Preoccupied with a Kronan Invasion

The Kronan spores had come down over Manhattan on Thursday night. By Friday morning, half the buildings on the Lower East Side were covered with stony blisters like a teenager's face. The whole weekend was spent trying to keep half the buildings in New York from collapsing as the growing Kronan warriors sucked out minerals from stone, cement, and brick. Reed had developed devices that could stabilize the growth but there were so many...

The invasion proper was, in hindsight, not quite as half-assed as it first appeared. The rapidly-maturing Kronan warriors emerged with all the skills they needed to form guerrilla cells, break into electronic stores and begin to assemble crude energy weapons and, Reed later discovered, a warp gate that would allow potentially millions of Kronan to emerge in the heart of Manhattan.

There was no time to even think about masturbation. All thoughts of cheating on Reed had to take a back seat in her skull. There was practically no time to sleep. Meals were protein bars grabbed whenever they could get a moment. No showers, only the occasional brief catnaps.

"Yesterday, I fell asleep on the toilet while peeing," Sue admitted to Dr. Stone. There were dark bags under Sue's eyes. The heroine had thrown a jacket over her costume, which was torn and scorched in places. Her yellow hair was a frizzy mess. She sipped her tea gratefully. "Johnny had to knock on the door and tell me there were faces emerging from the sidewalks on Broadway."

"That's...wow," Dr. Stone blinked. "I saw it on the news, but I didn't know you were so...active. No time to rest at all? Why didn't you reschedule the appointment?"

Sue gave a wan grin. "Oh, I'm on my sixth or seventh wind. But I guess that's one way to keep from thinking of cheating on my husband: keeping busy."

"Not exactly a healthy approach," Dr. Stone said. "You must be fairly tired and pent up."

"Exhausted, yes," Sue said. "Pent up? Horny? Honestly, fighting alien invaders just drains every sexual impulse out of my body..."

The lenses of Dr. Stone's glasses caught the sun just right and flared into two circles of light, as though her eyes glowed from within.

"Let's talk about that," the villain said, as the implants in her skull buzzed.