After being strapped to an atomic bomb by a cackling supervillain, running into microbes that could induce a jaunt through the astral plane, and getting an alien space princess for a girlfriend, you'd think that I'd be out of things to find utterly surreal. Heck, I'd taken banging a sexy spider chick in stride. Gigantic lizard monster? Pff! I could handle that. Galaxy sprawling alien slave empires? Passe!
But some part of me still rebelled at the idea of a sexy neanderthal. It just didn't make sense. And yet, here she was.
The neanderthal greeting party had arrived a few seconds after we had finished toasting their kaiju that had been threatening their fair city. Their arrival had been just as dramatic as ours had, though they had replaced 'psychic wormholes and mecha' with capes, spandex, and sonic booms. Five of them flying over the city, then swinging down to land before us in classic movie style superhero poses. Like, fist to the ground, arm out swept, leaving behind tiny craters in the sidewalk surface. I saw the concrete was already starting to knit together as their leader walked towards us.
She was the aforementioned sexy neanderthal. Her body was curvy and muscular in all the right ways, and her face was less uncanny valley than Doctor Oblivion or the placid faces on the biometric scans we had been given. Animated with life and intelligence, a neanderthal looked way closer to us homo saps than you'd expect. Her costume didn't hurt either: It clung to her curves like a coat of paint, outlining every single muscle group and every curve of hip and chest. The shoulders were gold and the arms were black, while the chest was an interlocking pattern of geometric shapes done in gold trim, with black making up the interstitial space. Her boots were nice, quality ass-kicking boots, but they shared the same general coloration as the rest of her suit.
And to top it off, the cape. The inside was gold, the back was black. Very Batman.
She thrust her finger at me. "Who the bloody hell are you and what the bloody hell are you doing and where are your
pants
!?"
I grinned, weakly. "Uh-" I waited, half a beat, for Magnum to step up and do the explaining before...right...I coughed. "As I said. I'm Abby. Er, Abadai Hatem. Homo Sapiens." I inclined my head slightly. "This is, uh, Beli Lapran, Diamond White, Tasmin Khan, Victory Smith and Tzali." I gestured to Opal, Tycho, Ebony, Vicky and Ali in that order. Each one had stepped out of their war forms. Beli was letting it all hang out without any sign of embarrassment. Ali had crossed her arms over her chest and was frowning at the neanderthals with a look of consternation. Vicky had simply shifted herself to not have external sexual characteristics. Tycho had gone for the old 'curl up and hide behind someone else' strategy.
Ebony had picked the more straightforward strategy of just not giving a fuck. She didn't hide anything, but she didn't pose like Beli, which did more to make her seem sexless than ten thousand signs saying 'i am ace as fuck.'
It was a lot more space efficient too.
The woman scowled at me. "And why the bloody hell did you show up in some blacktech suits and blow away our Cat-2?" She stepped forward. "I-" She paused. "Wait..." Her brow furrowed and she sniffed slightly. She looked back at the other. "Omniack, you smell that too?"
"Their genetic structure is distinct from ours in a way deeper and more pervasive than genejacking," a neanderthal wearing a pair of thick goggles and a suit of gleaming plate armor. It didn't look like it had been built by any earth culture, but it still had the same general concept: Curved metal to turn aside weapons. I could see anachronistic touches, though, like servos and tiny radio dishes and computers built into the wrists. "I think when he says homo sapiens, he's referring to a species..."
The woman looked back at me. Her eyes narrowed.
Then she gasped. "Holy fuck they're not from the Race!"
I pointed at myself. "Like, uh, no shit?"
"That's why they smell so weird!" One of the neanderthals was, quite suddenly, standing right next to me. He was dressed in a lurid green, skintight outfit with a large gear symbol emblazoned on his chest. He sniffed my hair. "Not bad, mind!" He grinned. "Not saying that they need some Blazon spray." He winked at me.
I blinked slowly. "Are you fucking pitching me hairspray?"
"Blazon!" the woman shouted. "we told you!"
"Hey, just cause you all hate endorsements..." Blazon said - suddenly, he was standing back by the rest of them.
I pointed at the woman. "You!"
"Paragon," she said, frowning.
"How many tons can you lift?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.
"...Pirate, what the fuck are you talking about?" Tycho hissed from behind Beli, who was starting to clap her hands excitedly.
"A
lot
," Paragon said, angrily.
"AHAH!" I laughed. "Superman, Iron Man, the Flash!" I pointed excitedly. "And I bet he's a shapeshifter?" I pointed at the guy in the gray and purple uniform with the face covering mask. "No, no! Laser eyes!"
The guy in the face covering mask grunted. "My question is, why the fuck do they have an unarmored Doyen with em?"
The entire group of neanderthal superheroes turned to look at Ali. Ali glared at them, sticking out her chin. "I'm not unarmored," she said, angrily. "I'm just naked. As is just and proper as a member of Bravo Squad. And you!" She pointed at Paragon. "You should be happy
. We
saved this city. Before a single thing was damaged!"
Behind her, with malicious timing, one of the tankers that had been overturned by the kaiju's splashing around in the harbor exploded with a distant
krrump
.
"...before a single
important
thing was damaged," Ali snarled.
Paragon frowned.
"Do you guys have, uh, a Hall of Justice where we can maybe discuss things and I can, er, we can get pants?" I asked.
"Hall of Justice?" Paragon asked, snorting disdainfully. "What an absurd name!"
***
We all sat in the main meeting room of the Tower of Utopia and Honor and waited for the refreshments to show up. I was not comfortable wearing neanderthal pants. Not because they were uncomfortable. Far from it! They were made of a cotton-ish fabric that felt nice and comfy around my butt region (which, I've been told, is the fifth most important region of a human body.) No, it had more to do with the fact that, previously, we had been psychics dealing with superheroes. Now, we were just regular humans dealing with superheroes.
"They're pretty quick to take off," Tycho muttered as she shifted in her seat. "I'm ready to drop trow and warp us out of here."
I nodded to her as the door opened and a cheerful robot walked into the room. They looked like a cartoonish neanderthal made of plastic and blue painted metal, and they whirred forward with a gay whistle. Since they weren't a living being, the psychic translation we all used reflexively (fortunately, this power was low impact enough that it'd still work even while we wore pants) didn't work on it. But from the C3P0 tone it used, I was pretty sure it was telling us how delicious the tea and cakes it was serving would be.
The tea tasted like water that had once been told that tea leaves existed, and thus, had an idea of what it could possibly be flavored like. That idea of a flavor ghosted across my tongue, while Opal made a face as she bit down into one of the crackers.
"That bad?" I asked.
"I mean, maybe my taste buds have been sandblasted from a childhood of vindaloo..." she said, shaking her head slightly. "But to me, this tastes like cracker flavored with cucumber."
"Man,
fuck
cucumbers," Tycho said, angrily.
