Marvel's Villainous Gacha 71 (Patreon)

“Alright. You have all systems live,” he said as he stood opposite her in the large ring. Neither had weapons, but other than that, it was a fair fight. She removed her jacket, revealing a tight tanktop underneath.

He had to admit, she wasn’t what he expected aliens to look, far sexier than expected. But, he found it difficult to get attracted, mostly because he could sense the machines in her body directly.

Her left arm was completely robotic, merely covered with fake skin. The left side of her jaw and cheekbone, the plating running up past the temple, was just as noticeable to his senses, including her left eye. And, that was just the beginning. Most of her spine, almost every joint, even the fingers in her organic hand. Also, almost half of her organs.

It was not an elegant job, at least not internally.

Ironically, it wasn’t the fact that she had robotic implants that put him off, but the fact that those implants had been put together in a haphazard manner, with little rhyme or reason, creating an aesthetically horrid feeling.

It was like looking at a beautiful woman after a horrible, botched botox job, but only much worse.

"You are staring."

"You asked me to take you seriously,” he said, shrugging. "We have simple rules. Full contact, no restrictions other than no weapons. I’ll stop when you yield.”

“I won’t,” she responded. “You’re not getting away without a few broken bones.”

He shrugged. Even if she achieved the impossible and broke his bones, it was hardly a big challenge for him to fix. Not with his endless list of healing abilities.

She attacked without any further announcement, which he had expected. She was an assassin, after all. He parried her punch, only for her to get closer. What she did was not sparring, every blow aimed to cripple him.

But, none of them were kill blows. He first assumed it was anger, but reading her mood, he realized this was her understanding of sparring.

He stayed defensive, watching her efforts as she circled around, pure aggression, easily shifting between elbow strikes and grapples, using some styles he had never seen before.

But, the same applied to him, and he had spent a long time optimizing his style.

She stopped when he managed to avoid the finishing blow of a dangerous combination. “Not bad,” she admitted grudgingly. “But, you can’t win by staying defensive.”

“I can read my opponent while staying defensive,” he said, and suddenly took the offense. A nine-punch combo later, he had a chance to deliver a blow, only for the robotic arm to move fast, blocking the path.

That was her whole defensive style, he realized. She fought like someone who had learned that some parts of her could be replaced faster than a wound healed, and she used that to her advantage.

Unfortunately, he had a different idea. He shifted his stance slightly, and delivered a more devastating punch, his fingers glowing.

It was a style he developed, combining Fishman Karate and Firebending. There were no outward signs, just a simple, devastating punch, enhanced by chi. His fist met Nebula's cybernetic forearm block.

The arm stayed intact, because the impact bypassed it.

The force hit her torso, the energy enough to ruin her concentration as it hit her sensitive organs, and that destruction meant her control of her center of gravity was gone.

He grabbed her arm, throwing her against the wall. She flew twenty yards, and hit the far bulkhead hard enough to leave a dent. Even for her, it was a painful blow.

She stayed down for about a second and a half, then she got up, and her face tightened. He expected to find anger, maybe frustration. What he found was fear. It was the kind of instinctual fear, one that he had trouble understanding.

"Again," she said.

This time, he didn’t waste much time. He defended her attack, countering with his; her guard once again proving useless. This time, she didn’t hesitate, so she retreated relatively easily, but the droplet of blood at the side of her lips suggested she wasn’t doing too well.

She attacked again and again. To her credit, she was quick to adapt and stopped trying to block him. Instead, she focused on evasion, trying to tire him. Too bad it was the worst strategy one could use against him.

Not to mention, he was fast enough to match her in speed, so her evasive strategy didn’t keep her safe. She managed to restrict him to glancing hits, but his new trick, even glancing hits left significant damage behind.

Then, inevitably, she slipped again. This time, he grabbed her, but rather than throwing her against the wall, he slammed her on the floor, his hand pressing against her throat. “Yield?” he asked.

For a moment, he expected her to continue because she looked desperate. As if the little bout they had represented something very important. But then she took a breath, dismissing that attitude. “Yield,” she said, her tone calmer than he expected.

Meaning, her reaction wasn’t about him, but something else. Her training must have been more painful than he assumed if her reaction to losing was this intense.

He offered his hand. She looked at it for a second, but with a growl, she refused, standing on her own.

She was very prickly.

“So, another round, or rest first?”

“I need to rest,” she said. “You hit like a runaway cargo ship.”

He nodded, going to the side to get a bottle of water. He threw it to her, and she grabbed with ease. For a few minutes, she said nothing, just catching her breath. He didn’t either. She was not a fan of smalltalk, and he needed her to get along better if she were to reveal more secrets.

Luckily, the more he interacted with her, the more he realized that while she was an assassin, she was not an infiltrator. She had no idea how to conceal her emotions.

Either that, or she was a far better liar than Natasha, enough to trick him despite his ability to tell lies by touch, which the spar had been an excellent method to achieve, but he was confident that it wasn’t the case.

Especially since he was the one who captured her rather than her finding her way into his sphere.

“You hit hard,” she said after a while. “Some kind of power?”

“Not exactly. It’s more like a special training to utilize body’s native energies. In theory, it’s teachable,” he said. She looked at him, a shred of hope there, which she immediately extinguished. He decided to test it. “I would have taught you, but it requires an intact body to channel the body’s energies correctly,” he explained.

“Explain,” she said.

“The technique depends on the natural energy flow of the body, starting from the center of the body, growing as it goes through channels, climbing the spine, passing the shoulder, elbow, wrist, and hand. Your implants would break the flow.”

“Of course they do,” she said, which, on the surface, looked like a casual remark, but he could hear the despair in her tone. It clearly touched on something important.

If she hadn’t been his best source of information about Thanos, he would have let it pass. Instead, he decided to test his luck. "How much of your implants is elective?" he asked.

Nebula froze. “What a stupid question to ask. Are you an idiot?” she suddenly exploded, standing up, walking away. Her intense reaction, filled with both hate and fear, confirmed his guess.

“Think of it as my reward for winning the spar. Tell me,” he ordered. “Unless you’re a coward.” It was a blunt approach, but he had a feeling it would work better.

“Fine,” Nebula said, and laughed. It was a dark laugh, not carrying even a hint of humor. “None of it,” she said. He opened his mouth, but she continued, not letting him say anything. "He made us fight,” she said, her hands tightening into fists. "Me against Gamora. Every time. He would set us against each other. She won every time, because she was better. And, every time she won, he would take another part of me, replacing it with a machine. To excise weakness, he would claim. A gift.”

Michael sat still, not saying anything.

She continued, her voice getting darker. “Do you want to know when it started. I was nine. I was so excited to play with my sister. I would show my father how far I had come, because back then, I still believed his kindness. I lost. And he ripped my eye out by his bare hand.”

Father of the year, Thanos was not.

“Any other curious questions?” she asked as she took a fighting stance. “How much did it hurt? How many implants? Did I deserve it? Come on, ask, and laugh.”

He didn’t say anything. He wanted to stand up and hug her, but she didn’t seem like she would appreciate it. Instead, he stood up, and took a fighting stance. She attacked.

Her performance was much worse. No tactics, no control, just pure aggression, wailing without control. He could have defeated her with a punch, aiming one of the dozens weak points she presented, but instead he stayed defensive, letting her exhaust herself.

They fought for about ten minutes before her furious burst ended.

She fell on one knee once exhaustion became too much, but even then, she was looking angrily. He waited, letting the silence sit while she finished processing her emotions, her anger fading away.

"We can take them out if you want,” he offered.

That made her eyes widen. “What?” she asked. “Do you even have any idea how much of my body mass is implants?”

“Forty-one percent,” he responded.

"Does it look like something that could be replaced,” she spat out. “Yes, I can replace them with cloned organs, but they will destroy my fighting capacity, and I don’t have ten years to condition myself from scratch. And, that assumes I could survive it in the first place."

“What if that wasn’t a problem?” he offered.

“I would say find a better lie,” she growled. “Is this an excuse to weaken me?”

“Look, just a day ago, you were imprisoned. If I wanted to weaken you, I would have ripped your implants off,” he said. “I made the offer, because we need useful soldiers. If you are too cowardly to take it, that’s not my problem.”

His words were mean, but it was intentional. The more he interacted with her, the more he realized Nebula would react badly to kindness, because she hadn’t experienced any. The aggression of his offer made it believable.

She was easy to manipulate. She was lucky that she was his best source of information for Thanos, meaning that, on aggregate, he had good intentions.

“What’s the price?” she said.

“I need someone who knows that bastard Thanos’ operation. His men, his bases, his old missions, everything. You’ll spend months compiling it, and help me when I need an assassin,” he offered. The fact that there was a price relaxed her further.

“How long will it take?” she asked.

He paused for a moment. It would last about five minutes even he pushed, and even if he was careful and handled it step by step, it would merely take an hour thanks to his ability to use Boost on Greater Healing Light to increase its performance even more. After all, while her body wasn’t as strong as an Asgardian, it still required enough investment than a normal human.

But, sometimes showing that things took more than they required was better so he could lie about it, hiding his capabilities. He could claim it would take a week, which would make more reasonable.

The problem, did it really make any sense? He was confident that he had read Nebula’s hatred toward Thanos accurately, and even if he didn’t, revealing his healing didn’t carry the same implications it carried on Earth.

Especially since Nebula would never see his healing directly, and would likely assume it was some kind of tech. Useful, but not the holy grail. Even if others learned, it wouldn’t be as devastating.

“An hour. You’ll be unconscious while your body adapts to the treatment,” he compromised.

For all her faults, Nebula was decisive. The moment she agreed, she accepted to be brought to the operation room. After he put her under anesthesia, he removed her implants one by one.

And, while removed those implants, he realized he was one of the few doctors that achieved it. Some of the oldest implants had some nasty traps that would have killed anyone who wasn’t at least an Expert Mechanic, but his tech knowledge was too deep for it to matter.

Also, he noticed some of the implants were calibrated wrong, causing far more pain than necessary. He would have assumed it was a mistake, but from what else he gleaned about Thanos, there was a chance he intentionally set them like that to cause pain.

After removing all the implants, regenerating was trivial. Greater Healing Light was already capable of regenerating with little side effects, and using the Boost on it made it even more perfect. Once he finished, he used all his diagnostic methods to purify her bloodstream from the side effects.

Then, he waited for her to wake up.

She opened her eyes, but her voice was panicked. “Why can’t I feel my body?” she said in panic.

He frowned. “What do you mean? Try standing up. You should be perfectly healthy,” he said.

She stood up, her patting moving her hospital gown. “I … I can move easily, but my body doesn’t have any feeling,” she said.

He understood what she was talking about. “That’s the absence of constant torture from your implants,” he said. “Whoever put them on didn’t know what they were doing. Or intentionally torturing you.”

She growled. “I’m sure that purple bastard ordered them to set it like that.” He shrugged, but didn’t answer. It didn’t need one. Instead, he watched as she moved. “There’s no lag. I don’t have to plan my moves in advance so that my arm reacts. I think, and it moves,” she whispered in fascination. “And, I’m at full strength already.”

“I’m a good healer,” he responded.

She threw a punch without warning, which he dodged, but he didn’t retaliate. He could see that she was excitedly testing her new body. “Careful,” he warned.

“What? Don’t tell me you can’t handle this much aggression,” she said, giggling happily for the first time since he had seen her.

“Well, I can, but you’re not exactly dressed for it,” he reminded her, pointing at her gown, already messed enough to reveal a lot of her body. And, without poorly constructed machinery to ruin her looks, she looked spectacular.

She blushed, which no doubt had a lot to do with her body finally being intact, working as intended with all the right hormones. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of a bit of nudity,” she said instead, ripping off her hospital gown.

He met her smirk. “Oh, I’m not scared even for a bit,” he said. “I’m just giving you a fighting chance!”

Nebula didn’t wait for another invitation, she rushed, naked. For a few minutes, they sparred, but unlike in the past, where every attack a caused a feedback of pain, she only felt excitement, each attack driving her arousal further.

Technically, she fought worse, but it was about her trying to compensate for a lag that no longer existed. As they continued, she improved with a frightening speed.

She feinted left, spun, and drove a bare heel toward his ribs. He caught her ankle mid-air, twisted, and used her own momentum to slam her back against the metal floor. The impact was solid, controlled, and it only made her grin wider. She hooked her free leg around his waist and yanked him in, grinding against the hard line of his cock through his pants as she grabbed her, twisting.

He could have pinned her underneath, but instead, he decided against it. He let her roll, so that she was on top, pinning his hands above his head.

She clearly wanted to feel in control, even as she tested her attitude. She ripped his pants, rubbing her body, but he could see that she was trying to look more experienced than she was.

He didn’t ruin her plan. Nebula was prideful, because until recently she had nothing else but her pride.

As she rubbed, her confident declarations turned into moans, the pleasure hitting her like pure voltage. Her hips moved, hurried, no finesse, just the aggressive rhythm she desired. His hips adjusted to meet every thrust while letting her feel still in control.

Then, she brought her hips down, taking him deep inside her, burying him to the hilt. Her cry was pure delight. “This feels amazing,” she moaned.

He decided to move, thrusting up. She pushed back into every thrust, her thighs tight around his body. The slap of skin on skin echoed off the walls while his hands locked on her hips hard enough to leave marks.

Her climax was spectacular. She collapsed against his chest.

[Feat Achieved! Subvert Nebula

+1x Gold Random Gacha ticket]

He hugged her, knowing Soft Hugger would work wonders, and while waited for her recovery, he activated his reward.

[Ring of the Bull]

{Rare Item: This golden ruby ring grants its wearer increased strength and endurance when worn. These increased stats are half a flat boost and half a percentage boost.}

It was a nice item. Nothing groundbreaking, but the fact that it was an item rather than a trait worked to his advantage, meaning he could give it to others if necessary.

But, that was all he was able to get. Nebula recovered from her climax, and he flipped her, this time pinning her underneath. His hips moved fast and merciless, but the real impact came from his hug.

It was devastating for girls with traumatic pasts, and he had to admit, Nebula won that sad contest by a wide margin. Even Natasha didn’t have a backstory that tragic.

In his arms, she slowly relaxed, but even with that, she reacted to his kiss with pure hesitation, freezing for a moment. He pulled back. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of a little kiss, Miss Assassin,” he teased.

She responded with a growl before she smashed her hips, their tongues battling.

It was a good way to put her healed body to the test…