Chapter 28: Home Sweet Military Base

Alexis was a steaming puddle of embarrassment as the two of them left the infirmary. Cassie had mercifully gone on ahead to inform the others that Elaine was awake and to give Alexis and her some time to freshen up before meeting them. Even with that time Alexis felt all squishy. Elaine had apparently been quite backed up because even after minutes of letting her cum dribble out Alexis still felt a puddle of it gathering in her panties.

Even worse, of course, was the way she'd embarrassed herself.

“Does it bother you that much that Cassie saw you?” Elaine asked, quite gently.

Alexis had loved the way Elaine had very pointedly not been gentle with her in that bed, the way she'd treated her the way Alexis thought Elaine treated the others in bed. Not only had it felt incredible, it had also showed her that Elaine had that much more faith in her than before, that she didn't treat her like she was fragile. But even so, in social situations Elaine was still her previous, tender self. And in those situations, that was precisely how Alexis needed her.

And the question was an important one. Alexis had been mortified to have been seen by Cassie. Even looking at him and seeing nothing but a pretty girl didn't help her awkwardness. She didn't hate men or anything but the thought of a guy seeing her naked still bothered her. But at the same time, it bothered her that it didn't bother her as much as she thought it would. Getting with Elaine had put a real question mark at the end of Alexis' sexual orientation. She loved that her partner was a girl, sounded like a girl, looked like a girl and thought like a girl but at the same time she couldn't deny that she also loved that one part of Elaine that was very decidedly not of a girl.

“It's not that,” Alexis said. “It's that thing I said. He threw me for a loop and I made a total fool of myself. 'I'm sure you will'? Good god, could I sound any more like a dork?”

Elaine chuckled. “That's what you're embarrassed about?”

Alexis fidgeted. “I mean, I can't say I'm all that happy that we were caught in the act but it was my choice to do that in the infirmary. It was inevitable that someone would walk in on it so I'm glad it was someone from our little group. Although there might have been a better time than right when I was begging for you to... put it... in my butt...” After every pause Alexis had grown a little quieter until the last part had barely been more than a whisper.

“Dirty talk is just dirty talk, babe,” Elaine told her, quite gently. “We don't have to do that stuff if you don't want to.”

Alexis hesitated for a moment, the heat returning to her cheeks. “But I... do want to try it.”

She wanted to crawl into a hole and pull it in after her. Admitting it was the worst. She had loved Elaine's fingers teasing her butt. And while the thought of taking Elaine wholly in that tiny little hole was terrifying, the thought of taking it in her pussy had been equally terrifying, once upon a time. She was sure that with enough practice, enough preparation and copious amounts of lubrication it wouldn't hurt.

Of course she'd been there when Ophelia had coaxed all the naughty details out of Evelyn about her and Elaine's first time doing that and so she knew that Evelyn had gotten herself ready for Elaine with a frankly quite unreasonable amount of masturbation, abusing her butt again and again, and Alexis couldn't quite imagine doing that. It wasn't as if she didn't masturbate at all but before meeting Elaine it had been something she'd done like once a week, tops. Now that she had met Elaine... Had she done it even once ever since her first intimate experiences with Elaine? She couldn't even tell anymore. Either she hadn't done it or it paled in comparison to her nights with Elaine to such an extent that she couldn't recall it anymore.

She was pulled out of her musings when she felt Elaine give her butt a squeeze. She squeaked a little and then squeaked yet again when she felt the ball of a finger poking at her little hole through her clothes.

“Then practice for me, baby. Get that little butt ready for me and I'll do the rest.” The words were a husky whisper that went straight down to Alexis' womb.

“Stop making me horny,” Alexis whined. “We just did it.”

“Need to give you some inspiration for later, don't I?” Elaine said with a smirk and then pulled her hand away.

Alexis let out a breath she didn't even know she'd been holding. Yeah. She had inspiration in spades.

**

From Elaine's perspective no time had passed at all but even so the way everyone welcomed her back warmed her heart. Ophelia, Evelyn, Abigail and even Prudence all hugged her and told her how glad they were to have her back. And aside from Prudence that hadn't been too surprising. What had surprised her, however, was that her parents were also present. Her mother told her how worried she'd been while her dad told her how proud he was of the spectacular showing she'd given.

It was, in a word, the perfect storybook ending to an action movie.

Except life was not an action movie. Life continued on. And so the reward for all of their work was that they had to go back to Base 15 and prepare for more fighting.

**

“I can't believe I'm glad to be back here,” Ophelia said as they went through the airlock and back into Base 15 proper.

“Yeah,” Cassie said. “Watching Elaine be all cute when her dad is praising her is fun and all, but not having an evil mad scientist sending his menagerie at us on an hourly basis is hard to beat.”

“I will fold you in half,” Elaine told Cassie.

“Oh nooo~”

“Without fucking you,” she added.

“Aww...”

“You really are rather bashful around your parents,” Abigail said. “No offense.”

“We're all kids around our parents,” Alexis said.

Ophelia nodded. “Doesn't matter if she's strong enough to twist him into knots now, with a dad like that you always believe that daddy is the strongest person in the world.”

Elaine felt terribly embarrassed by the conversation. She was a huge daddy's girl. There was no denying that. Even powerful enough to beat up scores of monsters she thought her dad was the strongest, coolest person she'd ever met. A mage, an outdoorsman and a trained fighter, Eric Caldwell was everything she wanted to be. Joining the army had been the only time her path had meaningfully diverged from following in his footsteps and hearing him praise her for it had made her heart soar.

But what embarrassed her even more than the way her teammates were ribbing her was when she remembered that their team wasn't the only one that had come back to the base at that time.

“Well I, for one, am looking forward to a nice long bath and an evening of getting pampered,” said Tracy as she walked past their little group with her entire pantheon in tow.

Elaine wondered idly whether “getting pampered” in this context meant having all her boytoys run a train on her or not. Goddamn but the blonde would look fucking amazing fucked raw and dripping with cum.

She blinked at the thought. Jesus. Yes, she'd always had a very high libido but she'd only just had sex with Alexis hours ago and she was already so horny she was fantasizing about other women. Was this going to be an issue? Was she going to need to go multiple rounds with multiple partners before she was satisfied? Was she reading way too much into a sudden bout of horniness?

And suddenly she didn't have to worry about horniness anymore because Professor Stollos rounded the corner and made a beeline specifically for her team.

**

Professor Stollos was well pleased. Not only had his experiments shattered his expectations but they had then gone on to humble Caulder, his old partner in crime. Their ways had parted due to the immoral nature of Caulder's research and considering Stollos' own lack of scruples for most of his life, that was really saying something.

But Project Divinity had beaten the abomination the man had sent at them. Stollos knew this would be a setback for the man. Oh, Caulder always just saw the failure of one of his designs as a reason to go back to the drawing board and improve on the design, certainly, but he was also too meticulous a person to start on version 2.0 before he knew where the faults in the earlier design lay.

Even if he was working together with whoever had caused the Invasion – Stollos knew Caulder well enough to know that he hadn't been the cause himself – his resources weren't limitless. While Caulder could procure infinite Outsiders and grow infinite clone bodies to twist into his horrific nightmares, the celestials that had been part of the Red Rider's design could not have been clones. The eros of the lovers in their twisted embrace, the algos, the agony, of the poor soul that had been made into a blade, bare nerve endings screaming with each swing the blade was used for, none of that could be experienced by soulless husks. Those had to have been real people once upon a time.

All of that meant that they had time before Caulder could make a nuisance of himself again. And by the time that happened, by the time he had not just created a being like the Red Rider but something far worse, Stollos intended to be ready for him. More powerful Shard Bearers and Awakeners, larger numbers of both, and more of them Lacrima.

He wondered idly when he had become so competitive. His research had always been about furthering his goals, about furthering humanity. Certainly, decisions like working with Caulder had been mostly about self-preservation, as had creations like Experiments 36 and – he shuddered – 72, but in the end he had always wished for humanity's ascension.

That hadn't changed but now he had a concrete goal to fight against. Fighting back against the Invasion had been a goal, certainly, an ambition, but it hadn't been concrete. One did not set out to “save the world”. One set out to save the world from something. And so long as they didn't know who was responsible for the Invasion, they didn't know who that someone was. And so long as they didn't know that, they had no way of fulfilling their task.

But defeating Caulder was a concrete milestone. Defeating him wouldn't save the world but he was their best lead. One didn't simply gain the power to control Outsiders. He had to have gotten that from somewhere. Even becoming a Necromancer wouldn't explain the staggering amount of control he had over these beasts. Keeping Outsiders from tearing apart an army? Certainly, a Necromancer could do that. Doing it without being physically present? Impossible.

No, Caulder wasn't a Necromancer, a mindless marionette of the Outsiders that couldn't see his own strings. Stollos could see the hallmarks of his old compatriot's work in his designs. Caulder's mind was still intact. And that meant he had to be involved with the cause of the Invasion.

Stollos prided himself in his calculated, rational thought processes – bouts of mad scientist laughter notwithstanding – but he couldn't deny that having a concrete goal in front of him and, furthermore, that concrete goal being bringing down his old friend turned foe, drove him onward, made him pursue his research with an urgency he hadn't felt since starting this Project.

And with that state of mind he approached Sergeant Caldwell's team.

“Congratulations on your success,” he said, then fixed his gaze on Sergeant Caldwell and Private Peterson. “Would the two of you be willing to accompany me? We have much to discuss.”

**

Abigail felt resigned. She knew she'd screwed up in the battle. She'd almost gotten overwhelmed by the mind-controlled cadets and soldiers, had almost gotten the entire support line killed. She'd just hoped she would be afforded a few hours to enjoy the victory celebrations before her bollocking began.

And so, it was with more than a small amount of trepidation that Abigail followed Elaine and the Professor into his office. Mechanically she sat down in the offered chain and daintily placed her hands on her lap as the man sat down in his enormous arm chair.

“First of all, I wish to congratulate you, Sergeant Caldwell, on your successful ascension. Not only have you managed to become a Lacrima, you have become very proficient in using your powers within a very short amount of time.”

“Thank you, Professor,” Elaine said.

He turned from Elaine to Abigail and she could feel the reprimand coming. But instead of telling her how badly she'd screwed up his face broke in a genuine, if slightly concerning, smile and he said: “And you, Private Peterson. You have done exceptionally well and I have an offer I hope you will be interested in.”

ChrisLensman

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