Act-of-Goddess Diary #59

(transcribed from video log)

We can finally rest. I know many of you have been following our leader’s updates, but for those of you who haven’t I suppose I should start from the beginning. Excuse me if I jump around a little; these have been a trying few days for me. They were the kind of days that make you question whether or not you have a destiny. I felt like I was a joker being shuffled in and out of a deck of cards at a party. Nobody was sure where I was supposed to go or if I should be in play or not. I’m sure you’ve seen how those cards end up after a while. Rips. Circular stains from a sweating liquor bottle.

It started this past Thursday. The day was uneventful. We trained in the fields. Paladina regaled me with some of the fairy tales planted in her head by the Game Master. Each one was a story of war or vengeance, something to convince her mind it needed to master a different weapon or style of fighting. The Viking in her fights to claim new land for her people. The legionnaire fights to restore his name. Any of them could make excellent tales around a campfire. I suppose that was the point. The stories had to grip her to become a part of her.

She is having difficulties with her family. Her husband does not accept her choice to leave her old work for what he considers embarrassing theatrics. Though I have not spoken to him in person his words reek of jealousy. I advised her not to listen. She agreed to spend the rest of her life with him, but did the four warriors that now live deep within her breast do the same? She has a goddess for a partner now; there’s no way he can compete with that as a mere… never mind.

Most of us retired to our quarters early that night. I was watching a romantic comedy film in my quarters called ‘She Outpartied Me’. It was recommended to me by several backers as the latest step in my return to normalcy. As many of you know I spent the last few years under the thumb of a mesmerist who had me convinced I was an actual divine being. I’m ashamed to admit I ate the idea up and changed my demeanor and vocabulary to reflect it. You have been kindly suggesting contemporary pieces of entertainment to help me modernize my speech. I finally got away from referring to the other Backers as ‘mortals’ last month.

I’m sorry to anyone who enjoys it, but it’s quite an awful film. I don’t think two people locking eyes as they vomit their hangovers into the same toilet makes a very good basis for a relationship. It seemed like both the characters had serious alcohol issues that the story never addressed. I know every celebration needs a good cask of wine, but the bathtub full of crushed ice and mojito was excessive.

I was nearly finished with the film and strongly desiring an excuse to turn it off when my wish came true. I heard a terrible clamor like some gigantic stork screaming. I rushed out into the hall to find Paladina brandishing one of her swords. She was just as confused as I was. We moved quickly towards the workshop; the noise seemed to be coming from that direction. We came upon Tin Soldier, eyes blazing and bayonet primed to skewer anything that got in his way. The terrible noise was coming from his mouth. We both ordered him to quiet down.

I am aware of the machine’s race issue; that’s why I made sure to repeat any order Paladina gave. Tin Soldier will obey commands given by her now, but there’s a noticeable delay in his reactions that isn’t there when white lips direct him.

“What is going on?” I demanded.

“There is an intruder,” the machine informed us. “It may be two intruders.”

“You’re not sure?”

“I am not sure,” the machine said.

The door to Alpha Dog’s workshop exploded outward. A tumbling ball of glinting metal bodies spilled into the hallway. It took a moment to make out four of our machine hounds doing battle with a confusing mass of bluish-gray limbs. Alpha Dog emerged from the broken doorway. He had a deep gash across his forehead and a darkened eye.

“Stop them!” he shouted to us and pointed at the mass of hounds. His other hand fumbled with his gauntlet as he tried to give orders to his machines. We still had no idea what we were supposed to be stopping. Between the metal fangs and claws of the hounds I caught only glimpses of something amorphous; the strange dark lump occasionally produced a fist that punched one of the hounds away.

My powers are incredible, but nearly useless in tight spaces. I can order a hurricane around like a personal servant, but it’s still not a good idea to bring one into my home. Any lava or boiling water would risk damaging my teammates. I had to stay towards the back while Paladina and Tin Soldier moved forward. Their blades only added to the chaos. The bluish mass did not bleed; instead it produced sparks when Tin Soldier’s bayonet struck it. Two legs, surprisingly feminine in shape, emerged from what looked like a male torso and kicked Paladina through the air. I caught her and lifted her back to her feet.

One of four hands wrapped around Tin Soldier’s neck and slammed him into the wall. The robot’s key could not turn in that position, causing him to deactivate. Another of the four arms was held high in the air so Alpha Dog’s nipping hounds couldn’t reach it. The hand held a small yellow rectangle with a plastic shell: a USB drive.

“Get the drive!” Alpha Dog ordered. “Or destroy it! Just don’t let them leave with it!” The mass skittered towards us with four feet and two of its hands. I summoned a gust of wind from the Himalayas to push them back. The air turned cold and filled with clumped snowflakes.

The mass barely faltered. The nearer half of it split off from the rest and launched itself at me. Only then did I decode what I was looking at. The intruding entity was made up of two people, one man and one woman, whose bodies could pass straight through each other. They were indeed made of metal, something I confirmed when the woman’s steely fist struck me in the stomach and forced me to my knees.

The ferrous fiends took off down the hall. They’d broken two of our hounds, but the rest ran after them. Alpha Dog picked Tin Soldier up and started his key moving again.

“Use your magnet Soldier,” he ordered. “Keep them stuck together. I’ll get Electric Eel.” The robot nodded and opened a panel on his chest. He removed a large bullet-shaped block of metal and replaced his bayonet with it. I am not a woman of science, but I can tell you the device’s magnetism became far stronger when the robot charged it with electricity. I was able to sense it because I too can access the Earth’s magnetic field when the need arises. If I tried to use it indoors it would have torn all the wiring from the walls and all the silverware from the cupboards.

Feeling useless does not sit well with me, but I had little choice as the muscles in my abdomen still bit at me. I hunched forward and followed behind Tin Soldier and Paladina. When we found the intruders again they were destroying the area around our front door. Alpha Dog had triggered the security doors, so two metal sheets had dropped down over the entrance. The metal man and woman had formed their hands into blades and pry bars and were ripping the sheets open.

The dogs barked at them, but were forced to back up when Tin Soldier approached with the magnet. I think the intruders felt its pull because they doubled their efforts. In seconds they’d torn a hole through to the night air. The singing of crickets reached my ears. They were about to jump through the hole when something pushed them back in. Thick roots grew at the edges of the hole. Shrubs plugged the opening. Transplant emerged from one of the plants. I had forgotten that he often slept outside on nice nights. He’d heard the banging on the security doors from within his makeshift tree bed. (He gave me a chance to sleep inside the trunk of a tree once; it was pleasant, if a touch confined.)

With their only means of escape blocked, the metal duo backed themselves into a corner. Her torso passed through his and her eyes watched from his clavicle. Tin Soldier fired the magnet like a grenade. It struck its mark, right near the man’s heart. It not only bound him to the security door, but it kept his woman from separating her body. A burst of green slime shot out and wrapped around one of her arms. Electric Eel was attached to the other end. He forced a lightning bolt’s worth of energy through it and into the intruders, which knocked them unconscious. Alpha Dog strutted over to the collection of arms and legs and pried the USB drive away from them. He tossed it to one of the hounds, which crunched it in its jaws and chewed until there was nothing left but tiny yellow shards.

When everything settled down and we’d brought everyone out to discuss it, the intruders awoke. They were tied together with a magnetic cable and sat in two chairs facing away from each other.

“So who are these fridge magnets?” Opossum Player asked.

“Their racial background is unclear,” Tin Soldier said.

“That’s not what she meant,” Electric Eel snapped.

“Do not speak for her,” the robot snapped right back.

“Everybody shut up for a minute,” Alpha Dog requested. He held a bag of frozen baby corn to the cut on his forehead. I had offered to bring a chunk of sea ice in for him, but he declined. He has often worried, rather vocally, that my powers would accidentally bring someone across the world into our secret home. His fears had been realized in a way that he found significantly more upsetting. “These two are mercenaries.” He pointed at them with his free hand. “We’ve got some FBI files on them.”

“We have backers in the FBI? Sweet,” Opossum Player said.

“Their names are Metal X and Metal Y,” Alpha Dog continued. “They’re married geologists. They got their hands on some weird meteor a couple of years ago. Nobody knows how it happened but the metal from it fused with their bodies.” I looked closely at our intruders and saw ridges around the ring fingers on their left hands. Meteorite wedding bands fused right to the skin. I could see a large Y on his chest and an X on hers. Their eyes were cloudy and white like dissolving pearls, their expressions smug and untroubled. “I’m sure you saw they can move right through each other too. You’ll never know where the next punch is coming from.”

“Why did you come here?” Salt Shaker asked them. They looked at her with their tiny smiles and said nothing.

“They only talk to each other,” Alpha Dog added. “I bet they pass their thoughts back and forth when they’re stuck together. I’d like to get Dreamweaver in here to see if…”

“What were they here for?” Paladina asked. “What was on that drive?”

“Our private files,” Alpha Dog answered. “Dialup alerted me when our computers were accessed. They copied all our financial information and all of our secret identities. I think they were after Deckard’s bounty.”

“They didn’t get out of here though… so we’re fine right?” Electric Eel asked.

“Not exactly.” Alpha Dog waited for someone else to figure out the problem and say it for him. Salt Shaker took the opportunity.

“Somehow they found the Barn,” she said. “That means they could find it again or sell the information. We need to convince them not to. A little corrosion could persuade them.” Small white crystals bristled across her arm hair and in her eyebrows.

“I’m pretty sure that would count as torture. We don’t do that, right?” Electric Eel asked.

“Hey you two. Would that count as torture?” Opossum Player asked them. They simply stared back with their stiff smiles. I’m not sure if they can even change those expressions.

“And the Justice Backers have a strict policy against taking prisoners,” Orb said. I had almost forgotten he was there. Even though he shares authority with Alpha Dog, it is rare for him to speak up or give an order.

“What are we going to do?” Paladina asked. No one answered her, but the solution descended on us all anyway. Metal X and Metal Y could not be held at the Barn and we could not stay there if we sent them to the police.

We tossed ideas back and forth for a few hours, but eventually they all slid out from between our fingers. Only one option, heavy and cold, stayed solid in our minds. The Backers had to move.

For our newer members it was merely a hassle. Salt Shaker had to empty all of the exotic salt lamps out of her room. Opossum Player had to take down her layers of posters. It was more than labor for some of us. Alpha Dog, Orb, Transplant, and I had been there for quite some time. We’ve been heroes long enough to transform our lairs into our homes. My best memories since before I could fly are in the Barn. I do not keep many possessions since I have access to the most beautiful places and materials of the Earth, but I am just as connected to the walls there as anyone else might be to a line of scratches on the corner they grew up stood against.

This is the reason for our spotty communication recently. We had to coordinate with Impala’s team (who agreed to hold Metal XY and turn them over to the police once we had vacated) and several of our most devoted backers to facilitate the move. Obviously I cannot tell you our new location, but Alpha Dog has cleared some of the details we can share. There was one backer in particular, whom I shall call Saint Nameless, whose business connections and deep pockets moved everything along as smoothly as possible. They acquired the facility for us, free of charge.

In the mid-eighties an organized crime family attempted to liquidate their criminal assets and shift all their money into legitimate businesses, primarily tourism. One of their ventures was going to be a mid-sized aquarium that would also function as a research center for river health. The family’s prior connections were discovered by the government and they were forced to shut everything down. Some of their investments they managed to mothball and most of their records were destroyed in a fire. The aquarium building was nearly complete, lacking only decoration and more permanent roads to replace the dirt ones used during construction.

Alpha Dog has named it the Backer Bay. The tanks are largely without cracks, so he intended to use them as display cases for the many oddities we acquire during our adventures. The largest will house the robotic hands we took from Woman’s Touch. Walking by them every day would be an unpleasant reminder for me. I used to be in the palm of those hands, sometimes literally. I held my tongue when he brought up the idea; I dare not destroy what little enthusiasm our team has for their work. Being a superhero seems to get grimier every day. I feel like a custodian sweeping the floor only to watch the dust settle back before my eyes. For every Game Master we defeat there are two spies trying to steal our hearts from our chests and ten internet scavengers trying to dispel our support.

We were all fatigued by the time we arrived at the Bay. Worse still, one of our intended bedrooms was occupied by stacks of heavy plastic buckets of water treatment chemicals. One of us was going to have to sleep in one of the fish tanks for a night or two while it was cleaned out.

“I’ll do it,” Electric Eel offered. “I’m already the fishiest one here.” We were all grateful to him. Our first choice would have been to set Tin Soldier in there, but he did not have a room at the Barn in the first place. Since he did not need sleep he usually just marched the halls and coordinated with the hounds on security.

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Paladina and I took an evening stroll through the building. A few tiny holes in the ceiling had, over nearly three decades, allowed generations of insects and spiders to squat in the corners. Pale dry leaves filled one of the tanks, nearly submerging a decorative pirate ship.

“I’m even farther from redacted,” she told me, referring to her husband. I thought she was going to say something else, but she let the words clot and stick in the stale air.

“Perhaps we should think more about what we’re moving towards,” I suggested. It was a meaningless statement. It would have been better for me to simply bring an invigorating breeze into the hallway.

“Come on guys. This place is way bigger than the Barn; it’s an upgrade!” We turned to see Opossum Player walking towards us. She had a heavy duffel bag over her shoulder with the sleeves of various loud sweaters dangling from its jammed zipper like the ends of deflated party balloons. She’d neglected to shift the weight of the bag for so long that there was an unpleasant rash on her shoulder that she seemed unaware of.

I don’t find her energy as infectious as some of the other Backers. In the short time I worked with Pawn I learned that he seemed embarrassed whenever he perished in battle. Opossum Player has the opposite attitude, seeing it as an opportunity to make as many mistakes as she wants. If I were brutally murdered and left to rot in a quarry I’d like to think it would convince me to change my behavior. To her it’s a free pass. Murder is just an insult she can shake off. I wonder if she takes the threat of our secret identities being revealed seriously; what’s a secret to someone nigh invulnerable? She could create a fresh start whenever she wanted. For me the move was pain. I was a monarch ripped from its chrysalis and shoved into a test tube by a greasy thumb. In that hallway I just wanted to share a moment of quiet adjustment with my greatest friend; I snapped at Opossum Player a bit. I regret it now, especially given how I lost control later that night.

Dreamweaver used to help me settle my thoughts immediately after I drifted to sleep. My former physician left enough holes in my mind to bury a thousand memories. Dreamweaver, with her amazing dress that seemed to be made of the same stuff as the dreams themselves, gave me hope. She tamed my nightmares. She is with Impala’s team now. I thought I could handle all the stress on my own, but the move helped some of the nightmares bite through their leashes.

There was a time with my doctor when, convinced I was being pursued and sickened by a demonic entity, I would use my powers to retreat to the bottom of the ocean. I had hoped the demon’s illusions could not penetrate miles of water and that the great pressure around me would prevent my sanity from leaking out. By keeping an open connection to a windy place, I was safe in a bubble of air no matter how deep I went. On our first night at the Bay as I dozed fitfully, my mind tried to take me back there. Subconsciously I think I assumed an aquarium could handle any amount of water I threw at it.

A wave of salt water crashed over me. It lifted me off my bed and slammed me into the wall before shattering the aquarium glass on the adjacent wall. Gasping for breath, I held out my hands and opened a portal to an area hundreds of feet above a jagged mountain top. I drained the water in my room and showered it over the rocks.

I suddenly became aware of a dozen other holes I had unwittingly opened all over the Bay. I could feel them; there was a lot more water where that batch had come from. I dared not close the holes my dreaming mind opened, lest I trap one of my teammates across the world and under an ocean or in some raging rapids. I had to first check to see if they were alive.

I raced through the corridors of the Bay, stomping through puddles and the now-mushy dead leaves. I could hardly believe what I’d done. Every tank I passed was now full of seawater. The lights passed through the tanks and bathed the halls a smothering eerie blue. In some of them I could see silvery fish swimming by in tight spherical shoals. I had opened portals at the front and back of every tank, so the animals were not trapped. With the glass between us it was just like looking out the window of a submarine. The strange sights and the occasional pulse of a luminescent jellyfish nearly hypnotized me, but a shout brought me out of it.

When I found Paladina her wet hair was hanging over her eyes like clumps of seaweed, but she was alright. Tin Soldier had outrun a wave that took over a hallway before dissipating and leaving a dozen purple starfish and one confused octopus behind. Though I didn’t know at the time, almost everyone was safe but drenched. Salt Shaker was beyond furious. Blocks of orange salt, yellow salt, pink salt, black salt, some with unique chemical properties, from all over the world, dissolved in moments. I had plenty of apologizing to do, but she wasn’t in danger. Electric Eel was.

The poor boy had no idea volunteering to sleep with the fishes was going to end up literally being the case. I found him clinging to the edge of the tank he’d been sleeping in, doing his best to resist the pull of the current. I rushed to help him and was about to grab his hand when a blue streak came in from the side of the tank and bit his thigh. He panicked and let go of the glass. The current tossed him out of sight in less than a second, taking a streak of his blood with it.

I cried out and focused my powers on the tank in front of me. I shifted the portal further down the path of the current to search for him. Cold fear crept up my costume along with the ankle-high water I stood in. More and more water pulsed over the rim of the tank as I shoved the portal forward. The glass cracked. I saw a shape, but it turned out to just be the streak that attacked Electric Eel. It was a shark about five feet long with big black eyes. I could’ve searched the entire ocean ten times over and not found him, so I instead followed the shark. I thought perhaps it was sniffing out his trail of blood in order to finish the job.

The shark opened its mouth just as I saw its target, my friend, rolling around helplessly in the current. I forced the portal wider and pulled as much water in as I could. The glass shattered. The water struck me like a charging bull and knocked me off my feet. Once the waves forced me under the surface I had no choice but to seal the portal and let the room drain out into the hallway. I was only able to stand once most of it had gone. My ears were clogged, but I could hear Electric Eel struggling. I rubbed the salt out of my eyes and saw him in the middle of the floor, wrestling with the blue shark. He tossed it away. I opened a tiny portal and let the shark fall back into the ocean from whence it had come. Then I helped Electric Eel to his feet and did my best to tend to his wound until the medicine hound arrived.

Luckily none of us were severely harmed. I don’t think I’ve ever been so embarrassed in my life. I suppose this is the goddess version of wetting the bed. Paladina and Electric Eel have forgiven me. Tin Soldier does not care. Salt Shaker has forgiven me on paper, but the anger still grinds along the edge of her irises when she looks at me. Transplant and Orb were the furthest away, so most of their property did not even get wet.

Alpha Dog didn’t take any convincing. I was about to go and close the rest of the portals in the tanks when he stopped me and said that we should keep them. The idea seemed strange at first, but grew on us quickly. My mind had naturally tailored most of the ocean windows to the boundaries of the tanks. To anyone that walked through, it would just look like a functioning aquarium. Anything that passed by was ours to observe.

I did not know if I would be able to maintain the portals at all times. Normally my powers require a certain amount of focus. This time was different though. In adjusting to our new home my spirit has used my powers to root me here, to give me a comfort I used to seek. These waters actually put me at ease. I would have to try harder just to close them. The Bay really is my home now. I can only hope the others adjust as well.

The last thing I must mention occurred the other night. Most of our rooms had fully dried from my unintentional tsunami. I was asleep in my bed. I’m not sure what woke me, but when I opened my eyes and looked at the tank in my room I saw a huge egg-shaped shadow. Though the glass had shattered, the portal conformed perfectly to the panel’s original shape. I reached out and touched the tips of my fingers against the wall of water. Four fingers in the midst of the shadow reached out towards mine, like a reflection seen at the bottom of a drain.

What was I seeing? My mind was still fuzzy from sleep. Was it a dream? No. The water at my fingertips was too cool. Its movements were too tiny and fluid to be the false water of a dream. A face appeared next to the other set of fingers. A woman around my age. She looked at me. A smile grew under her eyes, like a razor clam opening to reveal an entire line of pearls. Her features pulled away for a moment. She came back holding a colorful booklet. She flipped through it to a certain page, turned it around, and pressed it against the shadow so I could see. There was a picture of me, standing proudly in full costume. My signature swooped across the page, with the last letter curling around my knee.

The booklet is something Alpha Dog sells on our website. It contains pictures of all of us. I remembered because he has us autograph one hundred of them a week for you backers. The sight of the dry merchandise under water cleared the last of my sleepy haze. It was a small submarine, the shadow that is. The woman inside was looking at me from a tiny porthole in its side. I waved to her and smiled back. There are backers even deep under the sea.

I assume the vehicle was there for some kind of research and just stumbled across my new window. She couldn’t stay long, but I hope she comes back. If the woman from the submarine is watching or reading this, please feel free to contact me again. It’s nice to know that even if I retreated from my friends as far as I could, support could still find its way to me.

As you can imagine, the stress of recent events is still wearing us out. Forgive me as I’m going to forego any questions this evening. Fear not. Your goddess will not abandon the faithful. That was a jest. I don’t actually think I’m a goddess… not anymore anyway. Mistakes can humble you that way. Now I’m just a hero.

Salt Shaker’s Skin-Crawling Fan Fiction Corner

The move to the Bay has derailed much of our lives. Do. Not. Worry. All of the fan fiction is intact. Deckard and his goons might be able to stop us, maim us, kill us… but he cannot stop the power of socially awkward people intent on writing themselves into history as war heroes and legendary lovers.

I’d initially intended to introduce you to various authors in this series, but few of them can compare to Kharmie Buttercup. As long as she churns them out, we’ll be turning to her for all our needs. This week’s selection has a few interesting details, including a footnote (placed nowhere near the foot of the page) about Salt Shaker’s Fan Fiction Corner. It seems she’s spotted us. We’re no longer observers. Our presence in her habitat has made her hostile, so she’s incorporated our images and attacked them as a warning, puncturing the copies of us and filling them with venom. You do have to be careful when a fan writer feels threatened.

As Kharmie has honed her craft, she’s figured out that incorporating actual current Backer events increases her traffic. In this multi-part Epic, which we will only be viewing an excerpt of, she tackles the very real issues of interracial love and transhumanism with the delicacy and skill I’m sure you’ve come to expect. I should also warn you that this post contains “medium sexiness”, so you might want to excuse yourself if you can’t take the heat. Me? I love spicy food and I am ready to eat this up.

We join in media res, with Electric Eel and Tin Soldier trapped inside a magical board game labyrinth built by Deckard to separate and destroy the Justice Backers.

Electric Eel X Tin Soldier:

Power Surge! – Part 3

By

Kharmie Buttercup

(medium sexiness)

Electric Eel and Tin Soldier don’t know any ideas as to where they are at. Everything is so confusing! The other backers are trapped in other parts of the game board which has tall walls everywhere. Tin Soldier marches forward. Nothing can keep him awa from the battle.

“Where are you going?” Electric Eel asks him. “This place is full of traps! You might get us killed!”

“I am a soldier. I must fight. It is everything too me.”

“There is more to being with among the living other than all of the fighting that we do,” Electric Eel says. He has to run a little to catch up with the robot. He can’t stop himself from thinking his little march is very cute, just like a Christmas toy.

“You just want to trick me so I won’t want to fight black people,” the robot says back. Tin Soldier’s racism is still alive and strong: he always sits next to the whities on the helicpoters… every time.

At that suddenly, two giant dice fall out of the sky! They roll by like big rocks and the two backers jump out of the way for there lives. When they stop rolling the dices say 4 and 3. That makes a grand scary total of 7 monsters emerge from inside of the walls! 3 of them are giant snakes and 4 of them are giant bats. The boys go into battle stances so they were read to battle. Electric Eel is extra ready because he does not want to suffer the same fate as Salt Shaker who got killed a few hours ago when she wouldn’t stop yelling at people long enough to look out for the board-game-dragon that was about to eat her.

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FOOTNOTE: I’m killing off Salt Shaker in all my fics now because she is a jerk. Yes, it is true that she’s been putting my fics up to try and get people to laugh at them but the joke is on her because I’m more poplar than I ever been before. She is just jealous of my totally mad internet skills and all the awesom peoples in my fic-mmunity. READ THIS YOU STUPID SALTY JERK!!!!!! Don’t worry loyull readers, she can’t hurt me because I’ll just toss her over my shoulder like your supposed to do with salt.

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Electric Eel shoots slime out of his hands and hits a bat which he shocks so it looks like Benjamin Franklin’s kite when it was struck by lightning. The bat falls to the ground in a pile of ashes. All the other 3 bats get angry and starts shreeking at him and divebombing. Tin Soldier shoots them out of the air with his gun like he’s playing an old arcade game. 1 bat… 100 points! 2 bats… 200 points! 3 bats… 300 points!

The snakes are busy wrapping around their legs while the bats distracted there attention away from off the ground. Tin Soldier tries to jump away, but he lands on a red square and a voice says “YOU LOSE ONE TURN!” He is stuck and cannot move for a little while! It’s up to Electric Eel to save him. He wasn’t just saving the team’s toaster though… Electric Eel has been hiding his feelings for the robot. He knows its not right because Tin Soldier is not human and also happens to be super racist, but he cannot help it. He often thinks about how if he will tell the robot and maybe that will make him not hate black people anymore. Love is more powerful than how tan people are!

Electric Eel ties two of the snakes in a knot and then lightnings the third off of the big piece of metal he’s crushing on. Then the turn-freezing ends suddenly and Tin Soldier trips and hits his head against one of the walls of the board game. It screws up something in his head a little bit and acicdentaly turns on a program he didn’t mean to. Electric Eel kneels down next to the robot and looks at all the images flashing across the robot’s eye screens. The pictures look like… men! He recognizes the background in the flashing pictures… brown with gold borders. That was the background for smokinwood.com! (It’s a dating app for gay guys) Electric Eel is stunned. Tin Soldier is so embarrsassed that he hits himself in the head until the pictures stop and his eyes go back to what before been.

“You have a profile on smokinwood.com?” Electric Eel asjs.

“It’s none of your business!” the robot yells. “I’m the only one of me that exists… so I get lonely some of the times okay? I like the idea of having a person around to turn my key when I need it.”

“But… guys?” Electric Eel says. “Are you gay?”

“I… I don’t know,” the robot says. “I don’t know what I’m allowed to be.”

“You don’t need permission to like boys,” Electric Eel says, proud of himself for being open. His hand moves without him fully controlling it really. It touches the back of Tin Soldier’s neck and cradles his head. They stare a long time into each others’ eyes until Electric Eel has to blink. When he opens his eyes again Tin Soldier amazingly somehow looks even cuter. Heat rushes through his body, giving him an illicet thrill. Some electricity leaks from his fingertips and pops across Tin Soldier’s neck. The robot flinches. “I didn’t hurt you did I?” Electric Eel asks.

“No… it feels good. Please don’t stop,” Tin Soldier says and hugs Electric Eel with his taut metal biceps. Electric Eel is so excited to have permission that his hands go kind of crazy, running all over the robot and pushing little bolts of lightning out everywhere. They get lost in a personal little thunderstorm of lust. The clouds of their desire clash and don’t make any sound but they both swear they can hear something. Electric Eel’s hand moves down Tin Soldier’s broad chest. Down. Down. DOWN FURTHER THAN THAT. All the way to between the robot’s legs. He makes even more electricity and rubs it in as ahrd as he can. They both become lost in ecstaticsy. If the other backers found them they’re they wouldn’t even care.

Tin Soldier finally realizes that love could come from any place. It didn’t matter that the hand that was so expertly pleasuring him was blacker than the licorish nobody eats. He holds his new boyfriend and shivers a little when his new boyfriend runs a fingertip along the key in his back.

They do not want it to end but they worried if people were going to shun them. They did not yet know the full magic of Deckard’s evil board game. The spell was meant just for people… so if Tin Soldier manges to escape it back to the real world… he will become a fleshy bloody man!

For now the two backers just get to their feet and start searching for the rest of the team. There is still justice to be done, and that unfortinitly has to come before sexy time.

To be continued!

(Like my work? You can fund me on Stirotic: my handle is KButtercup90)

No matter how many times I get eaten by a dragon, I will continue to supply you with fan fiction for the dark days where you just need a reminder that there are people who matter even less than you. If you’ll excuse me I’m off to lock Electric Eel and Tin Soldier in a closet with a few skin magazines and a box of Kleenex to see if that actually clears up the race issues. It’s worth a shot right?