“What do you mean ‘you can’t’?” Jake Hedron demanded. “Why can’t you? You are the only Femme who can handle mass teleportation!”

“Not anymore,” Lisa said, almost whispering. “I have to rely on my own energy now. I’m no more able to do repetitive teleportation than any of the others. My body will starve just like theirs do!”

“Why?” Jake cried. “What happened? And why now? We need you more than ever to get the Phoenix loaded. You were fine a week ago when you created the San Luis Trench.”

“It’s gone! Okay?” Lisa yelled, tired of being interrogated. “I ran out of power! I used it all up!”

Jake sat down and slumped into his chair. “Alright, I see,” he sighed. “Sit down, Lisa. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

Lisa perched on the edge of the leather-bound chair in front of Jake’s desk. Jake thought she looked like a frightened bird ready to take flight.

“Have you tried to get it back?” Jake asked. “Your power, I mean. Will it regenerate?”

“I don’t want it back,” Lisa said, her voice quiet, but firm. “It’s always been there, threatening to escape. Until it was gone, I didn’t realize how it affected me.”

“Alright,” Jake replied. “When did it happen?”

“About a month ago,” Lisa said, deciding not to lie to him.

“A month?” Jake asked, raising his eyebrows. “How did you create those trenches, then? And what did you use to power up the Phoenix?”

“All you have to do to create a nuclear energy source is teleport one solid object inside another. That’s how I… that’s how… ‘Beth’… destroyed Albuquerque. That’s how I made those trenches. I just took pieces of sandstone and teleported them underground. Big boom. That magical sphere of everlasting energy that powers my Mind Ship is just two rocks – one inside the other. Simple, huh?”

“Your ‘Mind Ship’?” Jake asked, picking out the other oddity in the turn of her words.

“Well, yeah,” Lisa said. “We created it using the nuclear power in my mind and just teleported the image from my mind into orbit. What would you call it?”

“That ship is made out of mental energy?” Jake asked, half-rising from his chair and reaching for the panic button. “It’s not real?”

“No, of course not! I mean – it’s real! It’s solid!” Lisa exclaimed, trying to keep up with his questions. “We used rocks and sand and stuff that we teleported off the desert floor. Then I just melted everything and we formed the molten mess into shape. Then we teleported it all back out as a single object. It took weeks. You must have noticed! I near starved to death, even with my nuclear power source!”

“I did notice. I was really awed,” the chairman replied, then changed the subject. “Why did you hide the fact that you were limited in the amount of energy available for other duties besides blowing things up?”

“I… um, I thought you might, uh, think less of me now, you know?” Lisa muttered, not looking at him. “My phoenix power is gone. I’m just a normal Femme now.”

“The Femme Fatales are a lot of things,” Jake replied, smiling at her, “but they are not normal.”

Lisa sighed, another lame argument turned to dust in her mouth.

“How do you propose to backup the others, now?” Jake asked.

“Isn’t Tabatha still the regular backup?” she asked. “I did the heavy moving…”

Jake looked at her, letting Lisa answer in her own time.

“I can still time-walk,” she said, finally. “Instead of protecting Tanya with my shield, I can always go back and teleport her out of danger when she gets killed.”

“That’s another thing,” Jake said. “You do good work in bringing everyone back alive, but why do you always let Tanya get butchered before you rescue her? Don’t you like her?”

“Yeah! I love her!” Lisa exclaimed. “That’s why I always let her die. She likes being killed! Then, afterwards, I, um… Should I be telling you this?”

“Yes, most definitely!” Jake informed her.

“Well, I give her the images of her being killed, along with her thoughts and the emotions she radiated at that time. Then she goes home and, um… Well, she uses it for, uh, erotic stimulation.”

“God!” Jake laughed. “I knew it!”

“Tabatha does it, too,” Lisa suggested, not sure how her boss would take her accusing his wife of weird sexual practices.

“I know,” he replied. “She’s told me. All you Femmes seem to have a morbid death wish. I’m surprised we haven’t lost the lot of you.”

“You won’t lose anyone if I can help it,” Lisa assured him. “Am I still on duty?”

“Yes, of course you are,” Jake assured her. “Who else is there?”

Lisa left the Chairman’s office and sought out her mother. Béla didn’t seemed surprised when Lisa popped in beside her.

“Hi, sweetie, ready to go?” Béla asked her.

They were going to pull a raid on the three Confederate armies that were closing in around them – not to kill or disable anyone – but for their supplies. An army travels on its stomach. No food, no army.

“Not really,” Lisa said, and sat down, looking depressed.

Image of Lisa releasing her pent-up nuclear energy into the sky, freeing her mind once and for all from the terrible power struggle she’d fought inside herself for as long as she’d been Lisa, which was about forty-five years.

‘Wow!’ Béla thought back at her. ‘Any unpleasant side effects, Darling?’

“No, Lisa replied, switching to verbal. “But I can’t flare to heal myself or anyone else now, and my fire shield doesn’t work anymore. I have to do everything the old-fashioned way.”

“Like me?” Béla laughed. “You know, if you needed to, you could always absorb another nuclear blast. It shouldn’t be a problem now that you know how to get rid of it.”

“Yeah, you’re right!” Lisa chirped, suddenly brightening up. “I could, couldn’t I…”

She hugged her mom and quickly kissed her goodbye, “Back in a minute…” then vanished.

“Macario,” Lisa sang out as she reappeared at home. “Come with me, my love…”

She grabbed him and teleported them both out into the desert where they’d left the laser cannon a month earlier. It was still lying on the ground, undiscovered by anyone since they’d been gone.

“What are we doing here?” Mac asked, suspicious of his wife’s motives. “You trying to kill yourself again?”

“No, silly,” Lisa said cheerfully. “I just want you to shoot me again.”

“That’ll kill you again,” Mac argued. “I thought you didn’t want killed anymore. Besides, you can’t shield, now. You’d actually die.”

“I promise I’ll come back,” she said, grinning at him. “I can always come back.”

Mac sighed and picked up the cannon. “It has some charge in it,” he said, somewhat surprised. It had been lying out in the weather for several weeks and was exposed to that nuclear fireball that Lisa had spewed out of her mind into the sky. It had also been absorbing sunlight for the last month or so, and the charging core had absorbed some of it.

“Okay, Baby,” Lisa cooed. “Do me!”

“Do me? Now you sound like Mama Bee,” Mac murmured, hoisting the weapon up on his shoulders and pointing it at his petite, naked wife. “You ready?”

She nodded.

He pressed the firing lever. Nothing happened. Frowning, he pressed it, again. This time, it fired. The blast struck Lisa’s fire shield and dissipated.

“Well, surprise!” Mac called out to her. “I suspected you’d pull something like that. What did you do?”

Image of Mac firing the laser cannon and Lisa sucking the energy into her mind. Mac firing the cannon again and Lisa using the accumulated energy from the first blast to protect her from the second one.

“Real cute, Lisa,” Mac replied.

He pressed the firing lever several more times. It went off every other time he pressed the lever. Every time it released its deadly beam of energy, Lisa’s fire shield prevented the beam from reaching her.

“Clever girl,” he murmured and tossed the laser cannon aside. “It’s empty.”

Lisa grinned, then walked over and picked it up. Aiming at some brush, she pressed the firing lever. The sagebrush exploded into a shower of fiery embers.

“Now, it’s empty,” she proclaimed, and tossed it aside.

Mac looked at her, astonished. Lisa broke into inane laughter.

“Ha, ha! Faked you out! Big time!” she chortled.

“You blew up the bush yourself!” he accused her, laughing with her.

She admitted it. “I had some energy left over, so I just discharged it.”

“You’re incredible!” Mac announced, admiring her naked body.

“Ain’t I, though?” she agreed, quite pleased with herself.

“And you didn’t die!” Mac said, happily embracing her and holding her tightly.

“Nope!” she said cheerfully. “I’m the same ‘me’ that brought you here.”

“Good,” Mac replied, leaning down to kiss her face.

Lisa moaned her pleasure as Macario slid his tongue into her mouth. She let go freely and experienced that simple pleasure with her entire being. Without that nuclear energy in her head, she could experience new heights of pleasure and sensation without the need to clamp down on her emotional energy releases. She’d never felt so alive and free.

‘I love you,’ she sang into her lover’s head. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you…’

She radiated her pleasure through Macario’s body, arousing him even more. She laughed as his arousal sang back through her body. They lay down on the rough ground and Lisa began opening Macario’s shirt. Every few seconds she would reach down and tease his cock, stroking that massive organ right through his trousers, then return to playing with his shirt buttons.

After a moment of this, Mac tore his shirt off and pulled Lisa against his bare chest. She sighed in pleasure and rubbed her hard nipples against his softer, smaller ones. They both tried to unfasten his trousers at the same time, then both pulled back. Smiling wickedly into his eyes, she then teleported them off him just like she had done the last time.

Mac’s cock sprang up, no longer trapped down his leg, and slapped against his belly. They both laughed at the sight of it although Macario seemed slightly embarrassed.

Sliding down, Lisa began to rub her lips along it, kissing and licking gently as her head traveled up and down along its length. When it was wet enough, she stood up and balanced over that massive club, carefully guiding it up between her damp thighs. Then her pussy lips met the top of his magnificent cock and she simply dropped down on it, instantly skewering herself.

Neither was unable to keep from crying out at the intense sensation. Lisa was stretched like she normally was, and Mac’s cock wasn’t all the way in yet. Leaning forward, she put her hands on his chest to help support her weight. Then she began moving her pelvis back and forth, wedging him in a little deeper with each shift of her hips.

As she slowly corkscrewed her way down Macario’s cock, he could hear her grunt with every move. Half of his cock felt wonderfully wet and warm. Lisa’s pelvic muscles were also massaging it as she twitched back and forth, trying to get him deeper inside her.

“God, you feel good,” he told her as she sank a little further down on him.

“Yeah,” Lisa grunted. “And I aim to feel a whole lot better in a minute…”

She started to come before she was all the way down and her juices, mixed with some red, began leaking down Mac’s shaft, tickling his balls and ass. Even as one orgasm flowed over her body, the next one was beginning.

Mac could feel the top of her womb with the head of his cock and she still tried to take him deeper. Taking her arms in his hands, he pulled Lisa down against him and took over, moving in and out of her stretched and bleeding pussy with long, sensuous strokes.

Lisa’s control was completely gone. She lay on top of him, letting him squeeze her ribs and torso with his arms held tightly around her and had one orgasm after another as he slid that wonderful, giant cock up and down inside her.

In the almost forty years he’d been making love to Lisa, this was only the second time that she’d given herself completely to him, body and soul. He could feel her sensations and her love radiating through him and he knew she could feel his. Her warm, wet and sticky body was his to ravish as he saw fit, and he could feel in her mind that he had her complete agreement to do whatever he wanted with her.

She started thrashing in his arms as his orgasm neared, her body responding to his with an incredible buildup of sensual energy. His cock throbbed and shook as he pumped his semen deep inside her. Lisa shook with her own final orgasm as she felt his arrive, then she relaxed on top of him, completely sated, glowing her love for him from every pore of her body.

Macario gently stroked her rump, back and shoulder blades for a few minutes, enjoying the feel of her body against his and started to drift off.

He jerked awake, surprised when he suddenly found himself back at home lying in bed and Lisa wasn’t in his arms.

‘Sorry – I’ll be back soon. We have a daylight raid to do and I’m already late…’

Lisa timewalked back an hour and appeared next to her mother a few minutes after she’d just left, just as she’d promised.

“Okay, I’m ready,” Lisa called out, see Tanya and Tabatha there, and Alicia, as well. “What’s she doing here?”

“I’ve been teaching her the basics of teleportation and stuff,” Tanya explained. “She’s not coming with us, but Tabatha and Béla will be mind-linked with her so she can monitor us.”

“Suits, I guess,” Lisa quipped and sat down next to Alicia.

“You look better,” she said and sent the blonde an image of her being staked out naked in the sun when she’d been dead for about a week.

Alicia stared at the dark-haired girl, her eyes wide open, remembering her terror. “That never happened!”

“Yes it did,” Lisa said quietly. “When I found you, you’d been dead for several days. I showed your mom how to time-walk and she went back in time and rescued you.”

Alicia stared at her naked, evil step-daughter and the cruel images she presented her.

“Why did you abandon us?” Lisa asked in a hurt voice. “You deserted us to go live with the Normals. You could have been a member of our team.”

Alicia blinked several times as though she’d been slapped.

“Lay off!” Tanya said, suddenly sitting down between Lisa and her daughter.
“She’s here now, that’s all you need to know. She was trying to recover the life she had before. There’s nothing wrong with that. High powered business and politics is what she’s good at.”

“It’s all right,” Alicia said, quietly interrupting. “She’s right. I abandoned you – all of you. I even had another child while I was there. I left because I don’t want to go to New Eden – that’s no life for me. But, as I found out much too late, I can’t live among the Normals, either. People will always persecute those they believe are different. I can’t change that. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings by rejecting what you believe is important.”

“Nice speech,” Lisa murmured, feeling sourer than she’d felt for some time.

“You should talk,” Tabatha chimed in cheerfully. “You smell like the whore of Babylon.”

“Yes, she does, doesn’t she,” Béla added, discovering an opportunity to lighten the mood in the room. “And I should know…”

The others looked at her as she broadcast an image of the ancient city and the wonderful debauchery that those walls had contained.

“Were you the whore of Babylon, Mom?” Lisa had to ask, snickering.

Béla sat silent and proud, not answering.

“Okay, girls,” Tabatha interrupted, after allowing Béla her moment. “I brought down a map I drew from watching the army. The closest one is here,” she pointed at the center of Colorado, “to the north. They still have a mountain range to cross. Two more are here,” she pointed to the new canyon that arched east, then north to the twin Spanish Peaks, “and here.” That army was just north of what was now the San Luis Lake, rather than the San Luis Trench, as Jake Hedron had referred to it, earlier.

“Sorry,” Lisa said quietly. “I didn’t know that gorge would fill up so fast.”

“You must have melted a glacier or broken through to an underground sea or something with one of those blasts,” Tanya quipped.

“We have about a quarter of our supplies loaded on the Phoenix,” Tabatha continued, ignoring Lisa and Tanya’s chatter, “and we’re beginning to transport personnel aboard as the work load shifts from the surface to the ship.”

“How long will we need to get everyone aboard?” Tanya asked.

“That’s not the problem,” Tabatha replied. “We need to feed them. It will take at least two weeks, using the Focal Press, to get all the supplies aboard. After that, we could get the people loaded in just a few days.”

“How long do we have before the army gets here?” Alicia wanted to know.

“Less than a week,” Tabatha said. “Unless we slow them down again.”

She looked directly at Lisa when she said that last part. Lisa looked away, feeling guilty about… well, a lot of things.

“We might have to kill some of them,” Béla said quietly, knowing that her daughter was biting her tongue not to cheerfully recommend that exact same thing.

If Lisa had said it, the others, no matter that they loved her, would attribute her words to her bloodthirsty attitude. But Lisa hadn’t said it – her mother had. And because Béla said it, it was most likely something that they would not be able to avoid.

“I have a report from Tomlin,” Tabatha said, taking over again. “This is data from Lisa’s debriefing after she so spectacularly created those two canyons that kept the Confederates at bay.”

Lisa gazed at Tabatha nervously, upset that the Chairman and Tabatha would make a public accusation regarding the loss of her special powers.

“Lisa knows how to create nuclear energy at will,” Tabatha continued. “You may think it’s because she’s a phoenix, but it’s really a quite simple trick – one that you all should know how to do.”

Closing her eyes, Tabatha displayed a mental image of taking two simple rocks and teleporting one inside the other. The imagined nuclear blast made them all jump unexpectedly – all except Lisa.

‘Thank you, Tabby…’

‘I always have your back, Lizard Breath…’

“Wow!” several girls said. “That’s really… easy!” Alicia said.

Several of the group turned toward Alicia, who took the opportunity to tell them something.

“I know I should have stayed around and learned how to do these things that are so vital to your survival – and mine, as well, as I found out. If I’d not gone off searching for glory and political power, maybe I wouldn’t have attracted so much attention to the rest of you.”

“You didn’t do it,” Tabatha interrupted. “We’ve been stealing from the Confederacy for as long as it’s been around. We just never thought they’d come after us for it.”

“That’s just it,” Alicia explained. “They’re not after you for thieving. They want your ship – the Phoenix. And they want what they think is your technology: telepathy and teleportation, to be precise. They have a cube that can detect a telepath. That’s how they caught me. I never bothered to learn how to shield, so I set off every alarm they had.”

Tabatha thought for a moment. “All right, then. Now we know they’re not going to go away. We have two things we need to do, now. Steal as much of their supplies that will fit into the ship – teleport directly to the cargo hold – not the warehouse in Solar City like we originally intended. Then, using Lisa’s new trick with the rocks, dig a hole between us and them that they can’t cross!”

Jake Hedron came into the briefing room and stood next to his wife. “Okay, everybody, I want to welcome Alicia to the Femme Fatales. I assume that Tabatha has briefed you all on what we’re doing?”

Several girls nodded.

“Good,” The Chairman said. “Then let’s get started. Tanya and Béla will team together and go harass the northern army. Lisa and Tabatha, you get the group in the San Luis Valley. Tanya and Béla, be extra careful in setting off any nuclear explosions – that mountainous area is prone to earthquakes. In addition, if no one told you, there is a new volcano at the far end of the San Luis Trench. We don’t want to kill anyone if we don’t have to. And that includes your teammate.”

That last part was directed right at Lisa. ‘Don’t let my wife get herself killed…’

Tabatha kissed Jake goodbye, then vanished her clothes, so she was now as naked as her Femme teammates. Jake grinned, always amazed at the girls’ willingness to display their naked bodies at every opportunity.

“It distracts them so they don’t shoot us,” Tabatha explained.

Then she and Lisa vanished. Béla and Tanya, also both naked, vanished a moment later.

“Well, Mom,” Jake said to a somewhat embarrassed Alicia, “looks like just you and me…”

“Where are your maps?” Alicia asked.

Jake pulled down a wall map of the state of Colorado. Alicia got up and looked at it closely.

“Okay, here’s where Tabatha is,” she said, pointing down near the bottom of the map. “And there’s Béla.”

She pointed to an area just north of the Spanish Peaks.

“It feels weird, just sitting here and watching them through their eyes,” she explained.

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