"My husband is extremely physically fit, is he not?" Beatrice said, her antennas twitching as she clapped her hands together. "Admire him!"
"I am," Amy crooned, watching as the rapier in Lou's hand clattered and sparked against the rapier held by the combat servitor. "Thank you for convincing him to get his shirt off." Her voice was a soft croon in Bea's ear and Bea giggled.
"My deception was most effective. I began by seeding the cloud layers overhead with biological particulates to reduce precipitation, so the suns would shine more brightly. This created a heat wave, which I then capitalized on. Then, I told Louis, that he should not get his shirt messy. And thus..."
Lou sprang backwards with a grunt, the servitor's blade sweeping through where he had been. Grinning, he thrust at the hovering robot -- which danced backwards. As he moved, his skin glistened under the light of two sons as Amy bit her lip. "Holllly shit, he has an eight pack, holy shit..."
"I have an eight pack..." GF muttered under his breath.
"Yeah, he
worked
for it, though," Amy whispered. "Holy shit." She fanned herself. "Hollly shit, Bea, is he taken?"
Bea blinked at her, then made a tiny chirring hiss noise. "Yes! Lou is mine!"
Amy looked back at Lou. "Yo, Lou, you mono?"
Lou didn't risk glancing away from the servitor. It had been two days since he and his wife had consummated their relationship and he was feeling paranoid. Hence, the practice. His sword flicked out, knocked the enemy's point away from his midsection, then he pirouetted, leaped, and landed behind the servitor. He turned and thrust and the tip of his blade plunged into the back of the fragile robot. He grunted, hard, as he placed his palm against the hilt, then drove forward, the rapier crackling and sparking as it emerged. Here, it's advanced tricks became visible: From a distance, it merely looked like a fencing weapon from a more elegant age, before mankind fought wars with drones and antimatter.
When pressure was applied so, the inline UPF emitter pulsed from the hilt to the tip, creating a coruscating shockwave of coherent, quasi-real force that ripped outwards in a cyclone of destructive violence. The servitor flew to pieces and Lou lifted his crackling, smoking blade up, then swept it down, smiling at his onlooking audience.
"What was that!?" Bea exclaimed.
"To answer your questions in order of importance," Lou said. "Yes. Extremely." He looked square at Amy, who looked deeply guilty. She looked away, and Lou's expression softened. He sheathed his rapier on his belt, stretching his arms -- not noticing that this movement brought Amy's head snapping back. Bea gaped as she saw his muscles at play under his skin -- then reached up, covering Amy's eyes with her free arm.
"Hey-" Amy hissed.
"You heard my husband, extremely monogamous," Bea said. "And so, only I can watch his...abs..." She shivered, her antennas springing to full extension. "Those...y-you must stretch more, my husband Lou, you may have tight muscles! And, thus, must...lift...arms..."
Lou chuckled, lowering his arms as he grinned at Bea. "So..." He said, his finger scratching under his chin. "My rapier's loaded with a unified physics field emitter -- it's based off the grand unified theory that gave us agrav and stabdrives and the like." He looked down at the rapier, sighing. "It's a shame..."
"What?" Bea asked, blinking her eyes rapidly. "Does it require you to put on a shirt?"
"No, you..." Lou chuckled. "People, before the theory was found, were hoping that it'd make faster than light travel possible -- or that antigravity would make space travel cheaper. Both had big drawbacks. Antigravity will kill you faster than being shot without some very specific preparations and faster than light travel seems to involve flying straight into a sun at top speeds, and nothing we have can match it and the Shavanti have asked us to please not."
Bea nodded. "The Shavanti are aliens that live in the photosphere of stars," she whispered. "They are the only one of the Six Uncontacted who are within the bubble of explored solar systems. Lou told me, two nights ago, while holding me after our post coital bliss. I had orgasmed very hard. The Shavanti are counted among the Uncontacted because they only proclaim things, they don't accept any messages from humanity." She smiled at Amy, who smiled back at her, despite the fact Amy knew
all
of that.
"Exactly!" Lou said, his cheeks heating. "Um, you don't...have to mention the post coital bliss..."
"Yes she does," Amy said. "It's the law."
Bea's antennas twitched. "Which law? You are an AnCom, you do not have laws."
"Yes we do!" Amy said, grinning. "And one of those laws is bros before hoes. Listen!" She cut Lou off. "You have a super fucking hot wife, and you're just the hottest man on the planet, no offense Godfucker."
"No, I've given up even trying to argue with that," GF said, cheerfully. "I'm accepting my position as beta cuck."
"So, I may JUST have to watch-" Amy paused as Bea, giggling to herself, covered her eyes again. "...I may just have to
imagine
you naked and thrusting. But by my progenitor, I will
not
foresake the most sacred of all the sisterly codes: That of telling about boys we're banging during sleepovers."
Lou blushed, hard and opened his mouth.
"Ah! No arguments!" Amy said.
Bea bit her lip. "She...does speak quite forcefully, my husband Lou. I believe that we shall have to hew to this tradition of bros before hoes."
Lou sighed, slowly. "Very well. I surrender to your traditions, Amy."
"Eee!" Amy clapped her hands. "Okay, tell me, does he use tongue? If he doesn't, he dies."
"He used his tongue for-" Bea's antennas snapped to full extension.
"Can it NOT be while I'm right here!?" Lou exclaimed.
Bea nodded. "We shall commune later," she said, quietly. "Now, demonstrate more of your martial puissance, Lou!"
Lou chuckled, slightly. He was rather glad, in a high minded and low minded way, that Beatrice was clearly so very excited to see him show off. The baser part of him was just...aggressively pleased that he pleased her on such a physical scale. Not merely his arts in the bedroom, but his...whole of him. He had been put onto puberty blockers when he had first began to transition from Alexandrietta to Louis, and so he had never developed breasts. Testosterone had sculpted him more than estrogen, but he had taken more after his mother despite it. Sleek. Lithe. Not the broad shouldered bullish might of his father. A tiny part of him had worried that...he wouldn't quite be seen as manly. That he'd always be seen as the feminine transmasc pseudoqueen of the Neopolitan Star Kingdom.
Seeing Beatrice
drool
over his abs from the nearby grassy hill had eradicated that thought with a searing purity
The more high minded part of him, though, was just pleased to have an excuse for this practicing. Without neural augmentation and muscular enhancement that AnComs and Federals (to a lesser extent) and Plurals and even the Upkin used, the Neopolitans needed their own edge. And so, they had their craft, in terms of weapon tech and armor and force emitters...and they had their training...
And they had their souls. Lou didn't like to articulate it out loud because...unlike his shaky relationship with the syncretic faith of the Star Kingdom, which he could talk about with some measure of distance, the underlying combat doctrine of the Neopolitans, that of
Elan...
spoke to him. It meant something to him.
But it was the idea that...a human that fought
for
something could do things that no one thought possible. It was an idea born out by the implausible heroism of a thousand wars across the blood soaked sweep of Earth history. Even in the grime and mud of the Western Front, even when machine gun and barbed wire and bloody minded elites had seen fit to grind the last great era of nobility into the muck, there had been gallantry and bravery and heroism to stir the soul. He could remember the soft words of Marc, holding a sword in his hands.
We don't forget the Maxim Gun, lad. We don't take stupid risks. We simply refuse to blink.
And so...Lou had been practicing.
Because he was growing increasingly convinced that someone was planning to kill him and Beatrice. The clues had come with the second wave of ambassadors. The lighthugger had carried envoys from the Upkin and the Plurality, but both of them had required a delicate extra week of time being decanted. The reason for the Upkin's delay was simple: There was no way to
quickly
thaw a sentient blue whale, and there was no way to
quickly
move said blue whale and its life support and mobility harness from space to Charon. In fact, they had settled on digging out a mini-ocean in the neighboring dome for him.
The Plurality was more complex because each Plural was unique -- even more so than the AnComs. AnComs were about doing
whatever
. Plurals, like the Upkin, like the Neopolitans, like the Federals, were about doing something very specific. They
pushed
themselves. Not purely biologically or through cybernetics, but
