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"He's probably like, Mr. Buchanan in disguise; he's super creepy," Fletcher said, popping her gum bubble. "He's just, recording everything because he gets off on it, or whatever. Normal people don't fund teams of barely-legal superheroes."

Fang's illuminated contribution to the conversation was "No, man, listen: it's totally an empty suit. Like, we all saw that time MARDUK had a 'spare' suit walk around on its own. There's no one in there. It's the AI all the time."

"Buchanan just hired some poor kid to test out his warframe. We're probably on our fifth operator without even knowing about it. Some of those impacts he's taken have got to be lethal," Czernobog said.

They were talking about Hybrid Agent. Their colleague in the Junior League. The painfully enigmatic superhero who'd never been seen out of his power suit, by the general public or the rest of the team. His suit — effectively his body, as far as the rest of the world was concerned — was a complex mess of articulated plating, metal exoskeleton made from some ungodly expensive impenetrable alloy, repulsor discs of various sizes set into his chest and back, and all of it mirror-finish chrome and black and electric blue lighting. His helmet was like a simplified model of a human head, flat polygons and a smooth curve of black glass from scalp to chin, completely opaque. Even his voice was disguised, a sharp metallic burr that made it seem just as mechanical as the rest of him.

And he was on the team by the explicit request of Mr. Buchanan, the billionaire philanthropist who funded the team. It wasn't that Hybrid Agent didn't pull his weight, it was just... weird.

Thaumophage made up the reluctant final member of their quintet. "Could you give it a rest? Probably whoever it is just wants his privacy," was what he said, turning away from scowling out across the city.

They were all camped out at the seventy-eighth floor of an under-construction skyscraper, the walls open to empty air. Awaiting Hybrid Agent's arrival before they could start the night's sweep.

The junior League members: Fletcher, with the ability to form hard light, which she used to make arrows of every variety; Fang, with the power to shapeshift into any animal he could imagine; Czernobog, whose actual power was just strength and enhanced healing but more practically was the bizarre and baffling array of weapons he carried with him and could use in a pinch; Hybrid Agent, the enigmatic robot(?) suit with every convenience of modern technology built in... and him.

Codename "Thaumophage", which he hadn't picked out himself, thank you. He was good at acrobatics and breaking & entering, but what had catapulted him from the realm of the common criminal to a grudging superhero was how his last heist had been for an alien relic found at the core of a meteor — a part of the corpse of the god of magic: it had fused to his right arm, forming a bizarre centipede-esque carapace with spurs and glowing veins between slats of chitin, and made him one of the few hundred people in the world with genuine magical powers. All the rest of the crew — enigmatic Hybrid Agent excepted as usual — were metahumans, people who'd just woken up one day with new and bizarre powers. Most of the League were metahumans; people like him were a distinct minority.

Thaumophage didn't add, when talking about Hybrid Agent, was how not the least reason why he really hoped the guy was just... some guy, was because last week when they'd taken down Lord Destruction and gotten trapped in a half-collapsed building for an hour, Hybrid Agent had jerked him off.

The last pulse of the Phase Cannon had blown up their safehouse, and they'd been basically stuck in a basement waiting for someone to come by and dig them out — neither of them were that good at precise digging. Hybrid Agent could've gotten himself out if he didn't mind probably crushing Thaumophage to death, and he could've gotten out if he didn't mind probably leveling the surrounding block — having a part of the literal god of magic fused to his body was great for power but not so great for control. They'd basically rehashed that conversation a few times before it got boring.

The basement was all flat grey concrete, rebar sticking through where the stairwell had collapsed. The power was out; the only light was from Hybrid Agent's suit: repulsors lit up neon blue, making everything seem ghostly. The dust in the air was starting to settle, turning Thaumophage's hoodie more of a grey than its natural purple.

The outfit thing was just another reason he stuck out from the rest of the team — Fletcher in what was essentially spandex; Fang wearing... as little as he possibly could, which usually meant spandex boxer-briefs; Czernobog in a mess of straps and belts, weapons sticking out at every angle like he was a living pincushion. Compared to them... well, he hadn't really changed his clothes much between being a thief and being a superhero — undershirt, heavy hoodie, bandanna to keep his hair down, bandanna to keep his mouth covered. Leggings with knee-length shorts over top. Gloves. Sneakers. All in dark-but-not-black tones, since there was nothing more suspicious than someone wearing all black. He'd had to rip the right arm off all his hoodies so he could fit them on, but aside from that he hardly looked the superhero.

He'd been thinking about that as he watched the dust settle, his ragged outfit hardly possible to be more dissimilar from Hybrid Agent's sleek metal shell.

"So we're stuck here," Hybrid Agent had concluded, finally, perched on an old metal desk. "At least we won't run out of air:" he said, and there was a hiss, panels on his upper back peeling out like wings, raising gas canisters from inside. There was a slow hiss that gradually faded to background noise. "Got plenty of air in reserve." He tilted his head, looking over at him. "Stuck in a room and forced to talk with someone; it's your worst fear."

"Ha ha," Thaumophage'd said. He was the quiet one, the reformed villain. He didn't think that quite counted, given that he'd been more of a two-bit thief rather than a full-blown supervillain.

"I mean, might not look it now," Hybrid Agent gestured to the dark basement, "but you really helped in the fight."

"Thanks, but I don't need reassurance that I'm not useless, or whatever," he'd said a little dryly. "I'm not having a crisis of team spirit here."

Hybrid Agent hopped to his feet, stepping closer. "I'm not trying to reassure you," he said. "I'm saying... while we're stuck down here, maybe I owe you one." He was close — standing right in front of him, hands reaching for him, maybe. Intimate, them standing with two inches of air between them.

"Yeah?" he'd said, voice a little breathless, aware that sometime in the last minute the dynamic had changed, Hybrid Agent leaning toward him, featureless black faceplate just reflecting the blue gleam of his lights. Hitting on him, and not even subtly. He felt his cock stirring, thickening slowing in awareness, that — that this could happen.

"Yeah." Hybrid Agent reached for his waist, fingertips pressing against the sliver of skin where his undershirt had rucked up. Hybrid Agent spread his fingers, the pads on his fingertips and palm skinlike in resistance, not the slick metal or clinging rubber he'd been expecting. The fingers spread across his stomach, pushing his shirt up.

"We gonna do this?" he'd said, and Hybrid Agent had tipped his head, other hand slipping up his inner thigh.

"You want to?"

"Oh yeah," he'd said, voice sliding into a groan when Hybrid Agent had slid fractionally up, one hand cupping the hard bulge of his cock, the other feeling up his chest, dragging up over his scars, tugging on his left nipple. He groaned, face pressed against the planes of Hybrid Agent's shoulder, hands reaching for his waist, idiotically mirroring the motion: claws of his centipede arm scraping across metal plates, human hand pressing against the sexless curve of armor between Hybrid Agent's legs, palm grinding against the plate like he could feel it through the armor. He hoped he could.

Hybrid Agent popped the button on his shorts, dragged down his zipper, sliding under the waist of his underwear. His robotic hand wrapped around the base of his cock. He'd groaned, rocking his hips as Hybrid Agent stroked him off, breath fogging the shiny chrome of his shoulder, pre adding an organic shine to the more matte material of his fingers. Hybrid Agent jerked him off slowly, palm rubbing along the underside of his dick, each stroke pulling the back of his underwear tight around his hips, a dizzy rush of heat spiking through him as his fingers wrapped just under his cockhead. He'd groaned, and with the characteristic metallic burr in his voice Hybrid Agent had groaned too, face tipped down: watching his hand move on Thaumophage's cock, watching the flushed and shining tip of his cockhead slide back and forth through his fist.

"Oh fuck, fuck, fuck," he'd said, hunching his hips, cockhead dimpling against Hybrid Agent's stomach, precome smearing over the serene blue of his glowing repulsor coils. He'd come with a shaky moan, pleasure tangling in his guts, gathering like a physical thing in his cock a moment before he shot off, splattering lines up Hybrid Agent's chest, cutting through the glowing lines and arcs as Hybrid Agent milked each shot out of him, a streaky line dribbling down his fingers.

He'd collapsed back against the wall, cock jutting out through his open fly, a thin thread of come hanging down from his cockhead. He'd looked Hybrid Agent up and down, armor plating shifting like he too was breathing hard on the inside — shoulders raising, chest swelling. "Want me to return the favor?"

Hybrid Agent shook his head, wiping his fingers on the table. "I'm good." His voice was rougher even through the voice-distortion buzz, gaze still fixed on the hard length of his cock, listing now to the side, pulled up by the band of his underwear.

So that had been kind of hot, and kind of awkward, and kind of weird, and it would be a hundred times creepier if that had been Lance Buchanan — multi-billionaire, philanthropist, and major financial backer of the League — in a robot suit. The guy was like, nearly fifty years old.

Thaumophage had gotten hard in his shorts thinking about it anyway, which meant it was the perfect time for Hybrid Agent to alight on the building, repulsors across his back sputtering out beams of blue light like abstract wings before they flickered and vanished. The rest of them got up; he waved before getting to his feet, hoping his half-hard dick wasn't too obvious.

The thing was there were plenty of completely plausible reasons for them to duck aside, and maybe talk about it. Or fuck. He wasn't entirely sure where they stood.

He didn't try and wander off, but, well, he had his suspicions. They headed out, and not five minutes into the downtown west alleyways Techblaster jammed their communications. It wasn't even threatening; the guy just like being a pest.

So of course they had split up, and of course he was alone with Hybrid Agent when it happened. It was awfully convenient.

They were two turns back in a deserted alleyway, with all the windows above them dark and empty. The ground was wet with rain, reflecting the piercing blue of Hybrid Agent's repulsor coils; that was the only light.

Hybrid Agent sauntered up, fingers playing at the hem of Thaumophage's shirt for a moment before he slid underneath, feeling up his stomach.

"Gonna actually show me your dick this time?" Thaumophage leaned into the touch, half-hard cock grinding against the metal case over Hybrid Agent's cock.

"You wanna see my dick?"

Thaumophage just rolled his eyes. "You wanna just jerk me off again, be my guest." He curled his hand over Hybrid Agent's, dragged it down to his dick, ground against it. "But I'd kinda like to see the man behind the machine, y'know?"

Hybrid Agent shifted, uncomfortable, and Thaumophage had the brief flash of just what the fuck he'd do if the guy showed him a withered old man dick. Like, sure, there was some weird tension between them, and the suit was hot at least, but... but that would just be too sleazy. Or maybe he was just being a huge asshole, and the dude was like... paralyzed or something, and this was his high-tech wheelchair. Except—

"Well, don't freak out," Hybrid Agent said, hands pressing against the plating low on his abdomen, on the last seam above his crotch-plate.

"Did you just say 'don't freak out' right before showing me your cock?" Thaumophage said, but he trailed off into a mumble halfway through, because — there was the hiss of a seal breaking and the smooth curve of metal over Hybrid Agent's crotch hinged up, and... something sure as hell lolled out. Not a withered old man dick.

Purple-blue flesh, shining in the light — wire-thin lines of fluid stringing out as it curled and arched up, prehensile. Hybrid Agent groaned, the metallic burr seeming suddenly so utterly bizarre compared to the writhing tentacle-thing he had for a dick. It was massive, long enough to curl up over his chest, slime sheening the chrome. The blue light from his repulsors seemed to stain the flesh — color-changing, Thaumophage realized. Chameleon-like. The base turned chrome grey and repulsor blue, like the tentacle was sucking up the color. The underside really was like a tentacle: huge puffy sucker discs lined the bottom, each one flexing and clenching like a miniature mouth, forming bumps and curves along the shaft all the way up to the tip, which was paddle-shaped, lined with rows of flesh like traction grips on the bottom of a sneaker.

"Holy shit," Thaumophage said. But he still reached out to touch it. Hybrid Agent groaned again at the contact, hips sliding forward, and his cock twisted out like he wanted to shake hands with his dick.

The flesh was rubbery as it curled around Thaumophage's hand. It was gristly and muscular shifting under his touch; it curled into thick rubbery coils to follow his stroking hand, folded back over itself. Messy smears of slime drooled out from somewhere on the tip, spilling over his hand and hitting the ground with a sharp patter. "So you're like a fucking alien or some shit?"

"Keep jerking me off and you can call me whatever you want."

"Cute."

Still, Thaumophage kept jerking him off. If you could even call it that, hand and tentacle pushing against each other, the tentacle curling and twisting back up across his forearm.

Hybrid Agent's shoulders were pressed against the wall, hips jerking back and forth with each stroke. He groaned suddenly, jerking forward, grinding Thaumophage's knuckles against his... skin, a wet plane of flesh that his tentacle-dick split off from. Fat suckers kissed Thaumophage's hand, something nubby and flexible wiggling inside them — minute tongues lapping over his skin — and Hybrid Agent groaned again, cock squirting a messy gush of slime across Thaumophage's hoodie and soaking in, sticking it to his skin in splotches. "Fuck," Hybrid Agent said, hips wiggling in a particularly organic fashion. "Keep that up."

There was a pressure against his hips: Hybrid Agent reaching out, curling his fingers under the waist of his shorts, pulling him closer until they were plastered together. Pulpy tentacle flesh was sandwiched between fabric and chrome, squirming and churning like a snake. There were fingers on his hips, tugging his shorts down until his cock popped out, but he was a little distracted. This wasn't — this was definitely not how Thaumophage had expected this to go. At all.

He humped against Hybrid Agent, cock slipping back and forth along the underside of his tentacle cock, and the fat suction-cup suckers flexed and pursed, lapping up his shaft — a sensation he sure as hell never expected, fleshy and rubbery and slick, Hybrid Agent's blue-clear pre smearing across his flesh.

"Oh fuck," Hybrid Agent said, and Thaumophage just grunted, hips meeting Hybrid Agent's, the clank of his spread zipper against the chrome a regular beat. He fucked against the tentacle-cock, human hand smearing up and down its length, thick chitin fingers anchored against Hybrid Agent's side. Hybrid Agent was squirting pre faster now, each gush way more than anyone else's — a human's — regular load, sheening down the metal of his legs, dripping from his crotch, coating Thaumophage's cock in slick slime.

The metal burr of his voice decohered into a groan of pure static as his hips snapped up one last time, tentacle curling painfully tight around his arm. The whole thing jerked hard, muscles inside the length pumping and pumping. The very tip spread, a divot opening into a spread mouth that spit out a glossy bubble of blue-tinged come, each spurt adding a new bubble to what became a thick cluster of froth wobbling at the tip of his dick. His hips jerked each time, grinding up against Thaumophage, until finally his cock pulsed one last time and ejected the whole mass, a stringy tail of tarry slime attached to the underside. The whole mass drooled down his tentacle, smearing down the side and dropping to the floor. One of the bubbles burst and flooded the alleyway with acrid-smelling come, slowly spilling over the tips of Thaumophage's sneakers, the rest just jiggling in their cocoons of thick slime.

Thaumophage just held on, rutting his final few thrusts against the base of Hybrid Agent's cock, and then he blew with a final grunt, his load bursting stringy up the slimy tentacle, white streaks smearing into the thick layer of ooze, drowned in instants. He collapsed forward, pinning Hybrid Agent against the wall, letting his cock pulse trapped between coils, sloppily fucking the twisted folds of the tentacle cock as his orgasm burnt itself out, face pressed into the hard metal crook of Hybrid Agent's neck. "Fuck," he said, still panting. It was nearly a minute before the aftershocks faded and he slumped back, chests pulling apart webbed with slime, all Hybrid Agent's shiny repulsor lights glimmering through the mess of ooze, fancy plating sheened and glossy.

Thaumophage's shirtsleeve was soaked through with tarry come, sticking wetly to his skin, and more huge splotches were painted across his chest, soaking through to his undershirt, thick strands spilling down onto his shorts. Thaumophage shoved the sleeve up to his elbow, leaving it hanging there like a weight, unzipped his hoodie. "Didn't think fucking a robot would be this messy."

Hybrid Agent caught a streamer of come slowly drooling down his chassis, smeared it across the length of his cock. "Think of it like machine oil." He twitched as he tried to fold his huge tentacle-cock back inside — with what else, Thaumophage was wondering now that he was thinking a little less with his dick. His metal fingers couldn't contrast more with the pulpy purple flesh, still dribbling slime down his wrist as he guided it back into the suit, crotch plate hinging closed with a wet, sucking kind of noise. "Gotta keep all the parts lubricated."

"No shit."

Thaumophage looked around: still the same scene, nobody there, no gawkers snapping photos of superheros caught fucking. Good thing, because he was a fucking mess.

Later Hybrid Agent pushed him into the river, which at least hid how half the stuff dripping off him wasn't water.

So that gave him something to think about. Like, what the fuck was Hybrid Agent?

It was maybe a week after that — there was actual superhero bullshit to do; no time to fuck around, as much as he preferred it to the superhero bullshit — when the Junior League assembled at the old high-rise construction again. Busy catching criminals, or whatever superheroes ostensibly did.

"We think Thorns went to ground in the industrial park; there's signs of forced entry in a few of the factories, recent enough he might be there." Hybrid Agent was talking, perfectly professional. He tapped the side of his face, where ears would be. They were all theoretically in constant communication with the main League coordinator, but in practice Hybrid Agent handled almost all of it, talking directly to MARDUK. "Everyone ready?"

"We were just waiting for you," Czernobog said, shoving the knife he'd been flipping into a sheath on his side, one of about a dozen strapped in various places across his body. He leaned out the window and without any fanfare whatsoever kicked off, plummeting down the side of the building.

Thaumophage sighed. "Well, let's head out. Coordinates?" he said, but he didn't wait for the response, already blinking down to catch Czernobog, sending a plume of magical force that turned the dead fall into a graceful swoop out over the night sky. Behind them Fang flapped out, some kind of... something that was probably based off a dinosaur, Fletcher mounted on its neck, with Hybrid Agent a bright blue spark above.

Hybrid Agent gave the location, northwest of downtown, all factory buildings with big grass lawns around them, crosscut at no particularly reasonable interval by streets, with ramps to the rare underground car park or loading dock twisting off the streets. The one Thorns had blown through wasn't exactly subtle: there were some of his eponymous thorns stabbed through the wall and then most of the interior corridor. Half the drywall had been pulverized, and recent enough that the ends of the corridor were murky with dust.

"Thaumophage, you're on point," Fletcher said.

The thorns, as they'd found out last encounter, could stab through just about every material you could think of, but notably not through Thaumophage's magical barriers, which meant he was the best defense they had. The green-black glow of his fields gave everything a weird tint as they headed in, past the office rooms at the edges and into the main factory hall, clogged on either side with machines, complex catwalks up surrounding each one.

The instant they stepped past the double-doors in a spray of thorns slammed against the side of his field, throwing up hitsparks and shattering them into a hundred tiny needles that came down like rain against the expanse of the field: annoying, but not really dangerous. Thorns was already in motion, leaping up to the top of a machine.

Thorns was another Abhuman, one with unfortunate luck in the powers draw. Swollen across his back and growing down his forearms were masses of dense growth, spines peeking out from clusters dotted across his skin. Each thorn was a huge meter-long barb, flared and chambered at the end, and he could shoot them in volleys or individually, and they were sharp, brittle, and tipped with some material that cut through nearly everything.

Alone he was annoying, but not much a threat provided Thaumophage didn't fuck up. However —

In the splash of light thrown by the thorns hitting his field the factory room was lit up sharply, and he could see the corners of the room wiggle and distort, drawing out. "There's someone else!" he yelled, at about the same time as Fletcher yelled "It's Shadow Walker!" and the room split apart into confusing mess. Every flat surface burst apart, the floor raised and lowered into a mess of interlocking impossible geometry, walls stretching like someone had copied and pasted the entire room up and to the side and then jammed them back together, everything overlapping in curves that shouldn't have worked.

After that, things got very hectic. Mostly he listened to Fletcher and tried not to let anyone get skewered through. After a few minutes Fletcher managed to wedge them between Thorns and Shadow Walker, and from there they focused on pushing them further apart: him and Hybrid Agent against Thorns, the rest sending Shadow Walker out through a window, finally letting the abused geometry snap back together.

Things were going well until Hybrid Agent got skewered. He was a wild zigzag of light, repulsors flaring to propel him in ways gravity and inertia would take offense to, and all it took was the one misstep. A thorn smacked right into him, hitting him in the side and blowing out half the lights in his suit in a flash.

"Fuck!" Thaumophage yelped, half-catching Hybrid Agent as he dropped — he always forgot the armor weighed a few hundred pounds — ignoring the bellow as the electric charge hit Thorns. "Holy shit, what part of stay behind the field didn't you get?! Are you okay?!" he said, before realizing that was a really dumb thing to say. Hybrid Agent was still alert, breath coming in sharp static bursts. The thorn went right through his suit and came out his back, around where his kidneys were. Kidneys Thaumophage was starting to think Hybrid Agent definitely didn't possess: The spar of the thorn was drenched in something that looked like blue jelly, dribbling down its length and speckling the concrete underneath.

He instinctively reached for the thorn, hands wrapping around the flared end, Hybrid Agent's hand batting him aside— "Dude, don't pull it out, that'll just make the bleeding worse." His voice was tight with pain, a disgusting sucking noise coming from the wound. Around the entry wound there was a mess of churning blue-purple muscle, bleeding heavily. "Been better," he said, voice tight with pain. "But it's not gonna be fatal. Get Thorns while you can."

"Are you fucking kidding—" Thaumophage started, looking up at Thorns — who was, admittedly, in pretty bad shape, limping away and blistered, most of his thorns depleted. "You got that?" he said into his comms, waiting for an assent before he headed after Thorns.

He blinked over to Thorns, coming up right behind him. Boiling green-purple light flared at his hands and then he was catching the thorns before they ejected. He was shit at hand-to-hand, he'd never even been the scrappy kind of pickpocket. But having magical fields wrapped around his hands helped. His hands met Thorns', and he didn't exactly overpower him. But there was energy swirling around them both, slowly cohering into the surface of a bubbling field, rising up like thick syrup to wrap around Thorns, sticking him in a center of a perfect sphere, the field's surface so charged with magic it was seething and erupting in light, looking not that unlike a bizarrely-color disco ball.

"I didn't know you could do that," Hybrid Agent said. He was tilted up, one hand pressed tight against his side, his repulsors flickering.

"Yeah, well, me neither. Thorns is secured for— a while probably, and I'm taking Hybrid Agent out for emergency evac," he said, the last half into his comm, and then blinked him and Hybrid Agent out halfway through Fletcher's "What? No!"

He zigzagged through the air, blinking over and over on the way back to the tower: he couldn't carry the armor, but his magic didn't really have a carrying capacity.

"I'm going to be fine," Hybrid Agent said, but with his wound sucking and his voice ragged Thaumophage didn't let himself slow down. "I mean— I didn't want to tell anyone, but I'm actually—"

"Is this how you wanted to tell me about this?!" Thaumophage interrupted, voice sharp.

"Well, no, but—"

"Then maybe save it for when you're not bleeding out in my fucking arms, okay? You can tell me when you're better."

They landed with a crash on the helipad at the top of Buchanan Tower, alarms already going off. Hybrid Agent struggled to sit up, even as it made more blue-jelly blood trickle from around the thorn. The roof access crashed open, Mr. Buchanan himself running across the deck, skidding to a stop next to them. "Fuck," he said, succinctly. "You're going to be fine," he said to Hybrid Agent, and then to Thaumophage, a lot sharper: "Thanks. But get back."

He had time to say "What?" before Buchanan bodily shoved him away, a cluster of medic bots swarming Hybrid Agent, lifting him up into a gurney.

"Dude, I'll be fine!" Hybrid Agent said, already being carted away, body mostly hidden by the bots. "Go back on scene!"

"I'm the one who's supposed to be reassuring you!" he yelled, and then the roof access door crashed shut, leaving him alone on the roof. He wiped one hand across his face, accidentally smearing blue blood across his forehead. "Fuck."

---

"So, that was a fiasco," he said, afterward. Thorns had popped his field right around when he'd gotten back, and so even though things had been much less... neat than they could've been, it was still fine.

Fletcher stared at him. "You think?"

So there was kind of an argument. It wasn't actually important, and anyway it got derailed when Mr. Buchanan walked into the room.

"Hybrid Agent's condition has been stabilized," he said, without really even waiting until they'd stopped yelling. "It'll be a few days before he'll be back up and running." (Across the room, Thaumophage saw Czernobog mouth "sixth one.") Mr. Buchanan turned, before pausing, mouth thinning. "He also said you —" pointing right at Thaumophage — "could see him while he was recuperating."

And with that he was out of there.

"I really don't think he likes me," Thaumophage said, distantly, already thinking — what? Why him?

"Yeah, me neither," Czernobog said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Gonna report back on his secret identity?"

Thaumophage rolled his eyes. "That's private."

"Whatever, you're no use to me." Czernobog blew past him, heading to the kitchen.

So after that he asked MARKDUK just how to get to wherever Hybrid Agent was, and got lead down a few floors, to the labs. "Hybrid Agent thinks highly of you, you know," he said, thankfully speaking in English for once, as Thaumophage walked down the hall, lights built into the wall guiding him along. "He's been very evasive about his true nature — I hold some of the blame there — but I think he's allowed his worry to build up to an unhealthy degree. It's good to see him reaching out, even if because of... adverse circumstances." MARKDUK paused, systems outlining a doorway at the end of the hallway. "However, for privacy reasons even my systems are only minimally monitoring his recuperating suite."

Thaumophage had no clue what any of that meant. "Uh, thanks...?" he said, standing in front of the door, and obligingly MARKDUK slid it open.

He'd been expecting something like a hospital, vaguely — bed, bank of machines, heart monitor. Beige walls optional. Maybe something to explain the tentacle dick and blue syrup blood. But instead it was a vast room, the far wall entirely taken up by a view of a massive empty aquarium. He stepped inside, the door sliding shut smoothly behind him, plunging the room into darkness, save for the murky blue light shining through the water.

"Uh, hello?" he called out, stepping forward. This seemed more and more like a set-up, but for what he couldn't begin to imagine.

"Hey," Hybrid Agent said — or, his voice said, coming from above. Thaumophage looked up: coming from speakers in the ceiling. "Don't freak out."

"Are you seriously using that—" he started, trailing off as something swam up to the aquarium wall. "Huh."

"Hey," Hybrid Agent said, still from the speakers, waving a tentacle. "Uh, this is me."

The thing — Hybrid Agent — was... he looked a little like someone had glued a few octopuses together. There was a mess of curling tentacles, attached to some kind of main mass. He was shimmering, skin camouflaging to mimic the blue and grey of the aquarium wall, looking more like a messy distortion through the water than a thing in his own right. Thaumophage took a step closer, right in front of the wall, and Hybrid Agent twisted, a fan of tentacles spiraling aside to reveal a cluster of eyes, pupils huge and W-shaped, staring right back at him.

"Woah," he said. "I mean, so you're like... an alien? An alien squid?"

"A bio-organic second-generation AI," Hybrid Agent said, voice mordant. "After making MARKDUK, Lance wanted to try something more biologically-founded. And MARKDUK wanted to make something that actually modeled human thought processes." He swum in a graceful little circuit, tentacles spiraling around. "So here I am."

"So he's like... your dad?"

"And grandfather!"

"Gross." Thaumophage wrinkled his nose. "Why a squid, though?"

"He was on a whole cephalopod kick." With the weary tones of someone who'd probably rehearsed that particular answer. "No vocal cords either. Human ones at least. Hence the speakers."

"Huh." Thaumophage stood there for a second. "I mean, cool. I guess."

Hybrid Agent just looked like a mass of tentacles at first, but the more he swum the easier it was to figure out the actual anatomy. In the back of his head Thaumophage had been trying to figure out how he could even fit into the suit. He had a mass of propulsion tentacles under him, each one flaring out to the size of a thigh when they flexed — and those sure as hell were familiar-looking: he'd twisted one around and shoved it up through the crotch of his suit as a dick — and above that there was like a skirt of secondary tentacles, thinner and finer. His... torso, or main body, rippled apart, mouths opening all the way through his body before snapping shut, shooting him forward: jet propulsion. And above that, like 'shoulders', were two puffy blobs of tissue, more mouths open that spilled out 'arms', a dozen tentacles each that fanned out around him, stirring the air in a spiral pattern — he had eyes under those, on what would be his sides. Except, of course, at no point was he ever just floating there in the water mirroring human posture — every motion sent him looping around, body twisting in ways that would break every bone in his body if he had any.

"You look pretty — not-injured. I was expecting a hospital bed."

Hybrid Agent let out a little bark of a laugh, stirring around in the water. "It's physical therapy. I heal up super fast, but unless I keep moving the scar tissue will constrict movement later." He splayed up against the glass wall, a low rubbery squeak echoing through the room, and after a second Thaumophage could make out the still kind of messy impact wound, the puckered cluster of tissue right across one of his propulsion mouths. The skin there was a speckled blue-purple, not shifting chameleon colors like the rest of him. "So I got nothing to do but swim around in circles for a few days."

Thaumophage groaned. "Ugh, boring. That sucks."

Hybrid Agent shrugged — well, he did a loop, spiraling down under the window before slowly bobbing back up a second later. "At least I've got wifi. I mean — I can hear wifi, it's a thing."

"Weird."

"I guess I'm used to it. I don't exactly have room for comparison."

Thaumophage scuffed his feet against the floor. "So, like, is there anything you want for your whole... hospital stay?"

"I mean, you could—" He paused, and Thaumophage told himself he wasn't imagining the hesitation in Hybrid Agent's voice. "The tank's open on the top, you could come swim. If you want."

"Oh." He looked over: yeah, there was an access ladder om the side, going up, and the roof was recessed even higher upwards a few feet from the edge of the tank wall; he hadn't noticed before. "Sure."

Hybrid Agent was already waiting at the top, tentacles churning just under the surface. Up top it looked more like a pool: a gutter along the edge to catch runoff, a waist-high ledge submerged around the rim.

Thaumophage shrugged off his jacket, tossing it to the side, and stripped his undershirt off. Hybrid Agent was on his side, cluster of eyes staring up at him through the rippling water. Shoes next.

"Woah, it's warm," he said, toes in the water, heated to maybe just above body-temperature; tropical. The pool's smell was sharp in the air: salt, not chlorine.

"Yeah." A tentacle coiled around his ankle, slippery and rough, each sucker like a mouth.

"I hope you know I'm really shit at swimming," he said, unbuttoning his shorts, pulling his feet out so he could set them aside, leaving him only in his boxer-briefs. Having a right arm a good fifteen pounds heavier than the left didn't really come up much in everyday life, but it really fucked his balance up for things like swimming. Not that he'd been any good at swimming before that.

"I think I can keep you from drowning, if you're really that bad." Hybrid Agent spun around, ping-ponging back and forth against the walls. "I'm pretty good at swimming."

"Ha ha." Thaumophage slipped in, standing on the recessed ledge and then easing himself down, water lapping up his chest. He always forgot the sheer weight of it, pounds of water pressing against his skin in every direction. He shoved off the ledge, lopsidedly dog-paddling as Hybrid Agent swum around him — not touching him, but the water spun in his wake, currents sliding across his chest and legs.

"Not into skinny-dipping, huh?" Hybrid Agent sunk down, a shimmering blur in the water under him. "I mean — not like I haven't already seen what you got."

And— it wasn't like he'd forgotten that, but his unconscious mind hadn't quite caught up to how the octopus-thing circling him was the same guy who'd pushed him up against a wall and jerked him off a week ago, was the same guy with the tentacle dick. Suddenly a whole set of new questions came to mind.

He kept awkwardly dog-paddling, kicking out to set a wobbly path along the side of the tank. "So, like... are you designed to find, like, octopuses hot?"

Hybrid Agent laughed again — weirder now that he was swimming under him, just his voice through the speakers in the ceiling. "I think you know exactly what I find hot." And suddenly he was up, in front of him, a mass of tentacles rippling out in fans. Thaumophage watched as a few reached closer, almost tentatively pressing against him: trailing along his chest and stomach, chameleon skin slowly bleeding red-brown from his skin. The touch was warm and strong, tentacles stroking down his sides, each sucker like a tiny mouth, pressing fleetingly across his skin. A hot prickle ran down his spine, cock swelling in his boxer-briefs as Hybrid Agent's tentacles sucked their way down his sides, a fan curling over his hip, clutching the fabric of his underwear.

"We gonna do this?" he said, voice rumbling as a tentacle wrapped against the bulge of his cock, more snaking up the legs of his underwear, like tongues lapping his balls, twining around the base of his cock and clenching, making his half-hard cock swell fat.

Hybrid Agent's tentacles slid across his chest, tangling his arms in their embrace, more fanning over his stomach, tips dipping under the waistband of his underwear, tugging them down. "I got you," he said, voice oddly dispassionate coming from the ceiling, with Hybrid Agent himself wrapped all around him, suckers pressing hard kisses over his skin. Thaumophage's legs slowed, chest dipping under the water before Hybrid Agent's grip tightened, body half-submerged as he pulsed and rippled under the surface, tentacles that weren't wrapped all around him keeping them both aloft.

Tentacles slithered through his underwear, rippling contractions of muscle shuffling them down his hips, thighs, fabric going slack as they sunk down his calves, a shock of bright green in the pool under them, drifting down to the bottom of the tank — Thaumophage totally naked, arms and legs caught in a tangle of tentacles, cock jutting out stiff, twin tentacles slowly stroking up and down his length. Nearly his entire body wrapped up tight, pinned against the bulk of Hybrid Agent's body, the both of them bobbing up and down through the softly rippling water.

He huffed, wave smacking him in the chest, sputtering out water. "This really wasn't what I was expecting when I came down looking for you," he said. "Definitely not complaining though."

A tentacle spun up the length of his cock, fat sucker pressing like hungry lips against his cockhead, squeezing tight just the ridge, and he groaned loud, body jerking forward automatically as Hybrid Agent toyed with his cock. He huffed, tentacles feeling over his stomach, pressing dozens of sloppy kisses up his abdomen, over his inner thighs. "Fuck, man," he said, reaching out only to find his arms pinned in place, tied together by ropy masses of tentacles. "You got a dick or two you gonna bring out, or is this just — fuck!" he cut himself off, thick folds of ribbed flesh cupping his balls, fat suckers slurping on his cockhead, rubbery tentacle-tips working around the seal, again and again. "This just you getting to play with a real live human?"

"What do you think these are?" Hybrid Agent said, waving a few more tentacles in his face, blue-purple. "You should know, I gave you a pretty up-close look at one of them."

Rubbery muscled coils draped around Thaumophage's neck, curving over his jaw, tipping his head back, fanning over his mouth. "What, all of 'em? You got a few dozen dicks? Fuck, squid was wrong—" He opened wide, licking out — the taste sharply salty, almost slimy as he pressed his tongue against the flat, ribbed underside of the tentacle. "— Buchanan made a fucking tentacle monster."

"Don't talk about my dad when we're fucking, please." Hybrid Agent said, and Thaumophage laughed a little, mouth busy along one of his tentacles. There was a groan through the speakers, but that was nothing compared to feeling his entire body tremble against him.

Thaumophage lapped at a tentacle, sucking the tip into his mouth. It was a fleshy diamond shape, top smooth and rounded, underside the gripping surface, ridged and ribbed, fat nubs along the edge. It writhed in his mouth, a wet tongue pressing against his, and the motion carried down the dozens of tentacles wrapped around his body, coiling into spirals where they were pressed against his skin, looping around and around the length of his cock, until it was wrapped entirely in a churning mess of tentacles. With every suckle at Hybrid Agent's tentacle-cock his body jerked, huge rubbery muscles shifting and coiling, fluttering in the small of his back. The one in his mouth was leaking, a stringy slime oozing from a divot along the top, weird sour-bitter-tasting as it coated his mouth.

He was hard and aching, not that close to coming but close enough he found himself thrusting into the mess of hungry suckers pressed against his cock, but Hybrid Agent was sensitive as hell — each slurp made the furled tentacles around him pulse and writhe, tentacles thrashing through the water and spraying him with saltwater and slime.

Hybrid Agent's voice came from above, moaning, a sharp cry, but Thaumophage could tell he was at his apex even before — tentacles curling around his arms and legs almost painfully tight, tentacle-muscles contracting into gigantic blobs. He came, his warbling groan drowned out by the sheer sound of his body moving around him. His tentacle-cock pulsed sharply, slime flooding Thaumophage's mouth before he shot, a cord of come slapping against the roof of his mouth. He came in solid gummy lines, thick bubbles of come attached to the end, and they burst in his mouth, filling it with the salt-bitter of come. The thick fluid spilled past his lips, sputtering from the mixture of saltwater and come. The tentacle thrashed in his mouth, smearing across his gums as it spat again, coating Thaumophage's tonsils with slimy gunk, again and again until he just had to let it flood from his mouth, plopping from between his lips in dollops. The slime poured into the water around them, billowing out in clouds, weird wormlike strands of come slowly diffusing. They drifted in the water, plastering across Thaumophage's shoulders and chest.

Hybrid Agent shuddered, the lax weight of his tentacles squirming back to motion, almost hungrily converging on his still-leaking cock, achingly hard wrapped in the pulsing, sucking cocoon of his other tentacles. Thaumophage redoubled his efforts, legs ineffectually kicking as he jerked and thrust forward, tentacles spilling between his legs — tugging on his balls, circling his shaft, sparking pressure across the crown of his dick. He tipped his head back, groaning, muscles down his stomach rippling as the growing heat focused on his cock. Each stroke was more and more electric, almost-but-not-quite bringing him off, forced to the pace of Hybrid Agent's suckling strokes. He nearly whined, gasping sharp in the back of his throat as the steady work got him off, hips snapping forward as he came, come billowing out as white clouds in the already-murky water. Hybrid Agent kept going, milking him spurt after spurt, until it felt like he'd emptied every drop he had to give.

His heart hammered in his chest, breath fast, arms and legs weak even though he hadn't really used them for anything. Hybrid Agent kept them both aloft, Thaumophage floating in the center of the tank, the water around them slowly stilling — still dotted with thick white cords, bubbled clusters of come floating atop the water like obscene buoys.

"Holy shit," he said, catching his breath, and Hybrid Agent laughed softly from above.

The tentacles around his legs clenched, bulging and tapering in a completely inhuman fashion, tips pressing against his ass and slowly drawing down between his cheeks, slightly-slimy tips pressed right against his asshole, like tongues. He groaned, huffing out a little laugh — "Not done yet, are you?"

"I got a lot more than one dick," Hybrid Agent said, tentacle-tips digging into his asshole.

"Fuck," Thaumophage groaned, long and low, back arching as two tentacles pushed inside, hot and slippery, pulsing like nothing else he'd ever felt before. They thinned, sharp points digging inside him, then swelled into thick cords, a fat ball of pressure. His half-hard cock twitched, spurting pre into the water as Hybrid Agent pumped at his insides, one after the other flaring as they sunk further inside, squirming over the walls of his ass. Thick rubbery suckers crawled over his ass cheeks, pressing wet kisses against his skin before squeezing through his pucker.

Hybrid Agent was groaning, metal voice buzzing in the speakers a contrast to the wet splats of their motion, the slap of waves over their bodies. Hybrid Agent hunched up, tentacles boring deeper, the muscles tensing and then jerking forward, coiling deep in his guts like snakes. Thaumophage groaned, shoulders straining forward, arms still pinned at his sides, thick coils wrapping around and around his forearms, bowing his back so Hybrid Agent could drive deeper.

More tentacles squirmed over his hips, drooling thick slime, heavy and clinging where it dragged across his skin. The tentacles found his prostate, tips sunk way, way deeper: Hybrid Agent just clenched his muscles, one tentacle bulging into a massive ball and absolutely crushing his prostate, achingly solid inside him. Thaumophage jerked, mouth open in a wheezing groan, cock erupting in messy lines, squirting into the water and dissipating. The pressure didn't let up, a new tentacle swelling huge as the last one relaxed, like hammer-blows inside him. His muscles clenched around the hard knots of muscle, and each time Hybrid Agent shifted it forced a wet burble from his cock, a gush of come clouding the water.

Thaumophage hung there limp, eyes rolling back into his skull each time Hybrid Agent clenched his tentacles, like playing with beads the size of his fist, bunching and slipping away. Tentacles speared him deep, nubby tips reaching deeper, squirming up into his guts, more frantically squirming against his stretched hole, trying to cram even more inside him. He huffed, breath ragged, just letting Hybrid Agent try to practically stuff his entire body inside. At the base of his tentacles they grew achingly fat, even limp and jellylike thick as his thigh, filled with corded muscle that he could feel as it slid through his ravaged hole.

Hybrid Agent groaned, fat paddle-tipped tentacles slapping across Thaumophage's shoulders and neck as he pulled him close, tentacles lashing more strongly across his thighs, up his stomach — totally enclosed in a pulsing, churning mass. There was a final jerky thrust, hunching forward, sending them drifting, before he came again. The tentacles convulsed, muscle spasms sending slime squelching up their lengths before they finally erupted, heat blooming heavy in his guts, pulse after pulse until he ached, bloated and full. His other tentacles — wrapped across his hips, pressing up under his chin — just sprayed, cords of white slime tethered to glossy bubbles, the dimples at the tip of his tentacles opening into mouths as they spat out wad after wad of his load, until the churning water was frothy and thick, too cloudy to see through, his shoulders plastered with slimy cords.

They both lurched, Hybrid Agent listing in the water as he kept coming, pumping jolt after jolt of come into his guts, a solid weight growing, tentacles snapping convulsively, each ripple upwards ending in a blossom of heat until his stomach ached, bloated like he'd just eaten a meal.

The water stirred around them, Thaumophage not realizing they were by the wall until his knee knocked against the concrete. He dragged himself onto the submerged ledge, limply collapsing forward as Hybrid Agent peeled away from him, the wash of water across his back cool after the constant heat.

His knees hit the underwater ledge with a thunk, and he collapsed forward, arms folded on the rim of the pool, head pillowed between them. Hybrid Agent finally pulled out, gushes of churned-up seawater and slimy come already squirting out around his fat tentacles, his gaping asshole just above water level, each wave of water smacking his ass. The thick paddles at the tip caught the rim of his ass, leaving him gaping, broken-open ass drooling a slobbery waterfall of ooze, spilling into the water between his legs, the mess of come measurably hotter than the seawater. He lay there, letting it all pour out of him as he gasped for breath, arms wobbling when he tried to push himself up.

"You okay?" Hybrid Agent was swimming around him, tentacles still churning the water, and his metallic voice seemed, like always, bizarrely distant compared to the scene around him.

"Yeah," Thaumophage managed, voice still reedy, punctuated by the still-constant flood of slimy come from his aching hole, spilling down to his half-submerged balls. He dragged himself up, hissing when he sat on the ledge of the pool, still leaking come in squirts whenever he shifted. "Fuck." He laughed, a little short. "This was really not how I thought things'd go."

"This was pretty much exactly how I thought things'd go." Hybrid Agent was fucking smug as a squid, Thaumophage realized. More smug. Thaumophage flipped him off.

"Fuck, my shorts are still down there." His underwear was a bright dash of neon green at the bottom of the pool, slowly drifting in the currents.

"I'm gonna keep 'em. I got them off you fair and square, man. Gotta have something to jerk off to while I recuperate."

Thaumophage snorted. "Pretty sure you could convince me to give you some conjugal visits. Though next time, maybe you can show me just how you jerk off." He leered down at Hybrid Agent, and in response he blinked a half-dozen of his eyes and did a slow twirl, tentacles fanning out in all directions.

"You gonna tell them?"

"I'll tell 'em you're doing fine. They catch me limping, they can make their own guesses."