Love Smacks
By Justin Bedard
@JayDanielBurn

For @BridgeportChro1

“Tera wants me to what?”

Yeah, about what I expected when I finally got around to telling him.
“I know, I know,” I said. “But look! She’s got blueprints for it and everything!”

“Tina, that’s not the point…”

“What, you can’t do it?”

Just calling his bluff. I knew he could do it. He built a watch that can generate a motorcycle AND an actual freakin’ proton pack (which I still had to change hiding spots for every time he asked about it ‘cause Little Miss can’t have nice things). If anyone could do it, it was my big brother Lance.

“I can do it,” he said and looked over the scraps I’d pushed into his hands. “I just…I mean, what is it with them and pillows?”

“Running gag, I guess?”

“A running gag that’s gone a little too far, I’d say. Look at this.”

I’d looked at it more times than I could count. I’d already seen the room Auntie Tera rented out for it, and everything seemed perfectly legit. I mean…yeah, it looked like one of those rooms you toss convicts into after hooking them up in a straitjacket, but if you’re gonna make a quirky plan like this, you’re gonna do it with a little touch of totally weird.

“Not the room,” Lance said when I brought it up. “The cannon.”

The Linen-nator 9000, version 1.0 (© Succubi Enterprises). Twenty feet tall with a fifty-foot range. Meant to sit in the middle of a pretty big battleground (if that’s what you wanna call a pillow fight room). I liked it, but I was a preteen hopped up on sugar and anime 24/7 and therefore liked everything the least bit quirky. Basically I’m admitting I look before I leap even on my best days, and having a genius big brother with a bit of a cynical streak, believe it or not, doesn’t do a damn thing to fix it.

“Come on, bro!” I whined ‘cause that always helps. “It’s just like laser tag with pillows! Even Bianca and Sophia are coming!”
“To see their benefactor blasted into next week?”

“That’s why Auntie Tera wants you to make it. ‘Cause you’re a genius and you’re the best shot we have at getting it right…oh, and she wants you to upgrade the rifles you made last year.”

It was at that point that Lance rolled his eyes and swivelled his chair back away, tinkering away at what I was pretty sure was another watch just like his. And yeah, that was all well and good, but I’m not the little sister that gets ignored, dang it! So I parked my tiny tush right on his workspace and gave him the brattiest pout I could. Looked him right in the eyes, knit my eyebrows, and crossed my arms. He tried to lift me off. No dice. He tried to push me off. Nuh-uh. He gave me the Dwayne Johnson eyebrow, and I gave him the Grumpy Cat frown. I can do this all day, man. All freakin’ day.

“Tina…” he said.

“Hmph!”

Yeah. Hmph. Says so much and it ain’t even a real word. No, I’m not too old to use it ‘cause I am the utter cuteness and I can get whatever I want by being the utter cuteness.

What? You don’t believe me?

“It’s not that I don’t want to do it,” Lance said. “It’s just that there’s so much that needs to be figured out beforehand. Like…this guy we’re doing the whole thing for.”

“Chris.”

“Yeah, Chris. How much experience does he have with this sort of thing?”

“Literally gets smacked with a pillow every time he and Auntie Tera meet up.”

“…oooooookay.”

If I knew, I’d tell ya.

“The point is,” Lance said. “There’s a lot of variables to this that all need to line up perfectly. How can we make the cannon so everyone playing can use it on the fly? How can we set up the play zone so there’s enough room to bob and weave out of its range? How can we make sure that anyone who does get shot by the cannon won’t have to go to the hospital afterwards?”

Good point, but stay sharp, folks! Harlita’s prepping her smarty-pants slapshot!

“That’s really the deciding factor,” he went on. “The ammo might be pillows, but firing out of something like this? It’s like if you dropped a baseball off the Empire State Building. It wouldn’t matter if it was two pounds or five pounds or whatever. Once it hits terminal velocity, it might as well be an asteroid.”

“Right. Except gravity goes down, not left and right. So it’ll get slower as it goes. And this isn’t the Empire State Building, it’s like twenty feet from the wall.”

Form looks good…she shoots!

“Right, but people can still get concussions from pillow fights.”

“Not if you don’t aim for the head. And this thing is supposed to be manual, right?”

“…right.”

SCORES!!!

“Ah-ha, and you thought I didn’t pay attention in science class.”

“I most certainly didn’t, Little Miss Straight A.”

Yeah, I’m pretty awesome. More awesome was that I could see him starting to come around as he looked at the blueprints, then up at the ceiling, and then closed his eyes and gently bit his lip. Most people had a thinking cap. My big brother had a thinking ritual.

“Materials all together?” he asked.

“Yep!”

“Testing area secured?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Payment sorted?”

“Rina and Bran won’t kidnap you…without advance notice.”

“Ugh…”

“Urrrrrrrrgh.”

“Urrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

“URRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!”

What’re you looking at?! Be funny, get lovey!

“Gods, you’re lucky you’re so cute…” Lance sighed, then groaned again when I put on my sugar face and gave him a big hug.
“You’re the best, bro!”

“I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. The only way I can accurately test this thing would be on an actual person, and no. You aren’t even on the longlist for candidates.”

I wanted to argue just from force of habit, but he was right. You had to work hard and long to get a good body. Longer still if you wanted it to stand this kind of blast over and over ‘til it was just right.
Like, say…six hundred years?
***
“Aaaaaand I wish I had nothing to do with this…” Lance grumbled.
“Hey, you already built it,” I said. “No sense getting cold feet now.”
“No sense getting cold feet when we’re using my girlfriend to test a high-powered pillow cannon.”

“I was gonna ask Monica, but Kumi-chan still whoops her ass in wrestling. And Sandra straight up said no.”

Actually it was more like she looked up from the five-hundred pound barbell she was deadlifting and gave me the cocked eyebrow and bemused smirk combo until I figured it out myself. Still love ya, big sis.
For real, though, the Linen-nator came out great. Lance already fixed it up to make it a little less of a death machine. Widening the barrel to increase the spread and lower the range, programming a failsafe so the shots wouldn’t go above 20 KPH, and asking everyone for miles to PLEASE not fiddle with it. I figured that’d be the best he could do. Rule #1 of the Realm: you can ask them not to do something and have a better than crap chance of them listening. You can tell them not to do something and expect all the tricksters to come out and play. Gotta keep ‘em separated.

Speaking of tricksters, we spied a red tail swishing around inside the barrel, making the last few adjustments Lance needed and loading her own special breed of ammo. The kind of silk and cotton only the Seamstress of the Realm could weave, I saw when I walked around to take a look.

“Those are some pretty fancy pillows, Auntie.”

She spun around and smooched my cheek before I could even finish talking. Heck of a sight seeing her ditch her trademark jacket to come and help us out, but I guess she made up for it with the bandeau top/overall combo and the fancy red ribbon keeping her hair up in a ponytail. The sexy engineer look definitely worked on her, but then again, so did everything.

“Only the best for my dearest Brother,” she said, then looked over at Lance. “Thanks for pouring your all into this, love.”

Lance looked like he wanted to say something snarky, but Tera has those eyes that could make even a god go weak in the knees (or her super cynical nephew building a death machine against his will). That’s right, baby! Read ‘em and weep! Girls! We run this mother!

I mean, he knew that, anyway. Look at his girlfriend. You don’t get a girl like Akumi-doji without having a little respect for the fairer sex.

“Well, it’s not any of us that needs to be impressed,” he said and went back to his last few adjustments. “And while I’m on the subject and before someone tries to blindside me, seriously. What is it with you two and pillows?”

“Just he and I each indulging our inner child,” Auntie Tera answered with a sly little shrug. “You’re never too old to have a little…fun.”

Aaaaaand fishy face! …you know, when you open and close your mouth a ton of times like you’re going to answer but you can’t find the words? That’s a fishy face. Auntie Tera served them up like the pro of all pros, and my big brother wore them like a guy who’d already finished high school by the time he got his first real girlfriend.

Hey, don’t laugh so hard. I reckon that’s a ton of you guys, too. And I don’t think too many of you would have it in you to score an oni.

<“Kumi-chan!”> Lance called in Japanese once the fishy face was gone. <“The straps go under your arms!”>

<“I can’t get it. I think I’m too big!”>

That’s what she said.

…I mean, it was. You ever meet Akumi? Fam, she is JACKED! And the sweetest girl this side of Sugarville. It’s a really cool combination, and really fun to watch when Lance ran over to help her get the last few bits of protective gear fastened on.

<“I’m okay not doing this,”> he said. <“Your call.”>

<“I know the risks,”> she answered and gave Auntie Tera a little wave.
<“But it’s for someone special, so it’s worth it.”>

<“Alright, but you do realize this thing will shoot you at top speed.”>

<“Lan-kun, I’ve wrestled orcas. I’ll be fine.”>

Then she did this cute little pose where she bent down until her face was level with his and winked, pretty much guaranteeing she was learning way too much from Monica.

<“We could go one-on-one for a while, if it would make you feel better,”> she joked even though she actually wasn’t joking.

<“Come on, not in front of Tina...”>

I aspire to the adorable romance between my big brother and his oni girlfriend. Like, when you’re strong enough to bench-press a car and your man STILL worries about you getting hurt? And then he gets all cute and nervous when you get flirty and you just wanna hug him ‘til he’s permanently stuck to you? And now I’m sad ‘cause I really want a significant other but I’m too tomboyish for boys and too quirky for girls?

This isn’t supposed to be about me? Thank you, random audience member!

“Okay,” Lance sighed, pulling the last strap into place and then punching some code in on the Linen-nator’s interface. “If everyone’s ready for this to go to complete crap, the targeting system is set to only shoot at the torso. The end product’s going to be manual, but I have on automatic now so we can test the firepower. Too far under the threshold and it’s a love tap. Too far above it and Florence is gonna have a sudden influx of patients in the trauma room.”

“And that’s why we hired a genius,” I said.

“Hm. Anyhow, we’re gonna start with thirty-five KPH and taper it down from there. And please don’t mess around with it because I’d rather not blast Akumi back to 1955.”

“Hey, I love her, too! What’re you looking at me for?!”

“I’m looking at both of you.”

And there was Auntie Tera, one hand on her heart with her mouth open in a fake gasp. I think the word I’m looking for is “theatrical”, but I don’t reckon opening night on Broadway could top her.

“Moi?! Why, my dearest Lance, I would never! We’re already stretching the limit with the plutonium reserves I installed!”

“Huh?!”

“Well, how else are we supposed to generate the 1.21 gigawatts to power the flux capacitor?! Great Scott!!!”

“…you know, one of these days I’m gonna have a heart attack. And I’m gonna blame it on succubi the world over.”

That’s our Auntie. Playful even in the face of potential suckage. Such is life and love and everything in between. Suddenly getting a little preachy, eh? Go back to being funny, ya little diamond eye cutie pie!

Probably two weeks later when Lance finally learned to take a joke, he traced his fingers over the interface, and ladies and gents and enbys! Zee Linen-nay-tah!!! SHE LIVES!!! …and she’s a lot louder than I thought she’d be. Like…wow, she was loud. Work in progress, yeah, but it sure didn’t sound like a pillow cannon. It kinda sounded like…I dunno, NASA getting ready for liftoff?

…uh oh.

<“Ready?”> Lance asked. <“Last chance to back out.” <“Let it rip!”> Akumi called back and took up a stance.

“Awesome…awesome. …okay. Linen-nator 9000, firepower test A-1. In three…two…welcome to Jackass.”

Just to put things in perspective here, Akumi is about 6’3” not counting her horns, weighs a little over two hundred pounds, and is about as close to a pro sumo wrestler as I’ve ever met. TL;DR? She’s a big strong girl, which was why I asked her to help out in the first place.

Guess how well it went.

“HIDEBU!!!”

Thrown across the room, flat against the wall. So hard that she stuck to the wall and the pillow stuck to her before she fell face first on the floor. I’d tell Lance to put an airbag in that armour, but let’s be real. The airbag just decked her at Mach 3.

Oh, and Bianca was here! Cool!

“I take it that WASN’T supposed to happen?” our resident vampire queen asked.

“No,” Lance answered…and broke my lifelong assumption that I’d never be scared of him. “No, it wasn’t.”

“Lance, darling. I don’t mean to undermine you, but before you point fingers, are you sure you converted the speed right?”

Yeah, bro. I mean, thank you for at least listening to her and checking, but Jay-zus. Give a girl a heart attack, why don’t ya? I guess it was just good that Bianca was on the money when all was said and done.

“They called you a genius, Parker, and you actually believed it…” he grumbled, then slammed his forehead against the panel and groaned out loud. “Goddammit, why are imperial measurements even a thing?!”

So instead of thirty-five kilometres per hour, Akumi got hit at thirty-five MILES per hour. Okay, gotcha…sorry, just doing the math here. Okay, so take MPH and divide it by…what was it…1.6093 decimal number that runs on forever, and you get KPH, so…screw it, where’s my freakin’ calculator?

Ah, here we go! So thirty-five MPH equals about fifty-six KPH. Which in car crash terms equals a 90% chance of death…proving once and for all that it doesn’t always pay to know stuff.

But it does pay to be an oni.

<“Wow, that’s comfy!”> she laughed, getting up and dusting herself off like champ of all champs and giving us a wave. <“I’m okay! Hello, Bianca-san!”>

“Glad I could make the test run,” Bianca called back.

“And the end of my relationship…” we could hear Lance whining as he ran over, but Akumi ruffled his hair and pecked him on the cheek before he could make too big of a stink. Love him to death, but even I gotta say he needs to take a load off. Like, damn. She was hugging and loving on him like nothing happened. There ain’t a single end scenario better than that.

“Pardonne-moi, little lady,” Bianca cooed in my ear. “Aren’t I owed a hug?”

Well, she got it. And a big kiss from Auntie Tera. We’ve got a big weird family tree, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

“Bravo getting him to agree to this,” Bianca chuckled. “I’ll certainly have to thank him later…personally.”

Never thought you’d hear that getting bitten counts as a reward, eh? Well, I never thought Krampus was real until I apparently got kidnapped by him…

…long story.

…that I don’t remember.

…PLOT!!!

“Everything’s been arranged?” Auntie Tera asked.

“And then some,” Bianca answered. “My dear benefactor’s received his calling card to Pleasures. Sophia will be along to escort him. I hope you don’t mind, my love, but I borrowed your girls for a while to set up a small warp. Just enough for the dice to roll as they should…”

“They wouldn’t miss such a chance. No…suspicions to report on our guest’s end?”

“Oh, enough to fill the naughty-and-nice list. One guess which side we stand on.”

Still thirteen…is what I’d say if I didn’t have the biggest fan crush on Jensen Ackles. And Joe Keery. And Charlie Heaton. Oh, and Joseph Quinn, too! Gah, Stranger Things! Too many sexy boys!!! STAHP!!!
“I gotta ask, though…” I spoke up. “…is Chris really okay with this? The whole pillow smacking thing. Sorry, Lance got me wondering about it and now I can’t stop.”

“You know what they say about curiosity and the cat, love,” Bianca answered and drummed her fingers through my hair. “A good thing it doesn’t hurt to be…curious around these parts.”

Where the kitties were as curious as the rest of us. Still adorbs, though.

“It’s just something I do to show him my love,” Auntie Tera mewled (I think I used that word right). “…or my bemusement that he so often deserves. Nothing I wouldn’t mind done to myself.”

“So if I grabbed that pillow and smacked you with it, you wouldn’t get mad?”

“That depends. Are you feeling…lucky?”
Trick question. She’d be paying attention to me, so I’d be lucky either way.

“Alright, girls,” Bianca laughed and wrapped an arm around each of us. “Let’s save that banter for the battlefield. My darling Chris deserves nothing but our all…and don’t worry your pretty head, Tina. He’ll love meeting you.”

I actually wasn’t worried at all. C’mon, what’s not to love about me? Have you ever met me? I’m me!

“Well, as long as no one gets too hurt,” I said, which pretty much painted a big fat target for Lance to shoot with a snarky comment in three…two…

“Thankfully no, or else we’d have a very angry ogre girl to answer to.”

“Yeah, only Kumi-chan doesn’t have an angry bone her body and could give you diabetes she’s so sweet?”

So sweet that said ogre girl swept Lance up into her big muscly arms bridal style and nuzzled his cheek. Romantic aspirations. Right in my face. Really want a boyfriend now and dreading turning this into a Valentine’s special.

<“No need to worry about me,”> Akumi said. <“What do you think all my strength training is for?”>

“To sweep dear Lance off his feet, I’d assume,” Tera chuckled.
<“Well...yes. That, too. And now that’”>

Then Auntie and Bianca swarmed them, and then all three started planting kisses all over Lance’s face. Me jelly? Yep.

“Um, help?!” Lance asked by the time his face was all red with blush and lipstick.

It took us about ten more minutes to get back on track, then about five tries and prying Akumi off the wall twice before we got the power just right.

No pressure.

***

I actually thought we’d given too much away when the big day came and Chris was a no-show at first. Auntie Tera and Bianca went in for a few final touches and first pick of cover while I sat outside the door and waited. It’d be almost too boring if I didn’t know what was coming up. Either way, I thanked holy Lilith herself when I heard a portal open nearby and two voices getting closer.

“This seems like a prank,” I heard one voice say.

“A prank? From the Queen?” giggled another. “Why, don’t you know our kind at all?”

“Yeah. I do.”

I got a little peek of him. Short reddish hair. Glasses. Some nice scruff. Pretty tall (though I’m smol, so that’s not saying a whole lot). Good lookin’ guy, all in all. Though he was looking straight at me when he and supremely sexy Sophia came around the corner. That’s a problem.

“Hey, who was that?” I heard Chris say just as I zipped through the door and jumped behind the closest cover.

“Who was who?”

“That girl I just saw.”

“There’s girls all over this place, babe. You’re gonna have to be a little specific.”

Yeah, she and Monica hung out a lot. I won’t say how those hangouts usually ended, but you already know in the back of your head, don’t ya?

…see?! He knows!

Chris threw open the door not too long after I managed to hide, and he saw the same décor that made me jaw hit the floor when I’d made it there earlier. The whole warehouse-sized room was covered in pillows. Like, so many pillows. Mom is scared there’s so many pillows. There were tiny bunkers and trenches to hide in, a couple sniper towers on each wall, and the crowning jewel itself sitting on a pedestal in the middle. The Linen-nator 9001. Fully operational and tailormade for all your supernatural elimination needs!

…wait, wrong story.

“What have you got planned for me now, Sis?” Chris murmured.
He started to turn for the door, but no dice. Sophia already locked it, and now she was giving him that weird hungry look I see older succubi give their S.O. all the time. Salacious, I think the word is? Chris is looking at me again, so best to play it cute.

“Hi-eeee!” I said and waved. “We haven’t met before. I’m Tina.”
“…yeah, okay. Hi, Tina,” he answered after looking at me like I was about to jump him. “Any chance Tera set you up to this?”

He turned to look at Sophia again, but she was already setup in a dugout. Stripped down to a bra and loose PJ pants, pillow rifle up on her shoulder like if Rambo holed up in a Sleep Country.

“Well, you know the saying, babe,” Sophia giggled.

There was Bianca up on the nearby sniper tower, her rifle aimed down and mounted up on her bare leg. God DAMN, she looked awesome in that nightgown!

“Love smacks!” she called.

Then the Linen-nator roared to life, and up popped Auntie Tera. Satin PJs with her initials woven into the back, evil grin plastered all over her face, rocking the battle-born bedhead like a pro of all pros.

“And so do I!”

Boom goes the Linen-nator, smack goes the pillow. Right on target and with the right power to topple Chris safely into the closest dugout. Not gonna lie, I was scared we made him a little mad. Smoking him like that on his birthday? That’s like number one in the book of dick moves.

But he was smiling like…well, a kid on his birthday, so I reckon all was well with the universe. Though that pillow rifle he was picking up was modelled after Lance’s combat shotgun and I was the closest target, so…yeah. Cover sounds good right about now.

“Of course you realize this means WAR!!!”

Free for all. Surprising each other around corners. Pairing up only to blast our partner when they weren’t looking. The winged among us taking flight only to get shot down moments later, and once the Linen-nator got going, you’d see one of us hurtling into the wall every couple seconds. But we were laughing and carrying on like the little kids we were. Nothing hurt. Heck, we barely got the wind knocked out of us when we got hit. It was just that much fun, and I don’t even think we were keeping score.

I ducked behind a pile to take a breather, and there was Chris doing the same. No point-blank shots. Just the two of us smiling at each other. Guess Mom was right about me being a contagious ball of good vibes. I’d barely met the guy, but I already felt like we’d been friends our whole lives.

“Soooooo, yeah!” I chirped. “Happy birthday!!!”

“What’re you saying it like that for?” he asked. “We’re just getting started!”

Best pillow fight ever? Dude, you had to be there.