This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/daecrist on 2025-08-11 15:25:10+00:00.
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I kept bellowing for a long moment. It was carrying everywhere thanks to Arvie’s projection. All the frustration. All the irritation. All the roiling conflicting storm of emotions that’d been building up inside me for years, that I’d been trying to cover up by acting like everything was fine, came pouring out of me in that moment.
And I happened to be holding the decapitated head of a livisk prince consort dripping his blood all over the irradiated dirt of a ground zero that’d been created because the fucking livisk empress decided she was going to drop an atomic bomb on me to get my smokin’ hot alien girlfriend’s attention.
Life had gone to some very weird places in the past year.
“William. Are you quite well?”
I blinked. I came back to reality. Not that the reality I was coming back to was necessarily a reality I wanted to come back to. I was still standing at the irradiated ground zero of a massive building-sized crater that’d been created because the fucking livisk empress decided she was going to drop an atomic bomb on me to get my smokin’ hot alien girlfriend’s attention.
All the fighting had stopped all around me. The livisk were all standing there staring at me. I looked back at all of them.
Then I did something that was probably stupid, but I didn’t care. I reached up and tapped at the controls that would take my helmet off. I figured I was either going to die in the next few minutes anyway, or I was going to live long enough to get back to a radiation cleansing chamber.
Either way, the livisk were big on showing your face in combat. I figured this was one of those occasions where they needed to get a look at me while I was staring them down.
“I don’t know if that’s advisable,” Arvie said.
"C’mon, Arvie,” I said, grinning inside the helmet as the seals broke and air hissed all around me. “Don’t I have the same shielding that prince consort asshole had?”
“You do, but I still don’t think it’s advisable to take off an extra layer of protection,” he said.
“First lesson of being a meat intelligence, Arvie,” I said. “Sometimes it feels way better when you’re not using any protection.”
“Is this another one of your sex jokes?”
“None other than, my circuited friend.”
Arvie let out the digital equivalent of a sigh. Meanwhile I grinned as I stared at the inside of my helmet for one more moment. Then the HUD went out and I was staring at nothing for the brief second it took to pull the helmet off.
There was a brief purple shimmer as the shielding in my battle armor went into overdrive to keep me protected. I didn’t have the heads up display any longer, but I didn’t need the HUD to tell me there was a lot of radiation out there that would do its best to kill my ass if that shielding busted for whatever reason.
I looked at the prince consort’s head I was still holding high. It didn’t even weigh all that much thanks to the power armor. Or maybe it was the new strength I had as a result of this battle pair thing.
“We’re really going to have to have a chat with Varis about all this battle pair stuff when this is all done,” I said.
“You mean if you survive?” Arvie asked.
“I’m not all that worried about survival,” I said. “I’m more worried about people not gaslighting me about what’s going on here when I get out of this alive.”
“Fair enough,” Arvie said.
I strode up to the top of the hill and took in a deep breath. It wasn’t an irradiated breath of superheated air thanks to the filters on my suit working overtime as it replaced and cooled the air coming through the shield around my head.
I looked at all the livisk troops all around me. I looked at the one hover tank that was still hovering, though it looked like Arvie had hit one of their antigrav actuators. The thing was leaning to the side and looking like it was about half a minute away from slamming to the ground.
There were still a few imperial fighters hovering in the air as well, but I noted all of them were floating there with their weapons pointed slightly to the side of me. None of those weapons were glowing, and they sure as shit weren’t making an ominous hum that told me their pilots were about to do a strafing run with their plasma canons.
Well okay then. It looked like I was finally getting some respect on this dirt ball of a planet.
“Anybody else want some?” I asked.
Nobody said anything. Though something interesting did happen in that moment.
The shield wall started to rise up. Someone had finally figured out how to control the whole thing. I wondered if it was all rising into the air. Though when I glanced from side to side it looked like that rising was only happening in a localized area.
Well that was interesting. They were here a day late and a credit short, but it looked like the cavalry was finally coming.
Troops streamed through. Fighters started streaming down from up above, and each and every one of them blessedly bore Varis’s sigil. Hover tanks moved through with their turrets pointing this way and that. Like they were looking for a target, and maybe a little disappointed they weren’t finding anything to fire at.
They definitely had their plasma cannons glowing, and there was one sequel trilogy of an ominous hum coming off of them that told anyone foolish enough to fight them that it was going to be a very short and one sided fight.
Not that any of the empress’s troops were putting up a fight. No, they’d all put their hands behind their heads the moment I asked if anybody else wanted some, and now they were falling to their knees.
More interesting than all that, though, was the lone figure marching at the head of all those weapons and troops streaming through the recently created hole in the shielding. A series of massive fans on the other side of that hole were blowing the superheated air back into the shielding before it could get out and cause any trouble on the other side.
I chuckled and shook my head at that. It was a ridiculous solution. It was a very low tech solution. But if a solution worked then I wasn’t going to knock it.
I only noted that in passing, though. Mostly I only had eyes for that figure striding through the wreckage and destruction. Varis made her way up the small hill. She approached warily. There was a note of hesitation coming through the link. Like she didn’t know what to make of what was happening here.
Her eyes darted to the prince consort’s head I still held. Then back to me.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I said.
She stared at me for another moment. Then she reached up and took her own helmet off. She let it drop to her side as her hair fell down around her. The shield on her power armor moved to cover her hair as well.
“Shatner’s girdle do you look beautiful,” I said.
I stepped forward before I could think about what I was doing. I saw my beautiful alien girlfriend standing in front of me, and the only thing I wanted was to plant a smacker on her.
I dropped the shielding on my head. I knew I was going to get a dose of radiation from that and it was going to mean an hour or two in a rad chamber, but it was so totally worth it now that the cavalry was here and I didn’t have to worry about getting to that rad chamber.
She did the same thing, the sparkling purple haze around her head fading away as she leaned in and planted her lips on mine. I opened my mouth to hers and wrapped my free arm around her.
Was I vaguely aware of how ridiculous it was that I was standing here holding a prince consort’s head in my hand while I made out with my girlfriend? Definitely. Was it the kind of thing that seemed totally in keeping with how livisk did things on their world?
Also yes.
I imagined approaching her with the head of one of her hated enemies was the best foreplay a livisk noble could ever get. And it was working if the way she pressed against me with an urgency that surprised me was anything to go on.
It was a pity we had that power armor between us to keep things from getting too interesting.
Finally I pulled away from the kiss. I cocked my head to the side and hit her with a grin.
“Nice to see you too,” I said.
She reached back like she was going to hit me with one sequel trilogy of a smack. I could feel the irritation and the anger flowing through the link along with relief. Only that slap moved in and again the world seemed to slow down around me.
A funny thing happened then. I reached out to try and catch the smack, only her eyes went wide as she saw what I was doing. Then she was adjusting the trajectory and trying to move so her smack would move around my block and land on my cheek where she was clearly aiming.
We did a little dance there. Me trying my damndest to keep her from smacking me and her trying her damndest to keep me from blocking her smack. Finally after waving our hands around at each other in slow motion for what felt like an eternity, she pulled away from me, her chest heaving.
It was a good look for her. I’m sure we looked ridiculous to any outside observers flailing our arms around like that, but I didn’t care.
“How in the hells below are you doing that?” she asked. “How am I ...
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