A bead of sweat slid down Private Reno's face.

It was the dead of night, quite cool, in fact, and the sea was filled with ships of all shapes and sizes. Old wooden warships, destroyers, cruisers, and battleships, countless battleships churned out from the imperial naval foundry. It was last counted to be somewhere between 900 and 950, but the number changes after each successive war, as it did just recently.

Now the navy slept patiently in the calm waters of the silent darkness, the criss-cross formation stretching far, as far as Private Reno could see, and while such a sight would normally drive a lesser nation into immediate surrender, the crew were shaken. Scared. Terrified.

Reno had shared his story time and time again, and nobody listened. Now they were forced to. The capital had fallen by Redrim's hands, and even now, stories of the battle spread among their number like a virus. The tales of the demon ship with its otherworldly tentacles and fighter jet devil-spawn.

Perhaps this was his fate. To bear witness to Redrim's misdeeds, his great sins, his rising power surely into that of a god, and even now, no man among the near million of the total crew of this fleet felt prepared for him.

And to make it worse. So much worse. Redrim's flying battleship was recently spotted headed this way.

Private Reno looked back at the small island that the fleet was protecting. Several tents had been posted there, some still lit by electric lights, staffed with royal guardsmen at the ready. Reno swore that one just gave him the stink eye for looking too long.

He hoped Marianna would be quick about this. Her crazy plans had won them the world, but Reno felt so vulnerable, even in the greatest fleet of humankind, that he began to doubt her.

Would she unearth the world-conquering weapon? Would she finally bring everlasting-peace to the world?

Or would Redrim come to stop her again?

Reno began to nod off. This was his third day without sleep. His helmet tapped at the mounted machine gun on the bow of the destroyer, and it shocked him awake.

Someone whispered nearby.

He looked.

It was just another soldier asking for cigarettes.

His vision began to wane, and--tap--he shook back again.

Another whisper came from nearby.

He didn't look.

His head bobbed.

The whispers turned to hushing. Then to talking.

Then yelling.

"West North West!"

An alarm began to wail.

Private Reno wheeled over his machine gun to aim, but at what?

Spotlights clicked on. First a dozen, more blinking in, then a hundred, then more searching the skies around.

The searchlights cut through the night sky, illuminating wide swaths as they slid around searching, and one light paused--

Then another beside it--

And--

It was him. It was Redrim. His massive battleship flew across the night sky, the stars blinking out behind it, and now it was getting close enough to be lit by the spotlights.

The world rumbled with deafening beats, drumrolls without cadence, a barrage of flak artillery that blackened the skies and filled it with smoke.

There was a pause. Then a sensation. A sensation Private Reno thought that every man in the fleet felt at once. The feeling of a heart dropping in one's chest at the great mistake that was made, the mistake of painting the night sky black with smoke, that when done by a fleet of this magnitude, created a pitch-black storm cloud.

They had lost sight of Redrim.

Never lose sight of Redrim.

Main cannons fired. The ships blasted their main guns. Machineguns rattled along. Flak continued to pound. Arcs of fire zipping this way and that, no longer trying to aim but to fill the sky, hoping so desperately to score a lucky hit, but--

A red flare of light shot out from the black clouds. A jet? No, a missile!

Its crackling burn coasted above the fleet--just a solitary missile--thick and heavy and about the size of a jet--and Private Reno fell to his knees and covered his head.

It was a nuke.

A blinding flash. A tsunami of power erupted and boomed across the fleet--and the ships shimmered with a latticework of glowing blue lines. Protection magic.

After the eruption of water resolved, Reno checked himself. He was alive. With the new mana injection system, maybe his ships had a chance. Surely.

More missiles roared by. Now the flak and machine guns and main cannons fired at them, to halt them before doing more damage against the mana shields, but--

Redrim! The black smoke rolled across the hull of Redrim's battleship as he erupted from the cloud. Piercing shells of the fleet's mightiest cannons slammed against his magic barriers, but already it began to crack. Fighter Jets roared past, firing autocannons and heat-seekers into the fleet, but even they couldn't withstand a barrage this heavy. Some of the jets outright exploded and crashed into the water. Others blinked with magic protection and peeled off to escape.

It emboldened him. A taste of victory right on his lips. Morale was rising.

A sailor gasped. "Queen Marianna!"

"She's done it," said another. "She's unearthed the world-killer weapon."

Reno looked back at the island.

A gigantic structure rose out of the sea. Water peeled off from its surface, revealing sleek red metal armor across the length of it, and it was long. Incredibly long. Was it a ship, or was it a manmade island?

It rose out of the water, and Reno spotted the flares of rocket engines burning beneath it. The weapon was a ship. A massive battleship no less than five times the size of Redrim's, and this one--even with its incredible mass--could fly.

Private Reno watched in awe as Marianna's world-saver battleship angled itself skyward, and its main engines in the rear began to glow hot and erupt with blue fire, and the ship pushed higher.

A rumble roared from behind him, and a shadow blinked overhead.

Redrim! He was trying to ram Marianna! There was no way they could let this happen. Marianna's new ship was the one ticket to salvation for the world, and Redrim was here to ruin it.

Private Reno gripped his machine gun and fired.

Redrim flew closer. He fired another nuke. Reno shot at it. A line of sparks cut across the nuke's engine, and it burned out and plunked into the sea.

Redrim shot another. Shot down. Then another. Fizzled out.

Every gun for kilometers aimed at him, and his manashield bore the weight of a near-constant barrage of pounding, flashing explosions that the shield soon shattered, and his hull began to erupt.

A rocket engine exploded. Redrim's ship listed and pulled to the side.

Marianna was escaping! They could do this. Reno believed in himself.

Redrim's ship lost altitude fast and splashed into the water. Another manashield of a different type blinked in but shattered as quickly as it came.

Private Reno smirked to himself.

This was it. They had him. There was no way in hell Redrim could get out of this. His greatest weapon was his nukes, and they already had a countermeasure. Now he was dead in the water in the middle of the greatest fleet in the history of humankind, and all his little tricks were running dry fast.

Just a little more.

A sailor yelled. "She's done it! She's escaped!"

Private Reno looked up in the sky. Sunlight crested across the horizon, and the sky above lit with the fiery sunlight of a new dawn. High above, the Queen's new flagship grew distant now, more of a blur than a ship, marked only by the glowing rocket engines that propelled it to the highest levels of the atmosphere.

He looked back at Redrim.

There wasn't even a ship to look at. It was just an erupting, smoking, flaming wreck of a ship, bent and battled and shifting with each consecutive hit of a cannon. He was there, immobile like a wounded animal.

Just a little more. They need just a little more firepower to dig into the core of his ship, to hit those sweet spots, to give them that fiery flash of a reward, that victorious explosion they craved so terribly.

The fleet slowed its bombardment.

The cloud of fire and smoke began to thin.

And it revealed a battered wreck of a battleship.

Through his earpiece, Reno heard the order from his captain. "Ready the nuclear missile."

He grinned.

This would be the end of Redrim and the dawn of a new age of peace.

The vast enemy fleet stretched far across the ocean and dotted the horizon, and any ship that had line of sight fired on the ship.

With a final, world-shattering boom, and with a blinding flash from a tactical nuclear warhead, the ship vanished to metal splinters and ribbons, now raining across the fleet as confetti smithereens.

Silence came.

And then the roar of my engines as I approached from above.

The entire enemy fleet took the bait. I had molted away several layers of armor and flung it amongst their number, and it worked beautifully. It gave us just enough time to finish what we needed.

The enemy noticed the ruse and saw us howling right above them, and soon the sky blossomed out in black clouds of flak. Shrapnel plinked and pounded us, and we shook against the assault.

"Shield damage at 3%!" shouted a tech.

"Increasing shield density--"

"Balancing buoyancy in the front."

"Shield damage at 11%! It's rising too fast!"

"Further increasing shield density--"

"Wait. We can't maintain altitude at this rate."

The technicians hurried to maintain the ship against this magnitude of damage, and the Card King grunted as he struggled to fly us over an entire sea of firing guns.

I stomped my feet into the slots, anchored myself into the ceiling and floor, and a squad of gimps took their places.

I gave the order. "Divert all power to thrust."

"Yes, sir!"

Emergency Power activated.

Heart of the masochist activated.

Heart of the sadist activated.

Heart of the Kraken activated.

"Shield damage at 34%..."

"Redrim," said the Card King, "We can't last long in this."

"We won't need long," I said.

The sky pummeled us with flak. The enemy battleships calculated our trajectory, and now their shots grew accurate. Main cannon shells struck us on the hull, and even now, I could feel the manashield cracking. The shock of each explosion, the rumble of power that pulsed through my body, the shaking of the world around--it gave me a tickle. A certain kind of tickle that only a masochist could love.

Masochist bonus 30%.

The gimps groaned in their spots, and their chains rattled with every thump of an explosion.

Whap-whap-whap!

Sadist bonus 34%.

"Admiral! These numbers--"

I winced. We were moving too slow. I needed to punish my gimps harder. Faster.

Whap-ap-ap-ap--

The gimps shook and moaned and jolted around.

Sadist bonus 67%.

Masochist bonus 43%.

"Shield damage at 59%!"

This was bad. My levels were unbalanced. Had I grown this accustomed to punishment?

I shouted. "You there! Technicians! Come here and beat the shit out of me!"

The sonar tech shook back. "W-what?'

The ship rumbled. The enemy fleet continued their barrage.

"That's an order," I shouted.

After a pause of fear and hesitation, the bridge crew hurried over to the back and started punching me in the face, kicking me in the ribs and thighs and even the groin.

I grunted and gasped as they beat the shit out of me, as they gave me pain, as they punished me for the dirty little trash can slut that I was.

Masochist bonus 60%

Sadist bonus 80%

Shield damage 70%

Fuel: 60%

It still wasn't enough! "More!" I demanded. "All of you! Come to me at once!"

Soon, more rebels burst onto the bridge and joined in on the beat down. A tempest of fists and feet and knees and elbows and teeth attacked me all at once and from every angle, and I--fuuuck yeah--I needed this.

My tentacle whips continued to punish the gimps nearby at a brisk pace, and soon--yes, I felt the click of power--the balance was acquired!

Masochist bonus 90%

Sadist Bonus 90%

Shield damage 85%

Fuel: 55%

It was time. The new engine was ready to be activated.

I felt the power pulse within, and I flexed, erupting the wind around me and throwing the crew back. I bellowed across the ship. "Super Ultimate Sadomasochist Drive: Activate!"

The lights within the ship glowed red, and the ship made an unearthly howl as the rocket engines exploded with power.

The ship shot forward like a bullet. A cloud of white pulsed around the hull, and our slicing path through the air cut a line in the ocean below.

But I wasn't done yet.

The crew tried to peel themselves off the back wall.

"More!" I shouted. "Give me more!"

They crawled against the force of the ship as we approached speeds faster than anything we've ever known, and with shaking legs, they began to fight me again.

The sky continued to erupt with explosions of flak, but now we were outrunning even that.

The ship rocked violently with a slamming hit, and--

Shield damage 100%

The manashield shattered. The wind ground against the hull, and the ship began to glow a faint red.

"Redrim!" shouted the Card King. "What's our bearing?"

"Space," I said.

"What?"

"Space!"

Soon, the call was answered. Vil and Lara burst into the bridge with whips and billy clubs, and they began to beat me on my flanks. In turn, I punished my gimps even harder.

Sadist bonus: 110%

Masochist bonus: 110%

Fuel: 40%

Velocity: 4,700 m/s

Then the heroes came. The knight stripped naked. They beat the shit outta me with tree branches and hot candle wax.

Sadist bonus: 130%

Masochist bonus: 130%

Fuel: 30%

Velocity: 5,400 m/s

My heart pounded. I felt steam across the surface of my skin. My tentacle whips spilled over onto the crew, and onto Vil and Lara and the heroes, and I began to whip them too just as they whipped me, and together, we moaned and groaned and gasped in pain and pleasure as one mind, one mass of flesh and sexual energy, and the bridge door hissed open again--

It was Jessie, already naked.

Sadist bonus: 155%

Masochist bonus: 155%

Fuel: 20%

Velocity: 6,100 m/s

The skies outside faded to a dark blue, getting darker as we aimed toward the heavens.

The Gimp King and another platoon of gimps broke into the bridge, late for the party, and they dove in like wolves.

Sadist bonus: 175%

Masochist bonus: 175%

Fuel: 10%

Velocity: 7,300 m/s

Then pirates and rebels and crewman and before I knew it, the bridge was packed in a BDSM orgy of pain and pleasure, of domination and submission, a cresting torrent of panting breaths and smooth skin against skin and flashes of whips and handcuffs and the tide of us moaned loud--louder--erupting as one mind, one body.

Sadist bonus: 200%

Masochist bonus: 200%

Fuel: 5%

Velocity: 8,400 m/s

The rocket engines hit the emergency cut-off levels, and the ship coasted through the upper atmosphere. The crowd in the bridge was a panting, sweating wreck of naked people and odd smells, and slowly they began to peel off from each other--complete with the awkward glances and regretful stares--and they began to float away.

Cassandra's voice echoed throughout the ship. "Air pressurization stable. Apogee stable. Beginning orbit burn in 93 seconds."

The people began to gasp in awe at the sight before us.

The lights were stars. Thousands. More. Beneath us, the blue glow of the planet shone across the hull.

This was space.

Some of the crew tried to walk off, but they tumbled as if in slow motion. This was zero-gravity. As if reality itself were enchanted with a float spell. Some laughed at the absurdity of floating around like this. Others floated too far and ended up tangled in the Gimp King's sex swing spider web at the ceiling.

Jessie winked as she hurried past. The Gimp King returned to his ceiling spider web. The hero party sheepishly slipped out the back door, all embarrassed and cute.

"Admiral!" shouted the radar tech. She was still naked, but so was everyone else. "We're detecting the worldslayer's signature thirty kilometers ahead."

I pushed another naked dude off me and brought it up on screen. Sure enough, Marianna's mystery ship was right there, right in range of us. "Launch the nukes!" I ordered. "Battle stations!"

The alarm began to wail again, and the crew struggled to reform in this lack of gravity.

"Full speed ahead," I said. "Put us in jet range."

"Admiral, our fuel!"

"Shit."

The ship vibrated as we launched our volley of nukes, and in the darkness of space, the missiles looked haunting by their stillness. The nuke rocket engines didn't spray a line of smoke as they usually did, and they moved with such precision and measured momentum that it was as though a mage were levitating it over.

I watched with bated breath. This was our best shot to stop Marianna in her tracks. To stop her before she developed into a monster.

"Time to impact: 33 seconds."

I gripped my seat. The crew stared through the windows. Marianna's ship was a red smudge in the darkness, but on the screens, her ship was a demon. A behemoth. A final boss of space-borne battleships.

"20 seconds."

I held my breath.

"10 seconds."

Something flashed in front of Marianna's ship. Was it? No. Not the nukes.

It was a portal!

"Impossible," said Jessie from the screen. "She's spawning a dimensional gate to the outer reaches."

"5 seconds."

I grit my teeth. Marianna's ship coasted through the portal, and the nuke missiles raced just behind--

And the portal snapped shut.

A moment of silence came.

Then another.

"Uh, Redrim," said the Card King. He was also still naked. "What's the, uh, plan now? We're out of fuel, and we don't have enough to get back down from orbit."

"Fuck."