Xico Date & Pool Party

In any date environment, there is a constant tension between the desires of one party and the other, save in the absurd case of a perfect match. The one party enjoys dancing; the other enjoying doing crosswords. They cannot do both at once, so one has to win out over the other. Ordinarily this is done by trading off victories in a process more popularly known as "compromise," but the dynamic can become more complex and dire with only one simple alteration: make both parties want to ensure the other party is satisfied with the date.

Imagine yourself, a young teenage boy, lucky to date an incredibly hot, sexy, and sexual older woman. She's the one who winds up asking you out. You even know that she is the sort of woman who prefers fucking to actual dates, yet she's done so nevertheless, clearly to satisfy you - your first priority is no doubt to ensure that she thinks the date is as wonderful as possible, no?

Yet, inversely, imagine yourself to be an older man, dating an enthusiastic, shy and sweet young girl, who happily sucks your cock and who's glad that you took her virginity. You would feel an obligation to repay her affection with some kind of wonderful first (real) date experience, yet you could not do this if the girl in question meekly flopped over backwards at the slightest brush of air.

Add into it telepathy on one party's part, allowing them (and only them) to determine what the other party liked doing, and it's easy to explain why we wound up watching an action movie which appeared to have almost put Xico to sleep during its runtime. The film itself was interesting both for a few neat setpiece fights, and for its minor differences - the romance plot was exaggerated in intensity, the girl in question dialed up in her perfection. Whereas so many action movies in my own world featured a 'girlfriend' character who had little to her beyond that, here, the woman in question was... well, basically Priscilla with less personality. Rich, generous, sweet, almost obsessed with the protagonist...

We had met up at the theater separately, both of us having headed home to change. Xico had arrived first, despite my superspeed, probably because I had spent a good ten or twenty minutes fucking around on my computer, assuming that I would get there first either way. So, when we left the theater, that was my first time seeing Xico outside the darkness of the theater. She was wearing a rather cute black t-shirt with a white silhouette of a kraken on it, and a skirt that reached down past her knees... and had two holes cut in the back for her tentacles to stick out.

Which they did. In a public theater. Time slowed down as I reacted on a base level, using my superspeed to try to scan the crowd as it came out. Most people paid little attention to us, too busy with whatever conversations they were having, but a good number were looking at Xico, glancing at her tentacles with curiosity. Some tried to get photos, even, blatantly pulling out their cellphones to snap shots of Xico - and only Xico. They didn't even seem to have realized that I was her date.

Didn't she have a secret identity? No, I supposed she probably didn't. After all, all Kate had to do, to disguise herself, was to mess with her hair. She often looked like a completely different person after her hair had gotten tangled into a wet mess following some intense sex, after all. (From her saliva, or my sweat - she'd never sweated during our time together, no matter how long we went at it.) Xico had worn some long, thick dresses that could obscure the presence of her tentacles, but wearing them all the time was perhaps unrealistic, or unpleasant. It made sense. People tended not to think too hard about the welfare of others, so she had simply failed to consider the fact that I would become a target because of this-

Xico tapped my forearm lightly, and I slowed (or sped?) time back down to its normal pace. "...what?" Was her simple, succinct question, though it was baffling to me. "What are you... thinking about?" She said it in the same way one would ask, What are you talking about? - incredulous, baffled, almost cruel. Not the normal way, where it's a question a girl asks that must be responded to - for reasons too complicated to quickly cover here - by simply saying "you."

"Ah. I'm just concerned that a supervillain might target the people you know," I explained.

She blinked at that. "They... won't," she told me, frowning like my statement made no sense. "It doesn't," she said, unable to resist the urge to respond to my thoughts. "Why would... anyone... do that?"

Xico had never spoken to me in this way before. It, frankly, made me feel stupid. The little twist of her tentacles in response to that thought, earning a couple audible camera snaps and visible flashes from smartphones. "You know... um, revenge, because you foiled their plot?" I was beginning to slowly realize that I knew very little about the practical side of superhero life. I knew how many circuit boards Mira went through in a month, or the dietary requirements of certain extraterrestrials, but not the actual day-to-day practical side of things. I was filling in with the experience that seemed most relevant to me - superhero movies and comic books. It was a classic trope for the hero's girlfriend to get kidnapped by the villain, and-

"That... doesn't happen... in real life..." Xico said. She said it with this sense that she didn't want to have to say it, because it would make me feel stupid. And, naturally, once the words were said, it became obvious I was being stupid. For all the surface-level similarities, the superheroes of this world were real, and of course there were many tropes that weren't carried over. Secret identities may remain, but- "We don't... have secret... identities..." she said, softly. Her brow gently furrowed.

"You... don't?" I have to admit, I was confused about that, since I knew Kate as Perihelion first. And, presumably, everyone else also had various costumed names.

"Yes... but... it's not a... secret... it's just... um... what's word... like the one-eyed panda?" She suggested, referring to a well-known brand symbol for a chain of Chinese restaurants. "Brand?"

It all clicked into place, then. With the dizzying array of superheroes - Star Heroic alone employed 76 - naturally, the public would have difficulty remembering them. Using names that were words or concepts with an existence beyond just the random naming schema America normally used would assist in memory. It was easier to remember Perihelion or Tiamat or Amaranthine, even if they were rare words, because they had some actual meaning to connect to them. Mira versus Mary versus Miranda versus Marigold, on the other hand? All gibberish, easily forgotten and confused. There wasn't a word like Perihelion to get it mixed up with (other than Aphelion, which wasn't taken for exactly that reason). If you got confused and thought she was Amaranth, you'd still probably find her in short order. The connection between powers and names would also serve as a mnemonic, to assist normal people in-

"It's just... cooler," Xico said, interrupting my thoughts. "Kate Hill... um... it sounds foreign... to me... but to Americans... it's very dull. Perihelion... sounds... cool. Cool?" She asked, perhaps sensing my strange froth of emotions.

"Cool," I agreed. I guess that made sense. It felt vaguely... childish. Trying too hard? But, I guess they were trying hard to save the world, they could also try hard to be cool. It was like how the Pope got to wear an absolutely ridiculous outfit, but because he was the Pope, it was fine. Come to think of it, superhero outfits were generally ridiculous too. "So... what's your hero name?"

Her tentacles wiggled briefly with anxiety, and her fingers poked against each other. "I... have one... but Mira says... it's not very good..." Xico mumbled quietly, her lower lip almost trembling in a way that was cute and definitely did not make me imagine said lower lip trembling on the underside of my dick. Her cheeks must have turned red for different reasons. "You're so..." she trailed off for a moment, then gave a sheepish smile, her hands lightly wringing together. She floated up and kissed me on the lips, pulling back with a nervous expression that asked if what she had done was really okay.

I told her it was with my actions, mashing her face against mine. I could see her tentacles stretch out and quietly wave, before I drew her with me out of the theater. We took the subway back to my apartment, with Xico sitting next to me and occasionally leaning up to kiss me, a certain bashful energy to her every movement. Her lips were curled into a smile pretty much the entire time, though, so I wasn't too worried.

I was concerned about the people who would glance our way, though. Xico did not come off quite as 'young' as Lope did, but she was in fact the same age, and she was petite, too. It would not have been hard to confuse her for a girl below legal age. I was a twenty-eight year old man, intermittently snogging with an eighteen year old girl, and there were definitely people looking our way.

"They're not... looking because of... that." I briefly paused my thoughts, my attention on her, and she fidgeted for a moment. Her tentacles waggled up into the air, waving absently either way, then her tongues nervously lashed out past her lips. Oh. They were looking at her tentacles. Not because I was a twenty eight year old man with an eighteen year old girl. Wait, this was a world of reversed sexual morals. Would they even care about that? Not as much as on my world, definitely. "Not as much," she agreed.

Still, I did start feeling self-conscious, so I reserved the kissing for when we got back to my place - though I mentally reassured her that I would be playing with the inside of her tonsils plenty once we got back there, which set her tails to wagging again.

When we finally arrived in my apartment, I made good on my promise almost immediately. I even put my superspeed to good use, pushing her up against the wall and flicking my tongue against her tongues and teeth in a fraction of a second, earning a little squeak of surprise, then a hum of happiness. Her hands gently brushed along my upper arms, sliding up and down my biceps with obvious interest; her tentacles performed a similar movement on my thighs, paying careful attention to them, squeezing them tightly with intermittent force.

When I finally pulled off the kiss with a wet gasp, I loomed over her, staring down into her eyes, and she blushed faintly in response. "Is there anything you'd like to do, in the bedroom?" I asked, my hand brushing along her thigh, towards her groin, teasing at it through the fabric. She let out a little squeak. "Remember, from my perspective, you can pretty much do nothing but be sexy if you make a suggestion." Unless it was scat or something similar, but I doubted she'd jump to that. She blushed brighter and shook her head rapidly. "Good. So?"

"U-um..." she pulled her hands back from my stomach, briefly licking her lips. "Well... I like... older guys," she said, turning scarlet as she finished the sentence.

It was irresistibly cute, the way she acted so embarrassed about something that was obviously nothing but a benefit. Unless she meant much, much older men? Not just ones a decade her senior, but like, in their forties? She shook her head.

"W-well... older older too..." she clarified, a moment later. "I think... it's... sexy how you're... teaching me... about sex..."

"Okay," I said, my fingers gently trailing along her neck as I tried to think of how best to leverage this information. She liked the fact that I was significantly older than her. Should I pretend to have even more sexual experience than I had? Or just do things like call her cutie and say how nice her o-face was? The way she blushed bright red at the latter thought made it clear the answer was the second. "Let's go to the bedroom, cutie," I told her, pecking her on the forehead and drawing her along with me.

I quickly disrobed her, then myself - it took a fraction of a second, all told. She wiggled subtly as I laid her down on the bed, with a blush that reached down to her petite breasts. Her cute body had those nice little circles on it, lovely paired birthmarks on either side that my fingers brushed along with some interest. My cock twitched in the air, but she faintly trembled at the touch - they seemed to be a bit more sensitive than the surrounding skin. I did the natural thing, brushing around and around them. "That's cute, your response," I told her. "You like being touched like that, huh?" She nodded quickly, her tails starting to wag as best they could beneath her. My cock throbbed in the air, and I shifted my weight downward, teasing my dick against her slit and then beginning to slowly force my way inside her. She let out a hot pant, as my cock just wedged itself ever deeper inside her, her body wobbling faintly.

It felt fantastic from my end. "You're so tight," I breathed out. "That's what I like about young girls." Fuck, didn't that sound like a predator's line? But the gender-inverted version was hot, right? By the way that Xico clamped down a little and blushed and shook and nodded her head in response to each of my thoughts, I had to assume it was. "You're cute, and you're tight."

"Th-thank you," she stammered out, her voice failing her as I thrust gently deep inside her, sliding my entire cock into her. Her toes curled, including even her tails, and she let out a little whine of pleasure as she struggled not to respond too quickly, too sharply.

"Go ahead and come whenever you want," I told her, with a grin, knowing what my line here was supposed to be. "I like to see cute girls' o-faces," I told her. "Especially yours." She squeezed down on my dick as she pretty much immediately came, moaning softly beneath me. I leaned down over her, hungrily kissing and sucking at her neck, enjoying the feeling of her orgasm as it bathed my cock in pressure and warmth. Her whole body trembled beneath me, her back arching and pressing her bare chest up against mine. My hands pressed down against the bed on either side of her for balance, but as her orgasm ran out, I leaned back up. "I really want to get a good look at that cute young body of yours while I fuck you," I told her, as I gently took hold of her slender thighs and started to pump away.

It was a good view. That slender, unblemished body, marred only by her cute circular birthmarks that crossed along her whole form, as it gradually slickened with sweat. The way her cheeks colored red with embarrassment at being eyed up that way. The way her sex gently dripped around my cock, the faintest wetness slowly trickling out as I thrust in and out of her. Each thrust seemed to make her whole body bounce in response to the movements.

Some part of me briefly, suddenly, brought up the idea that perhaps Xico liked older men because of me, specifically - after all, an early sexual experience can cause all kinds of imprintation. The first porn I ever watched was a torrented blowjob video, and my first girlfriend was a blowjob fanatic, and now the one thing that could get me harder than any flash of skin was the sight of a woman's tongue with a stud in it (or Xico's own many tongues, or anything other form of tongue action that suggested blowjob expertise like the cherry stem trick, really).

In response to those thoughts, two things happened. First, Xico blushed scarlet at the suggestion that she was into older men because I was her first lover, though she failed to deny it. Second, she timidly flicked her tongues out, letting the thin things lick at the air, as if she was trying to do the equivalent of a strip tease just for me. It succeeded primarily in making me intensify my pace inside of her. I kept my pace slow and methodical - from my perspective. But from hers, I started to ram at her at a rapid pace, making her whole body jerk beneath me.

It wasn't too difficult to control my speed of speech so that it came out normally, and it took me only a fraction of a second to come up with what to say. "Ah, your young pussy is too good," I said, putting as much thick and overbearing lust as I could into the words. "It feels so good on my cock! I love it! I love young pussy! I love popping cuties' cherries!" Her blush, if anything, grew scarlet - and she came pretty promptly, from a mix of my increasingly forceful pace, and my lewd words, her sex gripping my dick so hard it began to intermittently stop my movements altogether.

"P-please keep... t-teaching me about... s-sex," she managed to get out, when her orgasm had left her, her eyes big and bashful and an absolutely gorgeous thing to stare directly into, since she now was looking right into my own eyes. "I-I like... s-sex w-with, y-you," she managed to get out, her voice rendered a bit of a staccato as I forcefully rammed it inside her with incredible speed. She came again shortly thereafter, her tight sex growing even tighter on my cock.

At that point, I couldn't take it any more. I bottomed out inside her, finding sweet, sweet release as I let go. Each splash of my cum into her seemed to provoke a little miniature orgasm, her whole body fidgeting and undulating beneath me, tentacles frantically lashing around underneath her. When I was finally spent, I pulled out and halfway collapsed onto the bed next to her. She curled up right alongside me, one tentacle softly wrapping around my hips as she snuggled up to me.

For a long few minutes, we both just caught our breaths, enjoying the feeling of one another. Neither of us had any reason to ask if the other person had enjoyed themselves - Xico, since she could read my mind, and me, since Xico had come plenty, told me she enjoyed sex, and begged for more in the future. Hard to get more unambiguous than that.

When we both had actually finished catching our breaths, though, I realized she hadn't actually told me what her hero name was.

"It's... Projecture..." she said, her voice quiet. "Conject... means to throw together... like with telekinesis... or to think... like with telepathy... but con means bad... and pro means good..." she explained, and I struggled on how, exactly, to politely tell her that her name wasn't very good. "Oh..." she said quietly. "Well... um... I liked it..."

"Why not Project?" I suggested. Her tentacles briefly flashed around at the air, then she quietly nodded.

"I... can still... change it," she said, before snuggling in close to me. She wound up spending the night at my place, cuddling together with me.

* * *

"Hey," Mira called out, as the work day began to run out. "I'm in a bad mood. Who wants to come over to my place for a pool party? Hank? Hank, come on Hank," she called out, waving to a very tall dark-haired man. "If you come I can count on at least three girls to show up."

"Very well," Hank said, with a small, almost grim nod. "If it is for the sake of my friend."

At that point, a good number of hands went up - almost all of whom I already knew, actually. In fact, it was basically every woman I'd had a meaningful conversation with, including Lope, and I got the impression that she and Mira were like oil and water. I guessed that made sense - the kind of girls who would be enticed to go to a pool party by the presence of an attractive man were also the kind of girls who would be first to show up to flirt with the hot new employee.

The only hand I didn't recognize was that scaled and light green. When I looked to find who it belonged to, it was a man. Muscular, a bit more than me - I was on the quite slim side, in terms of build - with light blonde hair done in a braid, and a pair of far-too-large ears. He even had a tail, looking rather like a shark's. I had seen him around. It was hard not to notice him, given he had a tendency to wear far skimpier clothes than was typical for men around the office. Where most people wore something fairly formal - a suit, a dress shirt, a blouse, a dress - he wore what amounted to a one piece, if that. Women certainly took their chances to look at him, but he'd never seemed to mind it, so I had ignored it.

My interest in the pool party wasn't for the fact that two guys were going, though. It was that Esther, Priscilla, Lope, and Kate were all going to go. Xico glanced my way, and as I resolved to go, she floated out to raise her hand into the air before I did so, to make it less obvious she was going to join me. I raised my own hand into the air a few seconds later. "Be nice to get to hang out with other people," I said.

At that point, nine hands simultaneously rose into the air. All belonging to different women, at least at first glance. I felt a faint sense of trepidation at the possibility of having to try to learn and remember the names of nine different people in one social outing, but Mira just sighed and looked across the raised hands. "Only one of you, my pool doesn't have infinite space," she said, at last. After a second, eight hands simultaneously fell.

* * *

The new girl, naturally, attracted my attention. Both because she was new, and because she (and eight of her friends?) had clearly decided to join the pool party solely once I had done so. She was fit, with a muscular physique, and fairly tall - the top of her head roughly level with my eyes. She had lovely blue eyes, and cropped-short blonde hair, and she stared at me as she quietly disrobed into her underwear, apparently having concluded that a sports bra and panties were sufficient to dive into the pool.

"Nora," Mira said, clapping her sharply on the back, interrupting her stare at me. "Please tell me you have a swimsuit on you."

"My bra and panties cover a similar quantity of skin," was Nora's simple, crisp reply.

"That's very nice, but nobody wants to see the exact outline of your labia, so, have one of your bodies bring over an actual swimsuit," Mira said.

Nora's attention went to Hank. She was standing in her underwear by that point - the man himself had already switched into a swimsuit and dove into the water a minute earlier. I finally took a proper look at him, and...

He happened to choose that moment to pull up his shirt. It hid nothing anyway - it was now wet, sticking to his skin and becoming semi-translucent - but I didn't have to turn my head to know that every single woman's eyes were currently on Hank's chest. I knew he was tall - six and a half feet, maybe more - already, just from seeing him around. In his suits, it was easy to dismiss his bulk at maybe as much fat as muscle. Without it, he had the most chiseled, muscular, well-formed physique I had literally ever seen in my life. My brain briefly locked as I realized the kind of competition I had for women's attentions - and apparently that thought was enough to make Xico float over next to me to nervously squeeze my shoulder.

It cleared my thoughts for a moment. I glanced at Nora, who was still staring at Hank. (And, yes, Esther, Lope, Priscilla, Kate, and even Mira were all drinking in Hank's bare chest for the couple seconds he took before pulling his shirt back down... then mostly kept staring.) "Hank," she said, at last, making him turn his attention her way. "Is this inappropriate clothing for swimming in?" She gestured at her own clothing.

He took no time at all to respond. "It is inappropriate to swim in your underwear." He said it in a way that it didn't feel like he was being patronizing at all, or even like the explanation was tailored to Nora - more like that was how he'd respond to anybody asking the question. "The water causes it to cling to your skin; even with darker colors, the effect is revealing." Part of me thought that the same applied to his t-shirt, and that produced this awkward little squeeze of Xico's hand like she really didn't want me to point that out to him. When I glanced at her, she blushed and fidgeted in embarrassment.

Well, I wouldn't be the one to tell him, if he was the sort to care. I could put myself in the girl's shoes - the megatits girl jumps in the pool wearing the skimpiest string bikini and doesn't seem to realize it's worth commenting on. Telling her what she was doing was just harshing everyone else's mellow. Especially since Hank was probably at least my age. He had to know what he was doing.

The shark-boy dove into the deep end of the pool, serving as the thing that finally set off everybody else to turn their heads his way. He popped up out of the water - and I don't mean just his head, I mean he actually leapt out of the pool, spinning in the air for a moment before diving back down, like a dolphin at play or something. The girls now seemed to have two men competing for their attention. "Don't be shy, friend," he called out - to me, I realized, after a moment. "Change into your swimsuit! Come enjoy yourself with the boys!"

The women practically all rushed off for the bathrooms at that point, no doubt wanting to strip down to their underwear as quickly as possible. I, on the other hand, had superspeed, so I beat all of them and got in my swimsuit before rushing right past them. I saw their gaze briefly flick to my scarcely clothed body with naked lust, staring at my bare stomach, my chest, but they only got a second or two before I'd cannonballed into the water.

"I'm Alexios, by the way," the shark-boy said, as he swum up towards me, offering a hand and revealing a shining row of - well, his teeth weren't sharp, despite my initial expectations. They were oblate, shaped almost like countless little 0s up next to one another. There weren't any canines, they all seemed uniform, or near enough, in size and length, rimming his whole mouth. "You are Roger, yes?"

"Ah, yes," I said, finally taking his hand after a second. "Sorry. We don't have..." I trailed off, having no idea what he actually was, and knowing 'whatever you are' to be a bad choice of phrasing. "My Earth only has baseline humans," I explained.

"Oh, I understand," he said, smiling. "I am Atlantean," he explained, a swish of his tail beneath the waves. "Oh, my apologies. Atlantis is an underwater kingdom in the Atlantic. Hm, is that where the name comes from? The ocean between Europe and the Americas."

"It's called the Atlantic in my world too. We had legends about Atlantis in my world," I told him, and he smiled at that, showing off those strange teeth again.

"Good to hear." He looked across the various women, tilting his head curiously. "I think you have a surprisingly lot of women interested in you." I knew that already, but I didn't know quite what had him so aware of it, tilting my head over to the girls, who had started to enter the water themselves. "Xico, Kate, Nora... well, which one do you like?"

"Nora?" I asked. Kate and Xico being the most obviously-interested wasn't too surprising, since I'd spent the most time with them, but I was surprised he picked out Nora over, say, Lope, or Priscilla, who had both already had sex with me once and clearly enjoyed it quite a bit.

"Ah!" His tail swished for a moment beneath the waves, then he drew quite close to me, clasping my hands in his in a way that made me mildly uncomfortable, just for how much closer he was than normal. I had to mentally remind myself that he was a man in this world, and also a foreigner, so there probably wasn't anything meant by it. "I have to admit, I did try things once with her, and sorry as I am to say it, but she's got a sex drive too high even for me! It was fun, though," he added with a wink, making me shift in the water. I was missing too many pieces here. Clearly, Alexios had misinterpreted my Nora? as a statement of interest, rather than of curiosity.

"I'm sorry, I haven't even spoken to her," I told him, making his eyebrows rise.

"Oh! Well, you see, Nora is a nova-" I knew what that meant, the local term for a human born with powers from some genetic or epigenetic cause that wasn't well-understood or easily-replicable, "-and her power is duplication. Her sex drive is, mm, independent through her bodies," he explained, with a slightly conspiratorial note to his tone, coming in close enough that his breath now brushed against my skin. I did understand what he was getting at, with a half-second of thought: imagine the sex drive of multiple men, compacted into a single person with multiple bodies. It would be an absurd amount.

"Come on, kiss!" Lope shouted out from elsewhere, making me turn her way. She was, in fact, talking to me and Alexios.

Alexios's hands squeezed mine, making me turn back his way. He was smiling in a way that was perfectly kind and warm, but made me feel suddenly very worried. "Well, what do you think?" My thoughts must have been legible without telepathic powers, so he soon frowned. "Ah, I'm sorry. I don't mean to make you feel uncomfortable," he said, letting go of my hands. That was good. It seemed like he wasn't going to actually kiss me.

"It's- ah, not your fault," I told him. A couple girls in the water, being asked to kiss, and one of them asks the other if she'd like to go for it? It wasn't really a big deal, if you thought about it in those terms. And it wasn't like he'd actually kissed me. (I did wonder what Atlantean sexual mores were like, but if they were anything like the ancient Greeks, they probably had plenty of gay sex.)

"No, boundaries are important. I should have noticed your stiffness earlier. My apologies," he told me, with a gentle bow of his head.

"Apology accepted," I said, wanting to cut off this whole conversation as quickly as possible. I had nothing against gays, but this was actually the first time in my life I'd been subjected to anything like being hit on by a man, and I didn't have much awareness of how to politely reject him.

After a second or so, Alexios seemed to decide that I really was okay now and he didn't need to apologize any further. "So... of Xico, Nora, and Kate, which do you like?"

Glad for the change of subject, I turned back to the group. "I like Xico and Kate," I said, though even at that point I still was less than certain I liked Kate in any sense that meant that I'd actually go out with her if the sex wasn't fantastic and easy, "but I don't know Nora."

"Ah, that is good to hear," he said, but he was clearly thinking it over to give me advice. "Kate. Well, Kate is a tad estrogen-brained-" that meant horny "-but that can be charming," he said. It certainly could be, if you were like me and wanted to have sex as quickly as possible. "Xico, I think you'll have to be the one to pursue her." He smiled gently as he spoke, smoothly flowing through the water around me, practically pulling me along with him and away from the girls. "And Nora- ah, here she comes. I guess one of her bodies must have brought over a swimsuit. Want me to run her off so we can keep talking?"

It was strange to have an offer like that made. In my old world, the idea of a man "running off" a woman who was interested in a guy he was talking to would so obviously be bad that it would require extreme extenuating circumstances - the girl being his stalker, say. Here, though, it was much milder, since I might just not be feeling "in the mood" to be approached. Of course, I wasn't a man of this world, so I said, "I'd like to get the chance to know her."

Alexios's eyebrows raised, but there was also a smile on his lips. "Ah, I see," he said, tail swishing for a moment behind him. "Well, I'll go play with the other girls to keep them off you," he said, swimming away as Nora finally came close enough.

Her gaze briefly followed him, her head tilting to admire his body as he jumped in and out of the water repeatedly. Once he had joined the other women and stopped rushing about so much, she tilted her head back and turned her gaze to me. "Hello. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Nora Kleiner." She offered her hand, and I took it, shaking it.

"I'm Roger Cooper," I told her. "What brings you over here?"

"You do. I have sexual and, by extension, romantic interest in you."

That was shockingly forward, even by this world's standards. My little jerk of surprise got no more note than a slight tilting of Nora's head. "That's forward."

She tilted her head still further, this time to the opposite side. "It is an honest statement. I find you physically attractive, and do not know you. I would ideally like to develop a romantic relationship with you, though that would depend on your personality and whether we are compatible."

Alexios hadn't given me any warning about Nora, other than her very high sex drive, and he had actually dated her, so I wasn't too worried her forwardness was a sign that she was a rapist or anything. "I'll take that as a compliment," I said, regarding her finding me physically attractive. Now I was groping for something to discuss.

"I will arrange for a date on Friday, after work, if that is to your liking."

"We can get to know each other now," I pointed out, honestly confused as to why she was immediately putting it off.

She tilted her head again, then straightened up and nodded. "Very well. That would be acceptable to me." She got a few inches closer, staring up at me with this cold, infinitely long stare that seemed not to blink or glance away for even a fraction of a second. "I am the heroine Fork. My power is duplication. I enjoy exercise, combat practice, and saving lives. I dislike crime and people saying things they do not mean."

She had an intensity to her that made it somewhat hard to quickly respond, but fortunately I had superspeed to compensate. I pulled an inch or two back, glancing around at the rest of the pool to remind myself there was a world outside her eyes. Mira was in a dark bikini and trying to chat up Hank; the other girls were pretty much all staring brainlessly at Alexios as he showed off for them, with the exception of Xico who occasionally glanced my way as if to check on me, and Kate, who occasionally glanced at Hank to admire his chest, or at me to admire mine.

She didn't ask me to speak up, despite the fact that I was actually taking quite some time to draw my words together. "I'm an accountant. My power's superspeed. I like math and video games." I considered throwing 'sex' into the list, but that might have been too far. "My dislikes are, uhh, being subject to violence."

She nodded at that. "Most people dislike being subject to violence," she agreed, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to list, and not a consequence of nothing else immediately coming to mind. I was glad my rather-crappy answer hadn't ruined things. "Is there anything I can help you with? I have a large quantity of free time, since I have a large quantity of bodies." I was reminded of my own stretched-out time back before I'd gotten this job, where I spent one hour a day working and a hundred subjective hours fucking around online. If she was a duplicator, I guess she was probably in a similar boat.

"Nothing right now," I told her. "What kind of duplication do you have?" I asked. I'd seen some male-duplicator on TV, a Japanese guy who made temporary illusory clones, but from the sound of things, Nora had a different kind of duplication.

"I was born with the natural tendency to split. My number of bodies naturally work to hit a certain 'metabolic mean,' though this has grown over my life, from twelve when I was young, to twenty-one today. When I fall below this margin, I consume an extremely high quantity of calories, equivalent to one or two months' food, and one of my bodies will split from the excess calories."

"That must've been hell on your mom," I said, trying to crack a joke.

"Yes. My mother and father were unable to effectively care for me." Her expression didn't change in the slightest as she said those words - despite that, I felt like a jackass. I couldn't tell if she was just that good at making people feel bad, or if it truly was unintentional. "I was enrolled in a government program to raise particularly problematic novas. Problematic in the sense that their powers present difficulties. I was a very well-behaved child." I thought I caught the slightest trace of pride in her normally cool and level voice.

"Got it," I said. Since we were already on the subject... "What does it feel like?"

"What does what feel like?"

"Having multiple bodies," I explained. "Is it like, there's twenty of you in psychic communication, or...?"

"I have a single consciousness, which controls all of my bodies, and experiences reality through them. The actual physical actions are undertaken by the individual brains and nervous systems, and the sensations are sent through them. As such, I," she says, with an airy gesture and a wave of the hands towards something ephemeral and beyond physicality, "experience pain when one of my bodies is struck, but only the body actually struck winces, flinches, and disfavors the damaged part. Is that clear?"

"It is, I think." It was a weird way to experience the world, though it seemed fairly easy to understand. It did make me wonder - "So if you're having sex in one of your bodies, the rest of them just keep going like normal?"

She slightly pouted at that, the faintest trembling of her lower lip, and I worried I'd deeply offended her somehow, since that was the strongest sign of emotion she'd shown so far in our conversation. "I apologize. I used to explain my experience in reference to sex. Mira told me that it was inappropriate to tell people that way, particularly males, so I instead used pain as my reference. Therefore, you should actually blame her for any lack of clarity." I didn't think that it was that unclear, but I nodded along. "When I have sex, I, in the abstract sense, experience the pleasure of sex. However, only those bodies which are actually being fucked experience sexual pleasure, orgasm, involuntary muscular movements, et cetera. The others can continue going like normal."

"You must be great for threesomes," I said. A moment later, I realized what I said, and resolved to try to arrest my motormouth. Something about Nora - her completely plain and straightforward speaking style, the way she barely reacted to anything you said - encouraged me to say things I probably wouldn't have said to anybody else.

"I am very good for threesomes, foursomes, fivesomes, sixsomes, et cetera. If you have any sexual fantasies that can only be fulfilled with multiple partners, it is extremely likely that I can fulfill them, unless they necessitate more than twenty sexual partners simultaneously, which is unlikely. Given you asked this question, I will assume this is something you would be interested in, and suggest that if we become sexually and romantically intimate, we could have such sex regularly."

I swallowed. She'd gotten a bit closer again - I got the impression her personal space bubble was just a couple inches smaller than mine, and I took a couple steps back. "We can go out, sure. Uh. Let me give you my number. Do you have something to write with?"

"Another body does," she told me, and I rattled off my phone number. A second or two later, my phone buzzed. "Your most recent caller is now one of my phones. If you would like to go on a date, or, alternately, to simply have casual sex, you can call me."

I couldn't help but let out a small laugh at the casual sex comment. "Were you this forward with Alexios, or just me?"

"I was approximately this forward with Alexios. We had sex after our first date, which he found sufficiently romantic to consider a spark to exist. It was even threesome sex, allowing me to satiate the sex drive of two of my bodies at once."

I have to admit, there was something appealing to the way she spoke - it was very, very straightforward. There was no chaff or obscurity, she just said things exactly as they were, like there was no concern about trying to cover up who she was. It was nice, particularly given how tiresome it could be to constantly flip and rotate genders to try to understand what was going on in a woman's head. Perhaps one day, I would get used to it enough to not have to think about it, but that wasn't today.

Still, I hadn't come here for Nora, she had come here for me. "Let's get back to the crowd," I told her. "You have my number now, we can talk any time."

"True," Nora agreed, and I swam back to the group of them.

Esther wore a one-piece, something fairly conservative but that still showed off she had a quite nice, curvaceous body - more well-rounded than I had thought, just looking at her through a suit and layers. Priscilla wore a white bikini which covered a decent amount, and which contrasted extremely well with her dark skin, making her breasts seem to pop. Kate wore something close to a sports bra for a top, and short-shorts for bottoms, which showed off plenty enough of her body but was clearly for function rather than form. Xico was wearing one of those one pieces that had a skirt, a simple dark design with two holes in the back for her tentacles to pop through. Lope's was the most risque, getting up this close, being a nearly-indecent black-and-red bikini, with fire print across shockingly thin patches of dark color.

One advantage of superspeed was that I got to eye up a half-dozen women in such a short amount of time that they didn't even notice I was doing so.

"Hey, Rodge," Lope said, quickly swimming over to me. "Tell Alex how cool I am. I'm super mature for my age, right? Age is just a number, y'know?"

It was impressively tactless, though about what I would have expected, given Lope's previous behavior. Boorish and horny. "If he thinks you're too young, then that is his choice." I gave her head a pat, which didn't improve her mood at all.

"Okay, okay, I get it. I was totally being unfair. Sorry," she muttered, kicking her foot beneath the water in a way that sent a rush of water running against my calf. It was obvious she didn't mean to apologize for hitting on Alexios, but instead to me, for...?

...for asking me to be her wingman going after another guy, I realized. Yes, that was a bit uncouth, right? I mean, we'd only had sex the once, and it had pretty much just been sex, but... I mean, I didn't care, since she was just a horny girl I had enjoyed having sex with, but for a normal guy in this world, it probably would have been rather impolite. "Oh, it's fine," I told her. "Don't worry about it," I said.

"Alright then, cool," she said, seeming to accept my words at face value shockingly easily before swimming over to try to flirt with Hank. The fact that it gave her the chance to bother Mira, who was also trying to flirt with Hank, seemed only to make her more inclined to do it.

Lope wandering off meant it was now time for other girls to move in for the kill. In this case, the two women I had actually gone on dates with: Xico and Priscilla. Xico blushed as she picked up that particular thought when she got close, and Priscilla took up the speaking role. "You are looking positively scrumptious today, Roger," she said, grinning with the sort of confidence that said she remembered very clearly our sex, and thought it was an enormous charm point for her. (In fairness, it was.) "Mm, you know, you look truly fantastic wet. I have a private pool at my home, if you'd like to enjoy it later." Her dark fingers freely trailed across my shoulder, while Xico just quietly blushed from the sidelines, perhaps picking up how our previous sexual encounter had gone.

"A-are you okay... Mr. Cooper?" Xico asked, from next to Priscilla, her tails idly flicking in the water.

"Mmm? Is there some reason he wouldn't be?" Priscilla asked, even as her fingers gently trailed down my chest, sending goosebumps along my whole body as they made their way downward. I wondered if she was using her powers to cheat and change the sensitivity of my skin somehow, and Xico quietly shook her head from behind her. "He looks to be in tip-top condition, just like I left him. Did you enjoy the ballet?" Her hand was now sliding around to the small of my back, fingertips trailing along my spine in this faintly teasing way that really did something.

"It was, um... well, honestly, I don't remember much about it," I admitted. The way her fingers moved produced this constant, low-level twitching on my part. In a good way.

"Too distracted by your lovely date? I'll take it as a compliment. That show wasn't worth anything next to the attention of a handsome man like yourself." She was laying on the charm thick - I probably wouldn't even have noticed, if I hadn't been from a different world, but for me, the odd little turns of phrase popped out more for their abnormality.

I did feel increasingly awkward under this kind of carnivorous assault right in front of Xico. She'd seen me with other women, but Priscilla had this sort of... presence, I suppose. Imagine your girlfriend making love to another man, who was just a big lovable dork. Unpleasant, sure, but less unpleasant than your girlfriend being fucked senseless by a guy built like Hank who made her come buckets. Rather different, at least in my estimation. And Priscilla had made me come buckets.

"You two..." Xico said, in a quiet voice, but nevertheless attracting both my and Priscilla's attention, "are cute together."

"Oh?" Priscilla shifted in the water, casting one arm around me in a lazy movement, my neck caught in the crook of her elbow as she repositioned herself. Her breasts gently pushed against my upper arm and back. They were by no means enormous, but they were still quite pleasant to feel. "Perhaps you'd like to take a photograph of the two of us?" Her fingers trailed along my shoulder, a hungry note to her voice.

There was maybe five or ten minutes of that - Priscilla fawning over me in a way that made it obvious that if there weren't a half-dozen witnesses, she'd give herself gills, dive under the water, and suck my brain out through my cock, Xico quietly watching and offering occasional commentary which seemed mostly intended to reassure me that she really didn't mind me getting attention from another woman like this. At last, though, I managed to extricate myself from Priscilla - her movements could only be qualified as teasing since I wasn't actually going to get to fuck her - and I swam over to Alexios. He was speaking with Kate and Esther at the moment.

"...I had lost the bet, though, and I am an honorable man, so I stripped down and bore it all in front of the academy," Alexios said, making Kate practically drool, and Esther's eyebrows shoot up into her hairline.

"I haven't heard this story before," Esther said, with a certain hungry growl in her voice.

"It only happened a few months ago. That sort of thing's quite common in Atlantis - someone losing a bet is how I first learned what a naked woman looked like," he explained, with a toothy grin and a flash of his tail behind him. "Of course, once I was old enough to participate in the Dionysia I got to see quite a bit more!"

"Yeah... the Dionysia..." Kate said, sounding breathless and struck dumb by his words. I didn't really know the term at the time, but, looking it up later, it was an orgiastic festival celebrated in Atlantis. "Wish I could go to one. Must be great."

"Hearing you talk about it is almost enough to tempt a woman to turn against God," Esther said, with a faint smile to her lips and an obvious hunger in her eye.

"Alexios," I said, since it seemed like a good time to interrupt. "Can I talk to you for a second."

"Of course, of course," he said, waving me forward.

"Away from the women?"

He let out a bark of laughter. "Of course," he said, and drew me along with him towards a more isolated area of the pool, smiling as he waited for me to start speaking.

"Ah. So. You clearly attract a lot of female attention." He nodded, his expression seeming placid at the statement. "How do you deal with it?"

"Oh, yes! You're new to being handsome, aren't you," he said, reaching out for my bicep and giving it a squeeze. I could see, out of the corner of my eye, as both Kate and Esther's jaw dropped at the sight. I resisted the urge to slap him away, since it was just my bicep. Men in this world were more touchy than men in my world. It wasn't even sexual. "I personally just think you should enjoy it, but Hank's of a different mind," he explained, with a glance his way. "Most epifa- ah, surface dwellers, are."

"I am enjoying it," I agreed, "but there's a difference between enjoying female attention, and walking out to be approached by four different women, and only not being approached by the other three because they're distracted."

"Oh, just turn them down, then," he said, warmly. "These are all superheroines, they're hardly going to become enraged if you tell them no. Perhaps a bit of politeness is better than cruelty, but, it can be hard your first few times, to tell a nice girl no. You think, well, they're not a bad person. They're not ugly. Aren't I being mean, telling them no? They want it so badly, maybe I can keep giving it a shot? But," he reached out for my shoulder, his hand squeezing it, "there is nothing kind about leading a woman on! If you don't like her, you don't like her. It doesn't mean she's a bad person. Oil is good, water is good, but they don't mix."

"I don't..." I trailed off for a moment, and he listened attentively. "I don't really want to turn them down." His eyebrow quirked in curiosity.

"If you don't want to turn them down, then what's the problem?"

I have to admit, I understood his confusion, when I turned my gaze inward. What was the problem? I would gladly have taken Priscilla, Xico, Lope, Kate, Esther, Nora, or even Mira out of the pool and bent them over something before fucking them to high heaven. I just didn't want them to approach me, since even five or ten minutes for each of them could stretch out to an hour or more. And, I was sure even then, there were other women at Star Heroic that I hadn't met.

"There's just... a lot of them," I said.

"Then pick one! They'll understand." His gaze went to the girls, briefly considering them in turn. "Hm, you did say you like Xico and Kate. Did Nora make a good impression? Your power might just mean you can handle her," he noted, with a faint hum. "Well, it's really up to you. I know it's different, but-"

"I don't want to pick one," I said, at last.

"Well..." Alexios paused, then smiled. "Pick two then," he said, with a smile that said he didn't understand what I really meant. "If everyone is happy with each other, that sort of relationship can be wonderful too, I know a woman back in Atlantis who has two husbands, they're all very happy with one another."

"No, I, ah..." I had gotten the impression that Alexios was - by this planet's standards - a slut. But I was now coming to a rapid realization that I wasn't really a 'slut' in the conventional sense. Alexios was a slut, in that he had slept with a good number of heroines and flirted with plenty more and freely offered lewd personal stories and dressed in skimpy clothing. He didn't have any interest in keeping a roster of a dozen superheroines he could bang at will, though. "I think I'll have to work this through on my own, I guess. Sorry to bother you."

"It's no trouble," he said, giving my bicep a squeeze, then glancing at the women. At some point, Lope had successfully dislodged Mira from Hank, and now the pair were arguing on their own. "I'll make sure they give you some space," he said, with a wink, swimming off.

I stared out at the scene. Priscilla's eyes repeatedly met mine, a certain smoldering temptation in them, a faint tilt of her head. Nora would stare at me, whenever - well, actually, all the time, looking at her. Xico was a tad more bashful. Kate was dumbfounded by whatever hot guy was put in front of her, which currently was Alexios again.

Hank interrupted me before I could finish my full accounting, placing one powerful hand on my shoulder and making me startle. "Roger," he said, with a warm, gentle smile. "It's nice to get the chance to properly meet you. I'm Hank White, also known as White Knight, the executive officer of Star Heroic. I apologize for not coming to say hello to you earlier - running this company is quite time-consuming."

"Oh, it's fine," I said, letting out a laugh. "I was just complaining to Alexios about getting too much attention, so it really is fine."

He let out a small laugh at that, his hand reaching for and clasping my shoulder. "I'm happy to hear there are no hard feelings about my failure to introduce myself. I do have one thing that has concerned me. I should have brought it up earlier, but I have a busy job." He said it with such grim seriousness I thought that somehow they had decided I had been embezzling funds from the company. "There are rumors about you, I'm sorry to say. Gossip, sinful as it may be, is found among even the best people. I will tell you what they're saying, if you'd like, or simply leave it if you'd prefer."

I'm the sort of person who can only wind up having things go around and around in his head, becoming worse and worse with each progressive revolution. "Hit me," I said.

"They say you're an easy lay, and that you've had sex with Kate, Lope, Priscilla, and Xico." My mouth opened and closed fruitlessly in response to his words. That was, in fact, an exact list of the women I had already had sex with. Its only fault was the absence of women I hadn't yet had sex with. "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this. I've told people to stop these rumors, but, as I said, even heroes are tempted to gossip. Most people don't believe it, if it makes you feel better."

"They don't?" They should, since it was true.

He shook his head. "You've been here a few weeks. Even Alexios took three months to move on to his fourth girlfriend." Another reminder that I was more promiscuous than the local slut. "The most common belief is that you have been intimate with Priscilla alone; second most, that Xico is your secret girlfriend. Do you want me to stop?"

It... didn't actually bother me at all, really, so I shook my head. "It's fine. Thanks for telling me. Is there anything really important I should know, about this? Consequences, I mean?"

"You have already begun to feel the consequences, I expect." He glanced at the women. "I couldn't help but notice that Nora, Xico, and Priscilla all independently approached you. I expect you'll see a lot more women coming your way in the future. If you want them to leave you alone, just say so, clearly and without ambiguity. Something like, I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in you. Please, leave me be. If they continue to bother you after that, they may be put on administrative leave, or reassigned elsewhere, to avoid problems." He squeezed my shoulder with that very, very muscular arm of his. "If they're egregious - if their invitations go beyond flirtation into indecency - you can always speak with me, and they may be entirely removed from the company. Sorry to mention as depressing a thought as this, but it did need to be said, and sooner rather than later," he said. He waited for a second or two, staring at me, perhaps waiting for a confession that Kate had exposed herself to me. (Well, technically she had, with those sexts, but I didn't mind.)

"They've been nothing but great to me, so far. These rumors are the first bad time I've had with any woman here," I reassured him, and he let out a warm laugh at that.

"I'm happy to hear that. I hate to think poorly of my comrades." A moment later, he was swimming off towards the main crowd.

A few minutes later, he had organized us into a game of Red Rover. It was pretty fun. About half the players had an unfair advantage from their powers. I had superspeed, Kate could jet through the water like through the air, Xico could telekinetically manipulate the water, Priscilla could modify herself to swim better, and Alexios was half-fish.

I was less than sure that Hank didn't have any power by the end of it. He proved able to just barrel through pretty much anybody except Kate. If he did have a power - rather than just being muscular as fuck and tall as hell - it was something subtle, or irrelevant to swimming. It wasn't like Lope could boil her way through the water, or Nora could duplicate her way to move faster.

The pool party mostly devolved into people just having an enjoyable time with one another, at that point. I chatted a bit with various girls at various times, but nothing too worth talking about. It was a pleasant way to unwind after a subjectively eighty hour long day of accounting work.