Helion

Eve could hear the shuffling of bodies from below; obscured by concrete stairs and steel railings, their enemies were moving into advantageous positions to stymie their assault. The bottom level was on the other side of eight sets of steps, the majority of which would hold cultist lackeys. “So, we charge down or slowly pick our way through them; what's easier?” Carmine had finally unslung her SPH from around her shoulders and held it at a casual readiness.

Eve half shrugged as she replied. “I say fuck it, we don't have a lot of time, and worst case scenario, I get shot and you carry me down. If that doesn't work, then we're waiting for backup regardless, so there's no sense in being a pussy about it.”

“Alright, I lead; you follow; try to keep up.” Eve drew in a long breath as Carmine hunched and then stalked forward in a predatory stance. Eve tracked the growing distance between them and the top of the stairs to ensure threats didn't emerge from any of the doors they passed.

Carmine came to the first landing and, with a loud, electric ‘thump’, showered the entire space with super-sonic shards of tungsten. The sparks generated from the small fragments of metal exploding across the concrete briefly lit up the dim platform, and Eve watched as four guards were shredded into the afterlife. They continued, one floor down, with three to go. The next landing was a replica, but as Carmine stepped past the entrance to the second sublevel, a hail of automatic weapons fire punched through the door, causing Carmine to dodge out into the open sightline of the third sublevel landing.

Eve briefly worried about her lover, but ultimately decided that Carmine had likely already calculated the most optimal outcome for the situation and chose to focus on the door, firing three rounds back into it before using her color to turn it into a large clump of moss that fell to the floor with a ‘wump’. Three cultists stood on the other side, momentarily dumbfounded; a fourth lay crumpled on the floor.

Eve opened up, and two fell to join their partner on the floor. The remaining cultist spun into the doorway behind it, and screams echoed out as it reemerged with a kicking and screaming Whitegirl. “Don't fuckin’ move or I blow this bitches brain-" the cultist was cut off as Eve dumped another five rounds into both of them.

Satisfied that there were no more threats, she turned back to the stairwell to see that Carmine had vanished. “Ahhhh fuck.” Eve dropped into a sprint, grabbing the railing and vaulting halfway down the next flight of stairs.

Another ‘thump’ reverberated up the narrow stairwell from two flights down, and Eve kept pushing. “She isn't going to wait? Fuck me…” After clearing another set in a single leap, Eve finally caught up to her lover. "Could have just-" but Carmine held up a hand and pointed to a closed door.

“Guild hunter. They dipped in as soon as I came around.”

The hairs on the back of Eve's neck stood on end as she reached behind her to re-equip her rifle. Depending on who the hunter was, this could be a grueling and potentially lethal fight. Eve wasn't delusional enough to think she was the best among the hunters; far from it. There were others, like Cassidy, who were far stronger and more capable in a fight. There were still more like Jasper, willing to sell out whoever it took to rise to the top of the food chain. All Eve had going for her was experience and maybe a bit of luck. Hopefully, whoever was on the other side of that door was more like Jasper.

Ultimately it didn't matter; all hunters were superhuman in some capacity, so this wasn't going to be easy either way. As her fingers brushed against the stock of her rifle, the door burst open, and the hunter had her fist buried in Eve's stomach before she could register the movement. As the air was forced out of Eve's chest, she scrambled to grab hold of anything on the woman she could reach, but this hunter was unnaturally flexible, bending and contorting out of Eve's grasp and then out of her reach before she could get a grip.

Eve sank to her knees, desperately trying to get her lungs to work again. Carmine had deftly stepped back to clear space for the confrontation she now had to handle alone. The hunter crouched and then sprang forward, attempting to lunge a short blade into Carmine's ribs. The powerful blow was knocked aside as Carmine slapped the woman's wrist so hard that even Eve could hear the tendons groaning.

Caught off balance, the woman latched onto one of the railing posts and used it to leverage her momentum up and over its side. Carmine wasn't having any of it, though. With the reflexes of a demon cat, she swung her free arm back around and locked her hand around the woman's receding ankle. The woman's body jolted as it met the incredible mass of Carmine's body, stopping her dead in her tracks.

The woman wasn't out of the fight yet, though, as she spun on Carmine, coiling up her torso like a scorpion tail. Another short blade had found its way into her hand and was plunging directly for Carmine's neck. With one hand holding the SPH and the other restraining the woman's ankle, Carmine had little to no recourse against the attack. Right up until Carmine snapped her head over, directly into the path of the blade, clamping her teeth down on it and ripping it out of the woman's hand.

Eve gasped as the air returned to her, reaching for her rifle once again and fumbling for it as the woman rained ineffective blows down on Carmine's head and neck. Carmine spun, swinging the woman around like a baseball bat against the concrete wall. The woman had sensed what was happening and had used her free arms and legs to cushion the blows as much as possible, manipulating her trapped leg to dissipate much of the kinetic force.

Carmine's look grew frustrated as she finally discarded the SPH to the floor and attempted to choke the woman with the newly freed hand. This backfired slightly as the woman wrapped herself around the incoming hand and then strained against the arm restraining her leg, essentially causing Carmine to strike a T-pose. The woman grunted with exertion as she fought to overcome Carmine's mechanical body, and to her credit, it looked like Carmine was slowly losing.

With the woman splayed across Carmine's torso, Eve couldn't get a clear shot at her without risking punching a hole through Carmine as well. Eve stumbled to her feet and, bracing herself against the wall, made her way to the knife that had been slapped out of the woman's hand. Eve hadn't noticed it in the midst of the chaos, but it had been struck with such force that it had become wedged in the wall close to where the two stood deadlocked.

Eve pried the blade from the wall and whirled to drive the point home in the woman's throat. Either because the woman had heard the knife come loose or because she had some wicked sixth sense, the woman relaxed her pull on Carmine just enough to pull her head closer into Carmine's body. Eve's blow barely grazed the woman's skin as her arm whistled down. Recognizing the disadvantage, the woman released her grip on Carmine's arm just long enough to pull a small black orb from a pouch on her hip.

“Let me go, and we all live; keep fighting, and we all die.” The woman's voice was full of venom and cruelty. She had the kind of voice that put you on edge just by hearing it. It reminded Eve of a deadly serpent, waiting for its opportunity to strike. Eve had learned long ago that calling the bluff of someone like this cost you limbs and sometimes lives. She briefly considered trying, but their mission lay elsewhere, and they couldn't afford to find out what that orb had been packed with.

Carmine had her eyes locked on Eve, waiting to see what her lover would choose to do. Eve backed up and slowly nodded to Carmine. "Don't suppose we'll be seeing you again soon?”

The woman smirked as Carmine released her grip on the ankle she held.

“I might come knocking if another bounty comes up for you. I figured I'd get a taste of the old blood before taking a real bite.” She waggled the orb clutched in her hand. "I didn't think you'd be so sturdy, what with how old your ass is. Too bad the guild excommunicated you; I would have loved to jump you on a mission. Anyway, I think I'll be goi-"

Her voice stopped abruptly as a thin red line formed across her throat. Carmine stepped up and gingerly took the orb from her hand as she attempted to swallow.

"First, don't insult my woman; second, war wire makes a horrible necklace.”

The woman blinked as droplets of blood began to well up along the angry red line. Eve hadn't caught the wire in the dim stairwell lighting, and neither had the woman. A burbling hiss pushed out from the woman's throat as her head rolled back and then off her shoulders, cracking into the floor before a jet of blood pulsed from the exposed neck. “Dumb bitch, no one gets to eat Eve but me.”

Eve winced as she turned to collect her rifle. “What's your definition of eat, baby?”

Carmine collected her SPH from the ground as well, still holding the primed orb in her hand. “What do you want it to be?” Carmine paused as she zoned out. "Ah, there we go.” She pressed the priming trigger twice in quick succession, and the small orb powered down.

“Anything that doesn't entail biting off large chunks of my body should be fine, I think.” Eve eyed the small orb as it disappeared into Carmine's pocket.

"Oh, so, like, just the tiny parts are fine, then?”

Eve rolled her eyes at her lover, and they continued down the stairs. “Any idea what was in it? It's a grenade, right?”

Carmine shook her head. “Nah, mil-spec crowd control. Lovingly referred to as ‘The Party Pooper', a noxious mix of capsaicin and aerosolized lysergic acid diethylamide. Mostly meant to cause people to believe they've been sent to hell.”

Eve growled, “So she was fuckin’ bluffing. Fucks sake.”

Carmine clapped her on the shoulder as they passed another door uneventfully. “Can't win 'em all, baby; you'll snag the next one, promise.”

They came to the final floor without running into any further cultists. The Hunter they'd left soaking the stairway in blood was the final barrier between them and their goal. The door leading to the main reservoir chamber had a sigil painted on it in blood; it resembled a squished vertical rectangle with four swirls protruding from the two vertical sides. “Well, I guess we can check off which God they're trying to resurrect, then.” Eve mused as she ran a hand across the symbol.

“If they've sallied forth under the Tamfo Bebre, then it's all the more reason to obliterate these wretched little heathens. Defiling their own kind is one thing, but blaspheming against sacred African iconography like this is just too much, even for them.” Eve seethed at the sight of the ancient Akan symbol scrawled on the door.

“Could be the work of one of the black members, though I'm not sure why they would opt to lend more than passing aid to this band of shrimp-dicks.” Carmine turned her head away from the door to keep from looking at it.

“I don't get it, Carmine. From the start, this whole thing has felt wrong. First Ganon and now Helion, a shitty little group of good-for-nothing faggots galavanting around trying to resurrect a long-dead god, should have been something printed on the back of a child's comic. But for the Guild to back them? Charles? Why would some of the most powerful Black Kings and Queens choose to stoop so far down as to actively assist these useless cum-skins in overthrowing the status quo?”

Carmine shook her head. “There's plenty I can calculate, babe, but the wills of people still elude me. Maybe they're humoring them? Like, maybe they're bored and think the cult isn't for real? Using the cult for a bit of entertainment before crushing them?”

Eve glared back at Carmine. “Carmine, please tell me you did not just indirectly insinuate that our superiors are meddling with things they don't understand.”

Carmine drove her eyes to the floor and apologized before Eve continued with her thought, “No, they know what they're doing. But I think a part of what you said was true, too. They're bored. Like anyone at the mountain top, what else is there left to scale? No more peaks, no more summits... maybe that's fucking it.”

Carmine glanced up to see Eve deep in thought, “Sorry, are you saying they're trying to use the cult to summon a malicious god because... they're bored?”

Eve looked over at her, “Yeah, I think I am. There aren't any wars right now. No struggles for their kind, right? They've peaked, and the opportunities for glory and fame are relegated to the silver screen. They're natural-born predators, Carmine. They were born of God to conquer and conquest, not laze about in apartments fucking white girls all day. They need a conflict, something to sink their teeth into and keep those hardened instincts honed. They need another Race War... Yeah."

Eve snapped her fingers as she continued. “Yeah! But since we all know how the last Race War turned out, they couldn't just do that again; it would be too easy. Hell, whitebois can hardly beat each other, let alone anyone else. No, the whitebois need a distinct advantage."

Carmine's lips formed an ‘O’ as she realized it. “So they're giving the whitebois a fucking God?! Doesn't that seem I don't know... FUCKING INSANE?”

Eve grinned, “Indolence breeds madness, my love. But the question is: do we stop this? It sounds like ultimately their goal is the same as mine: eliminating as many whitebois as possible."

Carmine took on a thoughtful expression before ultimately shaking her head.

“Nah, we gotta stop it. There are too many variables and unknowns. There's too much risk to Black life, and that's unacceptable. I don't think it matters who's calling the shots. If you're putting that many Black lives on the line, you need to go.”

Eve nodded along with her words, “Beautifully put, my heart. Plus, if this God goes buck wild, there may not even be an opportunity for a war. We'll all just be dead. There are better ways to enact the ******** of whites; employing an uncontrollable God and feral faggots is not it.”

Carmine shivered at the thought, “Ugh, so not it... blegh.”

“Alright, we'll try to negotiate and see if there is some peaceful resolution to this, but if it looks like things aren't going our way, well, we gave them every opportunity to do the right thing. This is for the greater good.” Eve placed a hand over her heart, offering a small prayer to her black God in the hopes he was listening.

Carmine mimicked the gesture before readying herself, “Stay close, baby; I'll see how much I can shield you while we move.”

Carmine tucked Eve in close behind her and then opened the door a crack. It opened into a small portal room, likely serving as a pseudo-airlock to keep the smells and contaminants in the reservoir from escaping. A guard was posted on the other end of the hall but seemed more interested in its fingernails than the door they were coming through. With two long strides, Carmine had crossed half the distance before the guard even looked up from its filthy hand. Her fist slammed into its face so violently that its skull tore apart and shards of bone and viscera rattled off of the corrugated steel walls.

Eve scoffed at the display of raw power, “I'm not paying for your drycleaning, just an FYI.”

Carmine giggled cutely before stepping over the corpse. “Bitch, as if you were going to pay for anything! We're loaded, remember? Also, you are sooooo one to talk, little 'Miss Murder'. You're fucking soaked in blood.”

Eve looked down to find Carmine's assessment to be true; her suit had been thoroughly drenched in whiteboi blood. Bits of flesh and brain matter clung to it like wads of lint. “Whatever, I think it adds charm, don't you?”

Eve crossed the grated steel walkway to join Carmine at the other end and Carmine hummed, “Oh yeah, watching you bounce that ass around covered in the guts of slain pin-dicks does things to my pussy I can't mention without blushing.”

Eve stepped up to the tall, blonde android and firmly cupped the crotch of her pants, grinding her palm up into the A.I's artificial clit. “Oh? Do you mean, my pussy? This one? Tell me, Carmine, what does it do to this little pussy that I own?”

Carmine's eyes widened, and she smiled smugly at Eve's attempt to dominate her. “My my, aren't you the brave little kitten today? Are you sure you want to go down this road with me? I'm not saying I'd complain, but... I don't think you'd make it, 'Mas...ter'." Her punctuation of the word master made the hairs on the back of Eve's neck stand on end, her fight or flight response detecting the implied threat.

Eve wasn't a particularly prideful woman, or at least she believed she wasn't. This night had called into question exactly how highly she thought of herself. Pining for the affections of her superiors, fancying herself some grand revolutionary, and now attempting to put herself above Carmine. All of these examples served to illuminate precisely where she fell on the food chain.

For all the swagger and poise she masked herself with while on the job, there was no getting around the fact that she was a bottom bitch. She was a cunt-to-be-fucked, a tool for others' sexual gratification; even among other women, she was destined to be a submissive, wet, mewling slut. Eve slowly retracted her hand, unable to bring herself to look at Carmine due to the embarrassment of overstepping her place.

“Good girl, do that again, and I'm breaking all of your fingers one by one. Just because you ‘own’ me doesn't mean you're ‘above’ me. Now kiss the back of my hand, apologize, and tell me you love me.”

Eve panted through the lust that had begun to blaze in her chest; everything Carmine was saying drove her further into heat. She took hold of Carmine's hand and gingerly lifted it to her lips, brushing them gently across the back of it.

“I'm sorry, Carmine. I love you.”

Carmine flicked her hand out of Eve's grasp and snapped her fingers around Eve's cheeks, pinching them together so that Eve looked more like a fish than anything.

“The fuck did you just call me? I know you did not just use my fucking name to apologize. Try that again, and get it fucking right this time, you cunt.”

Carmine released Eve's cheeks and replaced her hand for Eve to grab. Eve took it up once more and repeated the gesture, “I'm sorry, mistress. I love you.”

Carmine purred as Eve subjected herself to the belittling, “You're such a fun little toy. Honestly, I never saw myself as much of a dom, but you're just such a pussy-whipped cunt that I can't help it. This may be my favorite thing, now that I think about it.”

Eve wasn't sure how much she appreciated the tone of complete and total satisfaction in Carmine's voice, but she wasn't entirely sure she cared, either. Eve knew on an intuitive level that Carmine thought the world of her, loved her, and, above all else, actually respected her. That was enough for Eve. She'd follow Carmine into the very center of hell without a second thought because of those simple things.

“Leave you two alone for twenty minutes, and you start fucking. Can't fuckin’ bring you anywhere, can we?” Eve whirled in the direction of the voice, so startled that Carmine had to physically restrain her from lunging at Cassidy. “Ahoy-hoy, sluts. It looks like we missed quite the party coming’ down those stairs.”

A swarm of white bois piled into the small corridor behind her, and Jasper slowly made her way to the front of them. “Ugh, get the fuck out of my way! Move! I said, ‘protect’ me, not fucking'smother' me!”

They both retracted their helmets, and Eve could see the trip down the stairs had winded Jasper; a light shimmer of sweat coated her exposed skin. Cassidy put her hands on her hips and huffed, “So, now that the gangs are all here, how's about we stomp out our frustrations on some cultist throats?"

Eve put up a hand and interjected, “Before we get to that, Carmine and I think we've figured out why our superiors have decided to help the cult.”

Cassidy quirked an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah? Carmine filled us in already.”

Eve turned to her buxom lover and curled her fist. "Didn't think that was worth sharing with me, huh?”

Carmine rolled her eyes. “Oh shush, you're just embarrassed and angry that I left you out of the communications. This is the least important thing we have going on right now, please.”

Eve gaped at her before slamming her helmet back up and bringing her rifle around to check the ammo.

“Oh shit! girls! We're going! Fuck, Eve just cal-" But Eve didn't care; Eve was pissed, and Whitebois needed to die for it.

With a blind rage, Eve hauled back and put her boot into the door latch. The mechanism exploded, and the door buckled as it swung open. The small pneumatic piston responsible for softly closing the door imploded before being ripped from the wall and pulled along with the now-inoperable door. The shriek of steel and protesting hinges made the entrance to the reservoir echo across the giant chamber.

The room was easily 500 feet across and ran in a giant circle. About 30 feet down from the gangway were multiple swirling pools of dark water. The bright halogen lights suspended from the ceiling lit the walkways but still cast long shadows across the domed roof. Several other doors ringed the structure, and a central two-tier platform sat suspended by thick steel cables at the nexus of the many walkways.

Eve noticed two things immediately: first, a large group of people had gathered on the second tier of the central platform, three of whom appeared to be young women; and second, allowing her rage to overcome her may not have been the most advantageous decision. Every single head in the colossal room swiveled towards her at the same time. Many of them carried weapons. Instead of retreating into the room, Eve doubled down, hunching low, and poured as much power as she could into crossing the catwalk quickly.

Even with this additional effort, Cassidy easily cleared her overhead, launching herself fully 30 feet down the steel walkway and deforming the steel under her boots with each powerful push off the steel grating. Carmine simply vanished; one moment she was at the entrance behind Eve, and the next she was gone, likely scaling the roof to provide oversight for them. Jasper had her flunkies slowly spreading down the ringed walkway running the perimeter of the room, making their way towards the guards, who were now thoroughly confused as to what was happening.

Eve looked back towards the double platform in the center; aside from a few cultists guarding the bottom tier, the majority of the remaining figures were all gathered on the upper tier. They'd formed a circle around the perimeter of the hexagonal platform with their hands clasped at their sides, forming a long daisy chain. Some wore robes, others just wore casual street clothes, and others were just completely naked, and it made Eve wonder just how slapdash their operation was. At the center of the circle were three young women, one of whom was Melody.

They looked unconscious from where Eve was, and she doubted they'd been sacrificed yet, since nothing was happening but they were coming damn close to that time. The women had been strung up on large poles, taking the form of the crucifix, in some strange attempt to blaspheme further by mixing theologies. Christianity had been stamped out after the Race War had been won, with the population of its staunchest believers being almost entirely white. Pathetic cucks like them had never really stood a chance, and the indomitable will of the BNWO had effortlessly put them down.

Eve was intended by the sight; it wasn't enough for them to ape sacred Akan symbology; they had to pervert it with their disgusting cuck faith, too. She gritted her teeth as the rage nearly frothed out of her mouth. She could feel the savagely feral desires creeping along her spine as bullets ricocheted off the decking at her feet. Her vision narrowed, and the platform was all she could see. Four hooded figures stood in the center of the group, in between the three suspended women.

Three of them were noticeably taller and broader than the other, and Eve's heart skipped a beat. They were black; even from this distance, their build made it clear. A bullet caught her arm, but she barely noticed. Cassidy had reached the end of the walkway and was on a direct course for the opposite side of the reservoir. Eve hurtled over a corpse and came to a stop on the central platform. Scanning the walls, she found that Jasper's dead heads had clogged up on one side as they met considerable resistance.

There was a black man there, alternating between viciously swinging a steel baton and firing his pistol into the hoard. Eve hesitated before raising her rifle. She couldn't catch her breath and couldn't stop quaking long enough to get a clear shot. She blinked, reminding herself that it had to be done; they needed to do this. Even just a wounding shot to his leg or his shoulder would be enough to let them progress. “C’mon Eve, pull the trigger, you coward. C'mon, just squeeze it. Right there, between his bicep and rotator cuff, a week in a sling would be the worst case for him. Just shoot your damn weapon.”

But her mind and heart were both screaming out in pain. Even after fully understanding the necessity of it, her love and passion for her Black Kings still overrode any rational motivation.

“He's going to be fine, baby, trust me. You couldn't kill him, even if you wanted to. You aren't strong enough for that. Just let him handle it. He's made of tougher stuff than you are, so don't think too hard about it, alright?” Carmine's voice rolled over her ears like a soothing balm. Relieving her of any doubts she held. She was right; this was just her ego getting back into her head again. Thinking she could do any substantial damage to her superiors was both ignorant and arrogant of her. Even with a gun, the difference between them was so vast that thinking she could somehow overcome them was insane. She pulled the trigger, and the black man fell to the ground.

Eve stared at him. “Move, fucking move. Grab at the wound. MOVE! SOMETHING!”

Finally, she saw an arm sweep up to clutch his shoulder, and her heart started beating again. She felt like she was about to faint, but Carmine was back in her ear. “Told you, now get your ass up there and see if we can't put the brakes on this bullshit.”

Eve hesitated a moment longer and then turned to the stairs going up to the second tier.

Stepping to the top of the platform with her rifle at her shoulder, she scanned the figures around the perimeter. She spotted Francisco under one of the hoods, as she expected. But to her shock and horror, she spotted Gloria next to him. "Oh... not you too, Sister..."

The cult members hadn't moved or looked up from where they stood when she'd reached the top, too consumed by the low chanting to notice the world around them.

An intricate design had been painted across the open space in the middle of the platform, and Eve noticed for the first time that it shimmered with the same rainbow color as her own. “That's fuckin’... not good.” She swung her gun to the center and called out, “Charles! Charles, I know you're here. You need to stop this before it's too late!”

None of the heads turned; there wasn't even a twitch or flinch at the shout. “I'm serious! I don't want to start firing, but if you don't break this off, I will! I mean it!”

The keening of desperation started to enter her voice involuntarily, and her hands started to shake once more. She adjusted her grip on her gun and licked her lips. “Don't make me do this!”

Finally, there was some movement, but it wasn't any of the three large figures. It was the small one; it turned to face her, and as it pulled the hood back, she was assailed by the vision of the whitest person she'd ever seen. Snow-white hair, eyes so blue they looked like crystals, and skin so white they practically glowed from the reflected light. “I need you to shut the fuck up.”

It spoke with a strangely intense voice. Eve felt the compulsion to slam her jaw shut as the words vibrated her blood. But the awoken child in her womb negated the impulse, driving it off with a flick of the wrist. Eve didn't understand what had just happened, but she pushed forward. “No, I need you to stop this. We are not going into a second Race War because of you. Tell them to quit chanting!”

The small whiteboi? Girl? Eve couldn't tell, momentarily held a look of shock that quickly morphed into frustration.

“How did you do that? Get on your knees, whelp!”

The words came out more forcefully this time, and Eve gritted her teeth under the weight of their influence. Once again, her child deflected the pressure, and she remained standing.

“I… I don't know what you're doing, but it isn't working. I'm giving you one last chance to end this, or I'll fucking brain you!”

The little gremlin snarled as it spun away from her; it shrieked out a command, and all at once the cultists around her exploded into motion: “FUCKING KILL THIS BITCH, ALL OF YOU!”

For the barest of moments, Eve thought she saw the distinct shimmer of her color in the white things' mouths. “Shit! Fuck! LADIES HELP!”

Eve dodged a pair of grasping hands from behind and vaulted over the off-balance cultist, attempting to gain some distance between herself and the two dozen bodies on the platform.

The three black men that had been standing next to the gremlin had turned and were now cautiously approaching her as well. Eve directed her rifle at one of them, but Gloria stepped into her path, her spade earrings glinting in the harsh overhead light. “Fucking shit! Gloria, what are you doing?! That's your ******** up there!” Eve dodged again, this time cracking the butt of her gun into the side of the whitebois skull.

Gloria didn't speak; she just kept approaching with a blank expression on her face, tears streaming down her cheeks. The gremlin had maneuvered to just beneath one of the poles and, with a long pike, proceeded to jam it into the ribs of the first woman. “GIRLS, STOP THE SMALL ONE; IT'S FINISHING THE… THING.” Eve couldn't quite articulate what that was—a summoning? Ritual? Rite?

Carmine crackled to life on the comm, “Got it.” The muted ‘thump’ of her SPH sounded from somewhere overhead, and the gremlin lurched as a solid slug of depleted uranium ripped through its upper torso. It was like a balloon filled with spaghetti had popped. Organs and blood blew out across the grating and drained into the massive pool directly underneath. But the cultists did not stop their advances.

One of the ones towards the back turned and sprinted for the pike, tucking and rolling as it dove to pick it up. Eve smacked away the hands of another cultist before she felt the hard steel of the railing press into her back. “CARMINE, ANOTHER ONE, TAKE IT DOWN!” The call didn't go out fast enough, and Carmine's shot passed through the cultist's head at the same moment the pike slid between the ribs of the sacrifice on the pole.

“FUCK FUCK FUUUCK, CAS WHERE ARE YOU?!” At the same moment the words finished leaving her mouth, Cassidy slammed down onto the platform behind the group of cultists. Another of them had peeled off from the group heading towards the pike, but Cassidy grabbed it as it passed and crushed its skull between her hands. “THROW THE PIKE OVER, GET IT OFF THE PLATFORM!!!” This time, one of the black men turned and made a dead sprint for Cassidy.

She had just enough time to grab the pike before he was on top of her. Eve hopped up onto the railing and then launched herself over the group, wary of Gloria, who turned to watch her glide through the air. The Black King had grabbed onto the haft of the pike, and Cassidy strained herself against his might, trying to wrestle the weapon free. “EVE, WE NEED TO TAKE THEM OUT OR THEY'LL KEEP COMING!”

Carmine was right; eventually, they'd bog Eve down and kill her, and at this rate, Cassidy was going to lose her struggle for the pike. But it didn't make any sense. Eve was certain the little Gremlin had colors; otherwise, the commands it had given wouldn't have been nearly as forceful. So now that it was dead, its effect on the mob should have disappeared too, right? Something wasn't adding up, unless the Gremlin hadn't been the main body to begin with.

A decoy? Eve started snatching back hoods as she danced around the hoard; every single one of them wore an earpiece. “SHIT, CARMINE, WHERE ARE THE COMM SIGNALS COMING FROM?!”

Carmine made a confused noise before realizing what Eve meant: “OH FUCK, HOW DID I- ABOVE US! OUTSIDE THE BUILDING!”

Eve gritted her teeth. She should have put this together faster, and Carmine should have recognized what was happening. She started tearing out the earpieces as she went, severing the connection between these drones and the controller. It was a color similar in nature to Jasper's but seemed to only compel people within earshot. Once the source of instruction had been broken, so too did its hold on them. Eve heard a snap and turned to see the pike splinter into two lengths as Cassidy stumbled back.

The black man wasted no time and drove his end of the pike into Cassidy's stomach. She launched back and crashed into the railing as the King turned to shove the broken end into Melody. “CARMINE!!!!!” Another thump sounded, and the black man's arm separated at the elbow, sending his forearm and the pike cartwheeling through the air.

Right up until he grabbed hold of it with his other hand and proceeded to slam the pike into Melody’s ribs. “NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! FUCK!” Eve screamed as the King collapsed. The rest of the cultists fell to the floor like discarded marionettes. Jasper came up the steps as Cassidy slowly worked her way up the railing. Carmine plummeted back down to the platform, and Eve ran over to the pole where Melody had been strung up. “Help me get her down!” Eve waited for Carmine and Cassidy to boost her up to undo the lashings holding the unconscious woman to the pole.

She was young, very young, probably no older than 19. She had a youthful face that had been bruised and cut, likely during her kidnapping. The other two women were already dead, but Melody might still have a chance. “Carmine, what can we do?”

Eve gently lowered the woman to the floor, keeping a hand over the leaking puncture mark. Her pink tube top read “Creampie Cutie” across the front, and Eve briefly made a note that she wanted one like it.

"The wound looks pretty deep; it damaged her stomach and her lung, too.”

On cue, Melody coughed up some blood, staining her shirt and causing her to start choking. “Fuck! What do we do?!” And then Eve remembered how it had felt to exchange energies with her teammates. The invigorating effect of being suffused with color: Melody hadn't been impregnated with a god-child, but Eve was desperate. Turning her to the side slightly, she slowly began to feed her color into Melody.

Minutely, barely a hint of a trickle, almost nothing. Eve started slow, hoping to feel something take place, hoping to sense Melody's body latch onto the power. She increased the output, praying to her Black God that Melody would make it. Melody's eyes fluttered open, and she inhaled wetly before choking again. Eve locked eyes with her, and she burbled, “Mama? Oh…” before coughing up more blood.

Eve was struck by the words. She rang like a massive bell as they crashed into her mind. She was small again, kneeling next to her dying mother, trying to stuff the blood back into her body. "No, nonononono, not you too!”

Melody wheezed as she tried to refocus her eyes. "Mama, it's cold. I…” But that was all she could say.

Eve felt her go limp in her hands. Melody sagged as if being relieved of some tremendous weight. The burden of life slowly bleeding from her body. A small piece of Eve's mind broke. She wasn't sure which piece it was or what it did, but she could feel it break. Like a small auxiliary gear snapping off its spindle. The painted lines on the floor of the decking flared to life; shimmering, pearlescent light washed the ceiling as the lines began to blaze more brightly.

Eve numbly got to her feet, shuffling away from Melody's corpse with the other three women. This was it. The end of Helion and the start of a new age. War would be waged on a scale humanity had never witnessed. Lives would be lost in numbers only dreamed about in fiction. And at the epicenter of that future, Eve stood broken. She'd failed. Not just the mission, but Melody as well.

The women beside her were trying to speak, but there was an electric buzz in the air that made it difficult to hear. The colors on the floor pooled together and began to swirl, twisting into a rainbow vortex that sank below the decking. Once more, Eve had been left with an empty hand; all the cards she'd been dealt had been duds.

Where had it all gone wrong? Probably too many places, the food they'd eaten, letting those women go, saving Cassidy, and speaking with Carmine in the entryway. Maybe. Before then? Moping in the apartment, eating Ronnie's ass? This had been a train wreck running in slow motion ever since Eve took on the job, and no one had stopped it.

But, no, that wasn't right. It had started much earlier. Back when she was still just a child. This had all started when she'd had her life torn away from her. The meaning of joy and happiness had been something more to her than being bent over the hoods of cars by Black men. She had been laughing in the arms of her mother, swaddled in her warmth and scent. Things had always worked out back then, and it all changed the moment those two slimy fucks walked in and took her mother from her.

Every instance of Eve being betrayed, sold out, double-crossed, backstabbed, and lied to had all originated from Whitebois. Even now, just tonight, Mason has sold her out due to the influence of this shitty little cult. The same was true of Ronnie. They'd have never fucking done that if it hadn't been for the influence of these two-bit, lowlife, scum-sucking, pin-dick losers.

Once again, Eve had been on the receiving end of their fucking malice. Their racial jealousy, their indignation, and their refusal to simply learn their fucking place as humanity's toilet. Once again, their arrogance and ineptitude had robbed her of her ambitions, stealing even the smallest scrap of satisfaction she could have had. Them and this stupid fucking God.

Well fine. Let them struggle. Let them prance about as if their efforts had any effect; let them revel in their perversion. Their days were numbered, and for as long as Eve still drew breath, they would never be safe. She was going to kill their fucking God and then shove its stupid, dismembered head onto a fucking stick to parade around the city. She was going to personally use its skull as a shit bucket before drowning the next whiteboi she saw in it.

If they thought they could take even a single other thing from her, then they were past wrong. The other women had slowly stepped away from Eve as she stewed in her anger; she hadn't realized it, but she'd been emitting unrestrained wisps of her color as her rage built. They lashed off her body into the air, curling and dancing like rainbow flames.

Something started to emerge from the color vortex in front of them. Eve couldn't tell what it was at first, but as more of it rose out, she recognized a hand. It was massive, easily 12 feet across, and covered in scars. It slapped down on the platform, and the entire structure groaned. “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THAT?!” Cassidy looked at the other girls to see if they were all seeing the same thing.

“LOOKS LIKE IT'S THE HAND OF THE JEALOUS GOD.” Carmine replied easily, as though it were just some average event. Eve piped up before they could continue, “NO, THATS THE HAND OF A VERY FUCKING DEAD GOD.” And she opened fire. Her bullets harmlessly sank into the flesh of its fingers like grains of sand. Barely eliciting a twitch. The wounds instantly healed, and within a few seconds, it was like she'd done nothing at all.

“WOW, YEAH, SUPER DEAD. LOVE THAT FOR US.” Eve glanced over at Cassidy, who wilted under her pressure. “CARMINE, HIT IT WITH A SLUG.” Carmine braced herself and then let off a round. It blew apart the nail of its middle finger, and this time the hand shot back into the widening portal on the floor. Maybe if the damage was more substantial, it wouldn't be able to heal it as quickly.

But those hopes were dashed when the hand reemerged completely whole. It slammed down with more force, sending the women stumbling and snapping two of the support ropes. A second hand started to creep out of the portal, and Eve could see the crest of a balding head beginning to peek out from the horizon line of the pool of swirling color.

“LADIES?! IDEAS?! "HOW DID YOU KILL A GOD?" Eve racked her brain. She had one of these fuckers growing inside her; if anyone was going to know, then it would be the three of them. Jasper finally spoke up, sounding scared and like she wanted to be anywhere other than where they were.

"IT'S OUR COLORS. HAS TO BE. WE NEED TO FIGHT GOD WITH GOD.” Eve mentally smacked her forehead; obviously, it had to be the colors; anything less wouldn't do shit.

“ALRIGHT, FUCK IT UP!” Eve converted all the remaining bullets in her magazine and started picking her shots; Cassidy did the same, and parts of the giant emerging from the pool of liquid light began to flake off and disappear.

Its eyes finally peaked out from the expanding portal, and they locked directly onto Eve; she wasted no time in dumping the rest of her rounds into those massive, multi-colored orbs. The monstrous creature screamed as her ammunition tore apart its eyelids and shredded its eyes. It was too big for her rounds to do more than blind it, but Eve noted with satisfaction that it wasn't healing.

Cassidy was doing massive damage to its arms and hands. Its knuckles exploded, and gaping holes formed in its biceps and forearms as she dumped her magazine as well. The god bled profusely, and its inhuman yelling was becoming louder and more desperate. Jasper stood off to the side, not knowing what to do; her color didn't work the same way as theirs, and feeding her whitebois to it would only serve to deplete her army.

“CARMINE, JASPER, WE'LL INFUSE YOUR AMMO; GET OVER HERE.” Jasper quickly came over to Eve's side, and Eve took the small pistol from her. “ANY OTHER AMMO?” Feeding her color into her gun, Eve exchanged it with another loaded magazine from Jasper before handing that back as well. “YOU'RE GOOD; FIRE UNTIL EMPTY.”

Carmine had rushed to Cassidy, who now held the SPH. There wouldn't be much left for Ammo in it, but Eve was banking on that being their ace-in-the-hole. If Carmine could get some good, clean shots in with that behemoth, the God wouldn't stand a chance. But the God wasn't going to stay put for long.

It had an elbow up on the platform, and the remaining support cables groaned ominously as it began to put its true weight onto the steel grating. “CARMINE, GET UP TO THE CEILING. TRY TO EXPLODE THE HEAD.” Eve swept her eyes over the fallen bodies before she found another rifle lying discarded next to a prone form. She sprinted over to it and snatched it up.

As her hand curled around the stock, she thought she caught a hint of mumbling from the body. Glancing up at the God, she kneeled next to the corpse to see if she could make out the sounds. “I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry, I'm sorry.” Eve flipped up the hood to see Gloria staring blindly off into the distance.

“GLORIA, GET UP! GLORIA, YOU HAVE TO LEAVE! You were being controlled; this isn't your fault." There was a metallic screech as one of the cables snapped, and the entire platform lurched violently. The end closest to Eve dipped steeply toward the surface of the churning water below. The lower tier of the central platform didn't have its own support cables, so if this one fell, they both fell, and the dark waters below would take them.

Gloria tumbled away from Eve, turning and rolling across the steel floor until her ribs impacted one of the railings around the perimeter of the hanging deck. “GLORIA!! SNAP OUT OF IT! GET UP!” The god groaned as more shots tore through its body. Its shoulders and most of its chest protruded from the gate, and now that it was leaning on its elbow, it hauled back its right hand to make a swing across the deck.

“LOOK OUT!!”

Cassidy was the first to react, dashing over to Jasper and bodily hoisting the plush woman over her shoulder. The giant's hand came sweeping across the platform, and Cassidy launched herself over it, straining to make the clearance needed with Jasper on top of her. Eve didn't have anywhere to go, so she rode the angle of the platform down to where Gloria had ended up.

She snagged the railing as she slid through it. She could hear Gloria wheezing and made a last-ditch effort to save her. Taking hold of her arm, Eve yanked her off the steel pole she was clinging to and gently tossed the woman to one of the stable walkways below. “RUN, GLORIA! GET OUT OF HERE!”

The woman didn't move, and Eve ran out of time. The hand fluttered Eve's hair as it passed overhead, and Eve pulled herself back up to stand on the railing. The bodies of the other cultists tumbled past her through the railing, splashing into the dark pool below and rapidly disappearing beneath the swirling surface. More people she couldn't save. The God was leaking thick, techno-colored blood from almost every part of its body. Carmine had dug a hand into the concrete of the roof and lined up her shot. The god must have sensed something was coming, and it put its ruined hand up to block the shot.

Carmine's round blew the limb apart, and bits of finger and palm showered down into the water beneath them. Shatter bone and strands of sinew protruded from the stump of the god's arm. It shrieked like some great dying horror, the sound utterly drowning out every other sound in the massive room.

Eve watched as it shifted its weight onto its damaged arm, getting ready to swing its other arm up at Carmine. “Oh no, you fucking don't!” Eve leaped up onto its shoulder and jammed her gun into its ear, pulling down the trigger and letting the gun rattle until it clicked. The god's response was to roll its massive head to the side, attempting to crush Eve between its ear and its shoulder.

She left the rifle jammed into the bloody hole she'd blown open before hopping back down onto the tilted platform. “C'mon, Carmine, send it home, baby.” Carmine's second shot caught the god in the temple, and Eve watched as its skull expanded oddly in multiple places. The force of the round deformed its bone plates as it ricocheted through the brain material locked inside.

The god grunted before slamming its chin into the grating. Its arms slowly began retracting back down onto the hole as it began to go limp, but before it sank back to wherever it had come from, it spoke into the growing silence for the first time. "Ahhh, to have such power and such prowess. I know you, mortal Eve; the gods know you, first of your kind. I curse you; I spit envy at your feet. I cast my jealousy upon you such that you may never know satisfaction.”

It spoke clearly, despite having been shot through the head. “No meal shall sate you, no water shall quench you, and no smell shall delight you. I curse you to suffer from wanting, and until such a day as you slay another of my kindred, so it shall be.” Eve could feel the pressure on her child—the unbearable weight of a power far greater than hers.

They tried to fight it off, but parts of the curse still managed to set their hooks inside her. She could feel it dig its way into her soul as the head of the dead god slipped back beneath the color.

“WHO SUMMONED YOU?! How many of you are there? Is there a BLACK God?" Eve pushed past the existential weight of the curse to scream at the receding form of the callous God.

It burbled an echoing laugh as its hands slid across the grating. “Your God hates you; it reviles you; suffer with knowing it would kill you if it met you.” And then it was gone.

The swirling colors on the floor began to dim, and the platform swayed lightly as things returned to some state of normalcy. Carmine dropped down from the ceiling and rushed over to Eve. “Eve! Eve, are you ok? What the fuck did it do? Are you hurt?”

Carmine's hands wandered over her body, and she barely felt it. The last words of the banished God were still tumbling through her mind. There was no way that was true; her God would never hate her for living a pious life of worshiping those made in his image.

The jealous God was simply trying to sew chaos and doubt in her heart. As an avatar for the dying race of whites, what else could it do but disrupt happiness wherever it could? With the help of her child, she could feel that most of the effects of the curse had been avoided, but not all. There was a lack of something within her now, something she couldn't identify.

“I'm alright. Tired, but alright. It cursed me somehow; I am not sure what that means yet, but I can feel it. It's still out there somewhere in the aether, probably healing and plotting its return. Our true enemy slipped through our fingers because we weren't prepared. Someone else has figured out how to awaken their child, and we need to track them down. If they're smart, they've already left Helion.”

Carmine looked at her with worry across her face and said, “Babe, slow down. Just... here, come here.” Carmine swept Eve into a firm hug, bundling the smaller woman into a loving embrace, stroking her hair, and kissing the top of her head. "We'll figure this out; one way or another, we'll get this sorted out.”

Eve wished she believed that, but they'd been shut down just about every step of the way. Constantly two steps behind their enemy and scrambling to make progress against them. Defeating the God was a solid win, but it came at a high price as Eve thought of Melody bleeding out in her arms. The other cultists were no longer on the platform, having tumbled off into the waters below before regaining their wits. Gloria was the only remaining survivor, and she was still semi-catatonic on the walkway below.

“We need to go; the City Guard is putting up a perimeter, so we don't have a lot of time.”

Eve nodded against her lover's shoulder and broke away from the hug. “Cas, can you grab Gloria? Jasper, you still got eyes you can use?”

The women both assented, and they began to make their way out of the reservoir. Bodies lay everywhere; blood splattered across the walls and ceiling from the melee.

It didn't take much for them to slink out of the facility, with Jasper and Carmine monitoring the activity. The City Guard hadn't arrived in full force just yet, and their main focus was the destruction in the lobby for the time being. “I've scrubbed us from all the security footage and replaced us with cultists. Not that it'll do much since they were all in the same bed anyway, but it should buy us some time to come up with a plan.”

Carmine looked across the alley at the treatment facility, blocking the morning sun from her eyes with a bloody hand. “Well, at the very least, we don't appear to be anywhere in the commfeeds. Cassidy and I shouldn't have much trouble fading back into society.” Jasper sat on the back of one of her whitebois, looking every part of the exhausted socialite.

“Yeah, you two should still lay low for a while. Carmine and I will keep an eye out for any descriptions of you two and scrub them as they come up. Also, here's your pay for the job; let's just say the ‘danger pay’ on this one was substantial.” Eve nodded at Carmine, and she returned the gesture.

Cassidy laughed, throwing her head back in defiance of the mood. “Always fuckin' knew you'd do right by me, you bitch! I won't have to touch another fuckin’ white slut as long as I live. Well, unless I get that itch, I guess.”

Eve shook her head. “You utterly disgust me, Cassidy. Keep your perverse hobbies to yourself.” This only caused Cassidy to laugh harder.

“You guys need a ride? We need to deliver Gloria back to her home. Helion's going to be in a bit of an uproar for a while, and she's going to be in the middle of it. Don't envy the shit she's going to be going through.”

Cassidy sobbered up at the words, "Yeah... fuck... husband, boyfriend, and ********... I'm sorry about Melody, Eve... we tried.”

Eve shook her head. “This was the fucking cult's fault, not ours. All those walking white corpses are going to pay for this a thousandfold. Fuck the Gods, fuck fate, fuck destiny, and fuck everything else in this universe. I will put an end to their existence if it's the last damn thing I do.” The four of them all nodded together.

Cassidy scratched at the back of her head, “I think I'll take you up on that ride; I'm fuckin' tired, and sitting here waiting for an autotaxi isn't terribly appealing at the moment.”

Jasper raised her hand as she spoke. "Yeah, I wouldn't mind taking you up on that, either.”

Eve patted Carmine's ass, “Alright, ditch your goons and let's get the fuck out of here. Baby, if you would be so kind!”

Carmine kissed Eve on the cheek and affectionately wrapped an arm around her waist. “Already on its way, my love.”