FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The League of Super Heroines

Chapter 3: Goodbyes and Good FUCKs

By Draconicon

In the hour that they had for preparation, Rachel gleaned some bits of information from Xiadani regarding the approaching villain girlfriend. This stranger was an elephant, her name was Hema, and she had the super-power of regeneration to the point where she was constantly pulling herself together in new ways. It seemed like an odd power for a villain to have, and she said so.

"What, does she have some problem with empathy?" the cheetah asked.

"She is not lacking that," Xiadani said, sitting across the room, watching as Rachel worked her finger into a socket. The lightning sparked from her hand as she worked it into the main again. "Rather, she is lacking understanding as to the limitations of others."

"And how the hell does that work out?"

"When you can detonate a bomb and you have regenerated seven times before the blast has dissipated, it is easy to forget that others cannot."

The cheetah stopped what she was doing, blinking as she glanced at the other woman. Her mouth hung open for a moment, then closed again. She cleared her throat, and then shook her head.

"What?" the snow leopard asked.

"Nothing."

"Something."

"Just...trying not to think about how many times you two got stuck and you had to cut your way out," Rachel said.

"..."

"Yeah, sorry, stupid -"

"Four times."

"...And that's my breakfast trying to stay down."

"I'm surprised you were able to eat."

"I wasn't. It's yesterday's."

"Ah. My apologies."

Rachel waved it off, taking a few deep breaths to keep her stomach and its contents where they were supposed to be. The lightning. Focus on just making lightning. She put her other hand against the wiring, letting the energy flow down from her to the generators and the batteries at the heart of the facility, trying to keep her mind on that rather than on the mental images that were even then dancing through her head.

Gore filters were very much a needed thing at that moment.

However, it was enough to get her to finish the job. There was a soft 'whoosh' further on, and she pulled her fingers back.

"That's the facility charged, then."

"Good. And were there defense systems?"

"None that I saw. I think we're it."

"I believe that Thea is rather overestimating the majority of us."

The cheetah had to agree. All things considered, she was fairly sure that this Hema wasn't going to be that much of a problem. Regeneration was a powerful thing, but it needed something else to go with it if someone wanted to be genuinely dangerous. As long as the elephant didn't come to the new dome with some bombs on her or something, she was pretty sure that they were going to be okay.

Xiadani claimed her room, and then the pair of them walked back to the entrance. She sat down, the snow leopard stood at the door, and they waited.

She was just debating whether to start taking up a smoking habit - they always looked so relaxed when they were puffing - when a loud engine rumbling away caught her ears. They flicked back and forth as she turned to her left, looking down the road. She spotted a bit of smoke in the distance, but it was rapidly coming closer.

"Xiadani?"

"Hmm?"

"I thought you said that she was a regenerator."

"I did. That car belongs to her family, if I do not miss my guess."

"Well, it's not going to belong to anyone for much longer."

"I do not believe that matters much to her."

Certainly didn't seem to. Rachel had a split second to see that it was a red race car that was on fire, one of those narrow vehicles that were put on straightaways for pure speed, before it went shooting by. A rounded blur jumped out, hit the ground, and left a trail of blood that ran from one end of the lawn to the other.

"...I didn't know someone could bleed that much."

"Most can't. She makes it a necessity to wear red," the snow leopard said, sighing. "Let's get this over with."

"She's going to be conscious?" Xiadani fixed her with a stare, and she sighed. "Right. Bombs. Regeneration while blowing up. Sorry."

They walked across the lawn, and they'd barely taken three steps before the elephant was on her feet. Naked, but on her feet. It was the first time that Rachel had seen someone so flagrantly disregarding modesty laws, too, and, well, it was a sight.

Unlike the stereotypes involving most elephants, Hema didn't reach the point of obesity. Oh, she was plump, pleasantly so, but she didn't have that overhang that some females had when they were getting up there, nor did her breasts end up being supported by her belly. She had a slight glow to her, her flesh a bit shiny, almost like she was still heated up from the friction, and she steamed as she turned to look at them.

The cheetah did her best not to stare at the exposed breasts, nor the rapidly re-growing bush down between the other woman's legs. It didn't quite hide the lips down there, which were a bit red before they went gray again. She shook her head, thunking the hard part of her palm against her temple.

Shamelessly, the naked elephant walked right up to them, her thighs grinding against each other, her breasts bouncing ever so slightly, and she stopped with a hand on her hips and a smile on her face.

"Xiadani. Nice place," Hema said, nodding at the dome. "Have you picked a place for us inside, yet?"

"I'm afraid that there's no place for you here."

The slight dip at the edges of the elephant's mouth told Rachel that this was a surprise, and she braced herself. Hema tilted her head to the other side.

"I'm sorry. I must be hearing things."

"No. And I haven't stabbed you in the ear again, if you're going to use that as the next excuse."

"I know. That one actually hurt."

"I am quite aware. It was a moment of pride to find something that did."

"Oh, you know I loved that."

There was a slight smile on the snow leopard's face, but not much of one. Rachel cleared her throat, and Hema turned to her, almost like she had forgotten that the cheetah was there in that moment.

"Ah, yes. A friend of yours?" Hema asked.

"This is Rachel. A member of my new team," Xiadani said. "Rachel, this is Hema. My...girlfriend."

"And lover. And torture subject. And an occasional brainstormer of chaos."

"...It allows me to keep chaos from happening. I never intend to cause it."

There was another slight drop in the elephant's smile, and they were almost halfway to a neutral expression. Rachel didn't like the feeling she was getting off the other woman, either. This felt like the sort of thing where one of them was in it for a lot more than the other, and which was which didn't seem to matter that much at the moment. She cleared her throat, dragging Hema's attention back to her.

"Look. Here's the thing. Xiadani's joining up as a member of a superhero team. We're going to be dealing with a lot of crime coming up, and that means that we'll need to be free of a lot of other problems," she said, already feeling the cringe coming. "That means that we can't be dating villains right now. At least, not openly."

"I can keep a secret," the elephant said.

"No, you can't." Xiadani shook her head. "And I believe it is time that we had our goodbyes."

"Come on. That's not fair."

"I am not here about what is fair. I am here for what is necessary," the snow leopard said. "And what is necessary is moving forward without further awkwardness, from you, or from me."

"Okay, I'll just be that awkward stalker, then."

Her teammate turned to her, gesturing with one hand, as if trying to say 'and this is what I was afraid of.' She could see why. With the way Hema didn't care about the whole crash that she'd almost suffered through, not to mention painting the yard and street with her blood and flesh, there was no doubt in her mind that the elephant would become a security risk if she kept that relationship going. That, and the fact that it wasn't getting through that the break-up was happening, meant that there was little in the way of self-awareness in Hema's head.

She's spoiled, Rachel thought. She's so used to getting her own way with all those regenerations that she just doesn't care about what other people want. She can outlast anything, so why bother taking what other people say seriously?

The cheetah slowly moved between the snow leopard and the elephant, shaking her head.

"No. That's not what's going to happen."

"Heh, I don't think you can stop me. I can take anything. For as long as I have to."

"Really?"

"I've taken everything that Xiadani can think to throw at me and kept right on coming. It's pretty fun, actually."

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that her teammate was looking at her rather than at the elephant. There was nothing in the way of shame there, but there was something almost like regret. Rachel cocked her head to the side, and her teammate nodded.

Well...let's see how this goes.

"Can you prove that?" she asked.

"Hmm?"

"You said that you can take anything that Xiadani's thought to throw at you. Mind if you let me have a go?"

"In public?"

"...I meant..."

"Hema. No games," Xiadani said. "Just a demonstration."

"...Spoilsport. But sure. I'll go through this, and then you and I can go on another date together. Maybe we can paint a few buildings red tonight."

There was so much subtext to that that she didn't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Still, at least it got Hema to walk with her towards the road. She had an idea, and she didn't want to go through with it by the dome.

As they stopped, about ten feet apart, she flexed her claws. She could already feel the lightning inside, and with how embarrassed and annoyed she already was, she didn't think she'd have any issue drawing up quite a bit more to work with for this. There was no point in keeping to the milder charges that she'd used to fend off the dicks at work before. This needed everything right from the start.

She just wished that she wasn't looking at someone so very naked.

It's not that different from the locker room, she tried to tell herself, but that was a downright lie. Staring at someone in the buff in public was much harder, and the fact that there was a sort of sensual shine to the other woman's body, that there was a sort of delicate warmth to her as she walked, a sort of inviting -

Okay, fuck it, figure out sexuality later. For now...for now, just do the thing.

Rachel clenched her hand into a fist, holding it up. Hema cocked her head to the side.

"A beam attack?" she asked. "I've withstood quite a few of those. Ice can be interesting, though. Are you going to freeze me and chip me apart?"

"Not even close."

"Well, I'm curious."

"Just to be sure. Is your regeneration a conscious or unconscious thing?"

"...Interesting question. Both, but unconscious tends to be a bit slower, a little wilder."

"Just making sure."

After all, she didn't want to kill the other woman.

Collecting enough energy to get a stream of lightning going, she threw her hand out. The first bolt snapped from her palm and slammed between the elephant's breasts, throwing her back a step. All Hema's body hair stood on end, making little black spikes between her legs and in other places.

As the flesh burned and healed, burned and healed, she pumped it up higher, more jolts leaping from her fingertips into the main bolt that ran from her palm. It leaped across the elephant's body, starting to make her spasm, her arms flailing out and then swinging in.

She kept the lightning running, watching Hema cook to a bright red, start to heal, and then cook again. The other woman didn't make a sound, though. Not a first. Her expression was a mask of perfect confusion, one that started to twist little by little into annoyance, then discomfort.

When one of the lightning bolts finally ripped straight through her, punching out her back and hitting a car on the far side, though? That's when things REALLY got interesting.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

Hema's scream filled the air as the lightning bolts started cooking her from the inside-out. Her blood literally boiled, was replaced, and boiled again, filling the air with an iron-scented red steam. It continued to rise and spill, her skin catching fire, her eyes literally popping from their sockets as they blew up from the inside, only to regenerate again.

Rachel's stomach refused to stay down, and she turned her head to the side, puking onto the lawn. The lightning, however, kept flowing.

The cheetah kept it going for a full five minutes before she gave it a rest. She didn't want to look up, didn't want to see what it had done, but she had to. Forcing herself to look away from the puddle of her own vomit, she saw that the other woman was...well, whole. Not well, but whole.

Hema had fallen over when the lightning stopped, and she gasped for breath, staring up at the sky. She twitched, her skin a deep, lobster red in the chest, and pink most of the rest of the body. The grass around her was stained crimson, and likely that was never going to come out.

Finally, the elephant opened her eyes, her mouth doing the same as she gasped for breath. She shook from head to toe, getting to her feet. Rachel shook her head.

"I can't stop your regeneration, but I can damn well make sure that you can't do anything else. You stay away from Xiadani, and we won't have problems."

"...Consider me told," Hema said, nodding. "Um...I'll be...I need to...oh. I'm going over there."

The elephant pointed off to a building a few blocks down and started walking. She seemed a bit out of it, to the point where Rachel wondered if she'd caused some brain damage to the elephant.

"Don't worry," Xiadani said. "She's a masochist at heart. I imagine that you gave her more than I ever did."

"...Excuse me."

Rachel fell to the ground and started vomiting again. Apparently, there was still something left to come up, though that was as much for the possibility of Hema crushing on her after that as for what she'd done.

#

Thea returned about thirty minutes later, and the dragoness was rather displeased at the stain on the ground. When they explained what it was about, she sighed, but understood.

After that, it was just a matter of waiting for the others to show up. Kaimana, or 'Mana, was the first to show, very carefully exiting a bus as she walked out onto the lawn. The orca waved at them as she came over, applying some strength dampeners onto her wrists as she walked into the building.

The next to arrive was Korina, and the telepathic otter had to pause and do the same thing that the cheetah had done upon arriving. Apparently, the gossip queen didn't have the same sort of stomach for the bloody messes that Xiadani did.

Patricia and Sandy came together, the mare and the vixen arriving by car and by foot at the same time. The mare studiously ignored the blood spatter, while the vixen just couldn't shut up about it.

Thankfully, none of them had long to think about it before Thea gathered them all into the lobby of the building.

"Alright. We're all here, and that means that it's time to start fitting ourselves together as a team," the dragoness said, still in her bright red colors, still wearing her Diamond Dragoness costume. "Tomorrow, we'll be going for a costume fitting and our first press event. Today, I want to see how well you can actually work together."

"And how do you want to do that?" Rachel asked.

"We'll start with something very simple, and something that we should be able to monitor well enough. A series of sparring matches."

Everyone but Thea groaned at that, and all for different reasons. In Rachel's case, it was because she knew that with every other member of the team, she'd either be the one snapping someone else apart, or she'd be the one getting snapped apart. There was no getting around it with the way that they all had different powers, different life experiences, and different ways that the world had smacked them around.

And it got worse.

"We'll start with Rachel and Kaimana."

"...'Mana, would you mind covering your ears?" Rachel asked.

The orca woman nodded, pulling her hands to her head and covering her earholes. When she was good and sure that her opponent couldn't hear anything, she exploded.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?!"

"She's wearing power suppressors, and the arena itself is fitted with further ones," the dragoness said.

"Yeah, and we all know how well that works. She's fucked with what she's got, Thea. She can't help it, but she's fucked."

The dragoness sighed. "I know."

"Then why -"

"Because she is part of the team. And because, like it or not, we will be dealing with supers that will have something like her level of physical strength when suppressed, and even when not. For that reason, we need to know how well we can all take it."

"Even you?" Korina asked.

"Even me, though I will likely handle it better than the rest of you," the dragoness said. "That is an unfortunate fact, but it is still a fact."

Rachel groaned. She didn't like it, but they weren't wrong. With what Thea seemed to be doing to cut budget costs, it was all but certain that there weren't any combat robots for them to work on, nor anything that might be better suited for 'Mana to bust up for training instead of them.

This gonna suck, she thought, looking back at the orca. For all of us.

From the way that 'Mana looked back at her, arms hanging limp at her sides and her head down, she knew that the orca felt the same way.

THUMP!

Rachel wheezed out all the air that happened to still be in her lungs as she hit the wall for the fourth time that round. She slumped down slowly, her head hitting the rubber floor with a duller 'thump' than her back had made hitting the solid steel wall. There had been padding there, but she'd gone right through it.

And all from a tiny little poke in the chest.

"Okay, guys, stop. You're going to make 'Mana cry."

Yes, be worried about making 'Mana cry when I can barely breathe, Rachel thought, even though she actually agreed with Korina. The otter darted past her, running into the ring to hug the sobbing orca.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean - I'm sorry, Rachel. Please be okay, please be okay..."

Korina was muttering something to the orca, but it was quiet enough that Rachel didn't quite catch it. She was a little too busy being rolled onto her side, helped to her knees, and then lifted up by Patricia. The mare gently prodded her middle, checking for any broken bones in the ribs, and then along her spine.

Rachel hissed as her back was touched in the wrong place, not quite in the spine, but definitely near it. Patricia shook her head.

"Okay, that's enough. She needs medical attention after that last one."

"I suppose that we are pushing this a bit too quickly," Thea said.

"You think?" Rachel wheezed.

"Take her to the infirmary. I'll be there momentarily."

"What about a doctor?" Patricia asked.

"We could wait until one comes on-duty next week, or we can see what we remember from school."

Of all the things that she didn't want, it was Thea checking over her health. That said, she knew enough about her own body to know that the pain was coming from a rather important spot, and the last thing she should do was hold off on getting it looked at. The cheetah grumbled.

"Fine."

"Patricia?"

"Yes, yes."

The horse took her back to the medical rooms in the dome, and she was laid down on her stomach. Very gently, of course. The mare had always had a good hand for that, and there was no discomfort as she got settled in. She asked if Rachel needed anything, and the cheetah shook her head.

Then she was alone, and she forced herself to keep taking deep breaths.

Starting to regret this little idea...

They were all relying on Thea having some idea of how to work them into a team, but she was pretty sure that they'd all forgotten how the dragoness had been back at school. She'd been part of the group, but not quite a leader. A manager, sometimes, and not always the best of them. She didn't have the same sort of charisma a leader needed, and that was going to be a problem.

The lack of understanding, too, caused issues. She had a point in that they needed to know how they stood up to 'Mana's punching and everything else, but this was not how they should do it. They couldn't keep budget cutting.

She was still trying to figure out a way forward - something that was not her job - when the dragoness finally arrived. Looking out of the corner of her eye, she watched Thea approach, and held still as the dragoness pulled a machine arm down from the wall.

"This will not take long to diagnose."

"Probably not."

"You're angry."

"Some."

"I am trying to make this work."

"I know, but you're not doing it right."

"I have made it clear that I am trying to overcome my own difficulties in the process of pulling us together. I will make mistakes, and I will correct for them as we go on."

The machine hummed, and she held still for the scan that followed. It was quick, at least. She wasn't surprised that Thea had sprung for good equipment, even if they didn't have the personnel to actually use it properly yet.

"Thankfully, your ribs are not broken. They are, however, strained. I believe that we have an injection for that."

"Hmmph."

"Is the annoyed-exhalation for the injection, or for me?"

"You. If you're trying to be the team leader, you're being pretty shitty at it."

"Things will improve when we're more of a team."

"Yeah, but we're not going to get there if you keep pushing us like this. Hell, most of us haven't seen each other for months before you called us together again. I just found out that Xiadani had a girlfriend today. Hell, we ALL found that out today. How the hell do you expect us to work together when we barely know each other anymore?"

"...You raise a good point."

"Of course I fucking - OW!"

Thea had snuck the needle in while she was chatting, jamming it through clenched muscles right down to the bones. She hissed under her breath, more than slightly thankful that the dragoness's aim was still as good as it had been back at the acupuncture club.

Thankfully, the pain dissipated shortly after, a muscle relaxant and several other things jammed down to the bone. She could feel something moving down there, and she was doing her best to ignore that little feeling.

"You should be properly healed by morning. And I will take what you said under advisement."

"Mmmph...That wasn't fair."

"It did the job. But...you have given me much to think about. Thank you."

THUMP!

"...And if you'll excuse me, that sounds like Patricia moving about at greater size than usual."

"Get a carrot," Rachel muttered.

"Huh?"

"Horses love carrots..."

And with that, she passed out.

The End

Summary: A rather full day: meeting a teammate's girlfriend, sparring, and visiting the medical bay. Rachel isn't going to enjoy much of this.

Tags: F/solo, nudity, elephant, cheetah, snow leopard, dragoness, orca, various species, superhero, super heroine, patreon, lightning, gore, series,