Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Part 3 - Alien

   One day, the serious shit finally hit the fan.  I guess it was
inevitable - after all, these two ladies hadn't actually come to my
apartment just to get boned, believe it or not.

   Our place was apparently about the safest apartment in the city.  In
addition to our structural improvements and booby-traps, Sophie had sealed
the place with wards and charms to prevent all kinds of demonic entry. 
Therefore, it was assumed that any assassins with brains would try to
ambush me when I was out of the house.

   The obvious answer was to stay home, but I wasn't having any of that. 
Okay, I was having a lot of it, with some very good incentive to never
leave the bedroom, let alone the home - but I still insisted on getting
out, daily.  I jogged around the neighborhood, ran errands for supplies,
maintained occasional attempts at socialization with a few acquaintances,
and sometimes kept up the illusion that Lisa and I were going on dates.  I
also still went to work, though my tutoring sessions had been cut down to a
few hours a week.  Any time I was out, though, it was required that I was
accompanied by one or the other of my two super-powered bodyguards -
usually Lisa, who was less lazy, more clingy, and less likely to attract
attention.

   Walking home from the store with a backpack full of healthy groceries
and a carton of incongruous cigarettes, Lisa suddenly tilted her head to
the side and stopped me.  "Trouble," she said.

   I sighed.  This had happened enough that I no longer took it very
seriously, but I knew that it meant I was going to be carrying her share of
our goods home while she pounded mysterious inhuman killers into dogmeat,
and I wasn't looking forward to lugging Sophie's industrial-sized jug of
bottom-shelf gin.

   Lisa set down her burden and took off between two parked cars,
apparently headed down some narrow alleyway.

   I fumbled around until I found a way to carry everything at once,
jamming some more stuff into my backpack, and kept going down the street.
Sometimes I wondered what exactly was happening at times like this.  Was
there a sniper up above us with a rifle trained on me?  Thugs waiting
around the next corner?  How come I never saw or heard anything?  If they
weren't human, what were they?  The most obvious answer was more robots,
but Lisa never seemed to have any trouble with them.

   "Gaaah!" I shouted in alarm, dropping the gin, as a ten-foot demon
materialized five feet in front of me in a burst of flames, sulfurous
smoke, and distorted metal guitar riffs.  Then I groaned, stepping back out
of the puddle of booze and broken glass.  Sophie was going to be pissed.

   "Is that gin?  I KNEW it!  You must be Sophie's new kid!" the demon
roared.  He had curly horns, reddish skin, hairy goat legs, and a funky
trident spear thing, the whole works.  He cackled madly, and the smoke and
fire swirled around him without dissipating.  It was quite disconcerting,
but also quite...cheesy.

   "Seriously?  You're a demon assassin?  You look like a..." I was lost
for words, and not taking this nearly seriously enough, for some reason. 
Well, mostly because of the cheese.

   "LIKE A DEMON ASSASSIN?" he bellowed.

   "Well...like how a cartoonist in the newspaper would draw a demon
assassin, maybe.  If he didn't have too much imagination.  It's all kinda
cliche.  I mean, you know, cool, but..."

   "But what?" he growled, stepping forward and pointing the spear my way.

   "It's just, after meeting Sophie, I thought demons would be
more...uhm...not silly?"

   The demon glowered at me for a bit, and then his shape and size flowed
in a creepy organic bugs and slime kind of way and he turned into a more
normal-looking guy.  Still tall, still hairy, but mostly human looking. 
And the spear looked a little more practical and less Neptuney.

   "Sorry, just trying to give you what I thought you'd expect.  I haven't
been out of Hell for a while..."

   "No, no, that's cool.  I mean, it was pretty neat, just...a little
cheesy, you know?"

   "Cheesy!  Cheesy?  Yes, I suppose it was cheesy!" he cried loudly.  "And
now, in the name of Damastrius, thirteenth son of Belial, I'm going to rip
the soul from your dying body and send Sophia your bloody heart in a box!"

   "I'd rather you didn't, only Yeeeowww!" I shouted in pain.  I'd only
barely managed to dodge that spearpoint going right through my chest, and
it'd still taken a nasty gouge out of my shoulder.  "Hah!" he yelled,
advancing again at me while I backed and circled away.

   So this was bad.  Theoretically I was way tougher now than I was a
couple of months ago, but I was still just a short beefy dude and there was
no telling what all this weirdo could do.  Also, a weapon would have been
nice - I was seriously outclassed right now in terms of reach.

   Damastrius, Damastrius...I tried to remember anything I knew about that
name, or at least about scions of Belial, from the stuff Sophie'd been
teaching me.  Usually demons had some kind of weird weakness, like allergic
reactions to silver, or a vulnerable spot on the back of the knees, or
severe rabbit phobia...that kind of thing.  I was a little distracted
trying not to get shish-kabobed, though.

   Luckily, the whole point of doing fighting drills over and over again is
that they become instinctive, and I managed to do a decent job not dying
despite a brain full of confusion.  I shrugged off the backpack while
dodging another spear thrust, and tossed it at his face; he batted it aside
easily, but it gave me an opening to sprint back a few steps to where I'd
dropped the gin.

   One nifty shoulder roll later I'd escaped another attack from his spear
and also scooped up a couple of big pieces of thick glass.  Great, now I
had...glass.  Soaked in gin.  I guess it was better than bare hands?

   "Quit jumping around, you're only making this take longer," the demon
complained, swinging the head of his spear in a little circle.  With a
little Wing Chun action I deflected his next thrust and stepped in at him
at the same time, swiping at his body with the broken glass. 
Unfortunately, he easily spun back with the spear and knocked my hand away,
painfully.  And then the gin on the glass ignited, apparently from the heat
of his still-smoldering weapon, and I swore, dropping the flaming glass and
beating my hand against my chest.  "Fuck, fuck, fuck that hurts!"

   "Ah hah hah ha ha haaaaah!" he shouted, "Can't take fire, eh?  I got
plenty more where that came from!" Yeah, this wasn't going well.

   Rather than risk another flaming fist, I feinted and then threw the
other glass chunk at his head; it came close, but he still dodged.  I guess
he'd probably had more than a couple of months to work on his fighting game
before he got drafted to kill pretenders to the throne.  He cracked me on
the side of my jaw with the side of his spear.  I saw stars, but managed to
scramble away to a safer distance.

   "Can't say I think much of your protector," he said with a grin.  "You
obviously shouldn't be allowed to leave the house alone!"

   "He is not allowed to leave the house alone," Lisa said, as the metal
pipe in her hands connected with the back of his head with a mighty Clang!

   My attacker was sent tumbling ass over appetite into a parked car,
denting the hell out of the driver's side door and setting off a couple of
airbags and a car alarm.  It would have been a high-five moment, if Lisa
hadn't had her hands full.  And if she knew anything about high-fives.

   Instead, I collapsed against a fence post, breathing heavily, holding my
burned hand gingerly to my battered face.  "Good timing, sweetheart!"

   Lisa smiled at me and then interrupted the demon's attempt to stand by
sweeping his feet out from under him and bringing the pipe down on his head
again.  She then kicked his spear away from his hand.

   I figured it would be about a 50/50 chance that the spear would either
do something horrible to me if I picked it up, or else be the demon's great
weakness.  When he started to get up again and Lisa backed away in
confusion, I figured it was worth a shot - anything that could take a
beating from her was not something we wanted to fuck around with.

   I picked up the spear, and it did burn like a bastard - especially to my
already fucked-up hand - and the world seemed a bit greyer and uglier, and
I thought for a second I heard that choir of screaming children again - but
I didn't turn into a newt or burst into flames, so I steeled myself and
impaled that son of a bitch, driving the spear all the way through him and
into the car door.  He screamed in anguish, writhed around a bit, and then
he and his spear disintegrated in flames and smoke until nothing was left
but the hole in the door.

   "That is not possible," Lisa explained matter-of-factly, and then turned
to me.  "You are injured."

   "Yeah, I'm not happy, but I'm not going to die.  Let's get back to the
house," I said.  But she insisted on checking my hand, jaw, and the cut in
my shoulder before she let me pick up the backpack full of roughed-up food
and head home.

   ***

   Back in my apartment, Lisa got out the sewing kit and stitched up my
shoulder while Sophie examined my wounds.

   "Damastrius?  Guy's a fuckin wanker," Sophie commented while feeling my
swollen jawbone.  "Well, it's not broken, for some reason.  You're going to
need a blessing, though."

   "What, you mean like last rites or something?  I've been hurt worse than
this before."

   "Naw, it's not the wounds, it's the poison," she said calmly.

   "Poison?" Lisa and I asked simultaneously, with a bit of panic in our
voices.

   "Sure, it was a spear forged in Hell.  All kinds of bad mojo in there,
gonna spread like an infection through your blood until you go nuts, die,
and turn into a zombie demon thing.  No modern doctor could do a thing
about it, either."

   "Jesus, Sophie!  What do I do?"

   "I told you, honey, you need a blessing.  Get your ass to a church or a
temple or whatever, have a priest banish that shit out of you, wash the
wounds with holy water, say some Hail Marys, that kind of crap.  I'd, you
know, go with you, but...not really my thing.  Demon."

   "Shit...okay, like, right away?"

   "Quicker the better.  Don't take any chances about becoming a zombie
demon thing, those guys don't get any fuckin pussy."

   "I'm so glad you're looking out for me," I said weakly, rising to my
feet.  "Lisa, can you help me get to a church?"

   "A church can not heal poison," Lisa said, but her heart wasn't in it.
"I will go with you if it will reassure your superstitious mind."

   "Thanks, babe," Sophie said.  "And while you're out...could you pick up
another jug of booze?"

   "Woof," I grunted as I hobbled stiffly out the door.

   ***

   I convinced the priest to bless me using that time-honored tradition for
dealing with clergy: I lied like a persian rug.  Some sob story about
getting mugged, and my old-fashioned grandma the devout Catholic having bad
dreams, and the police weren't much help, and could you bless my injuries
just to make her feel better?  I'm not sure he really bought it, but he
played along.  I guess when you're a priest it's kind of your job to
pretend you believe weird shit.  And, now that I was living with a demon, I
had to wonder what other weird shit was true.  Did this guy really hear
God, for instance?

   How much of it was in my mind, I don't know, but my hand and shoulder
did start to feel better almost immediately.  Not healed, by any means,
just a bit less throbby.

   ***

   Back at the apartment, I pressed Sophie for any information more
detailed than "wanker".

   "Damastrius?  You remember what I told you before, right?  Guy hates
syringa flowers, manhole covers, and the letter H.  He's got a thing for
feet, too.  Like, big time.  Tortures souls by flaying the skin off their
feet and making them walk around in salt, likes to play these weird games
where he guesses which succubus is which from the taste of their toes..."

   "What?" I said, expressively.

   "Look, it probably doesn't matter.  Odds are good the guy he sent was
hired somewhere outside his domain, so he'd have had totally different
weaknesses anyways.  You said he showed up with the horns and the heavy
metal and everything?  That's fuckin priceless!" She chortled for a bit,
and then sipped her gin.  "Wanker."

   "I can't say you seem very concerned.  I pretty nearly died today. 
Aren't you supposed to be my bodyguard?"

   Sophie shrugged and gave me a confused look.  "What do you want from me?
You went out there with the robot, you're still alive.  Am I supposed to be
scared because you're not dead, or do you just want me to hold your hand
every time you take a piss?"

   I guess concern would have been weird, coming from the Sin Princess
here, but I'd expected a little more sympathy or something, probably
because we'd been screwing on a regular basis and that was supposed to
"promote emotional bonding".  Guess not so much.

   ***

   Later that night, things got weirder.

   I was having some kind of nightmare - it started out pleasantly enough,
with demons beating nine kinds of crap out of me, but then it degenerated
into something weird and incoherent.  I was hot, and there were flashes of
light and the sensation that I was pinned down and paralyzed, and there
were shadowy figures, and then there were inhuman faces, all around me,
looking at me, talking to each other without talking.  There was the face
of a beautiful woman, and yet it terrified me, made me want to scream and
barf and run and hide in the corner.

   Sophie poked me awake with a finger in my wounded shoulder.  "Ow!" I
tried to yell, but it came out more "Owoomph!" as she covered my mouth.

   "Shh," she whispered into my ear, "Trouble.  Something's in the house
and I can't wake up the robot."

   Can't wake up the...what?  Lisa never really slept, she just faked it. I
thought.  Had she forgotten to recharge or something?  No, forgetting stuff
wasn't really her style.  I stared at her in alarm, but she did just seem
to be sleeping.

   "Focus, cowboy.  I said there's something in the house.  We'll take care
of it without her help, it's my turn anyway." Sophie rolled soundlessly to
her feet and padded to the door, turning the handle slowly.  I realized
with a strange sense of fear that pale white light was coming around the
door into the bedroom.

   I slid out of bed - not quite so silently, I'm afraid - and slid on my
underwear.  Trivial things, I know.  Sophie hadn't bothered to put on a
stitch.  Maybe she was counting on distracting the bad guys while I bopped
them with a frying pan.

   We tiptoed into the hallway.  The light seemed to be coming from the
living room.  It wasn't terribly bright, kind of ethereal and flickery. 
Sophie scanned the dark bathroom before letting me walk by it, but
apparently the not-so-subtle intrusion in the living room was all that was
going on.  The succubus went in first, and I bravely hid behind her,
looking over her shoulder.

   The beautiful face from my dream was standing calmly in the living room,
attached to the rest of a beautiful woman.  She seemed less terrifying now.
Slightly.

   She was floating about four inches off the ground, her hair appeared to
be twitching in a non-existent breeze, and she was clearly the source of
the eerie white light.  She had blonde hair down to the jaw line,
shockingly green eyes, angular features.  Her thin, long body was covered
in a weird silver cloth...thing.  Despite being perfectly attractive, her
face seemed off somehow, not quite human.

   When we came into the room, she was holding a pair of scissors in her
hand, studying them intently.  I'd been using them earlier in the day to
cut off some sewing, repairing a tear in my exercise shorts.  The woman
kept turning them over and over again, like she was trying to solve a logic
puzzle.  After a moment, Sophie cleared her throat, and the apparition
looked up at us, dropping the scissors.

   "Oh," she said.  "You are not supposed to be awake at this time.  Please
go back to sleep." She raised her right hand.

   I woke up on the floor, carpet pressing into my cheek a bit roughly, one
hand twisted uncomfortably under me.  My consciousness swam back into my
brain reluctantly, from a great distance.  I'd been having the most
disturbing nightmare, I remembered...what was it about?

   "Get the fuck up!" Sophie repeated, and pushed her foot back into my
bruised jaw.

   "Ow!" I said, rising to a sitting position.  Then I remembered something
important was happening, involving a woman in my living room...or was that
my dream?

   "Why do you not sleep?" the floaty woman asked Sophie, tilting her head.
"Your mind is strange."

   "My brain's full of gin, honey.  That hypnotic shit ain't gonna work on
me," Sophie gloated.  I suspected being superhuman had more to do with it,
but maybe it was the gin, you never know.

   "Wugh," I added to the conversation, and then, "Who are you, and what
are you doing in my living room?" I didn't expect an assassin to answer,
but if she was an assassin, she wasn't trying very hard to kill me.

   "My name is impossible to express in sound waves," she said.  Did her
mouth move when she said that, or was my mind just filling in the blanks
after hearing her voice in my head?  Both things seemed to be true at the
same time.  "I am researching you.  I had hoped to study your dwelling for
some time before coming into contact with you, but this one with the
strange mind has ruined that plan." She seemed angry.  Or not.  It was
confusing.

   "Fucking up people's best-laid plans, that's me," Sophie said.  "Now get
the fuck out.  Go do your science project somewhere else."

   "No, I do not wish to leave," the woman with no name said.  "I will
finish my research.  It will not take long." She turned away from us and
walked into the kitchen area.

   "How long?" I asked, standing again at last.  My memory seemed full of
holes.  Who was she again?  How long had I known her?

   Sophie moved to put her beautiful naked self between us, hands on hips,
and said "It doesn't matter how long this bitch wants to be here, she's
leaving now.  Or I'm making her leave."

   "My research will take approximately four hundred and fifty-seven orbits
of your planet.  And I do not think you can make me leave." She pushed the
door button on the front of the microwave, and stared at it with intense
concentration as it popped open with a ding.  "Curious.  What do you
normally irradiate with this machine?"

   "That's it," Sophie said, "Show and tell's over.  Let's go, sister." She
strode quickly to the glowing woman and grabbed her elbow.

   Floaty woman paused from her current occupation - opening and closing
the microwave - and looked down at Sophie's hand.  "Why are you initiating
physical contact with me?  Do you wish to have sex?"

   Sex was normally the magic word for Sophie, but she didn't jump at the
bait this time.  "I always wish to have sex, honey, but right now I've got
other plans - huh." I was expecting something to happen, but nothing did.
"Shit.  How much do you weigh?"

   "Weigh?  My mass is relative.  What is this substance?" She
walked...floated?  I couldn't make my brain decide if her legs were moving
or not.  Anyway, she moved over to the counter and looked into a big bag of
rice.  Sophie refused to let go, which resulted in nothing except being
dragged over against her will.

   "Damn.  This chick is the real deal.  What are you?"

   "I am <something>.  Your minds have no concept for it.  Call me an
alien. I do come from outside your planet."

   What was I, a weirdness magnet?  "A robot, a demon, and now an alien? 
Give me a break.  Why on Earth would all of you come here?"

   "We didn't just happen to come here, Dingus, you're important," Sophie
said absently.  She let go of the woman's elbow and stood back.

   "Yes, you are important," the woman agreed.  "I chose your dwelling
because I wish to study sex."

   "You...whaa?" You've got to be fucking shitting me.

   "I scanned the local environment quite thoroughly before choosing, and
found this dwelling to have anomalously high levels of sexual activity, as
well as being a temporal focus.  Additionally, there is a strange source of
energy here, which I have been unable to evaluate correctly.  I suspect it
comes from this one - " and here she pointed at Sophie.

   "Hell yeah, I'm a source of strange energy!  Here, why don't you try
evaluating this!" Sophie cried, balling her fist up and then releasing it.

   A vaguely round cloud of boiling darkness spread from her hand and then
shot across the room, wrapping itself around the alien.  She looked
shocked, and then dropped from her floaty position, landing hard on her
feet.  Her white glow vanished.  She stared in alarm at the blackness,
which was slowly spreading across her torso.  "I am unable to move.  How
are you doing this?" she asked, and this time my brain was sure it saw her
mouth move.

   "It's called Grimalkin's Dark Cloud, after the batshit necromancer who
invented it.  He taught it to me in return for seducing him away from his
previous studies into the healing powers of mushrooms." Good old Sophie and
her cute little factoids.

   "Sophie, I don't think she seems all that dangerous..." I said, though
part of my mind, some lizard part in the back, was still gibbering with
terror at the sight of her.

   "Fuck that," Sophie snapped.  "This place is too fuckin crowded already.
We can't just have random dipshits teleporting in past my wards any time
they feel like checking us out.  She's gonna go, and she's not coming back.
Right, bitch?" Sophie advanced on our visitor slowly, still holding her
palm out.  The blackness had spread farther.

   "Wrong, anomaly," the woman said, and then everything jumped.

   We were in the living room now, sitting on the couch.  Sophie and I were
next to each other, fully clothed, watching as the alien sat sprawled on
the floor, counting grains of rice.  She had, apparently, emptied the
entire bag onto the carpet in preparation for this act.  There was no sign
of the black cloud, but she was still without her glow.  The lights in the
apartment had been turned on.  "Six million, one hundred thirty seven
thousand, two hundred and ten...why is it not two hundred and twelve?  It
should be two hundred and twelve.  Definitely two hundred and twelve.  I
will start over."

   "What the fucking fuck?" Sophie said eloquently.  "What just happened?
Why am I dressed?  Why am I SOBER???"

   I think I let out a little sob of alarm.  My eyes were quite wide.  I
might have been drooling.  There were flashes of white light every time I
blinked.

   "Your minds cannot contain the concept of what I did.  Think of it as
altering event lines within our local region of spacetime.  A bit of
temporal editing, a Tau-axis shift...no, your language does not contain
adequate words.  I changed things.  Definitely two hundred and twelllve..."
she added a few more rice grains to her pile.

   Sophie cried in alarm, jumped to her feet, and ran to the fridge.  Was
she actually wringing her hands?  "Priorities, woman!" I shouted, but she
was chugging straight out of the gin bottle and couldn't answer me.

   "...I haven't been...sober...in over two thousand years," she panted
frantically, when she stopped to breathe.  "It's...it's fucking horrible!
Aaaaggghhgluglugluglug sluuuurp.  How the fuck do you people do it?"

   "I could go for a shot myself right now, Soph..." I tried, but it was
too late.  The bottle was empty.  "Never mind."

   "Sorry, toots.  Medical emergency.  Shit!  Shit.  I still don't
know...well.  I guess it's some higher-dimensional shit we wouldn't
understand, right?"

   "Right," the alien said.  "However, I would appreciate it if you could
tell me why there are not enough of these objects here?"

   "The rice grains?  Enough for what?  What do you want to do with them?"
I still had no idea what the fuck she was doing.

   "Do?" She seemed intrigued at the concept.  "Look...alright, look,"
Sophie said.  "If we can't make you leave, and you came here to study
for...what was it?  Five hundred years?"

   "Four hundred and fifty-seven orbits, yes.  That is not long."

   "Maybe to you two, but some of us aren't immortal," I groaned, trying to
shake the daze out of my head.  The room swam and I felt dizzy.

   "Perhaps your body should not be exposed to Tau-axis shifts," the alien
said.  "You seem to be experiencing discomfort.  I apologize.  This planet
is extremely primitive."

   "If we're so primitive, then why do you need to study us getting it on?
And why the fuck are you counting rice like some kind of idiot savant?"
Sophie demanded.

   "Rice?  The number isn't right.  There is not enough.  Perhaps some
mistake was made.  I will count again.  One, two, three..."

   "Okay, look," I said.  "Can you at least let us wake up Lisa?"

   "There are no other intelligent life forms in this dwelling," the alien
woman said.  "Where is Lisa?"

   "She's the...the robot, in the bedroom.  The one you put to sleep," I
guessed.

   "Robot?  Ah.  There was a thinking automaton with you.  I suspended its
functions so it would not interrupt my studies.  You wish me to reanimate
it?"

   "Yes," I said.  "But watch out, she's probably going to try to kill you.
She doesn't like strange women in the apartment any more than Sophie does."

   "I see," the alien said, and it reminded me a bit of Lisa.  "Your fear
for me is unjustified.  Your automaton cannot damage me, any more than the
anomaly can." There was a brief bit of the white glow again, and then she
went back to counting rice.  Then she paused and looked up, as though
something had just occurred to her.  "Does this worldline have no Bleem?"

   "Bleem?  What?  I guess not.  What the fuck is a Bleem?"

   "Ah," she said, "your numberline is different.  Now I understand.  There
is no further need to count the...rice." She stood up, brushing her hands
clean, as Lisa ran into the room naked and frantic.

   "You gonna pick that shit up?" Sophie asked, pointing to the pile of
rice and opening her emergency fifth of scotch with one hand.  Well,
kind-of scotch.  It was called "Idaho Gold" and it was imported from
Canada, so it was hard to say what it had to do with Scotland.

   "What is happening?" Lisa asked in alarm.  "Why was my consciousness
interrupted?  Who is this woman?  Is she another...demon?"

   "Relax, Bubbles, she's some kind of alien and she doesn't seem to be
hostile.  She says she's just here to watch us have sex.  Also, it seems to
be completely impossible to get her to leave, so don't bother."

   "I apologize for my unwelcome presence, but I have been assigned to
study primitive sex, and I must finish my project.  I will not interfere
with your lives unduly."

   "Right, you'll just knock us unconscious, spill our food all over the
floor, rewrite time and our memories, and stare creepily at us while we
fuck?  Oh yeah, and you apparently nearly killed Sophie with your gift of
instant sobriety."

   "Fuck!  I wish she'd only killed me.  This is worse.  This is...this is
so baaad..." Sophie wailed, holding her head in her hands.  I had moved to
stand beside Lisa and put my hand on her shoulder.  She was looking me over
intently, but we soon heard snuffling sounds and turned to look with
surprise.  Sophie was...crying?

   "What is wrong?" Lisa asked with a surprising hint of real concern in
her voice.  "Interesting," the alien added.  "Is she distressed?"

   "Sophie?  You okay?  Is it, like, the world's worst hangover or
something?" I asked.  "You want an ice pack?  Tylenol?  Just say the word."
I realized that I was pretty worried.  Maybe our sex had bonded us after
all.

   "It's not...it's not painful.  Ice isn't gonna help, it's just...I need
to get drunk!  I need to STAY drunk!" She took another hard, long pull on
the scotch, but I guessed with her ridiculous tolerance it was going to
take a while to hit home.  "I don't want to feel like this, I don't want to
remember...anything."

   I moved over and sat by her, holding her shoulders.  Lisa moved near us,
putting herself between us and the alien, who was still watching with
interest.  I rubbed her a little and kissed the back of her neck, and she
sighed.  Then she looked up at me, eyes red, tears coming down, nose a bit
runny.  "I've done...you don't know what I've done, to all
those...people...waaaah!" She put her head back down and started bawling
out loud.

   Jesus.  I guess it never occurred to me that she might feel guilty for,
uh, destroying the souls of hundreds of people.  Makes sense, kind of, but
she never showed anything like guilt, any time.  Guess that's what all the
gin was for.  I'd thought she was just the ultimate hedonist.

   I held her as she rocked and cried, shhing in her ear, stroking her
hair. I wanted to say something comforting, but what do you say?  It's
okay? It doesn't matter?  You're not a bad person?  I mean, clearly, she
was.  You're just doing your job?  Maybe just, I don't care what you did?

   In the end, I just held her for a little while, and she finished her
scotch, and then she ran out the door without a word, presumably to break
into a liquor store or maybe mug a hobo for his Mad Dog.

   "I apologize for distressing your lover," the alien said.  "May I watch
you have sex now?"

   "...No!" I answered with a frown.  "Christ.  Lisa, why don't you get
dressed?  I think we need to resolve this a bit before anything else can
happen."

   "I do not wish to leave you alone with this...entity," Lisa said.  "Come
with me to the bedroom."

   So I did, and I filled her in a little more while she was dressing.  "I
see," she said.  "It seems your importance may be attractive to more
parties than I had imagined." She sighed.  "We really cannot make her
leave?"

   "I don't think so, no.  She seems to be able to...change reality, or
something.  I don't know what."

   "That should not be possible, but an alien lifeform would know many
things we do not.  We will have to be very careful.  She wishes to observe
us having sex?"

   "That's what we said, yeah.  All our bonking was apparently one of the
things that attracted her to our apartment."

   "Bonking?  Ah.  Are our sexual activities more frequent than normal?"

   "Unless somebody's on their honeymoon they don't normally have sex five
times a day, no.  I think the succubus is making it worse.  Pheromones or
something.  Sex mojo.  Who knows.  Honestly, as often as we've been getting
it on, my dick should be about ready to fall apart, but somehow I'm always
ready for more."

   "Interesting," Lisa said.  "I thought our sex was normal.  Perhaps it is
the succubus, as you said."

   "Hey, I'm not complaining," I clarified.  "You guys are great.  *You*
are great," I said, with a hug and a kiss.  She smiled, but seemed
distracted.

   When we returned to the living room, the alien was examining the
scissors again, moving her head from side to side, like she was trying to
see them with only one eye at a time.  "I cannot solve this puzzle," she
said.  "In how many dimensions does this device turn?"

   "Just the standard three," I said.  "Or four, whatever.  Look, if you're
going to hang around here for however long, we need to call you something.
Can you make up a human-pronounceable name?"

   "Call me whatever you wish," she said.  "It is not important.  Ah hah!"
She opened the scissors and closed them again, and then seemed
disappointed. "I do not understand."

   "Yeah, they're called scissors.  You use them to cut stuff."

   "Cut stuff?  Curious." She picked up a grain of rice and attempted,
using both hands, to use the scissors to cut the grain.  After fumbling for
a while and dropping the rice, she managed to neatly slice off the end of
her right thumb.

   "Oh.  How inconvenient." Some kind of silvery-grey blood began oozing
out and dripping onto her dress and the carpet.

   "Jesus!  Put those down...what the fuck are you doing?  Here, let me get
that..." Lisa seemed fascinated as I retrieved the end of her thumb from
the carpet.  "Are you okay?  Hold it like this, you need to stop
the...bleeding...or whatever that is...we should get you to a hospital,
they can reattach it if we hurry."

   "A hospital?  No, that would be foolish.  Your primitive medicine would
do me no good." She put the severed end of her thumb back on the wound,
concentrated for a second, and then let go.  It appeared to be completely
whole again, though it was hard to see through the grey stuff.  "This body
heals quickly, as you can see."

   "This body?  Do you have another one?" I joked weakly.

   "I normally exist without a 'body'.  This body is used to project my
mind into the simplified local spacetime.  It is a construct formed from
trillions of tiny machines."

   "Wow.  Nanotechnology?  We're still kind of working on that," I said. 
Lisa handed me a wet towel, which I used to begin cleaning her silvery
skirt thing and the floor.g The alien sucked the junk off her hand and then
answered me.

   "No, your nanotechnology is not an adequate description.  These machines
are not constructed from molecules, but from quantum foam interference
patterns.  They allow my higher-dimensional structure to be folded into
your universe, while drawing energy from the vacuum state of..."

   "Okay, right, whatever.  I don't know what most of that stuff means." I
stood up and put my hand back on Lisa's shoulder.  I needed some
reassurance after the weirdness of the day.  She reached up and grabbed my
fingers.

   Sophie burst back in the door and slammed it behind her.  "Ahh!  That's
better," she said.  "Sorry about before.  Won't happen again." Her words
were slightly slurred, but her eyes were bright shiny blue again.  She had
vodka bottles in both hands.  "Everybody still here?  Nobody got
assassinated?  Good.  Let's get back to business."

   "We were trying to think of a name for her," I said, since that still
hadn't happened.

   "Alexis," Sophie said without hesitation.  "It's a nice, classy name."

   "Alexis," the alien repeated.  "It sounds like a pleasant combination of
syllables.  What meaning does it have?"

   "Like I said, it means class," Sophie said with a wink.  I thought it
sounded like a stripper's name, but to Sophie that was probably the same
thing.

   ***

   To the disappointment of Alexis, or Alex as we quickly started calling
her, we did not have sex that night.  I think we were all a little weirded
out - a lot weirded out - and tired and sore.  The three of us collapsed
into bed and squirmed around, trying to get comfortable.  Lisa laid with
her eyes open, not even pretending to sleep, listening to Alex bumping
around the living room, messing with our stuff.

   "We're gonna need a bigger apartment," Sophie grumbled before passing
out.  I looked at Lisa, and we nodded.

   ***

   "So, how many bedrooms are we looking for?"

   Money, it turned out, was not really a problem.  Lisa had access to a
mysterious bank account whose balance was "adequate".  Sophie and Alex both
seemed to be able to create money whenever they wanted - Sophie summoned
physical jewelry through some kind of riches and temptation pact, and Alex
just manipulated the computers that determined bank balances.  Earth
machines seemed incredibly primitive to her - she occasionally remarked
that it was amazing we were able to sustain our existence with them.

   Lisa slid her arms around me and looked me in the eyes, stating, "I do
not need a bedroom.  I will be sleeping with you." No surprise there.  She
seemed even more attached now that we had a third female roommate.

   "I'll be sleeping with you, too," Sophie said, "but it still wouldn't
hurt to have a room to put my junk in.  One with a window.  So I can
smoke."

   I rolled my eyes, but it didn't seem likely that I needed to worry about
getting a deposit back.  Not my money in the first place, and probably the
whole apartment would end up getting burned down or smashed to pieces by
giant lizard men or whatever.

   "Anyway," Sophie continued, "We should look for more rooms than we need.
Plan for the future.  You know what I mean?"

   "What, for the pitter-patter of little feet?  I didn't think it was
possible for me to get either of you pregnant," I said stupidly.

   "No, retard, for more of us.  Can't you see what's happening here?"

   I...yeah, I could.  A robot was impossible, a robot and a demon was a
ridiculous coincidence, but now with an alien in the mix...there was a
pattern forming.  It would be foolish not to assume that even more
super-powered weirdos were going to show up at my door sooner or later, and
refuse to leave.  For some reason.

   Lisa frowned, and then nodded.  "It does seem likely that we will have
more...roommates."

   "Well, money's no object, so let's get a mansion!  With hot tubs and
plasma TVs and all the porn channels.  And maids.  Lots of maids!  We could
get ourselves a real Hugh Hefner thing going on, what do you think?" She
elbowed me lightly in the ribs, and I grunted.

   "I think that's going too far.  Let's get some kind of family home with
four bedrooms or so and call it good for now.  We don't want to attract
attention to ourselves, and we don't know for sure if anyone else is
coming." Maids?  I tried not to think of living in a decadent estate full
of French maids and superheroes who all wanted to jump my bones.  I tried
not to think about champagne and cocaine and pool parties and private S&M
shows in my living room.

   "Agreed," Lisa agreed, and Sophie moaned.  "You guys suck!  Why'd I have
to get stuck guarding the fuckin Brady Bunch?  Live a little!"

   But we were firm, or Lisa was firm and I pretended to be, and we ended
up renting some kind of converted loft thing with a few bedrooms in a
reasonable neighborhood.  My eyes bulged at the price, but Lisa signed the
lease without hesitation.

   When the superintendent showed us the master bathroom, though, Sophie
and I looked at the big comfy bathtub for about a microsecond before
meeting each other's gazes and raising our eyebrows with wicked grins. 
Lisa looked annoyed at us.  And the demon comes from behind to tie up the
score!

   ***

   Of course, it wasn't long - like about two-thirds of a day - before we
got back to the sex.  Sophie looked like she was about to explode just from
waiting that long.  "Fuck it," she growled, "let the alien chick watch.  I
need dick!"

   Lisa and I weren't really that reluctant anyway, since we'd been in the
habit for a while now and were getting a little antsy.  I was nervous, but
also a little turned on at the thought of our voyeur scientist watching us
- it didn't hurt that she was smoking hot.

   We stripped down on our way into bed - Sophie giving an extra twist and
wiggle as she pulled down her panties, showing off for the new girl.  Soon
we were all over each other, Lisa and I kissing and groping each other
while the succubus licked my junk, teasing me without really trying to get
me off.  I saw blonde and silver in the corner of my eye, and turned my
head to see Alex standing right next to the bed, staring intently. 
"Interesting," she said.  "But I do not see how any of this will help you
to combine genetic material."

   "It's complicated," I started to say, and then was cut off as Lisa
pulled my mouth back to hers.  Fuck it, I thought, the alien's going to be
here for years, she's a bright lady, she'll figure it out.  Or not. 
Whatever.

   Soon we shifted positions and I pulled Lisa on top of me, impaling her
down on my cock.  Sophie watched for a bit, playing with pussy and nipples,
as Lisa ground her hips up and down and around in circles.  We were all
sighing with satisfaction - it felt good to get back into the game.  I
reached up and slid my hands over Lisa's breasts and then her face, rubbing
her lips with a finger.  Her eyes were closed as she worked herself up and
down.

   Sophie kissed and licked my ear for a bit, and then I asked her to climb
up behind Lisa.  "I want to make a Lisa sandwich today," I said, and Sophie
grinned.

   Lisa didn't like the idea.  "I am not a sandwich!" she exclaimed. 
"Please do not try to eat me."

   I chuckled with Sophie, thinking of all the times one or the other of us
had eaten a bit of Lisa, but I clarified, "We're not going to have you for
lunch, honey -"

   "Well, not literally," Sophie said, cupping her hands around Lisa's tits
and rubbing herself up and down the robot's back.

   "- it's a...metaphor, about spatial positioning," I panted.  Sophie
pushed Lisa down onto me a bit more, and we had her pinned between us. 
Although I suppose she had the strength to free herself if she'd tried.

   "You lookin to DP the robot, lover?" Sophie asked, and I nodded with
lust in my eyes.  Lisa cried out as Sophie pushed two fingers up her ass
and began working them in and out, lubricated only with succubus spit.

   Soon we were all writhing together, Lisa's face contorting with the dual
sources of stimulation, Sophia's eyes sparkling with excitement, me
grunting under them and trying to push up and in with the right timing.  I
could feel Sophie's fingers wiggling and pushing in Lisa's butt.  Lisa kept
gasping from all the sensation, like she couldn't get enough air.

   "Is this a...pleasurable activity?" Alex whispered breathily in my ear.
I glanced over to see her face inches from my own as she knelt next to the
bed.

   "Extremely," I whuffed.  As we finished, I noticed that all four of us
seemed to be slightly out of breath - Alex seemed very excited.  I had a
sneaking suspicion she was eventually going to prove the old adage about
observers interfering with their own experimental results.

   Lisa's eyes rolled up in her head a bit when we came, and she collapsed
on top of me.  "Go get her, baby," I told Sophie, and held my robot lover
tightly, kissing her over and over while she moaned, Sophie diving for
sperm with her tongue and cleaning our junk noisily.

   After a while I figured it was only fair to give Sophia some attention
too, so I went down on her, ordering Lisa to play with the top half.  As
usual, the robot feigned great reluctance, but was soon obviously enjoying
herself as she kissed and fondled our beautiful demon lover.

   Sophie squirted a bit as she came, something she did from time to time,
and I got a mouthful.  It was so hot I was surprised not to feel it burning
my tongue.  "UggghhhnnnGodYeah!  That's the spot!" she shouted, pulling my
hair.

   As we lay tangled together, trying to recover our strength, Sophie
turned to Alex and asked, "So, what would you say?  Two thumbs up?"

   "Thumbs?  I enjoyed your performance.  I enjoyed it a lot." Alex licked
her lips.  "It seems very...primitive.  And I have many questions."

   "Well, you came to the right place," I said.  "Sophie here probably
knows more about sex than...anyone, actually."

   "If you're trying to flatter me, don't bother," Sophie said, popping
some gum into her mouth in lieu of a cigarette.  "I was already going to
let you get in my pants." She eyed Alex with interest and I could see the
wheels turning.  "You know, space girl, the best way to learn is by
doing..."

   "I...should observe.  For now.  Thank you." Yeah.  For now.

   It turned out Alex had a lot more willpower than I did.  She held out
for two whole days.

   ***

   It was time for first aid training, which I looked forward to each week.

   First aid was fun because I felt like I knew what I was doing, and
unlike the fighting practice, I figured I could actually do something
useful with a roll of gauze and some tape.  I was beginning to suspect that
all the Aikido in the world wasn't going to make me a match for a demon.

   First aid was also fun because Sophie helped out.  Much to Lisa's
annoyance, mouth-to-mouth with Sophie generally turned into french kissing,
and chest compressions always somehow ended up more like groping.  After
the second time she got molested this way, Lisa announced that she didn't
really need to practice anyway, and it would just be me honing my skills.

   Now, though, we had a new arrival - and her imprecise knowledge of human
anatomy and frailty meant first aid might be a bad thing to cover.

   Alex was always eager to study some aspect of our culture or physiology,
so she listened raptly as Lisa lectured us on vital signs and hand
positions.  Ultimately, all of this was supposed to be for my benefit - the
inevitable moment when some bad guy put me down for the count, and
resuscitation became necessary.  I suppose it was possible that Alex would
be first on the scene.

   Not the biggest boost for my pride, mind you.

   Anyway, after a while we were trading roles as dummy and life-saver, and
when Sophie ended up "saving" Alex, the inevitable happened.  Alex seemed
surprised at first, but she got into the tongue action pretty quickly, and
soon they were both moaning and groping and fumbling with clothing.  Lisa
rolled her eyes and left the room "to recharge", and I watched with
excitement as Alex had her first experience with physical love.  She
learned quickly.

   Her body turned out to be just as hot as her face, and I removed my dick
from its constricting prison for a bit of a wank while I watched Sophie go
downtown.  Soon Alex was arching her back and crying out in an unfamiliar
language, and then, bam!  The lights flickered and went out.

   Alex was glowing again, suspended a few inches off the floor, head
rolling dreamily, eyes closed.

   Lisa made a squeaking noise from the bedroom and sprinted back in with
the rest of us.

   Sophie gave a cry of alarm, heavily muffled by a face full of muff.

   We were all in bed, fucking -

   The lights were on, and we were sitting on the sofa, talking about what
had happened -

   Alex was watching us have sex the night before, only this time she was
naked and brazenly masturbating -

   The lights were off, and Alex was going down on Sophie in the living
room -

   The lights were on, and I was constrained by thick, slimy ropes -

   Alex was floating a few inches off the ground, moaning as Sophie
scrambled backwards across the floor and into Lisa's legs -

   Alex had a face on the back of her head, so she could blow me and eat
Lisa at the same time -

   The slimy ropes were forcing themselves into my mouth and anus, and I
kind of liked it -

   We were sitting on the couch again, as Sophie drank heavily -

   Sophie was coming in the dark, Alex's face between her legs, and she
shouted "Fuck, how long is your tongue anywayyyyy...."

   The three of us were lying in bed on our backs, writhing, as tentacles
sprouting from every part of Alex's body entangled and penetrated us all -

   And then everyone came at once, and there was a blinding flash of light
-

   And then we were back on the living room floor, and Sophie was on top of
Alex, and she stood up and quickly reached to cover herself with a shirt.

   "Oh," Alex panted, "Oh my.  That was intense.  Was that an 'orgasm'?"

   I threw up noisily, while Sophie remarked with false bravado, "Chick
really knows how to party!