Pepper VS Temptation - Part 16 (Patreon)

(Part 0) (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) (Part 11) (Part 12) (Part 13) (Part 14) (Part 15) (------) (Part 17) (Ebook)

To save the day, Pepper's going to have to be patient, resist temptation, and collaborate with a secret admirer on Charlemagne's team.

Pepper VS Temptation - Part 16
~A Persephone and Tritonia Story~
(edited by Tiliquain and Secretskunk)

Realizing I was in horribly baggy clothes that were not conducive to fighting at all, I stripped as fast as I could. I wasn't going to risk everyone's life just to keep my balls and breasts hidden, especially when they'd already accidentally seen my dick at full mast.

After a questioning glance, Tritonia kept her eyes on the door because the Spectral Thieves were seconds from cutting all the way through.

They shoved the giant three-meter-wide hunk of metal they'd cut out of the door into the room and it clanged against the floor before falling forward. It landed with a deafening bang, just missing the thick power cable that went to Alphonse's computer equipment.

As a mini spectral thief climbed through the hole in the door, it extended its three eyestalks, surveying us.

I went to throw a paint balloon, but Tritonia stopped me, saying, "Wait, we don't want to give away our tactics before the big targets enter."

I gulped and waited as a large tentacled mass that barely fit through the three meter hole came in. The moment it was fully inside, it rolled along the back wall so fast that I missed with my paint balloon. Tritonia managed to hit it soon after, though. I got paint on the second large Spectral Thief as it was coming in. Then I got the little one.

That little one got obliterated by Gillon and Charlie the moment the paint made it visible. Then the first big one started taking PIKL hits. As the tall long-necked bug-legged giraffe-like weapons platform was climbing through the hole, I threw two paint balloons at its head. It decloaked, revealing its blue carapace, and put up its shield, moving its head out of the way of the first balloon. The second one got it right in the head, though, making the shield impossible to see through.

The first big Spectral Thief hid behind Alphonse's desk, devoting six tentacles to disassembling his massive nine-display setup. The second one unplugged the laser printer and threw it at Charlie.

Charlie jumped to the side to avoid the printer and it smashed into bits as it smacked into the floor.

Tritonia got a third big Spectral Thief with a paint balloon as it entered. The first one lobbed two LCD monitors before rolling toward Abrams, who was near the projector screen. Its camouflage failed as it took hits from PIKL units, revealing its yellowish-grey center sphere and translucent blue-grey tentacles.

Tritonia was hitting the two Spectral Thieves that were still cloaked with more paint balloons to make sure they were visible. Meanwhile, the paint was burning off of the giraffe bug's shield while it fluttered the multi-layered wings on its back. They had to be some sort of cooling fins because they were nowhere near big enough to help it fly. When I turned to look back at the doorway, I chucked two balloons, blinding a second evil giraffe as it stepped through the doorway.

Even one was too many. Two was extra bad.

When I tried to blind the first giraffe bug again, it zapped the balloons mid-flight making them explode paint all over Alphonse’s computer equipment.

Abrams yelled expletives as the first Spectral Thief overpowered him and took his shield away. Dropping my shield, I crouched down, feeling my tendons stretch. Then I jumped over the entire team. It felt like horizontal skydiving.

Landing on the first Spectral Thief, I bit through the tentacles that had grabbed Abrams's RACS. The Thief grabbed me and tried to toss me into the wall. I wrapped my tail around its tentacles and it slammed me into the floor instead. As it got its tentacles around me so tight that I couldn’t breathe in, my claws extended. Growling and struggling against its powerful synthetic muscles, I bit and raked my claws over its tentacled mass, pulling pieces off of it constantly until its cloak failed.

The second Spectral Thief lobbed more computer screens. Boom dodged them easily, but Abrams got hit and fell flat on his back, his shield sliding uselessly across the floor.

Getting Abrams' shield, Boom put him back on his feet in a flash. Because I'd already weakened the tentacles holding me, Boom pulled me out of the Spectral Thief's clutches.

Boom said, "Get your RACS," and pulled out the measuring tape as The Spectral Thief reached for her.

The measuring tape started circling the Spectral Thief like it was winding a yarn ball, fully encasing it. I found it very disconcerting even though it was a great help.

As I tried to get to my RACS, I got hit in the side by the first blue giraffe. I crumpled to the floor as the shockwave knocked the wind out of me. It misjudged where I'd land and zapped the floor instead. There was so much energy that it blew a chunk of the Repository's advanced ceramic out, making incredibly sharp shrapnel that bounced off my armor-like fur.

I heard crackling bangs as the giraffes tried and failed to get through the RACS. All the noise came with glaring flashes, far brighter than what happened when we fired our PIKL units. Luckily, my enhanced vision didn't give me any afterimages. The buzzing from their radiator wings was like a swarm of giant bees.

Percy aimed the presentation pointer and flicked the end to extend it slightly. It extended all the way across the room in the blink of an eye. The giraffe that had shot me dodged it by standing up higher on its bug-like legs. Then Percy pressed the end of the pointer against the wall and it retracted with great force, flying out of her hand.

Gillon picked it up and aimed his laser pointer at the giraffe's head to blind it, before sending the presentation pointer at its main body. The other giraffe shot his shield and the explosion caused him to veer off target, sending the pointer through the third Spectral Thief instead.

It didn't seem to care, and just rushed him.

I leapt onto it, biting the tentacles that tried to subdue me. I was growling and trying to find a place to bite that would get it to stop.

Having painted all the cloaked targets, Tritonia took off her jacket and two PIKL-like emitters popped up from her back, sticking up over her shoulders and moving like turrets. I felt my fur stand on end when she shot the Spectral Thief I was wrestling with with some sort of shock beam. It freaked out, its tentacles going every which way.

In the brief second it was paralyzed, I found a panel in a six-inch-wide spot on its inner sphere that no tentacles came out of. I pulled it open, reached inside, and dug my claws into the electronics in there before yanking out what I found.

It collapsed to the floor, useless.

Percy grabbed the cookie jar and pulled three ninja stars out of it. Then she flung one at the second Spectral Thief. It cut right through the tentacles and sliced into the sphere at the center. Then she threw another and another, the number on the side counting down from three to zero once she'd thrown them all. Apparently the Spectral Theives were as robust as fuck because this one still had the use of half of its tentacles.

I jumped over to my shield, thinking we might actually win this. Tritonia was disrupting the second Spectral Thief when I heard a POW! accompanied by Septimus squeaking in agony behind me. When I turned around, I saw a dagger-like chunk of the floor sticking out of his side, just above his hip. Snarling at the giraffes, I got a rush of adrenaline.

Seeing that was effective, the giraffes employed a new strategy. Over the course of the next thirty seconds, the floor started exploding all around us.

Blood was leaking out of Gillon's arm, Alphonse's shoulder, and down Charlie's leg, making a puddle on the floor at her feet.

The shrapnel was bouncing harmlessly off my fur while I hid behind my shield, but everyone I cared about was going to die if something didn't change.

Charlie fell to a crouch, huddling behind her shield as she opened her button-down shirt. Then she pulled up her sports bra and took her right nipple up to her mouth. As she drank her own milk and blood from her leg started flowing back up from the floor and her boot and back into the gash, like time had been reversed.

While I tried to figure out what to do, the floor just ahead of my right paw got blown out from under me and I fell to the side. Then I got hit on my exposed left hip. While I worked to regain my balance, I took a hit on my left shoulder near my collarbone and lost my vision for a second. When I got it back, I was on the floor. I immediately got my shield in front of me.

Before anyone else could get hit, Boom basically disappeared and reappeared slamming her shield into the first giraffe. The giraffe's shield let off a bright green flash when she made contact. Then she disappeared again and reappeared smashing her shield into the other one while roaring like a wild animal.

I could track her movements when I concentrated, but I was sure it was outside human perception. Each time she hit one, she dented its body under the shield and knocked it so far off balance, it had to stand back up. But there was no damage to the shield itself and there were two giraffe bugs, so every time she switched her target, the other one just stood back up. We were all looking at certain death if she didn't keep going.

Tritonia's lasers were making the shields blink, but weren't getting through and Boom looked like she was going to tire out long before her bashing disabled the giraffes.

The giraffes changed their weight distribution, bending their legs more and leaning in the direction Boom was going to come from. When she hit one, it softened its stance, absorbing part of the blow and staying upright. The floor just ahead of Boom exploded, making her change course at the last second and miss the giraffe bugs completely.

Boom roared as a furry dragon tail busted out the back of her pants as her speed doubled. Her boots got torn up as she got claws on her feet and her ears lengthened. Cheetah fur grew in on the back of her neck. She started moving like a wild animal and snarling as her claws scraped against the hard ceramic floor.

"Boom! STOP NOW!" Charlie commanded.

I dared not get in Boom's way because I had a feeling I'd get crushed between a giraffe and her shield. All I could do was watch as she took her body past its limits until she was lurching across the floor, fueled only by her ferocious determination.

As she collapsed to the floor, she let out cry of pain so deep and so anguished that the fur on the back of my neck stood up. I rushed in, moving at a speed at least twenty times slower than her and rammed the giraffe directly ahead of me, hoping my added weight would be enough to knock it over. But I couldn't defy physics like she had. My collision took time, and the other giraffe used that time to kick me so hard I went flying and landed on my back.

As I tried to pull my shield over my body, I got hit in the abdomen by a laser pulse in a spot where I'd already been hit. At first, the pain was like getting stabbed by a chef's knife, but then my altered nervous system turned down the intensity so I could move enough to get my shield over me.

Instead of focusing on me, both giraffe bugs started shooting at the Spectral Thief that had been mummified by the measuring tape. It broke free a few seconds later and rolled toward the team. The third one was still moving despite being roasted by PIKL units and only having half its tentacles working. It managed to back Charlie and Tritonia into a corner.

Tritonia hissed at it and wrapped her long naga tail around it as she shot it with her shock laser thing. As it was being constricted, Charlie pulled her foot-and-a-half-long red-glowing medieval stiletto out of the sheath at her side and stabbed it into the Spectral Thief's central sphere. Only then did it stop moving.

The first Spectral Thief overpowered Percy and Abrams, pulling their RACS away. Percy screamed in terror as it grabbed her with its tentacles. Abrams was next, yelling angrily as he struggled to get free.

The giraffes had Tritonia and Charlie pinned down in the corner and Gillon was desperately trying to use both his and Septimus's RACS to avoid more shrapnel. He had no way to help Abrams or Percy without dying himself while my body was using pain to make me stay still.

As the giraffes turned their attention to me, my heart pounded so hard my ear drums were ringing. Maybe I was going to die before my friends. As I struggled to get off the floor so the giraffes couldn't stomp on me, I heard a deep roar.

Helja jumped through the doorway and drew the giraffe's fire. I'd never imagined her roo-tiger-dragon features could look this menacing. Her claws were like daggers and, as she bared her teeth to snarl, she looked ready to tear everything apart with her teeth. She lunged at the first giraffe, biting its long spindly neck only to yelp in surprise when the shield zapped the inside of her mouth. Smoke rose from her jaws as she trained her eyes on the remaining Spectral Thief.

PIKL explosions happened randomly around her, but never on her. It was like she wasn't even there.

Gillon was still using his bright green laser pointer to blind the giraffes so he and Septimus took less hits. Since they'd started blowing up the floor, this had been somewhat less effective. The laser's beam was visible due to all the dust in the air from the battle. When Helja ran through the beam, I saw the impossible: the beam bent around her, just above the surface of her fur.

Just as the only remaining Spectral Thief held up Percy so she could be shot by the giraffes, Helja bit through all the tentacles holding her and Abrams within a half second. The crunch from each bite made me cringe, but Percy and Abrams being free made me giddy. As the Spectral Thief tried to grab Helja, she reared back on her tail and kangaroo kicked it into the wall. I felt the hit through the floor. While it was dazed from that, Helja grabbed it by its tentacles and whipped it around in a circle like she was doing an olympic hammer throw.

When she let go, it was traveling so fast that it obliterated the rest of Alphonse's screens and the framework holding them. Then it hit the first giraffe bug with such force that it left the ground and hit the second one. The crush damage was severe enough that the giraffes looked like battered tin cans and their shields shared this crumpled topography. Helja had chased her improvised projectile, easily keeping pace with it and while both of them were trying to untangle their limbs, she wrapped her tail around the thick power cable that ran to Alphonse's computer equipment.

The lights flickered as all of Helja's fur stood on end. Smoke was rising from her by the time she let go and just as the first one was getting up, she put her hands around the first giraffe bug's neck.

Its shields whined like an ice cube on a hotplate. Then, as Helja let out another bone-rattling roar, I heard and felt a pop. The screens on everyone's PIKL units died and Tritonia fell over as my vision went completely out of focus and I heard radio static while tasting a nine-volt battery. A couple seconds later, I could hear Gillon gasping for air and see Helja unconscious on the floor.

The first giraffe bug's neck had been severed half way up and it was no longer struggling to get up. The second was just starting to stand back up, but its shield was only present in patches.

Septimus hauled his bleeding body over to Gillon and reached under his arm to reset him.

Tritonia got up and fired her shocker and her PIKL at the giraffe, knocking out its failing shield, bit by bit. Septimus and Percy both pointed laser pointers at its head and it was way less nimble, so it had trouble moving its head out of the way of the blinding spots or changing its targeting.

Helja stretched as she regained consciousness and then crawled stubbornly toward the other giraffe.

Septimus collapsed as Gillon sat up. There was a lot of blood and seeing Septimus like that had me incredibly worried. I had to move, I had to end this fight.

My body stopped fighting me as I growled and hopped to my feet. Yelling "KNIFE!" at Charlie, I pantomimed throwing.

When she threw the stiletto at me, I grabbed it out of the air. Then, I held it in front of me, pointing it at an open spot in the giraffe bug's shield and ran at top speed. It plunged all the way into the evil giraffe, right where its neck met its body. A loud pow was followed by a green flash and it falling to the ground.

I fell with it, needing to rest a bit. For the next couple minutes, everyone breathed sighs of relief and grabbed stuff out of the big first aid kit on the wall next to the conference table.

The pain in my abdomen receded to what I thought was a safe level and I pulled the stiletto out of the fallen giraffe. Septimus was wheezing as he talked to Charlie and Gillon. I walked over as I listened to their conversation.

"No, I don't want your milk," he said.

"My professional opinion is that you have a fatal abdominal injury and you're only lucid due to adrenaline right now," Gillon said. "You're the one that tested her milk and approved it for medical use."

"I don't want to do this, either, but I don't want you to die," Charlie said. Her leg had fully healed.

"Stop pretending you care about me, it's disgusting," Septimus said.

"Do you think I would have gone through all that shit to save you from Centralia if I didn't care about you?" Charlie said, pulling her already-unbuttoned shirt to the side and then pulling up her sports bra to expose her big furry breast.

"I don't want any more of your damned help!" Septimus said.

"Is your stubborn dislike for me worth your life?" Charlie knelt next to him, putting her breast right in front of his muzzle.

"You claimed to be a scientist, but you're no better than the military brass!" Septimus groaned in pain.

"Do you want this to be your last discussion?" Charlie asked. "Isn't it a bit silly to be pontificating why you don't trust me when you're the one whose finger is on the trigger?"

"Fine, I'll drink your stupid milk just to get you to shut up," Septimus put his mouth on her nipple and started sucking.

I put the stiletto on the battle-damaged conference table and knelt down next to Septimus. Then I softly pet his head as he drank. Septimus grabbed me and pulled me against the side that wasn't injured.

Charlie was blushing more and more as this went on.

After kissing Septimus on the neck, I said, "I want to check on Percy and Boom."

He gave a small nod and let me go.

As I walked up to Percy, Helja dashed over to Boom.

Percy was leaning against the wall that had the giant projection screen.

"You okay?" I asked.

She hugged me tight. "Yes, fuck, that was scary."

I hugged her back, feeling her breasts and bulge against me for the first time in what felt like ages. "Yeah, I'm glad Helja showed up."

"Me too," Percy said. "She's kinda terrifying, but at least she's on our side."

"Trust me, I had no idea she was that vicious in a fight," I said. "Not that I'm complaining."

"Looks like she's trying to get your attention," Percy said, letting me go.

Helja was waving at me as she crouched over Boom, so I let go of Percy and went over to her. Helja kissed Boom just before I got there.

Boom had a foot-long furred dragon tail with scales on the underside that had busted her pants. A furry pair of balls was sitting out in the open with a feline sheath above them and her breasts were stretching her uniform. Her finger and toe nails had become claws and there were rises on the soles of her feet and palms of her hands that looked like they were on their way to being paw pads. Her ears were pointy and she had cheetah fur on the backs of her hands.

Helja looked up from examining boom the moment I got there. "We're going to need to move her soon. I'm assessing the best course of action."

"Why did you kiss her?" I asked."

"To put builders in her to sense her internal temperature at multiple points," Helja said. "She cannot go that fast for that long. The thermodynamic load nearly boiled her from the inside out."

"Can you repair her with your builders?" I asked.

Helja shook her head. "That would be dangerous-unwise since I've never seen I've never seen this sort of rapid hybridization and don't know what NPOs are incorporated into her." She paused and tilted her head as she thought for a moment. "Her temp is not coming down fast enough, we must put her in an ice bath ASAP."

"I'm on it," I said as I ran over to Charlie and the others. "Helja says we need to put Boom in an ice bath."

Septimus was lying next to Gillon as the blood that had leaked out of his ghastly wound ran back into his skin like a video on rewind. He pulled the chunk of floor out of his abdomen, groaning in pain. His ears looked far less pale and the color was coming back to the paw pads on his hands.

Charlie was looking a bit bashful as she pulled her sports bra down over her breasts.

Gillon got up carefully, not putting weight on his broken ankle. He had gauze patches on the lacerations to his arms. "Can you and Helja carry Boom to the habitat?"

"Maybe we could use Charlie's milk on Boom?" I said.

"No, she is already capable of accelerated healing. She'll survive if we get her core temperature down and we'll risk her life if we introduce more NPOs into the already chaotic situation inside her." Helja picked up Boom and put her over her shoulder, walking toward the door.

"Good because I'm out, didn't even have enough for Gillon or Alphonse," Charlie said. "And I agree with Helja's assessment. Do not use any NPOs on Boom unless you get approval from me."

Alphonse was getting a gash in his leg treated by Abrams as I said to Charlie, "Can you help me get all the habitat doors open so we can raid all the freezers for ice?"

"Good idea," Charlie said, her eyes darting between my and Helja's naked bodies.

Charlie and I ran ahead of Helja and Gillon, ready to collect every ice cube on base to save Boom's life.

END OF PART 16

I’d like to acknowledge my $20 patrons, Arkona Kothe, Navajo Demar, UBA, and Warialinth for helping make all this possible. Thank you! Thanks to all my other patrons as well. Every one of you rocks!

(Part 0) (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) (Part 11) (Part 12) (Part 13) (Part 14) (Part 15) (------) (Part 17) (Ebook)