Tony Stark rubbed his armored hands together despite himself. “Light cruiser design, if I recall. Half the size of this ship, about the size of the Starjammer...”
“Correct. Corsair said his ship has a unique neo-neural network, and a functional shipboard AI in an organic metals layout, making it one of the rarer and most finely-made vessels of its kind. Its self-repair abilities are a league above standard Shi’ar vessels.”
He brought an armored hand up to his forehead. “Dammit, so much tech we could leap right to, and we can’t actually produce any of it!” he swore under his breath.
I nodded along with him in agreement. “The production tech is the key thing. Dumbing it down so an average genius can understand it, a highly intelligent person can fix it, and an average person can use it. Without that kind of tech backing us, Terra won’t get into space effectively.”
His repulsor disks and uni-beam projector glowed for a moment. “Yet we’ve weapon tech the equal and more of their standard military issue,” he muttered wryly.
“And some of the best force field and E-materials understanding out there, profound knowledge their monastic sects would kill to have, and some of the most murderous combat psions in the galaxy, not to mention dudes growing wings. Hey, Warren!”
The golden blond Angel, too handsome to really be human, had wandered up to us. Tony took one look at him, dropped his head slightly to look over his tech-glasses again in humorous disbelief, and had almost had no words.
Almost. “I’ll leave you here with Mr. Divine Bankroller, and see if I can wheedle some improved recycling tech out of them.” He gave the currently taller Worthington a clap on the shoulder and wandered away, finishing off his drink and taking another from a blue-skinned, six-tentacle-legged server’s plate as ‘she’ glided past him.
We both watched him go, kibbitzing as he did with the normal Stark irreverence, looked at one another, and grinned at the same time.
“He still can’t call people by name,” Warren mused in his newer and deeper voice.
“Uh, huh. Well, how many women are checking that their hair is okay in your pecs?” I pointed out for him, and he looked down at the divinely-sculpted muscles there.
“Is that what they were doing,” he deadpanned back. “I kept thinking I spilled something on my shirt.”
“You ready to go back to being a mere mortal?” I asked with just the ghost of a smile.
His grin was sheepish, but when you look that good, that just made it cute. “Well, ahem! I was wondering just how long I could stay like this...” he asked, certainly not without a good reason, nope, nope.
“Tell Fury that it’s an Asgardian-powered biomorph acting on your bloodline, and you’re being allowed to keep it for a week so you have a course of study on your biopsi advancement. You should be able to replicate it by the time you’re a Twelve or a Fifteen, and if you can take it to Twenty you can hang with her.”
His blue eyes flashed with inner light. “Seriously?” he asked, almost forgetting to keep his voice down.
“Uh-huh.” I flicked up an Assay, peering at and through him. “Oh, isn’t that nice for you...”
“What?” he asked, batting those impossibly riveting eyes. I just had to laugh at myself as I looked around to make sure no one was staring.
“Watch this.” I flicked up a mirror-effect on the window, and then reached up, a lightning blade forming on my nail, and slid it down the side of that perfect face and cheekbone and skin, an act which likely would have put me on the shitlist of every woman staring at us together if they could see it.
“What the...” he started to blurt out, and I held his hands down before he could grab.
“Wait for it.”
Rich red blood was coursing down his face and along his jaw, a drop was starting to form on a perfect chin... and then it all stopped.
As he watched in disbelief, the blood moved back up his jawline, up his cheek, back into the deep cut in his skin, and said gash sealed itself almost as rapidly as I’d cut it. Total elapsed time, about twelve seconds.
“I have a healing factor?” he asked, stunned, touching his totally unmarked face as I let go of him.
“More than that, your blood would heal others if they drank it. You have a giftable healing factor, and that includes, oh, diseases and poisons. It’s not at the speed of a Feral, but it’s not slow.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Is this... dependent on this Asgardian energy?” he had to ask, shocked at the implications. Blood of an Angel, indeed!
“No, it’s a result of bloodline stimulation, just like flying faster and looking like Adonis’ cuter brother. The physical strength and durability is Asgardian, but those are something you can emulate from a psionic reinforcement and Heavy Gravity Training side. Huh.” I tapped my chin. “Accelerated healing factor probably means accelerated HGT, especially with biopsi reinforcement. Bet you could power through that in six months!”
“Wow.” He shook his head, golden hair dazzle and dance, yessir... “Uh, a week, right?” he repeated carefully.
“I’m sure you will spend all that time inspecting yourself carefully and not indulging in replications of falcon mating dances.”
His perfect cheekbones and ears suddenly grew the most adorable shade of pink. “I, uh, hadn’t thought about that...”
But now he had, and it wasn’t going to go away.
I shooed him off, and the women watching, both alien and human, heaved sighs of relief and puzzlement as I chased him away. He was just too dazzling for most of them to intercept unless they had astonishingly developed egos, especially when it was perfectly obvious he was making his way towards the other angel in the room, and nobody was going to mess with THAT warrior woman lightly.
“Dyna! Dyna!” Peter Parker rushed up to me urgently, eyes wide with enlightenment. “We gotta duplicate their toilets!”
I turned on him with a raised eyebrow, and give him a good five (seventy-five) seconds to realize what he had just said. His excited expression slowly faded, and he stopped looking like he was ready to jump around like he’d won the lottery or something.
“Uh, well, I’m serious?” he finally said, only a little defensively.
I rolled my eyes. “Peter, you find the most interesting subject matter to get excited about.” He promptly blushed. “What got your bowels so loosened?” I pressed, and he grew even redder.
“They use a slow-form wavefield disintegrator to break apart sewage before it reaches their main collector! It’s all broken up into base elements, sorted out and ready for recycling!” he spluttered excitedly, and I stepped aside as a couple gobs went past me and hit the window.
He got redder yet.
I held up a finger for him to focus on, focus, Peter. “Mr. Stark said he was going to look for some form of new recycling tech. Why don’t you go suggest that he go buy some plumbing technology instead, which is probably much lower on the sensitive tech list, and tell him why,” I suggested, as he followed my wagging finger.
“Oh, oh, that’s a good idea!” he agreed, and rushed right off as I pointed him in the right direction.
I sighed, and had Vier TK some frothy drink with two alien fruit garnishes on it to my hand. Parties...
And here came Guardsman Smasher again, uniform modified, like mine was, for more showing off of skin and curves, but cleaving to his homeworld’s colors. I sighed again.
His grin said he had experience, and so no end of lovers. I wasn’t that interested in making out with hot alien guys, and my pheromones were set on ‘out of season’.
However, weaponized Asgardian curves just didn’t care, nor did visually-stimulated prospective male sexual partners. I’d informed him that my real form was half a head shorter and not nearly as wowza, but it hadn’t mattered to him.
“Dynamo! Business, business, peace!” he added after seeing my expression. “Which doesn’t mean I haven’t lost interest.” My expression grew even flatter. “Right! Uh, the other Terrans said the best person to talk to was you or the big mercenary about this.” I just looked at him, saying nothing, keep talking... “The Majestrix found herself really liking the spicy food served at the diner on the Colosseum. She was told it was a temporary establishment, and that the Dealer was the brains behind it.”
“That is correct?” I coolly encouraged him to get to it.
“Would the Dealer be willing to cook a course for the Imperial Coronation? That video going around of Champion eating the Combicha Ten is generating a LOT of interest.” He smiled quite earnestly, knowing there was no way Dealer would turn it down.
And oh, the price she could charge for coming from one million light years away to cook for a Galactic Empress...
-------
Some hours and more later...
“Pete, it’s time to go,” I said, and this time I was not too caring, as webbing came out of my fingers and began to wrap him up.
“Huh, wha, Dyna?” he asked, from somewhere in a haze of exhaustion, not resisting as I rocked him back and forth and wrapped his nude body up.
His uniform was scattered all over the place, but the tech parts I’d managed to find and save before someone made off with them. Prestidigitation did the job assembling the various pieces quickly. UM Fabric wasn’t cheap.
“Up and at ‘em, lover-boy,” I said, tossing him over my shoulder.
“So tired,” he mumbled into my backside, not really caring. “Wha time is it?”
“Time to go home, Pete,” I said, skating off smoothly so as not to bounce him.
“Bu tha’s like tomorrow,” he mumbled behind me.
“Yep.”
Cindy and Gwen stirred up the courage to look into the room I’d just removed him from.
There were six females in states of total undress within, all of them quite attractive, all of them quite exhausted, and none of them were human. Two were furry and had tails.
The air was full of mating season, come take me now! The two girls slammed the door closed and raced off after me, because they were starting to respond.
---
Just about everyone was in the forward shuttle hold, waiting on the late stragglers to be rounded up and led in. Peter being all webbed up and over my shoulder was far from a unique state of being, as easily a dozen of the people here had new outfits on that they hadn’t brought on board, and looked like they’d just had an incredible core workout.
Well, they probably had. She-Hulk looked particularly smug, the Hulk looked very relaxed indeed, and Hercules, Fandral, and Hogun were commiserating together over a very serious subject matter which nope, nope, had nothing to do with alien women.
Rather a lot of the men, and a fair amount of the women, were in similar circumstances.
Thor fortunately had been braced or blessed by the presence of Sif, and was in fine spirits. I was pretty sure Herc and Valkyrie had wrestled around for the night, she not finding him nearly the oaf that most of the Olympians were.
I also found it damn funny that the Starjammers had to go all the way back to Terra to get to their ship, but that was just me.