the reasons!" I yelped. "Specifically, the fact you're an evil drider whose working with the man who murdered two of the people I care about most in the universe!" I strained against the restraints. The hardened metal that my wrists were clad in refused to budge.

"...and?" Dr. Palladium cooed, turning. She lifted her spidery rump to me and I saw there was a thin slit at the base of her curved backside. It glistened with arousal and she purred. "The fact it's so utterly depraved only makes it better. Besides..." She reached back, caressing her red and black carapace. "Don't you know driders are smooth as silk?" She grinned. "And tight as a virgin..."

Okay.

Have you ever had an un-erection?

I was having the hardest one of those right now. It was so un-erotic that my cock was actually shrinking slightly and my balls had gone running for the hills. And it wasn't the fact she was a drider! Heck, her being half spider was, by far, the BEST thing about this evil, evil person. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Dr. Palladium was a perfect example of a 'butterpersonality.' Which was like a butter face, but for personalities. My expression must have made what I thought of that and her clear...because it made her grin even wider.

"And you know...nothing is quite as much fun as an unwilling male..." She licked her lips. "I could bite your neck, fill you with some paralytic venom..." Her cold palm cupped my cheek. "And then get you worked up with some proper contact drugs. And once you're practically insane with lust, I can mount my beautiful baby boy..."

My eyeball was twitching again.

You're the dragon who-

Her finger slid from my cheek to my neck. Her palm pressed to my chest. "Such a pretty baby boy..."

You're the dragon who has forgotten-

Her palm slipped past my belly button, and slowed inexorably as she started to get closer and closer to my un-erection. She applied just a bit of fingernail pressure, which made me want to squirm. My arms strained and I gritted my teeth as hard as I could, trying to think of what it was I could have forgotten. I tried to teleport. No dice. I tried to fly. Still nope. Wings? Hah! I couldn't even flipping shapeshift. Roar? Wasn't going to help here. What the flip kind of dragony thing had I forgotten?

"By Lloth's tits, I'm wet right now," Dr. Palladium crooned.
Her breath was hot on my face.

Her breath.

Her breath.

Breath.

Breath.

"Oh!" I exclaimed. "I'm an idiot."

Dr. Palladium looked confused.

I smiled at her, then spat a wad of spittle into her face. She clutched at her face in horror, screeching as if I had just spat her with acid. Which I totally could have - but I also wasn't a fucking monster. I just needed to get her far enough away for this trick. I breathed in, focused on the right lung in my body, then breathed out a spray of glittering pinkish fog. It swamped around Dr. Palladium's body. Her face showed a look of fury - she had realized I had just spat normal spit, rather than acid. Her face still showed that look of fury as she toppled slowly to the side, then collapsed. She was frozen stiff - paralyzed by my freezy fog, which was a holdover from the 5% of my genome that was Royal Frilled Dragon.

I grinned, then looked left. Ptooh! The glob of acid hit the wrist brace and started to hiss and bubble. I looked right. Ptooh! I strained, and after a few seconds, the braces were weak enough and I bust off the table, my head-computer playing the triumphant chords of my theme song.

BRASH!

AHHAAAAAAH!

SAVIOR OF THE UNIVERSE!

I sprinted to the door, slammed the lock button, then rushed to the chemical dispenser. I tapped up the controls, swept my finger through the options menu, and selected biochem. Then I tapped up, oh, fifty six kilograms should do it. As the dispenser started to gloop out a thick white paste, I turned back to Dr. Palladium. I picked her up, then pressed her up to the restraining table, which helpfully deployed brand new restraints. I grinned, then grabbed onto her wrist. There was her wrist computer. Which was now my wrist computer.

Dr. Palladium groaned, then shook her head. "W-What!?" She looked around. "Hey! Give that back, young man!"

"What? This?" I asked, wiggling the controller. Then I dropped it on the ground and stepped on it. I scowled when the controller refused to break. It was made of solid metal and chunky plastic that refused to bow to Mr. Boot. And I wasn't wearing a boot! But then the chem dispenser dinged and I beamed, then spraing backwards. I grabbed onto the bucket, while Dr. Palladium started to tug and twist at the bindings. But she was bound as tightly and as firmly as I was. And unlike me, she didn't have twelve different breath weapons at her disposal!

"You're alone on this ship! They'll find out what happened to me eventually," Dr. Palladium snarled.

"That's where you're wrong, Doc!" I said, then tipped the bucket over. Thick white goop slurped out and flowed into another bucket. I tossed the bucket away once it was empty, triumphantly stepping aside. "Becuase as my theme song says...I save every one of us. Stand for every one of us!"

I kicked over the bucket containing the mixture of pinkish goop - which was, roughly, twenty five percent of P90 including a chunk of her radioactive taffy power core...and now fifty six kilograms of simple, ordinary sugars. Pink liquid slurped onto the floor, but in the center of it was a humanoid mass. And as Dr. Palladium and I watched, that humanoid mass grew in tone and definition, the pink slime slurping up into them. Breasts formed, as did that perfect ass, as did the strands of her candy hair. After a shockingly short time, P90 stood, buck naked, her skin glistening and glossy and looking entirely new.

Dr. Palladium gaped.

I stepped up. P90 held her hand out, down low.

I slapped my palm into hers.

And P90 smashed her heel down on the wrist-computer.

"And that," I said, sneering at Dr. Palladium. "Is why they call me Brash the fucking Dragon."

P90 looked at me. "Who calls yo- whoa!" She yelped as I took a hold of her wrist, swung her around, then kissed her. Hard. My tongue thrust into her mouth and my hands cupped her ass, squeezing her tightly. She pressed against me - her body soft in all the right places and hard in all the other, equally right places. Her hands cupped my cheeks and her delicious, sweet tongue pressed against mine. My eyes closed and I broke the kiss, panting heavily, my voice ragged.

"P90..." I whispered. "Right now...I need to get fucking savage..."

She nodded, subtly.

"And that means I gotta be a dragon," I snarled. My hands grabbed her knees and I lifted her. It was hard. My muscles strained and my back twinged, but I took that and I fought it down, slamming it backwards as I focused on being a dragon. Dragons. Feral. Bestial. Primal. I might not be able to fly. I might not be able to grow scales or a tail. I might be stuck in a human body. But I was a goddamn fucking dragon, and I'd prove it to myself, and to Dr. Palladium, and to this whole fucking universe. And so, lifting up P90's athletic body, I pressed her against the wall. Her legs wrapped around my hips instinctively as my cock surged to life.

It had been un-erect. Cowering in the face of Dr. Palladium and her grotesque personality.

Now?

Now it was hard enough to bend steel. My cock slapped against P90's slick, slippery pussy. Her eyes were brimming with tears as she looked into my face - but I had no time for anything but the pure expression of instinct. I slammed into P90, claiming her as a part of my harem, and claiming my strength. My cock sheathed itself in her cunny and her legs tightened around me as she let out a sound between a groan and a gasp. Her hands worked through my hair as she cradled me to her body, whispering. "Oh Brash!"

I started to fuck her. And as I fucked her, I felt my confidence growing. And as I felt my confidence growing, I felt my anger stoking and honing as I slammed harder and harder and harder, taking advantage of my increased weakness and P90's impressive soak to just fuck with an abandon I had never shown before. I kissed her hard enough to draw a line of sour candy blood, and P90 responded by orgasming so hard that I almost popped out of her sex. But I remained planted just enough to thrust home deep.

My balls boiled over and I growled into her mouth as our tongues dueled. And P90 surrendered, willingly, desperately eager for my tongue to plunder her throat. But I was too busy drawing my head back to roar out in pure bliss as my balls clenched and I came. Seed filled her, spurting into her newly reconstituted sex with blast after blast after blast of thick, white cum. P90 shuddered again, her fingers digging tight against my shoulders as she clung to me. Her eyes were slightly askew and her lids were hooded. She breathed in deep, shuddering gasps.

At that moment...I felt utterly connected to us - sharing our grief, our anger, and our lust.

And I took that connection and surged into it with a psychic shove.

I had never tried this before. I wasn't sure if it would work.

But as I slid out of P90, her hand buzzed with a pale light. She managed to get her feet under her, then clapped her hands together instinctively - pushed slightly by my psychic connection. There was a flash of greenish light that made me wince with its brightness. I grinned fiercely as I stepped backwards - the light fading slightly. P90's eyes widened and her knees wobbled as she held her very own psi-sword in her hands. It had a green edge and she held it as effortlessly as if she had been manifesting them since the day she had been built.

"Whoa..." she whispered.

"Y-You used a...sex based psychic link to arm her!?" Dr. Palladium asked, sounding stunned. "I thought you were just trying to make me jealous."

"That!" I thrust my finger at Dr. Palladium, manifesting my own psi-sword with a flare of red light. "That is why you're going to lose, Dr. Palladium. And why evil will always lose. Because evil thinks of itself. The truth?" I grinned. "I forgot you were even there."

The door to the office opened and a orctrooper in armor stood there, holding a tray covered with potato chips, cookies, and cans of diet soda. He looked, despite wearing a face concealing mask, utterly bored. P90 slashed the tray in half, then grabbed onto the back of the orc's armor and bounced his head off the wall hard enough to dent helmet and wall alike. Next to the orc was his cohort, a fellow who had a rifle hanging at ease. He struggled to bring it up, but I was already running at him. I slashed the rifle in half, then kicked him in the head. He went sprawling, struggled to get up, and I kicked him again, and again, until he was down.

I grinned at P90.

"Lets wreck some fucking face," I said.

P90 had already fished one of the orc's sidearms free. She held a pistol in one hand and a psi-sword in the other.

"...why do none of the Jedi ever do that?" I asked. "It seems like it's a great combo."

P90 looked completely fucking baffled.

TO BE CONTINUED