Chapter 18: Getting Closer

Prudence was currently on board a Gospel, the same one she'd flown to Base 15 not that long ago, checking out a report that had the mermaids all up in arms.

The mermaids of Base 15 made up their monitoring division. It was their job to check out the data the cadets produced as well as data trickling in from outside the base. And one of the readings had spooked them badly. They'd noticed a rather huge spike of necromantic energy not too terribly far from one of the largest refugee camps in the US. But since they only had this one scanner reading to go on they'd sent Prudence out to investigate.

She wasn't sure how to feel about the assignment. On the one hand she agreed that the scanner reading was concerning and that checking it out was important. If it turned out to be more than just a random spike of Outsider energy on a planet covered in random spikes of Outsider energy it would mean something extremely bad was about to happen to the refugee camp. On the other hand she couldn't help but think that an Ophanim like her was wasted on scouting duty.

She paused at the thought. The assignment that had brought her to Base 15 had ended up with her having to fight a Jabberwock. She still had no idea how that horrible goat dragon thing had seen through the Gospel's allegedly impenetrable camouflage but she did know that if the craft hadn't been piloted by someone of her power level things would have gone very very badly. So maybe an Ophanim like her wasn't wasted on this mission after all.

Even so, the ride was lonely. She'd gotten used to the bustle of Base 15 and would have enjoyed one or two of the cadets to accompany her. Maybe the beautiful songbird who had piloted the craft last time. Or maybe the tall brunette her boss Jeanne seemed so fascinated with.

But if she thought that her presence here was a waste then the presence of even more people would only exacerbate the issue.

She shook it off and fiddled with her AR displays, trying to zoom out her navigator app. The place the mermaids believed the spike of necromantic energy had come from was still an hour out. That meant there was still quite some time to kill before her boredom was about to end...

Her eyes flew open as she looked back at the windshield.

Wormwood, she swore quietly.

There was an army marching along what had once been a highway. They didn't wear US colors and the regiments of soldiers were flanked by Outsiders. Dark Young, light Equoid cavalry, heavy cavalry on False Unicorns, even things she'd never heard of before were trotting, slithering, stomping and even hopping alongside the troops. Why the monsters from beyond space-time weren't turning on the soldiers was beyond Prudence but what she did know was that this highway would lead them straight to the refugee camp. At the speed they were going it would still take them two days but that still meant that an army of Outsiders was on course to attack one of the densest gatherings of civilians left in the country.

Prudence made an executive decision and decided to skip the ride back.

The Gospel came with a function called a Warp Drive. The name sounded scary but it didn't lead through some sort of otherworld to cut rides short. Instead the Warp Drive was a very powerful space-elemental PSI device that could instantly teleport the craft to anywhere on the planet as well as to Heaven or Hell. The downside was that using it was so energy-intensive that it would instantly overload the Gospel's power source, its mana generator.

The long and short of it was that the craft could teleport to wherever it needed to go but at the cost of becoming unusable for the next 24 hours. Not particularly useful for scouting missions but incredibly convenient when one had to be somewhere yesterday.

She pressed the Warp Drive button and selected Base 15 as the target.

**

Abigail was in the training room, practicing with her magic bow. After joining the army she'd learned that she wasn't a half-bad shot with an assault rifle. All her life she'd thought that guns were pointless and dangerous and that she wouldn't want to touch one with a ten-foot pole. After the world had been overrun by monsters, however, she had reevaluated her previous opinion and allowed that maybe there were in fact some situations where such weaponry was warranted. And once she'd allowed that she realized that she actually liked shooting the damn things.

But there was the ever-so-slight problem that almost all factories had stopped producing, which meant that their stockpile of ammunition was rapidly dwindling. The replicators kindly donated from Heaven helped mitigate the problem somewhat but they were only prolonging the inevitable.

And that's where the bow came in. The bow was magical and the arrows it fired came from a quiver that never ran out, the arrows made more from light magic than any physical material. So since this ammunition would never run out she had decided to train herself in the bow's use.

To be fair, the bow's use wasn't something she needed to train. The bow was part of her powers as a Shard Bearer and so the moment she'd first summoned it her mind had flooded with the knowledge of how to fire it. The muscle memory hadn't wholly come with it but after just a few days of practicing with it she could make shots that Olympic gold medalists in archery considered difficult.

What she was truly practicing was using her light magic to influence the arrows she fired. Her teammates had given her the idea and so she was practicing.

She was sitting on almost four hundred EXP she couldn't spend because her stupid Bond Level wasn't high enough. Yes, she had fucked up with Elaine. But did the universe really have to punish her for it?

So since she couldn't get stronger by leveling she decided to get stronger by training her abilities more. As Elaine kept saying, the skill ceiling for a mage wasn't their raw power but their imagination. And right now, with her bow, she had a way to train her imagination in a very tangible way.

She tried to make the arrows splinter apart. She tried to make them burst like flash bangs. She tried to infuse them with her fire magic.

All of it worked out perfectly and she felt surprisingly accomplished at the little bit of magic she'd managed to figure out.

“That was amazing, you've got a real talent for this.”

She damn near jumped out of her skin when she heard Elaine's voice behind her.

“Sorry, didn't mean to startle you," Elaine told her. “You were so focused that I didn't want to interrupt you while you were training.”

Abigail took a moment to compose herself before she dared to turn around. Why was Elaine here?

Her first thought was incredibly uncharitable: Why are you talking to me when you've got four gorgeous girls fawning over you? But she clamped down on it. She'd been the one who had screwed up, not Elaine. Elaine had been nothing but kind to her the entire time they'd known each other. True, she hadn't really spent time with her but she had more than enough to do and Abigail hadn't exactly gone out of her way to talk to Elaine either.

So she decided not to be a bitch for once. Elaine was here to build bridges and Abigail wasn't going to spit on her kindness again.

“No, it's alright," she said. “You've been born into magic so your praise means a lot.”

“Don't say that," Elaine said and handed her a bottle.

She glanced down at it. Apple juice. Her favorite. Huh. Had that been a lucky guess or was Elaine truly that observant? Either way, it was considerate. She really was thirsty. “But it's true. I wasn't born a mage. Every breakthrough I make is great to me, even if it's comparatively paltry for someone like you. So, if you tell me I'm doing a good job then it means a lot.”

“That assumes that I'm objective about it," Elaine said.

“So it was insincere?" Abigail asked, raising her eyebrow. What was she doing? She was trying to build bridges here and she was, cocking it up. Again.

“The praise was sincere," Elaine said. “But you're part of my team. You're important to me, to us. I can't be truly objective about what you accomplish because your accomplishments might end up saving our lives, not to mention your own.”

“I'm still not as strong as the others," Abigail said, then added quietly: “I'm holding you all back.”

Elaine frowned at her. “But you aren't holding us back. You're making everyone stronger and your magic is almost at Ophelia's level.”

“So I'm at my best when I'm not fighting?" Abigail asked. “Great.”

Elaine took a deep breath. “See, I don't get you, Abigail. You don't want to be in the spotlight even though you're born to stand out. But here you are, in a situation where you can stand back and support from the back, and you complain that you aren't playing the leading role.”

That shut her up. “What do you mean, 'born to stand out'?”

“You're gorgeous, Abigail," Elaine said. “That isn't even a compliment, that's just objective fact. You could have started a career as a model even if you didn't have that golden voice. But you have that, too. You could be a superstar. You could own a stage with both your looks and your voice. But you want to hide yourself away instead.”

“I already told you why I do that," Abigail hissed.

“You can't tell me that there's no way to become a singer without prostituting yourself," Elaine said.

“At least none that I have found," Abigail said. “You have no idea how many offers like that I've gotten. I don't want to be a whore to be a star.”

“But these days there are ways to promote yourself that don't need you to do any of that shit," Elaine said.

“And that would work but I'm too timid to do that sort of self-promotion," Abigail said, now a lot more quietly. Elaine wasn't wrong. There were ways to gain fame that didn't require her to do favors for dirty old men, but...

“That's not it, though, is it?" Elaine asked.

Abigail's breath hitched.

“You don't just hate the idea of people taking advantage of you, you hate the idea of people looking at you lewdly, right?" Elaine asked.

“Yeah," Abigail admitted. “The idea of guys staring at me and...” She shuddered.

“I think that's something you should talk to Cassie about," Elaine said. “I'm sure he knows how to deal with that.”

Abigail opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. “He would know, wouldn't he?”

“Yeah," Elaine said. “But speaking from experience, just ignore it. Ignore when people you don't find attractive do it, be flattered when people you do find attractive do it.”

“Experience?" Abigail asked. She wanted to kick herself. The last thing she wanted was to imply that it couldn't have happened to Elaine. The woman was sexy, though in a totally different way from herself. As Elaine had said, Abigail could be a model. Elaine could also be a model, but for magazines like Biker Babes Monthly.

“If you're in the military you're either the squad mattress or the squad dyke," Elaine explained. “When the first guy came knocking and," she made finger quotes, “'asked' to have some fun I told him to fuck off. From then on I was the squad dyke. That meant only the guys who really couldn't take no for an answer even tried but that doesn't mean there wasn't a dozen guys I knew for a fact were jerking off to the thought of fucking me. A few of them I found flattering. The rest I just tried not to think about.”

“Past tense?" Abigail asked. “When did it stop? When you joined the Project?”

“Mostly," Elaine said. “Jordan tried to get with me until he noticed me ogling girls. And Brandon--”

Abigail cut her off. “Who is Brandon?”

Elaine told her.

Abigail swallowed. “So that's what you meant it happened to you too..." she finally said. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

Elaine nodded. “In the end shit like this is going to happen. You will attract unwanted and inappropriate attention. But all the positive attention will make up for it.”

“Well, until we've gotten rid of the Outsiders it doesn't matter much," Abigail said.

“You think so?" Elaine asked. “I've seen you singing for the others at night. They all love your performances.”

Abigail blushed. “I'm not even performing. I'm just singing for myself, I just happen to be attracting an audience every time.”

Elaine rolled her eyes. “Sure, you just happen to be singing for fun, right in the middle of the cafeteria.”

Abigail buried her face in her hands. “Okay, fine, maybe I am enjoying the attention.”

Elaine nodded. “See? But to get back to your role in our team: You are a bard, essentially.”

“What does that mean?" Abigail asked. “I've never played these kinds of games. As a kid I was more for strategy games.”

Elaine smiled. “Bards strengthen their allies with music and can often cast spells. In battle they support. Outside of battle they tend to be the voice of the party.”

“So in the spotlight outside of combat and supporting from the back while in combat?" Abigail asked.

“Exactly," Elaine said. “And for the record, I think you're a very powerful part of our party. I don't care that you lag a level behind Alexis, Evelyn and Ophelia. Right now you've hit a ceiling because of our Bond Level. But you aren't letting that hold you back. Instead I found you training your magic so you can grow stronger without leveling. I couldn't ask for a better team member than you.”

Abigail was blushing crimson. “How can you say all that with a straight face?”

“Because it's all true," Elaine said and gently cupped Abigail's cheek. “I'm sorry we've had such a rough start of it.”

“Y-yeah," Abigail stammered out.

**

Lieutenant General Francis Hayworth was sitting in his office, checking his mail. The CARD he was wearing made that a lot easier than it had ever been. He didn't even need to sit at his desk to do it but was only sitting there out of a sense of decorum.

Managing Base 15 had turned out to be both more and less stressful than he'd expected. Less stressful because things weren't too dangerous right then. The cadets weren't strong enough for the big operations yet. That would change in time but for now things were relatively relaxed. But on the other hand things were more stressful for him because of the crazies he was supposed to work with.

Jeanne d'Arc was a breath of fresh air. A powerful angel but smart, capable and disciplined. She was a military leader at heart and knew how to run a military base. But even still she was strong enough to crush his skull between her fingers and she was a living legend to boot.

Professor Stollos was more trouble. The man was driven by his research and was clearly genuine in his desire to strengthen his subjects and make them capable of protecting humanity but Francis knew the man was capable of horrible things. He'd seen some of the things the man had done. The twisted monster he'd shown off two days ago was only the tip of the iceberg. So while Francis trusted the man's intentions he still felt queasy around him.

And finally there was Nurse Rachel. Beautiful, seductive, aggravating Rachel. The less said about her the better.

And he wasn't sure who to raise it with but the cadets were also slowly getting more and more eccentric. The others hadn't made mention of it yet but Francis had noticed that some of them were acting slightly off. He had chalked it up to them being holed up at the compound at first but now he was beginning to wonder.

Right then he was reading a memo from Base 15's monitoring division about a concerning energy spike they'd picked up. He wasn't sure what all that magical mumbo-jumbo meant but he did know that it would mean trouble if what they'd found was true.

Just at that moment there was a sharp knock at his door.

“Enter," Francis called out and instantly a very frazzled-looking Prudence stormed in.

Off all the nutcases he'd been given to wrangle he probably liked Prudence the best. Jeanne was a military woman but she seemed lax compared to Prudence. Prudence was a born soldier. From what he'd picked up along the way he knew she'd already been a soldier in life. That meant she couldn't possibly be that old because women in the military had practically been non-existent for many, many centuries. Heaven's hierarchy was a little esoteric to him but as he'd understood it the highest rank was that of the Seraphim, after that came Cherubim like Jeanne and right beneath those came Ophanim like Prudence. Even more, Prudence wasn't just an Ophanim, she was the direct subordinate of a Cherubim, Jeanne, which meant that she was very high-ranked as far as these things went.

Those two facts combined meant that Prudence was very likely an ambitious high-flier, no pun intended. And that was a personality type he could work with.

“Ophanim Prudence," he acknowledged her. The brass had decided to put him in charge of this entire compound, which meant that technically he was currently her superior even though she could crush a platoon of human soldiers. It was a farce, nothing more and nothing less.

“Lieutenant General," Prudence barked, snapping to attention. At least she was a good sport about this farce. “The monitoring division asked me to scout out an energy spike they've observed.”

“I'm aware of the energy spike," he said. “Please report.”

Prudence took a deep breath. “An army is marching down the 80 en route to our Ohio refugee camp and they're definitely not friendlies. They'll reach it in 48 hours.”

**

“Why did you have to say that?" Jeanne demanded, leaning over Rachel's desk and glaring down at her.

Rachel smiled, as Jeanne's position gave her a great view down the angel's ample cleavage. “Say what?”

“The comment about my virginity," Jeanne said.

“Was I wrong?" Rachel asked. She'd been bored and wondering what, or rather who, she would do tonight but her boredom was thankfully over. And from the scent and the visions Jeanne had been bombarding her with since entering her office she knew she was going to have a lot of fun tonight, so long as she didn't mess things up.

“That's not the point," Jeanne said, glaring at her. “It's unseemly.”

“Virginity is overrated," Rachel said. “A virgin isn't a better or nicer person just because they've never fucked.”

Jeanne's eyes narrowed. “A succubus would say that.”

Rachel smiled. “In the end, the only thing virginity is good for is to stir people's imagination.”

“Imagination?" Jeanne asked.

“Tell me, Jeanne d'Arc, have you ever considered it?" Rachel asked, her tone turning low and husky. “All those men who followed you, who bled and died for you, have you ever wondered how many of them were motivated by the idea of being the first to ever fuck your tight virgin pussy?”

Jeanne flushed a deep shade of red and Rachel savored it. Not just the sight but also the onslaught of images Jeanne put out, her desires going into overdrive. Up until this point she'd truly never imagined all those men crowding around her and using her as their willing plaything. Rachel felt close to orgasm just from that. She knew Jeanne was no wide-eyed blushing maiden anymore but even so the gorgeous blonde had just been corrupted a little more.

Rachel wasn't trying to get her to fall or anything nefarious like that, though. For one thing the only way for an angel to fall would be for them to willingly forsake Heaven and its laws and Rachel had no interest in putting in that kind of effort. The true reason Rachel was doing what she was doing was that she knew the angel had a dirty mind. There was nothing evil about it but Jeanne was so damn repressed about it. And repressed sexual desires were the easiest way to drive Rachel wild. It was somewhere between her drug and her kryptonite. She hated it when people repressed their desires but she loved getting repressed people to admit those desires.

“Tell me that thought didn't make you wet," Rachel told her.

Jeanne averted her gaze and Rachel smiled.

Angels couldn't lie. There was a certain spectrum to this inability but it was shared by all of them. All of them could mislead, some of them could tell partial truths, but none of them could directly tell a lie. Rachel already knew that Jeanne was one of the angels who could get away with telling partial truths even if leaving out too much clearly caused her migraines, but at least she wasn't too bound by this rule. The worst example was an angel named Remiel, protege to the Angel Lord of Charity, Maria (Yes, the Virgin Mary herself). Remiel wasn't just unable to speak lies, he was utterly incapable of stopping himself from answering any question truthfully and completely. And given that Remiel had a rather low opinion of most people around him that made him come off as incredibly rude and brash.

Anyway, in reaction to Rachel's question Jeanne shrank back into herself. Rachel was certain she'd pushed too far and that Jeanne was about to bolt but then the angel said:

“I can't.” It was almost a whisper. It had to be, or the quavering would have been too obvious.

Rachel nodded. “Did you know I can sense's people's desires?”

Jeanne flinched as if she'd been struck.

“I know the kinds of things you want, Jeanne," Rachel said, her voice a bit gentler than before. “I know you were looking forward to helping me with Elaine's Oath.” In fact, some of the things Jeanne had wanted to do with her and Elaine had been very naughty indeed.

“Lust is a sin," Jeanne whispered, as if reminding herself.

“I've heard your preachers talk, you know?" Rachel said. “The sins are inevitable, as are the virtues. For example, I am practicing temperance right now.”

Jeanne snorted. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“If I wasn't I wouldn't be sitting here, talking to a repressed little angel," Rachel countered, then went on. “The sins are only truly sins when they cause you to harm your relationships with others. But that isn't what's happening here. Being true to your desires wouldn't hurt anyone, it would just cause you to loosen up a little.”

The words caused Jeanne to hesitate. She was clearly mulling them over. She looked back at Rachel and let her eyes roam over her. She didn't let her appreciation show much at first but the more she thought and the more she looked at Rachel the more she started undressing her with her gaze.

Rachel smiled internally. She knew Jeanne's mistress, the Angel Lord of Temperance and Chastity, wasn't as stuck-up as the title indicated. The fact that Jeanne was so repressed, therefore, had nothing to do with Lady Venus and everything to do with Jeanne being a living legend that others looked up to. It had created stifling expectations for her and she barely allowed herself any rest or diversions. And Rachel hated seeing such a radiant beauty wasting away her afterlife like that.

“Tell me you don't want me, Jeanne," she finally said, very gently. “Tell me you don't want my mouth on your lips, on your gorgeous breasts, on your toned stomach, or on your pink little pussy.”

Jeanne let out a shuddering breath. “I-I... I can't.”

“I will do anything you want me to, Jeanne," Rachel said, her voice still soothing. She was worried about startling Jeanne and driving her off. She had almost broken through to the stubborn legend. She just needed a tiny little push. “Even the things you won't admit to wanting. But I need to hear you say it. Tell me you want me, Jeanne.”

Jeanne's breathing quickened a little and Rachel feared she'd pushed too hard, but then the angel said: “I want you, Rachel.”

“Then kiss me," Rachel commanded.

Jeanne leaned over, cupped Rachel's cheek in her hand, and gently pressed their lips together.

The angel let out a moan the moment their lips met. Rachel had expected the kiss to be slow and gentle, hadn't wanted to kiss Jeanne deep and hard for fear of going too far, but Jeanne was the one who deepened the kiss. She sucked and nibbled on Rachel's bottom lip and then thrust her tongue into her mouth, invading her as she pulled her closer.

All her desires finally came spilling out as if a dam had burst inside her and Rachel was exuberant. Finally getting the angel to admit her feelings was even better than she had imagined it would be.

Of course, at that very moment there was a knock at the door just a second before Lieutenant General opened the door, saying: “Nurse Rachel, I need you for an all-hands meeting!”

**

Subject 259 was staring at a map of the state of New York, putting the dots together and coming up with a picture she didn't like very much.

After spending days scouting out locations related to Project Seedbed she'd found that while some were still untouched many of them had been destroyed. At first it hadn't made much sense to her. If there had been a coordinated attack on the Project there should have been more destruction. On the other hand, if a group of survivors had just been fighting for their lives there should have been much less. It had only started making sense once she'd asked the AI riding Subject 202 to procure her a map. Once she'd started marking down where the Project had been attacked it made more sense.

The attacks on Project Seedbed formed an almost perfect circle. Analyzing the timings would take a bit longer but Subject 259 was almost certain that whoever was responsible for these attacks was at the exact center of that circle, as if they'd been marching outward and trying to liberate the region from the Outsiders' influence.

Laudable, certainly, but didn't they realize how exceedingly obvious it would be to observers? Did these idiots think that the Outsiders were an uncoordinated, mindless horde that wouldn't notice such things?

To be fair, the main forces of the Outsiders wouldn't. But her creator and, more importantly, the people he'd taken up with, the shadowy cabal Subject 259 had only heard whispers of, were most certainly not mindless. And if she reported her findings to her creator he would come down on these people like a ton of bricks. But if she didn't report her findings then the AI riding 202's body would tell him, at which point her punishment would make 202's seem merciful in comparison.

As such, lying wasn't an option. She had to comply. However, she had a few cards left to play. She couldn't keep quiet but she could delay her report, make up some bogus excuse for why they had to be extra sure, why they had to analyze the attack timings and then carefully scout out the perpetrators.

She just hoped she'd find some way to alert those people of what was coming before it did.