Author's Notes:

Each episode in the "An Inhuman Love" series will be a stand-alone novelette, meant to be read and enjoyed in a single sitting. Expect a monster/human pairing in each episode, with all the juicy details included.

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Tumbles fell.

As sand and rock and a desert night sky taunted him, insulted him, pointed out the predictability of his current circumstances, he closed his eyes. This fall would be the fall that killed him. All his journeys, all his discoveries, his bag full of old scrolls and his head full of old knowledge, gone. And of course, his life would be gone too, but no loss there.

This life was a waste. Dirty. Broken. Bent! Such a bad break. His friends had had solid, sturdy, stable lives. Good lives. His? Quicksand. No foundation. Just loose sand that sent him tumbling all the time. The fact he earned the name Tumbles was, as Wordy told him, deliciously perfect.

Well Wordy, he was about to join you in the land of blue sands.

Except, not. As the blackness of the pit cave swallowed him, he felt a slope of rock catch him. There was only blackness now, the cave devouring him like one of the sand worms, but a sand worm's insides were probably soft and acidic, and his head, arms, and legs kept slamming into more and more hard, dry things as he rolled. The softness of a sand worm's insides would have been a much more pleasant death, he figured.

Eventually the rocks were like a dune of large of grains of sand, enough that he slid down them instead of bouncing down them. They still cut him, and tore through his white, loose, thin clothing; a must for the desert, but horrible for blocking the nasty bites of sharp stone. They greeted him with as much malice as the dune gnats, and he winced and groaned and yelped with each cut and bruise. But, soon, he was still, no longer tumbling, no longer sliding, and staring up at a cave ceiling.

Alive! He got up, regretted it, and tried getting up more slowly the second time. All his bones worked, but they ached, and demanded he sit back down in the darkness on the cave floor. Well, he wasn't going to do that, and he forced himself up onto wobbly knees. There was light, a little, managing to break through the hole above him. Way, way, way above him. He groaned all the more as he looked up, hand to his head to keep his loosened white turban secure. A tiny hole poked in through the mouth of the cave above. Enough light to see by, just.

"... it's supposed to be here." The old scroll had said the strange doors were here. Course, the scroll was generations old, and the dunes did not hold still. Maybe if the dunes did not move with time, this wouldn't have been a hole instead of doors, waiting to swallow him? How did you manage to deal with the flow of time, Wordy?

With another groan, he walked back to the slope of rocks. A big hole in the ground, and it was a very big hole, easily a hundred feet. He wouldn't be scaling that in sandals.

"By the sands! Dead, I'm dead. Dead!" He pulled his foot back, and took a kick at a rock. At the last moment, he remembered the sandals, and raised his foot high enough to miss the rock, only for the momentum to knock him back on his ass.

Tumbles you moron, you're going to get yourself killed, after surviving a cave in! Calm down, calm down and breathe.

He forced himself to standing, and looked around as best he could. Darkness, rocks, a strip of light. Anything good? It was much cooler underground than the desert sands of the day, that was true. But all he saw was rocks. The scroll had said—bag! Where was his bag? Where was... Groaning, he walked over to some large rocks, massive rocks, and looked down at the tiny bit of his bag's strap sticking out from thousands of pounds of rock.

Dead, so dead. Dead and now he couldn't even check the scroll. And his sand rider was above on the desert sands, sitting there, waiting to be taken. He backed away, head hanging, and kept walking backward until he put his back to the metal of the cave wall behind him. Metal?

He screamed and jumped away as the metal began to grind, immense moans shaking the cave as it tried to move itself, slide itself upward. Metal, up? It was trying to go up! Like a war machine garage! Except, not curving upward with sections, this metal door was sliding straight up. And it was a metal door underground! Why was there a metal door underground? The scroll had said there'd be ruins here, but this made no sense. And why was it moving!?

He stared at the old metal, eyes wide, gaze scanning across the wide surface looking for some sort of identifying mark. But the sands and the rolling rocks of centuries were not kind to anything, and even underground metal would suffer as the sand worms upturned the earth over the years. Bunkers and other hideaways or storage places from the ancient times were nothing but metal boxes now, and they had to be broken into. This metal door had to be from the ancient times, but it was moving on its own; they never did that. Or at least it was trying to move on its own, but grinding sounds vibrated inside his grave, and he raised his hands to cover his ears as it grew to a crushing scream.

Was someone on the other side trying to lift the door? No, couldn't be, that wouldn't explain the noises. Unless a hundred men were pulling on enormous chains like in the South Machine Pits. Or maybe a grand engine, drinking deep of Earth blood, like the great lifts of the Repair City Omata? No, none of that or anything like that would be here, many miles from any village. This metal door shouldn't be moving.

But it was, and did. As if lifting a mountain, as if lifting all of the sands of the world with it, the strange, flat, smooth, metal door, began to slide up into rock. He could see curves of metal, some sort of door frame, maybe ten feet high and ten feet wide that the door slid up into. Dust and dirt and hundreds of years of rock were snug to the metal frame, burying it, and the whole building beneath stone. But still the door managed to start lifting, and Tumbles winced all the more as he pressed his palms tight to his ears to try and block out the thundering rumbles and ear-splitting screech of metal grinding metal.

Silence greeted him, and so too did a hallway of darkness. Might as well have said 'Tumbles come in here and die' written in Earth blood lit on fire.

Behind him, was a cave wall he could not climb, and likely to bury him the moment he tried. Before him, was a large hallway, dark, details lost to shadow. What would Wordy do? He'd say something smart, something catchy, like 'go forward when you can, unless it's a sand worm, then go around.' He only had the one choice anyway.

He dragged himself past the doorway, and sucked in his breath with a loud gasp as his eyes betrayed him. The walls were smooth! Smooth smooth, actual smooth. And... they had lights! Lights were coming on, just like at the camp! Except these weren't hooked up to any old energy machines, running on Earth blood with a grumble and groan. These lights were slick, silent, tall and thin, and they glowed a pure white as they overflowed the room. More, and more, some flickering, but most turning on gently, like the rising sun.

The floor was flat, and the color of a war machine, almost black but not quite. The ceiling too. No dust, despite how stale the air tasted, and he knew for sure no one had been in this room since... since... since the Reckoning! He started to tremble as he continued forward, lights continuing to light up as he moved along, and exposing more of the room. Another door, with a symbol carved into the metal surface. An animal? Some sort of bird, but it looked nothing like the dead-eaters he knew of, the only birds he'd ever seen. One of the birds of myth, then?

As he approached, a loud, machine groan surrounded him, and he fell onto his very bruised ass. Yelping, he stared on as steam started to drip out of vent holes above him.

"Decontamination in process."

What in the sands? He forced himself back to his feet, shaking and wobbling, but standing, and stared up at the vents as the cool mist fell upon him.

The door closed behind him. He gulped, and turned to look at it, his entryway gone, his exit gone. Oh no, he was going to have an early reckoning at this rate. Wordy always said he'd tumble into a death hole. He didn't mean literally!

"Facility damage critical. Back up systems damaged. Main power offline. Failsafe date passed as per Historics Act VI. Initiating emergency state 1-3-2-9. Beta clearance now provided to all access grades. Please contact engineering lead Doctor Fraam Dovnitz."

"Um... o-ok?" Talking. The walls were talking to him. Crazy gas? No, no it couldn't have been crazy gas. This steam felt like water and it smelled like water, sort of. But none of the words made any sense. And he didn't recognize the walls' accent either... and why did the walls sound like a woman? Why did the walls talk at all?

"Decontamination failure. Contamination levels grade B. State 1-3-2-9: acceptable contamination level. Please report emergency situation to Commander Joshua Vernimer."

"I'll... I'll do that." Could the wall understand him? It, she, or whatnot, didn't seem to be able to see him, or if it did, it didn't care he wasn't what it thought he was. He—the door! It started to slide open, slick and smooth, two doors pulling apart like a freshly greased bullet gun. He gulped again, and stepped into the new room.

No way, there was no way this was happening. He'd found a vault! One of the old vaults, from before the reckoning. A vault that hadn't been opened in hundreds of years! Many thought they were legends, that they never existed! Oh, by the sands, he was in a vault!

And, being that he was Tumbles, he was probably going to die in the vault. Couldn't climb back up, even if he could get the door behind him open. And there was bound to be something in the vault that would kill him. Because he was Tumbles.

The lights in the larger room were working better, less flickering. More of that weird, white steam was dripping down from vent holes too, but dispersing before it managed to reach the clean, smooth floor. So smooth. Did the people before the Reckoning always keep things so smooth? If you walked on it, why keep it smooth? Dirt and grit and bumps and grooves were better for not slipping, and not tumbling.

More lights started to turn on, from behind a glass wall. Glass, actual glass, clean and clear and slick and smooth glass. Beautiful. He came closer, hands up to his chest and elbows at his sides, ready to defend himself against the inevitable traps. But, what sort of traps did the Ancient Ones use? It was easy to look around for leg traps, with everything so open and smooth. Maybe... maybe they could use the guns of old, and turn him into ash?

He came up to the glass, and stared. It was a window. So rare, so clean. It was tall, maybe ten feet high, and twenty feet long. On his side of the window were weird desk things, with buttons on them, and glowing symbols he recognized from the ancient symbols. No one could read them. By the sand, he wished he could read them.

On the other side of the glass was another big room, with a lot more of that strange steam coming down the walls from more vents, enough that the floor was covered in the steam, and it was hard to see the other side of the room. There was something in there though, something in the middle, some sort of big tube, slick, solid, smooth. It had a window too, so he could see what was inside the tube.

A person was inside the big tube.

"What in the sands!?"

"Query unrecognized. Please reword and restate query."

He jumped and spun around. That woman's voice again, coming from everywhere, from nowhere, and he gulped loud enough he could hear it in the dead silence of the vault.

And it told him to... reword and restate query? Query, like, a question? The only person he'd ever heard use the word query was the Gun Lord of the East, an intelligent man with a penchant for shooting off kneecaps.

"Um... who are you?"

"Miranda class interface protocol, version 8.3.1."

He understood maybe half of those words. "W-Where am I?"

"R&D Center 43."

"Forty three? How many R&D centers are there?" And what did R&D mean? He could ask that later.

"Classified, Alpha clearance only. Number in designation does not indicate amount."

"Um, ok, um... uh..." He was talking to a... a machine? "Are you... are you alive?"

"Miranda class interface protocol, version 8.3.1."

"I know! But, are you... um... can you think?"

"Miranda class interface protocol, version 8.3.1."

Ok, if this talking, invisible machine in the walls was alive, it wasn't very smart. He thought maybe the Ancient Ones had made machines that were like people, intelligent. If they had, this voice thing didn't sound like one of them. Oh! Better question.

"How... how long has it been since the Reckoning?"

"Define Reckoning."

"The Reckoning! The war! The great war that left the scorched Earth! That birthed the sands!"

"The war of 2092 was the last recorded war in history. Reports ceased before war was designated as ended."

"Before it ended? When... when was the last report?"

"Classified. Emergency state Beta clearance granted. Last report was on August 12th, 2092."

Whatever Beta clearance was, it was helping him out quite a bit. "No, I mean, how many years has it been since then?"

"It has been 1274 years since the last report."

Oh by the sands. Over a thousand years since the Ancients were killed. Wow. Wow! Proof that the Ancients existed, proof that they died in some kind of war, proof that they had vaults! Or R and D centers, whatever that meant. Wordy would have died of joy to know this.

"And... and um... what's in there?" He pointed to the tube with the person inside. They must have been a corpse or something, considering how long this vault must have gone without being opened.

"Classified. Emergency state Beta clearance granted. Immortals Mark 8 in cryo-storage."

He threw himself away from the glass, onto his ass once again, and scampered away until a good twenty feet were between him and the glass.

"One of the Im-m-m-mortals? They caused the Reckoning! The last great war!"

"The war of 2092 was caused by the assassination of political figure Abraham Leblanc. No Immortals units were deployed during this war, according to the last report."

Ok, ok, he had a chance to learn some truth, instead of legends passed on by word of mouth. Ask something important! What would Wordy ask?

"... Define Immortals." The machine had asked him to define Reckoning, why not return the favor?

"Classified. Emergency state Beta clearance granted. Immortals are elite combat units developed by the First States Alliance. As a deterrence measure, the twelve best soldiers employed by the countries in the First States Alliance were upgraded with the latest in nano technology, synthetic flesh grade F38, and powered by a miniaturized, internal nuclear fission core. Based upon the previous failures in cyborg technology, new cyborgs were designed to have synthetic bodies that closely resembled their original bodies, to prevent terminal brain dissonance. The result was the Immortals, cyborg soldiers that do not age, function for thousands of years on a single fission core, have extreme strength and reflexes, and require almost no food or water. Unlike previous attempts at cyborg technology, it was deemed imperative that Immortal synthetic bodies share some human functionality, to both prevent terminal brain dissonance, but also to prevent psychotic breakdowns in the human mind due to lack of familiar stimulus, as the Omega units proved was required. They—"

"Ok! Ok, I get it. Super soldiers..." Easy to say, hard to imagine.

A loud crash forced him to turn around. He recognized that sound, even with these weird metal doors and walls between him and it. The sound of a cave in. Crash, bang, crash. Over, and over, loud enough he had to cover his ears, and hard enough he could feel the vibrations shake the whole of the Earth. So it wasn't the contents of the vault that were going to kill him, it was the desert herself. She never did like Tumbles very much.

"Entry point B now compromised."

"Yes, thank you! Because, yeah, the giant falling rock bang sounds didn't make that obvious! ...are there any entry points not compromised?"

"Negative. All three entry points into R&D Center 43 are compromised. Please initiate emergency measures to insure rescue."

He sighed, walked back over to the glass, and banged his head against it. Didn't matter if he accidentally woke up the Immortal thing now, he was going to die. He wouldn't have been able to climb out of the hole anyway, let alone move an avalanche. He was a small guy! Smallish anyway. Lean and strong, but that only went so far when you were kind of short and kind of light.

No rescue was coming. Hell, even if the village he last visited knew where he was, no one would have cared. No one alive would care he was going to die. The only person who was going to see him die was a machine from the ancient days. Such a sad reckoning.

"... can... can the Immortal... Mark 8 be revived?"

"This Immortals unit is in cryo-suspension. Deactivating cryo-suspension requires Beta clearance. Emergency state Beta clearance granted. Do you wish to revive the Immortal Mark 8?"

He gulped, loud enough for the sound to drown out his heart beat, but only for a second. Thud thud thud. He stared on at the tube ahead of him, did his best to see through the mist, and shivered as he locked eyes on the dark skin of the Immortal. His imagination had painted them as giants, a hundred feet tall, armed with enormous guns that spit bullets the size of people, swirling with molten lead. This thing before him didn't seem much bigger than him, maybe half a foot taller? But, the machine was wrong about the Immortals not being a part of the great war, so was it wrong about other things?

Did any of that matter if he was going to die?

"Are there, um, any other rooms in this place?" he said.

"Affirmative."

"Great!" He spun around and looked at the walls nearby. If there were doors, they were pretty well hidden, slick and smooth. "I... uh, where are the doors?"

"Stand by." Some grinding noises, loud, shrill, dirty and broken, filled his ears and the room too, until the hard sound of grating metal crawled up his legs into his back. He walked toward the sound, and watched on as one of the walls tried to part ways. He was right about the doors being subtle, the mist falling from the walls hiding the cracks of its shape.

"Let me guess, entries to other rooms compromised?"

"Stand by... Hallway A-B door compromised. Please initiate emergency measures to insure rescue."

Predictable.

"Is there any way for me to get food or water from in this room, or the room the Immortal is in?"

"Negative. Please initiate emergency measures to insure rescue."

Dead, so dead. He had no emergency measures! His emergency measure was the sand rider he left topside to explore the hole in the ground! His emergency measure was the little bit of food and three canteens he had of water, in his crushed bag! His emergency measure, was climbing out of the cave, that was probably completely collapsed now!

What now? Nothing he could do now. Trapped in this room, with an Immortal. What do? What do what do what do what do what do.

"... awaken the Immortal Mark 8." By the sands, if he was going to die, might as well do it exploring what ancient mysteries he could uncover. Wordy would say 'throw yourself to the wind and see what happens'.

"Affirmative. Beginning awakening procedure."

The sounds, like a dozen men upon war machines riding with blaring trumpets; except, not. He stared on at the tube in the next room, and raised a brow as the kssssh and whirrrr and zzzzzzt tickled his ears. Not loud at all, almost gentle. The steam in the room lessoned, and lessoned, and the tube started to fill with a gentle white light, illuminating the deadly terror inside.

The deadly terror was a woman.

He raised a brow, tilted his head to the side, and watched on as various lights of different colors started to turn on in the tube, tiny ones, like buttons. It looked like the lining in the tube thing was a cushion? Only cushion he'd ever seen that wasn't hard as stone was the Gun Lord of the East's throne.

His eyes didn't stay on the tube for very long though, as the draw of the Immortal caught his eyes. A woman, but not a woman. Tall, fit, lean, strong. He could see her muscles, her abs, her strong-yet-feminine shoulders, the thickness of her legs and tightness of her waist. But as the mist faded and the tube lights finished turning on, he gasped.

The Immortal's skin was the color of night sky, with layers of curving, sleek armor coming off of her limbs. The armor looked more like proper metal, like steel, and it looked... pretty, like, whoever made it wanted the pieces of armor to look elegant and slick. She had shoulder pads of the strange metal jutting out of her shoulder, curved with a spike that rounded back, all smooth and shiny. The same with her wrists too. Gauntlets! Or wrist guards, something that left her black hands exposed.

It was the same for her legs, layers of the curved armor covering the outer thigh of each leg, curving downward, with a spike on each curving downward as well, always with slick, smooth shapes. Kneepads of metal as well, with a spike pointing outward and up, like a snake fang. She had shin guards, the dark silver wrapping them, and a few spikes sticking toward their outside. No shoes though. He could see her toes, black, the same as her hands, her stomach, her neck, her breasts, her face.

Face! She had lips, a tint of navy against the night black of her skin. Why the armor of her shoulders, arms and legs did not cover more important areas like the chest or stomach, he did not know, but the passing thought faded as he stared on at her sharp chin, and the dark navy lips beneath her nose. The nose bridge raised into a slick, curving metal barrier that covered the Immortal's eyes. More than covered, it looked like it was a part of her upper head, dark silver flowing back into large spikes, covering where ears should have been, where hair should have been.

She was beautiful. It made no sense! The armor made no sense, and yet he could not stop staring at the slick machine. Solid. Sturdy. Stable. All the good things he could possibly imagine, the Immortal embodied. It was as if someone had taken a human woman, tall, lean, strong, dipped them into the night sky, and then grafted ornamental silver armor to their arms, legs, and the top of their head. Lines of a brighter silver ran up and down along her dark body in beautiful designs too, curving with the shape of her abs, her breasts, her legs and waist and all the beautiful muscles of a warrior woman. If she asked, she could be accepted as a member of the Silver Eyes, the body of a warrior and huntress and seductress.

Tumbles laughed, and slapped himself in the forehead. There was no use in arranging the words into a story in his mind, when he was going to die, trapped in a vault with an ancient, living war machine.

"Computer, report."

"Aaah!" He threw himself back and away from the glass, as the voice of the Immortal reached through the window as if it were not there. A woman's voice. A normal, perfectly normal sounding human voice.

"Catastrophic damage. Facility compromised. Emergency state 1-3-2-9 initiated."

"... 1-3-2-9. Seriously?" The Immortal of death walked up to the glass, and looked down at him. He thought. She had no eyes! He could not tell where she looked, as the sleek visor of dark silver covered her eyes completely, burying both her of eyes and her forehead in the beautiful metal before it slicked back into spikes curving over her head. "Hey, you, what the fuck happened? Who are you and where's Doctor Dovnitz?" Such a strange accent!

"I... I um... I'm Tumbles. I d-d-d-d... d-don't know who Doctor Dovnitz is."

"... Tumbles."

"Y-Yes ma'am."

"How about you give me your real name?"

"T-Tumbles is my real name. It was given to me after I became a man."

"... um, what?" The woman walked closer to the glass, and raised her hand. Oh by the sands, he'd offended her! He raised his arms up to defend himself, knowing full well it was pointless. If she wanted, she could destroy the planet. If she wanted, she could—tap tap, tap tap, tap tap. "The fuck are you talking about, when you became a man?" She tapped the glass with one of her fingers.

He lowered his arms, and raised both brows as he stared at the beautiful machine.

"M-My adult name... Tumbles. I, I um... I suppose you wouldn't know, great Immortal, if the world did different things, before the great war."

"Great war? What? The fucking wa—Computer! Report on Leblanc war."

"Please narrow query."

"Oh I don't know, how it fucking ended? Because there's a civilian fucker in this highly secret R&D center looking at me like I'm one of the four horseman, and talking about the great war. Fill in the fucking blanks!"

"Last report was on August 12th, 2092. State of Leblanc war unknown."

"Hmm, a year after I went under. Any other Immortals woken up?"

"Last report indicates no other Immortals have been deployed."

"Enough with this last report shit, get me Comms!"

"Intel network is down, Immortal Mark 8."

The Immortal marched back and forth in front of the glass, pacing like an angry wife waiting for her idiot husband to come home so she could kill him.

"Computer, how long since the last report?"

"It has been 1274 years, five months, and thirteen days since the last report."

The machine of death stopped, turned, and stared at him. This time he could tell, because her body went still with her visor aimed at him, her breathing stopped, and her shaking fists paralyzed at her sides like funeral stones.

"... w... what?" she said.

She didn't know. Despite the skin of onyx and the divine metals on her limbs and head, he recognized the body language of a human, a normal person, a woman. She reached out, put both hands on the glass, and let her head droop down between her arms and shoulders.

Through it all, Tumbles stared at her, trembling, unable to get up, on his ass and weight behind him on his palms. She didn't know, and he woke her up. Maybe the computer — whatever that was — wasn't lying about these Immortals. They were just humans, like him, turned into weapons? And... and somehow, she'd been sleeping all this time?

"... I'm sorry," he said.

Her head came up, and pointed in his direction, her hands still pressed to the glass as she leaned against it. No eyes, but she did have a mouth and nose, and he could see emotions through them, if only a little of what the eyes normally held.

"The fuck are you sorry for?"

"I, I um... I fell down here, from the sands. Cave in. This, this um... computer? It... it says I'm trapped, that... that we're trapped. And um, it said... I could revive you." He wasn't sure what 'fuck' meant, and at this point, he was afraid to ask.

"... then I should be thanking you."

"Thanking me!?"

"Yeah. R&D protocol, no actively researched weapon or device can come out of lock down without human interference, even after the Historics date has passed. That includes Immortals in cryo. Of course, we were good to go, bug free by the time the war started, with years of tests and... whatever, doesn't fucking matter. We went under until they were sure there were no issues, and I guess the Leblanc war got out of hand during that time... immensely. Christ, over a thousand years? Really?"

"... I... I have only... um, Computer, to tell me if that's true."

Sighing and grinding her teeth — her tongue was navy like her lips, her teeth silver — she tapped the side of her head, underneath one of the spikes where her ear should have been. "Turning on my AR. Maybe we can confirm."

"AR?"

"Augmented Reality. I guess you're only familiar with the sunglasses or contact lenses version. Ha, who the fuck am I kidding, a thousand years? You probably have better shit now."

"... sunglasses? Contact lenses?"

"What? Seriously? Your English not the best or something? Eh, sorry if that's mean. I'm guessing you're Indian?"

He looked around, down at himself, then back at her. "Indian?"

"Yeah... from India? Tan skin, white turban, black beard—I like the trim beard look by the way, very cute."

A compliment, from an Immortal! Cute! He wasn't sure what to make of that, other than to blush. A woman complimenting him was a marvelous thing to be treasured, even if it was from an ancient machine of doom.

"I... I don't know what India is."

"... seriously?"

"The, the um... the legends say, the great war led to the time of Reckoning. And... most... most of the world died in fire."

"... this day just keeps getting better and better. Ok, you know what? Instead of spoon feeding me just how fucked everything is, I'm getting us out of here. The Intel Network is down, and my AR is telling me jack shit."

"... Jack shit?"

"Back up and cover your eyes."

"What? Oh!" He scampered away back toward the door he came in from. It didn't open, more grinding sounds coming from it, and an eventual, depressing beep. Compromised entrance, of course.

As the Immortal drew back her hand, he covered his eyes, and turned his back to the glass. Predictably, the machine of death shattered it with a single punch. The sound was like thunder, but sharper, like thunder's angry little sister. Rain followed it, thousands of drops of rain, scattering around and dancing upon the metal floor and walls. Much of it hit him, but with distance and with hands covering his face, it fell off of him harmlessly, shards of glass becoming the new sand of their grave.

Or maybe not grave? She sounded convinced she could get them out. And, she was an Immortal, after all, and as he turned around, he jaw dropped at the sight of the shattered window. He hadn't realized how thick the glass was. So thick! By the sands, she'd be able to punch through a semi five-wheeler war machine!

She stepped into the room with him, and came up to him. Closer, and closer, until she was only inches from him.

She was beautiful. So close, his eyes couldn't help but wander, and look up and down the obsidian beauty and silver lines that highlighted her skin. The dark silver metal spikes and guarding plates of her limbs were a part of her, seamlessly connected to her onyx body. Such beautiful designs, bits of white highlighting edges of silver, and dozens of lines, flowing lines of different shades of silver running the curves of her body before joining the metal plates guarding her forearms, her shins and thighs, her shoulders, and her skull.

So close, he could see how the movement of her body looked natural, normal, as if she was soft, as if she wasn't a death machine from an ancient era. Her toes pushed aside the bits of glass without issue, both unharmed by the sharp edges, and yet bending with weight against the floor like normal toes would. Her chest rose and fell, and her movements caused her rather large breasts to shift lightly, their teardrop shapes pressing to her chest. So close! So close, he could see her navel, and lower, how the dark navy slit between her thighs was actually her sex.

Wait a minute.

"You're naked!"

"Oh god, I'm helping out a moron." She sighed, laughed, and reached out to pat the man on the arm. He flinched, and she went slower, chuckling again as her hands found the white cloth of his shoulder. She felt... warm, and alive. "Synthetic body and nano tech. Comes with a lot of perks, and a lot of functions of a normal human body."

"... I don't understand."

"It has to do with brain dissonance. Put a human brain into a synthetic body that doesn't have enough human features, it crashes, like a compu—you don't know what that is, apparently. Right, yeah, the person dies."

"S-So, this... this machine body is... close to human?"

"Exactly. I... I really shouldn't be telling you this, but according to you, the world's ended while I was asleep, so, fuck it. Look." She held out a hand to him, palm up. "Touch."

Gulping, no doubt loud enough for her to hear, he blinked up at her, and touched her palm. "It feels... like skin!"

"Yeah. Now, touch again." Her black skin started to shimmer and shine like stars against the night sky. It only took a second, but once she was done, he could see how her body's skin was now smoother, and harder looking. The subtle skin definition of knuckles, the lines in her palms, the shape of areola against breast, all went away, flattened and smoothed into a metal shine.

And when he touched it again, he gasped. It did feel like metal, like solid steel. And yet she closed and unclosed the palm, even as the metal skin told him it shouldn't be able to bend at all.

"Neat huh?"

"I... I uh... but why naked?"

"Got a problem with a naked woman?"

"N-No! No, you're... so... so..." Ok, think of the perfect word to compliment a very attractive death machine capable of destroying you with a flick of her finger. "Magnificent." Too much? Way too much. Ugh, such a bad storyteller Tumbles! Bad story, bad story. Wordy would laugh.

But she laughed, and let her skin return to normal. "Hard mode for combat, soft mode outside of combat. Hard mode is hard on the CNS, taxing, starts to hurt the nerves after a while. And I could wear clothes, but, the fuck do I care about people seeing me naked?"

"I... suppose you would have no worry for men trying to take advantage of you. You could destroy them easily."

She tilted her head to the side as she looked down at him, a few inches taller than him; not as much as the six inches he originally thought, but still. "No, I meant, most people aren't interested in fucking a synthetic that looks like she's made out of metal. You though, you got that glint in your eye like you've had a couple shots and you're trying to work up the nerve to ask a girl out."

"S-Shots!? I've never been shot. And ask a girl out? Out where?"

She erupted into laughter, and stumbled toward the door that failed to open, before pounding her palm against it a couple times. But not in attempt to open it, rather, because she couldn't stop laughing.

"Ok, I think I'm going through some sort of denial about my world being gone. You'd think I'd be sadder, right? But... I don't know, it's not hitting me. Maybe it will once we're top side." She looked over his shoulder at him, and grinned. "But, stick around, I like you."

"... you do?"

"Sure. Young looking man, very cute, saves me from over a thousand years of sleeping? Very Sleeping Beauty."

"... you are beautiful." Bad Tumbles! Bad! What is the matter with you? Just because she complimented herself, called herself sleeping beauty, is no reason for you to jump in and compliment her too! Arg, Wordy always told you your bad storytelling was going to get you into trouble. Tumbles couldn't help it! Not as he found himself staring at the machine of death's rather large, muscular butt.

And she laughed again. "Sleeping Beauty was a movie, a story. I just thought the comparison apt because you woke me up."

"... oh."

"That said, I'd be lying if I said I didn't waste a shit load of the military budget, demanding they put in a little extra work in cosmetics." She forced her fingers between the lines of the sliding door, and slipped her fingertips into the tiny crevice. "Not like they couldn't say no, weren't a lot of soldiers with my scores willing to participate in the experiment."

"C-Cosmetics?"

"Yeah, the color scheme, a little flair on the circuitry, the—you probably think it's body armor, heh." She dug her heels against the steel, and, started to force open the door. Her voice became labored with the struggle, arms shaking, body struggling to not slide. So, she was human, sort of. "Plus I got them to increase my bust a couple cup sizes. If I'm going to spend nigh eternity in a synthetic body, you're damn right I'm going to do it with a nice rack."

This woman! This machine. She didn't behave like a god. She didn't behave like some cold machine of death. She didn't behave like a legendary figure at all. She behaved like a rambunctious young woman! He didn't understand half the words she used, but from the way she moved, the way she talked, the way she looked over her shoulder at him and chuckled, before she got back to work, knowing full well he was staring at her, it was almost like she was flirting with him. But that made no sense! He was just a silly small man, and she was a machine of death! There was no way she could have been flirting with him. No, it was just his mind playing tricks on him. He was a young man, nineteen years old, his mind still in the clouded years. Wordy had told him when he was younger that he was a stupid boy, always staring at women, and he'd never get his mind out of the clouded years. He was right. Always was.

The door came open with a screech, and Tumbles sighed as he gestured out to the wall of rock that blocked the tunnel.

"Yeah, trouble." The Immortal reached up to her visor, and tapped on it a few times. Then a few times more. Then a few times more again, all as she looked around at the walls around them, and above them. "Looks like twenty feet of rock in the way, and... a hundred-feet-deep hole? How the fuck? This base was built in an empty field."

"The... the sand worms, they... churn the earth, the mountains, the sand, everything."

"A worm? How fucking big is a sand worm?"

"W-We don't know, we never see their ends. But, their heads and mouths—"

"Mouths!?"

"Yes, they're, um... maybe... their heads are maybe forty feet wide?"

"... sounds like shit out of Godzilla, holy fuck." Laughing, she started grabbing rocks, and throwing them into the room.

He stepped aside, and watched the tall woman grab enormous boulders, hundreds of pounds each, and throw them behind her. So strong. So utterly, ridiculously, wow strong. He stared on, jaw dropping, and she laughed at him whenever she glanced his way. The rocks crashed, shattered, split apart, and tore into the room behind them.

"Um, shouldn't you be careful? You might... destroy some of the things you—"

"Nah, this facility is dead. AR says all the equipment and their power sources are damaged or drained. Only thing running now is back-up maintenance power, bare minimum for some lights, some analytics, and cryo." Another rock flew past, shattering the tube the Immortal had stepped out of. Wordy would say it was a metaphor for leaving her old life beyond. Tumbles thought it was a waste of something they could have showed to others, or maybe sold.

She made good time, kicking aside smaller rock, throwing bigger ones, crushing some into powder right before his eyes. Combat mode, she said. So deadly! The legends weren't lying.

Eventually, with time, she got them outside the vault, or at least, to the doorway out into the cave. Nothing but rock, the avalanche blocking everything.

"Alright, get back into the observation room, Tumbles. You can watch, just keep most of your body behind the door, ok?"

"O... ok." He stepped back into the room, poked his head out, and watched.

Something came out of her wrist guard things, the silver armor she called circuitry. Lines, glowing lines that pierced the air, and his eyes squinted to fight the erupting light that came with them over her wrists. The weird lines were blue in color, almost white, and only as she moved forward slightly did he realize the lines were only visible because it was light hitting the dirt in the air, like the dingy cracks of home's walls letting in the sunrise.

The Immortal Mark 8 pointed both her hands forward, and unleashed Armageddon.

A high-pitched sound filled his ears, and he again had to cover them. But this time, the squealing noise was coming from the woman, not the door, and as the sound grew louder, so too did the lines of light she emitted. Like a sun rat calling for its mate, the sound was ear-piercing, but it was the sound of destroyed Earth that forced him to stare on. The weird lights increased in size twenty fold, and buried the path in the strange beams. The Immortal had her wrists pointed at an angle upward, so whatever she was doing, she was aiming it up on a slope.

The rocks were not kind. He could feel them rain down on the path of her... her... energy, but they all turned to dust. She was cutting through the Earth with beams of pure death, heat, fire condensed into lines of light. It lasted only moments, and soon, she lowered her hands as the beams of Reckoning vanished.

"Oh... by the sands."

"Laser technology. Lots of problems with it, but you can make it work in certain circumstances." She gestured to the door, where it now opened to a slope of rock leading upward. The rocks had caved in continuously, only to be destroyed by her... laser thing. Where the debris went, he had no idea, but the light of the sun reached down onto the slope, all rock above it gone.

"My... my scroll."

"Scroll?" she said.

"I had a scroll... a map, from hundreds of years ago, after your time. There are some still left, and they point to... places like this. It was in my bag, trapped... in that cave-in."

"Sorry. But, come on, get on my back. I'm going to have to jump out of this pretty quick, cause all this rock's super heated now."

It was getting hotter. Waves of heat were hitting him, and he was sweating terribly. So, as the Mark 8 got down onto a knee, he got onto her back, careful of the various silver spikes jutting out of her arms and legs, and the many of them poking out from the top and back of her head. As long as he put his chin on her shoulder, he was fine.

She ran. Like the wind! Sprinted, jumping forward, she hit the slope of the rock, and bound up them like a rock crawler bug! Fast, so fast, feet hitting and pushing against boulders, launching herself up the slope with such swiftness the heat of the wind was manageable. And before it got painful, they were outside.

Outside! Oh, blessed outside, topside, sand and sun and air and... where was his sand rider? The sun was a couple hours from setting, which took out some of the heat. It meant he could breathe and not have to worry about the heat tearing away his moisture. But, he was very much worrying about his sand rider. He'd left it right there! Did it fall into the cave too? If so... it'd be a very hard walk back to the village.

He looked over at the Immortal. She was looking around, and her jaw was visibly dropped.

"Desert. So much desert. I... I had no idea. I—"

"Well look what we have here! I gotta admit, that beam of light scared the sand out of us."

Tumbles jumped around. A voice? What in the sa... oh no.

Two war machines, each with two people in them, each armed with bullet guns. One of them was fat and strong, the other three tall and covered in muscle. They must have grown up in Chem town. Were they summoned by the avalanche? Or, maybe they saw his sand rider, before the avalanche second avalanche?

"The fuck? My AR didn't pick these guys up?" The Immortal gestured to their war machines. "They're driving two fucking vehicles!" Groaning, she stomped a foot on the sand, and tapped her visor a couple times. "Oh, right. Interference from the laser. Should be clearing up soon."

"What dune shit is that?" The fat man said, and he gestured to the Immortal.

"Some woman in weird armor?" Another said.

The Immortal walked up to Tumbles, leaned in, and whispered. "Um, who the fuck are these people? Friends of yours?"

He gulped again. "They're... um... slavers."

"... you have got to be shitting me."

"You!" One of the men with the bullet gun pointed the weapon at the Immortal. "Get in the war machine! You're coming with us back to Mega Manor!"

"... Mega Manor? Seriously?" The Immortal shrugged, and walked up to the machine, and two massive, muscly men waiting for her. "I... you know what, fuck it. I don't want to play coy. I've had a very bad day, so, I don't care who you are or who I piss off when I kill you. Die."

And the carnage began.

Brightness erupted from the wrist armor of the Immortal. Like an engine itself, spitting fire, white fire, the gauntlet turned into a bullet of its own as it forced the Immortal's fist forward, fire erupting outward from behind it. At the same time, she jumped toward the man, a leaping punch.

The man exploded.

Tumbles had never seen a fist collide hard enough to break someone, let alone go through threm. The Immortal's fist hit the man in the chest hard enough to go into it, and the man flew backward and away from the impact like glass shattering around a rock. Blood, everywhere. Body parts, everywhere. Tumbles stared on, frozen, as the woman turned to the driver, and spinning mid air after punching the first, she drove her foot toward the second man. The strange silver armor of her legs unleashed a fire worthy of the Reckoning behind the foot, propelling it forward, and the man had only a moment to open his mouth and prepare to scream. No scream, only the separation of his body into parts and mulch, as the woman's foot hit him, through him, and went into the front of the war machine. It kept going, through the metal like it was sand, and as the foot came up, the fire fled, and the Immortal flipped with the momentum to land upon the war machine's face.

"What in the sands!"

"Shoot her!"

The two remaining in the other war machine unleashed a rain of death. Bullets upon bullets. Their aim was poor, but one of them was using a mounted bullet gun, attached to the war machine. Quantity over quality. The hail of deadly metal fell upon the other war machine and the Immortal standing upon it.

Her skin lit up like the stars. Each bullet crashed upon her, and each ricocheted, the sound not dissimilar to the sound of bullets hitting the war machine beneath her.

She bent a knee, like someone preparing to run, or leap, at their prey. "Tumbles get down."

No need to tell him twice. He threw himself to the stand, and listened. The strange fire that erupted from her wrist and leg armor started up again, and screams mixed with a strange sound of impact, of what it sounded like when you punched someone, except, so much louder. And then, no more gunfire.

He raised his head, and gasped. Those two were dead as well. So fast! So fast, she had jumped at them, and punched, or kicked, or did something, something so hard it caused their bodies to explode. She was covered in blood, but, the second war machine wasn't. Instead, she was down on the sand with their... their bodies, or rather, their body parts. By the sands. So much blood, she was covered in it.

She'd removed the men from the machine, and destroyed them, saving the war machine from damage, and from the explosions of crimson.

"Ugh. Gross." She flicked her hands down to try and dislodge some of the blood, before she turned around, jumped into the back of the war machine, and grabbed one of the canteens. "Seems like they had lots of water. Hope you don't mind." She took a sip of its contents, and used the rest of the water to wash the copious amount of blood from her.

"The... the um... the Lord of Mega Manor won't be happy!"

"Fuck him. He has slavers? If we run into any more, I'll kill them. If we run into this Lord person, I'll kill them. No patience or sympathy for that shit." She sighed, and tried to wipe the blood off some more. "I'll go bury these bodies. And one of the trucks is still intact, so we can take that."

Truck? So many words she used to describe things, and he didn't understand any of them.

"You... you killed them. I mean, I... you didn't hesitate. Just like in the legends."

"Killed a lot of people when I was in Special Arms. Don—legends?"

"... legends of the great war. They said the Immortals... were amazing in battle." And they they were to blame for the war. Don't tell her! Don't tell her, not now, not yet.

"That's good, I guess? I mean, the R&D Center said no Immortals were launched for the war, but the intel network was down, so maybe they did? Fuck, I don't know." Sighing, she started burying the bodies, the parts of them, hiding them deep into the sand. "Alright Tumbles, what's the plan?"

"Plan? You want to know... my plan?" He was still trying to keep himself from gagging at the sight of body 'parts', let alone thinking of a plan.

"Well, yeah. I assume you want to get back to your village?"

His village was a lifetime ago. The nearest village though, yeah, maybe that was a good idea.

"We can't travel though," he said. "It will be dusk soon, and the sand worms hunt at dusk, and through the night. We must be quiet during those hours."

She shrugged, and gestured to him. "So, what's the plan?"

There was only one option. Set up camp. "We must... settle down for the night, and set up a tent to fight the cold." The original plan was to investigate the spot on the scroll, and quickly return to the village. He did not want to be caught out here at dusk, but, too late now.

"Sounds like as good a plan as any." She wandered around, from war machine to war machine, and opened the doors to peek inside them. "You haven't asked for my name yet," she said.

"W-What?"

"My name."

"I... thought you were... Immortal Mark 8?"

"What? Oh god, ha." She chuckled openly, and started digging through the various bags. "I guess I shouldn't laugh. Tumbles is your name, but it sounds like a code name to me. No, my real name is Amanda."

"... Amanda." An unusual name. Mark 8 sounded a little more normal to his ears. But, he nodded, and started pulling out the poles for the tent from one of the war machines; he knew they'd have some. Amanda. Amanda. It did have a way to it, something that made him smile. "Amanda."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For all the equipment they managed to find, they did not find anything that would provide the needed warmth for a night in the desert. And that was a problem. They had the poles, why not the proper blankets and mini-fires? They didn't have a single glow rock either. The best option, the only option, was for him to remain clothed, and sleep under the single blanket they had found. It was small, not enough to do much more than cover Tumbles's body. At least they had the supplies to make the full tent, so every surface was covered; he wouldn't be getting stung by any scorpions or death rocks tonight.

The tarp underneath him a decently soft bed with the sand beneath it, he lay upon it, and slipped the sheet on top of him.

"Are you sure you'll be alright?" he said. He should have been more worried about himself; freezing to death was very possible. And, like stupid Tumbles, he found himself worrying about the machine of death.

"Yeah. Running extra heat for a cold night might knock off eight hours of... AR says 9213 years of power supply remaining, at normal activity levels." She shrugged, and lay beside him on the tarp, outside of his blanket. As she did, she ran her hands down the spikes on her head, and bent them. Not bent, but rather, pushed in on some hinges that allowed the spikes to smooth onto her head, almost like hair. It let her put her head down without puncturing the tarp, as she lay on her back.

"Even the Immortals need sleep?"

"Mmhmm. I'm a cyborg, not a robot. Still human. The nanotech and synthetic flesh handles almost everything, but the brain still needs sleep."

"I... I see. Food? Water?"

"Just a little every few weeks, for the 1% the body can't synthesize or recycle."

So many words he didn't understand, numbers he couldn't contextualize. His questions were more to hear her talk; he liked the sound of her voice. And her voice let him know she was there, because with the tent closed and night time upon them, he couldn't see a thing.

"Mind if I create a little light?" she said.

"Um, how?"

As if a glow rock had been brought into the tent, the darkness began to fade, gently coaxed into hiding by a subtle green light. The woman's wrist! The silver armor plate that covered her wrist — she'd called it circuitry — let off a constant, gentle green glow, both arms. And with light to see, he turned to look at the Immortal only a few feet from him.

She was so beautiful. The various metal colors, lit by the gentle light, glinting and shining quietly in the black, were like the sky after a death storm. Death storms were, like the name suggested, deadly, but the streaks of green and blue they carried after were hypnotizing, and he found himself looking up and down her body as if she were the sky. She breathed. Did she need to breathe? Maybe it was just because she was human before she was a machine, and breathing was a habit a human did, right down to the soul. Maybe something to prevent brain dissonance, whatever that was.

Breathing made him notice how her large breasts, softened, no longer in battle mode, squished to her chest. The hint of areola and nipple, skin texture in the obsidian of her body, caught on the green light. Her waist showed her ab muscles, moving in slow motions with her breathing, and he stared on as her breasts pressed to her chest near them, squashed with gravity.

Arousal stirred within, and he gulped as he stared on, unable to look away. But the cold of the desert struck and struck quickly, retribution for daring to become aroused. The tarp, the single sheet, his clothes, they were little barrier to its stinging bite. Before he knew it, he was shivering, and he curled up into a ball as the cold fell upon them from the tent above.

"Holy shit," she said. "Temperature drops a fucking lot, I had no idea. You sure you're going to be ok?"

"I... I um, don't know. Will you?"

"Yeah yeah, I'll crank my heat output more. Might even warm the tent up a bit."

"... thank you."

"Ha, dude, you need to worry about yourself more."

"It... it is very cold," he said, teeth hitting each other.

"Yeah. It normally get this bad?"

"N-N-No..."

"Shitty lucky then. Come on." She reached over for him, picked up the side of his blanket — oh no, his only source of protection — and slid herself toward him as she rolled over onto her elbow and side. And then, she inched her way onto him, pushing him onto his back and forcing his legs down.

"W-What are you d-d-doing?"

"You're going to freeze to death. I'm a furnace of heat. The fuck do you think I'm doing?" She slid onto him and set her body upon his, the small blanket upon her back and legs, and her chest to his chest. He braced for extreme weight, but, she weighed only as much as a woman did, thank the sands. Perhaps a little more, but nothing uncomfortable.

She was so warm. So very, very warm. Almost too warm. Bits of his body thought she was stinging hot, like sand in the open sun, but once the bite of cold lessoned, her body instead felt as a hot softness from head to toe. The silver armor of her legs was on the outside of her thighs, so she kept his legs between hers where her thighs were so very warm, and skin soft. Her feet were warm too, warming the blanket at its coldest place. Her stomach was warm, and hard with muscle. And with her chest, and large breasts pressed to his shirt, the warmth of it began to overflow and sooth his clenching muscles. In five minutes, she fought off the cold of the desert night, and he found himself relaxing as the blanket, and her body, became an inviting heat bath.

Or at least, relaxing was the plan, her intention, but the feel of her weight upon him was both an insanity he could never have predicted — she was an Immortal! — but also, the feel of her skin was enchanting. She was in normal mode, however that worked, and normal mode kept her skin feeling very human. Her breasts molded to his chest, her hard stomach rose and fell with her breathing, and her arms nudged against his every so often as she got comfortable, reminding him how very human she was inside that machine body of slick, smooth beauty.

"Feel better?" she said.

"Y-Yes! Very much. Thank you."

"It's a good way to conserve heat, press bodies together, sometimes naked and wrapped up in the blanket. You don't need to get naked for this, considering I'm a furnace, but yeah." Her head was beside his, but she raised it to talk, and smiled down at him, the dark tint of her navy lips lit by the gentle green.

Bodies together. Naked. Under the blanket? The imagery hit him, and he closed his eyes as he found his mind drifting to the thought of it, to his naked chest being bathed in the strange softness of this death machine's heavy breasts, her naked pelvis pressed to his, naked legs, naked thighs—

"I'm sorry, did I say something sexy?" She lifted her head again, and put her weight onto her elbows outside his arms as she looked down at him, a big grin on her lips.

"I-I-I-I—"

"Tumbles, I can feel you getting hard." She laughed, a warm chuckling sound he felt vibrate upon him. "You must really love machines."

Getting hard? He was aroused, and, perhaps she meant his penis? Oh by the sands, it was getting bigger, growing firm. Hard, as she put it. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.

"I... it's just... you're so beautiful, and... and... slick, smooth..."

"God damn this post-apoc world I'm in has some strange compliments." She lowered her head a little more, and after licking her lips with her navy tongue, she set a kiss on his chin. A kiss! Warm, and wet. Inviting. "Wanna do it?"

She'd kissed his chin. She'd kissed his chin. She'd kissed his chin.

"D-Do it?"

"Yeah, like, you wanna fuck?"

"I... I don't know what that word means."

"Oh fucking hell, I've been saying fuck all this time and you don't know what means?" More warm laughter flowed from her, and she slid a hand over to run her onyx finger down his temple and jawline. "It means a lot of things. In this context, it means do you want to have sex."

Sweet sands, she must have been toying with him. If he said something silly, she was going to kill him. Don't forget, she's an Immortal!

"I, I um... you... you're..."

"I just woke up in a world where everything and everyone I ever knew is dead, and apparently, Immortals are considered mythological death machines, so it's not like I'll be making friends easily. I have nothing, no one, and nothing to fight for. But the guy who woke me up, on the other hand, is getting a stiffy just cause I'm lying on him. So you can lay there like a cold fish if you want, but knowing you think I'm hot makes me damn fucking horny. Plus, you've really got this cute, adorable little dude thing going on." She ran her finger down his trimmed beard and tan skin, and drew lines along with her finger before finding his lip, and tugging on it too.

So many words he did not know the meaning of! But, he did understand the motion of her body, her pelvis, everything, as she began to slowly rock herself upon him.

"B-B-But... is... is it even... possible?"

"Oh very possible. All the Immortals made demands of the R&D branch before we agreed to be their prototypes. And every damn one of us wanted to be able to fu—have sex, in our new bodies. It was important for fighting brain dissonance too, but mostly, it's just because sex is awesome."

"I... wouldn't know."

"Oh, virgin? Sweet. Then you should definitely let me pop your cherry."

"... p-pop cherry?"

She sighed, chuckling, and continued to gently rock herself on his body. "You'll see."

Her body continued to rock upon him, gently, maybe two inches of her easing herself back and forth, and nudging her pelvis forward. She felt so wonderful, so utterly wonderful, heavy breasts pressing to his collar with each sway, and her pelvis pressing her sex toward his own. He was getting more and more erect, until his shaft fought to rise, poking up against his pants and her body both. Chuckling all the more, she raised her hips high enough for his penis to push upward against the fabric of his clothes, slide along it, and rise up to settle along his stomach, before she lowered herself down onto him again.

His pants were starting to get wet, around the crotch, from where she was rubbing against him.

"I... I um..."

"I can personally guarantee you this body has a very human, very tight little slit. And with the amount of heat I'm putting out, it'll probably feel like a sauna on your cock. Certainly wet enough." She didn't stop! She kept rubbing against him, burying him with her breasts, rubbing her thighs against his, and sneaking in kisses on his chin. Her lips felt so very human.

"You... you really want to... have sex with me? But I'm... just Tumbles."

"Oh god, referring to yourself in third person. You are so cute, it is fucking killing me. Yeah, come on. Only thing this body's ever tried is some sex toys, just to see if she worked as promised, and I'm eager to take her for a spin on a real dick."

Sex with an Immortal. Sex with one of the Immortals of legend. This was very much not a normal night for Tumbles.

"... ok."

"Awesome. And don't look so afraid! Jeeze, I'm not going to hurt you." She reached down with one arm, the other with her weight on its elbow beside his shoulder, so her free hand could find his shirt, and pull it up. He froze, trembling, but no cold reached him past the blanket that covered them both. It was her, she paralyzed him, struck him still as her hand pulled the shirt up to his neck; she kept it on though, it was useful against the cold. It was enough to expose where half his shaft poked out from the waist of his pants.

"Tomorrow we can have some better fun, get our hands and lips involved and shit. Can't do much in the cold though." Her hand reached lower, and slid down his pants until they were almost to his knees. With his midrift and pelvis completely exposed, she lay upon him again, and pressed her breasts to his bare chest. Nipples, hardened, raised on swollen areola, rubbed against his skin as she nudged her pelvis toward him again. Softness, wet lips, they rubbed against his length, against the base of it near his testicles, and rising higher as she inched herself forward along him and left a trail of her juices on his length.

He didn't move a muscle, only stared up at the visor that cov—was her eyes. Was this really happening? This beautiful, deadly, slick and smooth war machine, was going to have sex with him?

"Well, you can lie there like a cold fish, that's cool. I don't think you will though, once I've got you inside." She put another kiss on his chin, and then another higher, to his own lips, a tiny peck that earned a chuckle from her. And then, a moan, as she raised her pelvis high enough to set the entrance of her sex against the head of his shaft.

She was very hot. Her juices were almost boiling, and he shivered as the heat of her sent sparks down his length. Shivers turned into trembles, as she started to push her hips back down toward his, and angled her pelvis to press the head of his member against her slit. The sensation filled him with shivers of bliss, the squeezing muscles of her insides sliding down his foreskin and bathing his glans in a wet, massaging grip, as she took him into her body. He moaned as her body eased in every inch of him.

Her insides were so hot, it was almost painful. Like swimming in one of the rock streams near his old village, the stinging hot water filled him and his member with a tingling pleasure that forced his eyes to close, and for his body to relax into the covered sand beneath them.

"Feel good?" she said. "Like I said, must feel like a sauna inside me."

"By the sands, it... so hot, so solid."

"Solid? Man, the lingo you guys have is weird." Chuckling again, she set her head over his, and offered him another small kiss on his lips, her weight on her elbows. "You're the first guy to test out this body, so give me some feedback. Tightness good? How about the tits? I wanted soft and heavy, but not so soft they sag to my knees." Her dark navy lips grinned at him, playful, almost cat-like.

"It... you... it feels amazing! So sturdy, stable! Smooth."

More chuckles. "Whatever those mean."

"I... I don't understand your words either."

"Eh, I guess we've got a huge slang barrier. Well, I'll explain. Right now, your cock is in my pussy. And these?" She took one of his hands, raised it from where it rested beside his hip, and as she leaned up a little so her breasts hung more openly, she set the hand underneath it so he was cupping its weight, and the hard nipple upon it. "Tits."

Cock, pussy, tits, all strange words, and he doubted he'd remember them, as his brain was going into a fog, eyes locked onto the Immortal lying upon him as she guided his hand onto her breast. So. Utterly. Beautiful. And through the dialogue, through her fun and inviting voice and words, she didn't stop gently rocking herself back and forth, her hips pushing toward him with each light sway.

He could feel her hot juices trickling off his testicles. And the heat! The heat of her insides was just enough to send more of the stinging bliss of hot water through his length, his cock.

"... I... I'm..."

"My god man, you still act like I'm a mysterious being of legend. I'm just human, same as you, but with some upgrades." She lowered herself back down to his chest, squashing her breasts to him, and setting her lips near his ear. "Judging from the look on your face, the upgrades feel pretty good though."

"Um... um..."

"Ha, shy boy, you are getting me so damn fucking horny. Arg, it's that look in your eye, like you can't believe this is happening to you. Turns me on."

"Turn... on? Like, a machine?"

She erupted into laughter, proper, human, full body laughing, and he couldn't help but smile as she vibrated on him.

"Old expression. Means to become aroused."

"Oh! Oh... so... you're..."

"What, you can't feel it?" She squeezed her insides, hard, hard enough to earn another groan out of him, send sparks down his length as her wet flesh clenched on his girth, and cause a few more drops of her to leak onto his pelvis. "You know much about sex?"

"I... I do." Men and women were taught plenty about sex, because they had to be able to satisfy themselves and their lovers, without risking pregnancy. Unwanted childbirth was a recipe for a village to crumble under the weight of it.

"Then you should know I am god damn dripping horny, and this... is really... good." She let her weight off of her elbows entirely and rested her head beside his on the tarp beneath them, her weight now pressing down on him through her chest and stomach. She was taller than him, and had the leverage to let her forehead rest on the tarp, while still tilted so she could look his way. And he looked hers, head tilted enough so he could stare at her, at the metal, shiny, smooth visor where eyes should have been, and at the smile of her dark lips. "Cum as much as you want, too. Not like I can get pregnant."

"Oh... I... are you sure?"

"Mmhmm. Gotta cuddle with you till you fall asleep, with this damn cold. Tomorrow we can have some proper fucking."

Tomorrow. She wanted more sex with him, tomorrow! His lips broke into a wavering smile, as if the expression would shatter the brilliant dream he was experiencing, if he made it in full.

"Mmm... hold on..." She started to go faster, using her knees to push her body back and forth, while her hips and pelvis drove down toward him with each rocking motion. Squeezing muscles worked with the motion, gripping on him with each thrust of her body, until more of her hot liquids were trickling out of her. She knew her body, far better than he knew his own.

"Shit," she whispered, teeth clenching, and body clenching down on him until he thought she might burst his shaft. His cock, in her words. But instead, she started to tremble, dancing vibrations that worked through her as her insides bathed his length in spasms, muscles tightening in random spurts of blissful, soaking hot, gripping shivers. They continued for some time, until he almost wanted to ask if she was alright. But, she was moaning, small sounds that made him ache with need, as she drenched him in wet heat.

"God damn it," she said. "No foreplay, my partner is lying there like a dead fish, and I still cum first." Chuckling all the more, she brought her head up again, and set her chin to his, looking down at him. Always a guess where her eyes were looking, if she even had eyes underneath the visor. "I'm really soaking you, aren't I?"

"Y... you are."

"Sorry, just... you're really damn cute, and I'm feeling a little like a princess here, returning the favor to the handsome man who saved her from an eternity of sleep." She started to move her hips again, slower, and as she did, she leaned in again to kiss him. A proper kiss. A long kiss. He blinked up at the visor covering his eyes, before eventually, his eyes closed, and he let the softness of her envelop him.

"But, you're the one that saved me."

"True, but... eh, it's not the same. And I've always had a little kink for the princess fantasy. Handsome man rescues damsel in distress, she repays him by fucking his brains out." She chuckled when he froze. "Expression, means she gives him a lot of great sex."

"I... I see."

"Lot of girls told me shit like 'that's not right! She shouldn't feel the need to repay him with sex because he saved her', and there's me on the sidelines, hoping the cute, innocent little princess in the holovid rips off the man's clothes and rides that dick." She kissed him again, and grinned at him as she softly plucked at his bottom lip with hers. "Like I'm doing to you. Different strokes for different folks, right?"

What a strange world she lived in, but he didn't get to say it. She put her lips onto his again, and kept them there, gently nudging her kiss into him as she started to move her hips again. Without a word, she took one hand, and guided it onto her back. Muscle, skin, the onyx body felt like hot flesh against his touch. She guided the other down to her butt, and helped set it along both where it met her hamstring, and closer to its inner curves. Here, he could feel the hard muscle of her large ass push in toward him, flexing again, and again, and again, as she 'fucked' him.

He couldn't handle it. So tight, so very tight, and hot! She was still creating the extra heat with her body, and as she stayed on him, he felt the heat begin to fill him. Like relaxing in a rock stream. He could feel bits of sweat forming on his body, wetting his clothes. And he could feel his cum, starting to flow up his length, each flex of his inner muscles causing a wave of the tingling pleasure to spread outward from his pelvis and thighs. His glans grew sensitive, swollen, and the constant caressing pressure of her depths caused bliss to dance along it until it was almost painful.

His hands on her ass and back squeezed, and hugged her close, as he felt the first gush of his thick cum flow into her.

"There we go. I was scared I'd lose a second time. Started getting close there." Giggling, she put her head on his shoulder, and continued to squeeze him, milk him, draw her hips out with clenching muscles before devouring him to the hilt again.

He held on, held onto the ancient death machine, this beautiful creature of metal and onyx and softness, and came inside her. He managed to thrust a little, to push up with his hips as much as the position allowed, and let slip a couple more quiet groans, as he sank himself into her. Each thrust filled her with cum, the thick liquid growing hotter within her boiling insides, before trickling out of him.

As his pleasure started to fade, the Immortal began to shiver as well. She managed three more thrusts of her own, before she went still again, and let out some quiet moans. Moaning, she was moaning, her lips next to his ear as she lowered her forehead to the tarp again. The sound alone caused him to clench on her body, and thrust upward into her. She moaned again, louder, higher pitched, almost a squeal. He had to thrust again, and again, unable to stop himself as he felt her squeezing insides leak more juices, and more, inhumanely hot, causing him to sweat more; he didn't care. He thrust again, and again, until he felt her heavy breasts jiggle, and her large ass shake in his grip. At some point his other hand had lowered to it, to squeeze its muscled size, as he pushed up against her. The sounds of her, her moans becoming whimpers and squeaks, filled him with a need, and he thrust into her hard enough to make her bounce.

But eventually, he stopped, breathing a little harder, and hands drifting up to hold the woman's back.

"Much better," she said, panting as well. Not as much as him, but still. "Was hoping you wouldn't just keep lying there. Damn that felt good."

"I... I'm glad."

"Hey, you're sweating. Let's get these clothes off before the moisture catches the cold and chills you. You won't need them tonight anyway. I plan to cum at least twice more, and I'm sure you got another one in you."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Waking up was a very strange experience. The first thing he noticed was his penis felt sticky. Right! Right, he had sex last night. Heheh, sex. Tumbles, you had sex! First time, first time, and it was good, so good and sturdy! Stable. He—

He gasped, and rolled away. Black machine! Death machine! W-Wait, wait, calm down. It was... the Immortal, the Immortal he woke up from her sleep, the Mark 8. Amanda. So it wasn't a dream.

"... Amanda?"

Groaning, mumbling, the machine forced herself to sit up. She was beside him under the blanket, and her body was still giving off a large amount of heat. Too much heat. Now that the sun was rising, the tent quickly warmed, and Tumbles found more beads of sweat on him. Sweating was bad, sweating meant loss of water, and salt. Their newly acquired provisions would help, but still, waste not.

"Ah shit, yeah, it's the apocalypse isn't it?" The machine of doom sighed, looked at him, then down at the blanket, and groaned some more. "Can we go back to sleep?"

"No no! We must move. The desert is dangerous during the day."

"Right, of course it is. Dangerous to move during the night, dangerous to not move during the day. Bleh, don't worry, I'll protect you." She turned to face him, the two of them on their knees now, and she grinned. "Considering the tech level those raider fucks had? Classic gunpowder bullets? I feel like a god surrounded by insects."

He blinked. That, was a powerful image, and he shivered a little as he stared at her. Had a night's sleep changed her?

She laughed. "Calm down kid. I am serious though, we don't have to get going immediately. If anyone's approaching, my AR will tell me; can't be in combat mode while I'm trying to sleep, so the AR will alert me of any incoming people, waking me up if it has to."

"W-What about snipers?"

"Do you guys use any sort of anti-quantum radar tech?"

"... what?"

"Then, as long as I'm topside, I'll notice anyone with metal on them for ten kilometers in any direction. So, you, go take your morning piss, have a quick drink and bite to eat, wash yourself up, and meet back in here in fifteen minutes."

And just like that, she was up, and gone, ass of muscle swishing as she walked. He looked down at himself, and gulped as he felt his cock start to grow again. 'Hard', like she said. But, she'd given him an order, and he steeled himself to do it. Her recklessness and carefree attitude was both unnerving, and, delightful, and he found himself smiling as he watched her. She was so... so... fun?

He got dressed, stepped out of the tent, and took advantage of the crack of dawn. The only time of day where there was light, but it was still cool. He took the opportunity to dig through the supplies the raiders had left, pee behind one of the war machines, and sit down in the long shadow cast by the machine's sister. Some water and some basic food paste, gross but essential to life in the desert. There was plenty of water and plenty of food in the war machines, and plenty of Earth blood too. If the Lord of Mega Manor ever found out about this, it'd be the death of Tumbles, but as long as Amanda was by his side, his worry for the situation diminished from terrified, to flustered.

How would the village react to Amanda? Immortal was a dangerous title, and she had already exposed one terrible flaw: the need to sleep. Her 'AR' thing would warn her of danger, and surely she would enter combat mode before anything managed to hurt her, but still, the possibility it would not go that way existed. He didn't want her hurt.

He found a tiny cloth, wet it, and quickly began to scrub himself, stripping behind the war machine so Amanda could not see. Or, at least, that was the plan.

"You know, for a small guy, you got a great body."

"By dirt and rock!" He jumped, spinning around, wet towel dangling out beside him in hand, and him as naked as the day the sun greeted him.

Amanda, smiling, grinning, walked up to him, swaying her hips with what must have been more motion than necessary. "I really like the short hair and trimmed beard look, on the tan skin. Plus, this," she got close enough to reach out, and set her hands onto his hips, where one of her fingers traced the line of the V of his pelvis, "is hot. You got just enough muscle to be dangerous, and call me shallow, but I love these." Her onyx finger traced the lines of his abs. "Knew I felt more was hard than just your cock last night."

"I... I um—" He blinked down at her hands, and how close they were to his penis. He blinked five times over at how quickly his penis decided to betray him, and stand up for the death machine touching his body.

"Damn, you go up like kindling. Gets me all tingly." Her hand tracing his abs slid down, drifting through the tuffs of dark hair, and her grip wrapped around his shaft. He didn't move. Laughing, she stepped in closer, other hand slipping behind him to press lightly against his back as she turned herself a little, so she stood close to him but not quite in front of him. And, she began to stroke him, squeezed his member, smiled at him as she did, and craned down her neck to put a kiss along the corner of his lips.

"I thought... we were going to meet in the tent?"

"Couldn't help myself." She pressed one of her breasts into his arm, the other jiggling with its closer arm working his shaft. So good, so very good, she got faster and squeezed tighter, all without hurting him or discomforting the sensitive skin of his glans where his skin caressed it.

"You... you... you're voracious."

"Yeah, probably. Come on, a cute guy I like pops a boner the moment he looks my way, the moment I touch his stomach? I have to help him out."

Pops a boner? Don't worry about it Tumbles, just go with it.

"You... like me?"

"Seems like." Her hand grew faster still, until it was approaching a rhythm Tumbles knew all too well; he used the rhythm many times when masturbating.

He came. Staring at the beautiful machine, at her smooth body, her heavy, jiggling breasts, and her ab muscles crunching with her motion, he came. Three minutes, he'd lasted three minutes, from the moment she put her grip around his girth, to the moment the first gush of his cum squirted out onto the shadow-covered sand beneath them. She kissed him too, another for the corner of his lips before it found his neck under his jaw, the beautiful machine craning her own neck to find new places to kiss as she continued to milk him of his white fluid.

"Gotta rub a quick one out of you anyway, cause I plan to be the center of attention for a little bit before we get back to fucking. You done cleaning?" She continued to milk him, to ease her squeezing grip back and forth along his cock, so the final drops of his leaking fluid filled him with more waves of tingling bliss.

"I... had just... finished..."

"This is kind of dirty again, isn't it?" She let go of his shaft, moved a little to get in front of him, got on her knees, and set her lips onto his glans. He gasped as he stared down at the beautiful machine, her dark, navy lips drawing back along his ripe skin, and cleaning it of the cum that was dripping from the tip. Pleasure, warm, tingling, worked down the sensitive flesh into his body, and he shuddered at the overwhelming bliss of her lips and tongue kissing his cock.

But then she got up, licked her lips, and blew him a kiss before she walked off to toward the tent. "Come on."

And like a naive, lost puppy, he waddled after her, setting the cloth onto the war machine beside him as he walked. Naked, in the desert, the early morning hours, and following after a woman who was going to have sex with him, a dangerous, deadly machine. Wordy, if only you could see Tumbles now. He'd say something perfect, something like 'you might as well, cause what else you gonna do?'

He stepped into the tent, and groaned, long, quiet, eyes locking onto the beautiful obsidian skin of the woman. She was on her knees in the center of the tent, sitting on her feet, and playing with herself. One of her hands was playing with her breasts, teasing her hardened, raised nipples, the other reaching down to spread apart her sex. Her slit was wet, its dark navy lips spread by her fingers and exposing the almost glowing blue of her insides.

"Step one to fucking Amanda properly: make sure she's cum at least once first. Last night was a fluke. Normally, I expect a tongue on my clit and fingers working my insides, before you get any of this pussy. So, come here."

He got down onto his knees in front of her, and stared. "I... I uh."

"Ha, arg, you're so cute it's killing me. We can skip the tongue part today, cause you deserve some time playing with the rest of me. But, come on, two fingers in, palm up, and press up toward my belly before the navel." She used her fingers to spread her slit far apart, until a drop of her juices trickled out of her. "Hurry up, I'm dying here."

He gulped again, got in closer, close enough he had to arrange for their knees to get between each other; easier said than done, with the silver armor curves jutting out from the outside of her thighs. With his right knee between her thighs and almost touching her sex, he reached down for it, and touched her entrance. Not as warm as last night, but last night she had become a furnace of heat. Today, she felt human, and she felt divine. His fingers grazed up and down her folds, catching moisture, more of her juices, and rising to nudge against her swollen clitoris before lowering to her entrance again.

"You fucker, I said... inside... arg, please? Don't make me beg."

An Immortal, begging. He trembled with the reality of that, of this death machine sitting on her knees a single foot away from him, her body shivering, because she wanted him inside her, pleasuring her. His eyes locked onto her spread, smooth legs and sex, and he slid his other hand down to hold onto her hip, as he eased two fingers into her clenching depths. As she told him, he sank his fingers in, and pressed upward.

"Yeap, that's the spot. That's... the... g-spot." She grinned as she leaned forward, one of her hands finding his shoulder, the other resting on her leg. Two people, kneeling in front of each other, knees between each other's, looking at each other. "Feels a bit rougher than the rest of me, yeah? Press up on it, in spurts, like... yeah... like that."

He did as he was told, and gladly. Each time he pushed up on that spot, she squeezed on him, causing her juices to soak his fingers until a droplet fell off his knuckles. Her moans were quiet as well, as if the two of them were afraid to let the other know how amazingly pleasurable this experience was. Or at least, it started like that, but Amanda's mewls started to come out louder, higher pitched, and she clenched her hand on his shoulder as she started to move her hips with his hand.

"You can... rub it a little too. Just a little! Mostly... like... the... finger pressure."

"O-Ok." Gulping again, he tried moving the two fingertips around in a circular motion, just a little, like she said. He didn't stop pushing his fingers toward her abdomen though, and found he had to fight against her own muscles and their vise-like squeezing.

The hand she had on her leg reached out for his free hand, the one on her hip, and she guided it down to the blue flesh of her clitoris.

"Rub this too, but gently! Just... as icing on a finger fuck cake."

She knew what she liked. Wordy always said that he'd be better off with a woman like that, someone to point him in the right direction on things, keep him from tumbling. He didn't know if Wordy was talking about sex specifically, but Tumbles was very glad Amanda knew what she liked. Because, seeing her tremble and shake on his fingers, was intoxicating. He stared on, watched her body shiver, watched her breasts jiggle and her hips fail to hold still as he gently caressed her clitoris, while fingering her g-spot.

And when she came, his jaw dropped as he watched the muscles of her beautiful body clench, her abs crunching, her thighs squeezing on his hand, her shoulders arching forward. She slipped both her hands around him, and hugged him, burying her face in the nook of his shoulder and neck, head turned in toward him to keep the spikes away from him.

"Ease... ease up... on my clit."

"Yes ma'am." He pulled his other hand away, and instead set it on her hip again. Her hip, then up her back, and onto the hard, shivering muscles around her upper spine. He stopped fingering her as well, worried perhaps she'd grown sensitive.

"No! Don't stop... more... harder."

Begging, her voice wavering, she was begging him. His cock was standing upright so swollen it was starting to hurt, but he barely noticed. All he could think about was the deadly machine holding him, begging him to keep fingering her. So he did, pressing his fingers against the spot inside her, a little harder and faster than before. He had to move his whole arm to keep up the pace, to keep hitting the spot, and soon, the sound of her wet pussy being fingered hard filled the tent.

Her trembling body had begun to slow, but as he started to put his whole arm into the fingering motion, almost slapping her insides, she erupted, new waves of tremors flowing through her, and a new wave of juices coating his fingers. Not just coating, splashing. He would look down, but he couldn't with her head beside his, shoulder in the way. He could feel it though, feel her cum coating his hand, dripping down between his fingers, falling off of his palm, and splashing against their thighs as he fingered her.

"St... op..."

He stopped, yanking his fingers out of her. Too much! Oh no, he—

She turned her head upward from its spot on his neck, and kissed him; he could feel her shivering body through her lips.

"You... are too damn cute," she said, barely, her voice cutting with pants and some very not-machine-death-like whimpers. "I came, hard, twice. Calm down you... cute little fucker." He was never going to understand this 'fuck' word that she used for everything. "You have now earned the right to fuck me in whatever way you wish."

"I-I have?"

"Ch'yeah. I'll give you a little guidance though. Like boobs? Pick something with me facing you. Like ass? Something facing away." She eventually pulled away her head, and eased herself away from him, still shivering, but in control. "These are pretty damn nice. Glad I got the upgrade." She cupped her breasts with her hands, and squeezed on them. Her fingers sank into them slightly, and much of their soft size spilled over her palms and fingers. "This, on the other hand, I built myself, with thirty years of squats and deadlifts." She turned around, and while still on her knees, reached behind her after kneeling more upright. Both hands grabbed her ass, squeezed, and pulled apart before letting go, causing the large mounds to shake. She reached under them as well, and lifted up on them with a finger for each cheek, to bounce them, jiggling them.

Wait.

"Thirty years?"

"Mmhmm. Started exercising pretty hardcore when I was fifteen. Military when I was eighteen. Served for twenty-seven years."

"You were forty-five when you decided to become a machine?"

"Hey now, cyborg." She looked over her shoulder at him, and shrugged. "Is that a problem?"

"I... I just... you're so... so... playful!" All the elders of his village were mean and short-tempered. They didn't laugh.

"Oh my god." Laughing loud, she turned around, and punched him. A soft punch, in the arm, the sort a friend would give. "Kid, you catch the eye of a woman in her forties, and you're going to get fucked every night, and probably every morning. And, I'll have you know, women my age have other kinds of fun too, like sports and shit. Ya jackass." Despite the insult, she pushed herself toward him until her ass was between his knees. Closer, and closer, until she pressed the crack of her large, amazing butt against his cock, so the shaft was lined up between her two hard cheeks. "Maybe it's cause your world is pretty fucked up compared to mine? Forty-five wasn't very old, back then."

"M-Maybe..." Her words faded, everything faded, as his mind focused on the one thing that mattered anymore: the large ass of curvy muscle and shapely roundness rubbing up against his hard length.

"Ha, entranced? Ass man it is. Lie down, I'll give you a treat."

Gulping all the more, he pulled one leg out from underneath him, and then the other, until both were out straight along the tent tarp. He lay down, mind in a haze as he watched the woman continue to nudge her butt against his hard member. And he certainly wasn't about to let his head fall and miss the sight, so he reached out to grab the nearby blanket, and quickly bundled it up into a tiny pillow to prop up his head.

Amanda slipped her feet underneath his thighs, so he had to lift his knees to let them fit underneath. But she continued to back up as well, and bend down a little too. She reached underneath her body, still facing away from him, and grabbed his shaft to point it upright. And, with her knees to the tarp between his knees, her legs now hooked under his, she lowered herself down onto his shaft.

He stared on, blinking wildly at the sight of the most amazing, beautiful image he could ever possibly imagine, of a sexual, beautiful woman lowering herself down onto his length in such a position. Her back was arched, her chest pointed away from him, so he had no choice but to see the curve of her spine, and how it connected to the thick shape of her ass cheeks. Her slit devoured him easily, swallowing him with her dripping wet, clenching entrance, and burying him to the hilt until he felt her depths snug on his glans.

Still leaning forward, she put her hands on his shins, and started to rock herself back and forth.

"Reverse cowgirl," she said, head turning to look over her shoulder at him. "Well, actually, I think this is called the nun? With the way I got my shins under your thighs." One of her hands reached down and gave his leg, where his thigh sat across her calf before his legs spread out around her, a small, playful slap.

"Nun?"

"Ha, nevermind." She leaned forward toward her knees again where they sat between his, grabbed his shins again, and started rocking herself back and forth a little harder. "Good position for getting deep." Shivers, trembles, and a few wavers in her voice. But also, a few chuckles, and even a whimper, as she started to get faster. "And I get to control the angle, get to make sure you hit those... spots... right... there." She pushed herself back toward him, her ass pressing down to his pelvis, spread apart so he could see the navy flesh of her insides working back and forth along the base inch of his girth. Her lips, taut around his cock, were so beautiful, and wet, and he stared on as she ground her butt and pussy onto him again, and again, and again.

"Tumbles, I'm giving you full access rights to this body, dude. Come on, have some fun." She stopped grinding on him, reached back, took one of his hands, and set it on her ass. "Squeeze."

Fun. Immortal Mark 8, ancient death machi—cyborg, was asking him to have fun with her. It was still hard to process, still hard to accept the random luck that had found its way into his lap, figuratively and literally. Tumbles didn't get lucky. Tumbles was unlucky! And, he'd only been awake for maybe forty-five minutes before he and Amanda were back at it again. Just thinking about her, last time, warming him, and treating him to such bliss, he still wasn't sure it wasn't a dream. But it couldn't have been a dream. It was happening right now!

He set both hands on her ass, and squeezed, earning a giggle from the cyborg.

"There we go." Voice growing brighter, she sat up straight, and reached behind her to set her hands onto his, pinning them to her ass.

At her behest, he squeezed a little harder, earning some more giggles from the beautiful woman grinding on his body. The delicious feeling of her ass, of the muscle and texture of the obsidian skin, a very human texture, was to die for. He squeezed more, kneaded, caressed, and gazed upon the large mounds molding to his pelvis. And, perhaps too bold, he pulled her ass apart a little more, so he could see in greater detail the amount of her juices trickling out of her from the navy lips devouring his length.

All the while, Amanda got faster and faster, moving her hips back and forth, all while keeping her hands on her ass with his. Beautiful, smooth, slick and sturdy and solid. Too amazing. Too, very much, amazing. The heat of her juices was all the more inviting, and he shivered as he felt them on his testicles, the wetness growing as her voice turned to pants and mewls. He squeezed her, and her insides squeezed on him, clenching and gripping, until the head of his cock grew sensitive, swollen to bursting, and her soaked, warm insides sent unending sparks of bliss down his length into his pelvis.

As he began to flex his insides, and his cum began to flow up through his shaft, Amanda leaned forward, set her hands on his shins again, and began to grind herself with a new fervor. Whimpering, a sound so enticing it had him dumbstruck, he stared on as she ground her body back and forth hard enough to make her ass lightly jiggle in his hands. It was almost painful, how much she was rubbing his length, milking it, insides caressing his swollen glans, and he winced with each gush of his cum. Pleasure, overwhelming.

But at last she began to slow down, and eventually stop, her back arching and highlighting her perfect curves, as she started to tremble as well. Her insides began to squeeze in a different way, less hard clenches, more trembling waves and random spasms. Quivering, tight, hot, her insides continued to milk him of his cum as she came on him.

"Ok... that was awesome." She sat upright once again, still quivering, but apparently feeling perfectly ok to start talking. Trembles still worked through her thighs, he could feel them, and her insides continued to offer random shivers, earning some groans from him as his white fluid leaked out from her navy pussy. She danced for him too, moving her hips in a figure eight motion, as the two of them let the waves of bliss pass with time.

"You're... amazing. So smooth."

"Aw, thanks." Laughing again, she got up, and stood over him, grinning down at him. His cum leaked out of her, dripping down her thighs, and a few drops falling straight down onto his body. "Ok, get washed... again, and then we're off. Nearby village is fifty miles you said?"

"Y-Yeah... but, um—"

"Come on."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With the one war machine damaged, and his sand rider gone, they tossed all the supplies they had into the remaining war machine, and took off toward the village he last visited for supplies. Bad idea, bad bad idea, but he didn't say it.

"Just like riding a bike." Amanda pushed down on the accelerator, and drove the four-wheel war machine over the desert dunes.

"What's that mean?"

"Just means you don't forget how to do something. This is like four-wheel drive."

"But, it is a four-wheel war machine. And you are driving it."

"Ha, funny name. It's a Manta Armored Transport. Just a big fucking truck with a box armor setup. Modified though. Like, holy shit." She gestured to the mounted gun on the back. "A lot of the weapons I see you guys using is pretty old tech, but the fact you got it working at all is surprising."

"Amanda... we need to talk." Better get this said before he lost his nerve, and everything went to the sands.

"You wanna break up with me?"

"What?"

"Break up, means not date... which means not fuck anymore... which means not have sex anymore."

"W-What? No, no that's not what I meant."

"Ah. Well, hit me... which means, tell me what's on your mind."

He sighed as he tried to find the most delicate way to word this. It was easy to think, to let his mind wander, as Amanda navigated the dunes with surprising ease. Driving on sand was harder than dirt and rock, and he found himself surprised yet again at her skills.

"... people... know about the Immortals."

"Yeah, I got that from what you said earlier. The computer at the R&D center said no Immortals had been deployed, though."

"I... I don't know anything about that, but..."

"Out with it, Tumbles."

"... people... people blame the Immortals for the damage of the ancient war!" He threw up his hands before covering his eyes with one of them. Too painful to look at her. "The scorched Earth, those who believe in the myths... they blame you."

Amanda sighed. The machine engine noise faded, and the two of them sat in the desert silence atop one of the larger dunes. From up here, they could see the village, shacks made of bent metal, some piled high, some stuck low, all held up by beaten and bruised metal poles. Rust and steel, sand piles the villagers shoveled to keep the town from being buried in the deadly breeze, dead and half-buried war machines sticking out of the sand, some with wheels, some not. The small village had a fence, built high, made of sheets of metal torn off the sides of old war machines, and a few people wearing white cloth like Tumbles walked the perimeter within, peeking out through cracks in the fence to scan for potential raiders.

"I didn't want to say anything," she said, "when my AR picked it up. There's activity, some signal of some kind, a good two hundred miles North. I need to check it out."

"... you were going to abandon me here?"

"Abandon? What the fuck, no? I was going to leave you with your people!"

"They're not my people! My village is dead and gone, almost a hundred miles East of here..." He sighed, rested his elbows on the war machine's front, underneath its protective glass face — Amanda called it a dashboard — and set his chin in his palms. "I stopped by here, traded for provisions, so I could track down the place on the scroll."

"Why were you looking for things on that scroll anyway?"

"It... it was... Wordy wanted to do it. I was... carrying on his dream." And, you know, looking for salvage to sell too.

"Wordy?" She shrugged, leaned back in her seat, and pulled a lever so the seat fell back. Feet up on the dashboard, she looked up at the sky, or at least kept her visor and face pointed at the sky, and she sighed yet again. "I'm in a fucked up world, Tumbles. Everything I knew is gone, and unless someone catches me sleeping, I'm going to live for centuries... in this very fucked up world. I figure I should at least track down the other Immortals. And fuck, now you're telling me Immortals are blamed for the world being a desert? Now I really have to go looking for them. And the AR says there's something over there, so... yeah. And hell, I'd invite you to come, but considering the welcome we got when we got out of the hole, and the future welcomes an Immortal will get, I figured you'd be happier in your village."

"But, it's not my village."

"Yeah, I get that now."

"Do... do you not want... me to come with you?"

She turned her head to him, sat up, and gave him a rather hard punch on the shoulder, hard enough to make him hit his side against the door of the machine.

"I just told you it's going to be dangerous."

"... honestly, Amanda? I'd be safer with you. Raiders and slavers are common. The Gun Lords kill as they wish, and turn many villages like this one into slaves."

She smiled. He blinked. What in the sands, why was she smiling? She pulled the seat back up, rotated her shoulders a bit, and turned the war machine back to life.

"You did a lot of traveling, trying to fulfill Wordy's dream?"

"I did."

"So you know this land well? The people, the places?"

"I do."

"And... you really want to stick with me on this journey? Cause, I warn you, I'm about to throw myself to the wind and see what happens."

Tumbles laughed, and smiled at her when he found her staring at him. "I... I'd like to come."

"Awesome. You tell me what Gun Lords or whatever are around that need to be put down, and I'll play hero and rescue people from their bondage. And I'll track down my fellow Immortals in the mean time, see if I can get answers about this mess that's blamed on us. Good plan?"

"Good plan."

The Immortal grinned at him, turned the war machine around, and headed North West.

He pointed the other way. "Um, wait, this way, North East. And, we should visit the village first, for provisions."

"Two seconds in and already he's backseat driving."