Like last time, we began with an exchange of pleasantries.

“Thought you could escape me, Godless scum? You must not know the meaning of what it means to be a hunter.”

“Yeah, go fuck yourself.”

“If your attacks are as slow as your wit, this battle is already over.”

“Do you come here just to hear yourself talk? You can do that literallyanywhere else in the world and you would get a warmer reception. In fact, try it, please. Go fuck off to Russia or something and tell me how your speech went when you’re done. I’ll wait.”

“Arrogant pest, you dare to mock me, even at the end of your existence?”

“I warned you last time, Karu. I’m not holding back this time. You come here and pick a fight with me, you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself when you get hurt.”

“I am harder to hurt than you think, serpent.” She glowered at me, her visor glinting dangerously in the brilliant sunset.

“Do you have to work really hard to come up with things to call me with every quip, or do you just cycle through them?”

“I will not be made a mockery of. I have been more than gracious in allowing you final words, now take them to your grave!”

Without any further exchanges, she dove at me at full speed, the superheated plasma from her jetpack flaring out in all directions behind her like a blue halo.

But I wasn’t lying about not holding back this time. I wasn’t dancing around and getting burns on my back again. The last ones still bothered me every night when I went to sleep. This time I stood my ground.

With hardly a thought, a bolt of lightning formed from each of my hands, and I held them in front of me in an X, putting them between me and her. Another pair of blades materialized out of the air and, as though suspended by extra-long arms sprouting from my sides, did the same, forming a web of lightning between me and her.

Karu, meanwhile, was at maximum speed and couldn’t simply stop. She twisted and the streaks of plasma trailing behind her became a spiral as she rolled to the side, veering wide of me. As she passed, I heard a deafening extended explosion. It was enough to make me jump, and it was only after I’d felt the burning spray of metal shrapnel bouncing off me that I realized she’d just unloaded an automatic weapon at me while she flew past.

The burns stung and my ears rang but she was wheeling around for another pass. Not full speed this time, she’d learned that didn’t work already, but she also wasn’t ready to give up after one try.

I held my stance and looked for her to get close enough to get a swipe in. I had my lobbed lightning grenades, but I think they exploded on impact, and if she wasn’t close to the ground, it wouldn’t touch her, and I wasn’t confident in my aim enough to nail her moving. The targets I threw at were usually moving much closer to human running speed than mach 1.

Sure enough, this time she broke into a roll much earlier, keeping her out of my reach, and raised her arms to barrage me with fire as she passed.

This time though, she shot lasers instead of bullets. As I’d learned when I accidentally levelled the XPCA facility, my lightning had a much easier time chasing down the source of a laser than a bullet.

The lasers weren’t even visible in the air before my shield arced and bolts of electricity jumped out to meet them, disrupting their flight and following the beams to their source. I saw surprise on Karu’s face for a fraction of a second as it was illuminated by the lightning surging towards her before the bolts landed and she seemingly froze in midair, writhing like a marionette with half its strings cut.

I had to give credit to whoever designed the jetpack, though. Even as Karu reeled and twitched involuntarily, the thing stayed intact and did its damnedest to keep her upright. Her momentum sent her plowing into the ground about twenty yards from me, but it was a soft landing, relatively speaking.

She was down only for a second before stirring and getting a wobbling leg under her.

“You–were–foolish,” she gasped out. “Last time. To–show–me…your…powers.” She grinned and patted her armor, which I only now noticed looked slightly different than in the first encounter.

“Resistive armor?” I asked, mildly impressed despite myself. It had done its job, and she was in much better shape than anyone else who’d tried that trick on me before.

She struggled to her feet, and then lifted into the air gracefully, her legs dangling under her weirdly. “And…with every…trick you show me…I grow closer to…your defeat…and God’s glory…” She seemed to be having a hard time talking, her jaw clenching and her face twitching involuntarily. I pitied her for a moment. I had no qualms with fighting back against someone who was actively hunting me, but that didn’t mean I wanted them to suffer.

“Don’t you dare look at me like that,” she said, now more fully composed. “Don’t you dare pity me! I AM GOD’S CHOSEN CHAMPION, AND YOU ARE FILTH!”

Hoo, boy, she was pissed now.

She spun straight up into the air and once a couple dozen feet up, came to a halt, facing me with her arms and legs thrown wide.

“FACE JUSTICE!” she screamed, and from her hips, back, and the huge cluster of weapons on her arms, dozens of micro-missiles screeched out, streaking towards me, their twisting smoke trails like a pair of ethereal wings collapsing on me.

Unfortunately for Karu and the angelic metaphor, I knew that missiles were the one thing my shield loved to chase even more than lasers. Instinctively, I tried to stop her, warn her, anything, but it was too late, and the dozens of missiles were already on their way.

Using my swords, I tried to cut down as many as I could before they impacted my shield, but there were too many. I only got maybe half before lightning surged from nowhere and obliterated the screaming missiles, and then surged up their contrails and into Karu’s spread-eagle body.

She shuddered and jerked horrifically, screaming the whole while. Smoke billowed from her suit and at least one thing on her arm exploded spectacularly, sending her spinning and reeling. For a moment, it looked like the explosion sent her further skyward, but after that moment, it became obvious she was unconscious and began to plummet to the ground.

I was running towards her before I could even process what I was doing. Her pack was doing what it could to keep her aloft, but she was tumbling end-over-end and the many spindly wings on the thing were unable to orient her in any meaningful way. Only a dozen yards now, and I urged my legs to move faster.

I was back in practice again. Even the quarterback had to do drills, and I wasn’t even always a quarterback. Running one way, looking another, trying to catch a ball that’s just out of reach, and then catching it anyway.

At least my gear was lighter now.

The ball, however, was heavier. Much, much, much heavier. She fell into my waiting arms and I felt the unpleasant buzz of lingering electricity pass into me. Then her full weight was on me, as well as that of her arms, armor, and jetpack, and my momentum carried me another step forward as my legs gave out under us. I took the brunt of her fall, but we both slammed into the grass, rolling several times before coming to a halt.

I’d instinctively tucked in my arms and head as I rolled, having been tackled dozens of times before, but Karu was out, and flopped wildly. Her jetpack was smart enough to retract itself before it became splinters. Even before she rolled, I think one of her arms was broken from the explosion, and watching it bounce around in the crash made me feel sick.

In the aftermath, I gave myself a few seconds to assess and recover before staggering up. Bruises everywhere. Legs stung like hell for pushing them to run so fast, arms hurt like hell for trying to catch a free-falling 200 lb tank. Knees and pants ripped to shreds from my first bounce. Miraculously, nothing sprained or broken feeling. I took a deep breath and put my feet under me. Good, stable.

Karu was a mess in a heap. Something on her was still smoldering, and her arm was definitely broken, lying the wrong way across her prone body. She was torn up all over the place, but what I really needed to know was if I’d just added another body to my headcount.

I crawled close and couldn’t see her breathing. I leaned in putting my ear over her mouth and couldn’t hear her breathing. Shit. I swore under my breath then checked for a pulse. No pulse. Shit. I sat back, reeling for a moment.

I had never wanted this. This fight, this life, this exile, this power. It felt like my powers weren’t the only thing I’d gained that one night after waking up, I’d also gained a curse. How many more people would make me do this? How many more still bodies would pile up in my memories. And for what? At the end of the day, why was I even fighting so hard to stay alive?

To protect my home, protect myself? Why? So that I could claim more lives in the future?

I felt hot tears streaming down my face and hated myself for my self-pity. Here I was wallowing in misery when the person next to me was dead. Dead! Dead, dead, dead, dead!

I slammed an impotent fist into the ground and was numb to the pain.

Then I looked at my fist, bits of grass stuck to my knuckles, matted with blood from numerous scratches. Then I looked to Karu’s still body, and had a thought.

To be part of the football team, we often had to attend school events or even volunteer. Most of them were stupid, silly things. Volunteer lifeguard. Chaperone events. Hang fliers. Community-crap, we called it…but not in earshot of Coach.

But one thing we had to participate in was CPR training. It stuck with me because of how off-the-rails the whole thing had gone, from Brick making out with the dummy to us trying to break the stupid thing by really pounding the shit out of it, to asking the poor, flustered instructor all manner of irreverent and inappropriate questions.

We’d all thought it was a huge waste of time. Every mobile device in the world had an emergency mode where it could act as an emergency instructor or even defibrillator, depending on the thing’s voltage.

Today, I resolved, that stupid community-crap waste of time was going to save someone’s life. Not a life particularly worth saving, but one that I refused to take.

I unstrapped the tangle of buckles crisscrossing her chest and peeled her vest off her frontside, careful not to move her or upset the numerous canisters and grenades hanging off of it. Two hands, one on top of the other in the center of the chest. The instructor had said that and commended Brick on his form, before he went to town, pounding the shit out of the dummy as fast as possible.

Press down hard, to the beat of Memento Mori, that crap pop song from my grandfather’s generation. I remembered one of our halfbacks serenading the dummy with that as he pumped, and got the whole team singing and laughing.

Thirty beats. Brick pretended he couldn’t count that high and had the instructor teach him numbers after ten.

And then…

I looked down at her still body. She was tough and tanned, bristling with weapons. Her blonde mohawk and buzzed sides made even her hair scream ‘fuck off.’ She was dressed conservatively, pragmatically, zipped and buckled and velcroed into a drab and camo shell. Even her eyes were hidden away, behind the now scratched-and-scorched visor, with its dangerous-looking horizontal eyes, which even offline now, glimmered ominously in the fleeting sunlight.

But her lips looked round and soft as any girls’ I’d ever seen. Her teeth, straight, white, well-cared-for, slightly parted like she was about to take a bite of something delicious.

This is to save her life, I reminded myself. Right now, she’s technically dead, so this is literally the least sexy thing ever. I needed to stop wasting time, put my lips on hers, and fill her lungs with air. So I did.

Even after all that, they were soft and warm.

I stayed focused and repeated CPR another dozen times. What was next? What was I missing?

I knew the answer, of course. First step, call for help. Last step, repeat until help arrives.

I kept going but my arms, already hurting from the fall, were on fire now. What else was there to do? There had to be something.

I pumped away and went over the course again. After CPR was…was…

It hit me. Application and use of an AED. Automatic external defibrillator. An electric jolt to the heart in case of cardiac arrest, arrhythmia…or electrical accident stopping the heart.

Again, I felt the guys with me as I went through the steps. Step one:

And I stopped.

This was so fucking wrong.

I remembered Peterson’s voice lifting about the room, asking the instructor with mock concern. “But what if the victim is a girl, and she’s wearing a bra?”

“Then you carefully move the bra above the patient’s chest before applying the AED,” came the instructor’s patient response.

I swallowed heavily and un-velcroed and unzipped her flight suit. It fell open, and covered by a white tank top, her large breasts popped out. I had to stop again for a moment, my every action weighing the value of saving this person’s life against…what was basically necrophila at this point. I rolled up the tank, revealing her bra and honed abs. Her tan lines were intense, and it was obvious that she did much of her training in nothing more than a tank. I took a deep breath and, as the training said, moved the bra above the patient’s chest.

If it weren’t so entirely fucked, it would have been the most glorious moment of my teenage life.

One after the other, the two huge globes came tumbling out, each well larger than my hand, and flatter and less spherical than I’d expected. Right in the middle of each, looking a little small for the size of the breast was a dark circle, which after examining them both so closely, I realized was the same creamy pink as her lips. They looked so soft and smushed down against her reclining form.

I didn’t even give myself a full second to stare. One pad would go under the breast on the right side, the other above on the left. I put my hands in those positions, taking care not to touch the huge, glorious breasts, took a deep breath again and force a small shock through my arms.

There wasn’t a dramatic jump like you saw in the holos. If she moved at all, it was because I’d pressed my fists into her torso, making her breasts sway. There was definitely a jolt though, I could feel it through her. I pressed a finger to her neck to check for a pulse.

It was there. It was there! It was faint, and hard to feel under my own heart racing, but it was there! I bent forward and saw her chest rising and falling. It was the most beautiful thing in the world. Despite this whole thing being my fault, I’d just saved my first life. Relief flooded through my whole being and I wanted to just collapse and rest and bask in it.

But the sun was almost down now and my job wasn’t done just yet. Almost sadly, I pulled her bra back down and tried to get her breasts to cooperate in going back inside it. As I kneaded and prodded the soft warm flesh back into place, I felt like I’d only moved from necrophilia to rape at this point, and was still not really enjoying my first breast experience. Finally, they were put away as best as I could manage, and I rolled her tank back down.

And now what? Leave her to freeze? It seemed stupid to save her life just to abandon her, but it seemed even stupider to do anything else. I sighed and swore at the unconscious girl but gently as possible lifted her onto my back, trying to keep her broken arm from swinging, and carried her back towards the bunker.

Man, if AEGIS had issue with me bringing Wynn and Tate home, she was going to flip when she saw this.