Chapter 6: Power Leveling III

“I'll go first if that's alright,” Cassie said with a meaningful look at Abigail.

“Sure, go ahead,” the singer said and Elaine studied her for a moment.

Up until a little while ago a statement like this would have been timid and reluctant. Abigail had been terribly hesitant before, afraid of even speaking up. But then she'd spent some time talking to Cassie, then Elaine had had a long heart-to-heart with her. And now, finally, she was part of the group. She was still the only person on their team who wasn't in an intimate relationship with Elaine but even so she no longer felt like an outsider. She was merely naturally introverted and so the much more outgoing Cassie of course forged ahead and she was clearly glad to let him. It also didn't help that Abigail was likely still self-conscious about her Bond Level being so much lower than those of the others.

It really was a shame how timid Abigail was. Put her in front of a crowd and let her sing and the woman could command an entire room but outside of this very specific situation she was timid and withdrawn. Which was a shame because, while Abigail was beautiful no matter what she did, when she forgot about her anxiety and just sang she was gorgeous. Tall, lithe, with a breathtakingly beautiful face and long, flowing tresses of warm brown hair, the woman could have been a super model if she didn't also have a golden voice. Elaine didn't feel any attraction towards her but that was mostly because of the way she'd acted when they'd first met. While Elaine no longer held a grudge she didn't feel any romantic interest for the woman. And while Elaine could tell that Abigail was objectively drop-dead gorgeous, she was a bit too perfect to do it for her. She was the kind of beauty Elaine couldn't imagine soiling, couldn't imagine being intimate with. Maybe it was asinine but it was how she felt.

She was snapped out of her musings when Cassie shared his level up screens and the AR displays filled her field of vision.

“How do you have so many EXP?” Evelyn asked.

“I think I read something about you getting a hundred and fifty in achievements,” Elaine said. “What was that about?”

Cassie actually blushed a little at that. “Well, I got fifty for saving a comrade's life and a hundred for saving ten comrades' lives.”

“Right,” Evelyn said. “You were hopping all over the place saving people.”

“It's what I do best,” he said.

Elaine raised an eyebrow at him.

“I'm not bragging,” he quickly said. “My skills are all about protecting people. It's the actually doing damage part that's difficult for me.”

“So you don't like your skills?” Alexis asked.

“I like my skill set a lot,” Cassie said. “It's just that after getting into my first proper fight I can see where my problems lie... and what I need to fix them.”

“And what do you need?”, Alexis asked.

“Pretty much exactly what I've got here,” Cassie said. “The upgrade for Protective Refraction is great. I was really straining to block the Darklight before you and Ophelia showed up. The Riposte thing would have made things so much easier. And knowing who's about to die would make the hopping around better.”

“That skill is really morbid,” Evelyn said.

“But useful,” Prudence chimed in, causing everyone to look at her. “One of the scariest things about Outsiders is that they can destroy souls so thoroughly that they can't reach an afterlife, which is otherwise impossible. Even the vilest shit in this world can't do that. But they can. So Cassie being able to just keep souls safe is incredibly valuable.”

“So no soul can be destroyed by the means of this universe?” Cassie asked. “So what about the really vile people? We've already heard that Hell isn't a place of punishment and damnation. So what about people like Hitler? Mengele? Mao? Do they just get to be assholes for all eternity?”

“Depends on the people,” Prudence said. “The vilest criminals are kept by Ahriman in a special part of Hell. But that doesn't go for all of them. Joseph Mengele, for example? Well, from what I heard, he is the head researcher in the infernal city of Gomorrah, a job he inherited from Professor Stollos.”

“Charming,” Cassie said.

“Yeah, it's a part of Hell that even most demons try not to think about too hard,” Prudence said. “Hell is all 'might makes right'.”

“Doesn't seem like Rachel's that powerful,” Evelyn said.

“You'd be surprised,” Elaine said. “She's still an Arch-Fiend.”

Prudence nodded. “Not only that, but not all power has to be personal. If Rachel ever flexed her connections or started developing loose lips she could sink a lot of ships in Hell. And people are very aware of that.”

“Huh,” Evelyn said. “I see.”

“Anyway,” Elaine said. “We were talking about Cassie's leveling.”

“Right,” Cassie said. “I suppose there's no question of what or how I should buy since I can afford everything and it'll all count for my levels so I should just go ahead, right?”

“Absolutely,” Elaine said.

“More Luck than Intelligence, huh?” Cassie mumbled to himself. “Well, slap a bunnygirl outfit on me and call me Asuna, I guess.”

“I don't get that reference,” Elaine said, a little annoyed that she was left out of an in-joke for once.

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “Just calling myself a bimbo, nothing more.”

“Just so long as you don't start talking like a valley girl,” she said.

He grinned at her, then said in the ditziest voice he could affect: “But, like, doesn't that just sound, like, super hot and stuff? Like, oh. My. God.”

“Please stop,” Elaine begged.

**

Prudence listened to their banter but the more she heard the more she started wondering. She was aware that Cassie was a boy. It was very much not apparent from the way he looked and sounded, but she knew it. If she hadn't, then his stat sheet referring to him as Cassius would have told her. And she was also aware that Elaine and him had a physical relationship. And so she couldn't help but wonder what their relationship was like.

Elaine looked as if she could snap him like a twig, so try as she might Prudence couldn't imagine Elaine lying down and being a pillow princess for this gorgeous little slip of a man. Maybe she just pushed him down and took what she wanted from him? Was that what he was doing? Was he trying to provoke her? Or maybe she had it all wrong and he was actually a domineering playboy in bed? Prudence imagined Elaine bent over the bed, spreading her cheeks and inviting him while he teased her.

She rubbed her thighs together at the thought, warmth spreading outward from her core and all the way to her cheeks. She was so lost in her fantasies that she only noticed the stat screen in her field of vision when Evelyn said:

“Whoa, look at that!”

Immediately Prudence shot up as though someone had stabbed her, then blushed even harder when she realized that the comment hadn't been about her. Thankfully, nobody had seen her daydreaming about Cassie railing Elaine from behind. Lord above, she needed to get laid.

Except, unbeknownst to her, Cassie had noticed.

**

“Interesting,” Elaine said.

“What is?” Cassie asked.

“My Agility is at 265,” she said.

“I don't really see the significance,” he admitted.

“I'm pretty sure the Professor told us that stats cap at 255,” she said. “But I'm already over that.”

“Maybe we went beyond his calculations again?” Alexis suggested.

“It's more likely that these caps don't apply for Elaine, given that she isn't entirely human anymore,” Prudence chimed in, having finally calmed down.

“I can't say I'm a fan of that line of thinking,” Evelyn said. “She's still human where it counts.”

Prudence raised an eyebrow. “Am I?”

Evelyn opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. She thought about it for a moment, then said: “Point taken.”

**

Rachel Cypher didn't really do afterglow, as a rule. She had supernatural stamina and could keep going without rest so if she ever stopped having sex it was usually for the benefit of her partners and not her own. That being said, she did enjoy the companionship of someone whose brain she had just fucked out.

Usually.

Part of her was ecstatic that she'd finally managed to get Hayworth to loosen up a little. Even better, he'd been just the kind of animal between the sheets she'd hoped he would be. There was a certain thrill in the fact that she'd gotten him to do these kinds of things with her. The fact that he'd taken pictures of her smeared with his cum and sent them to his wife for her to masturbate with had made it even better. All in all seducing Hayworth had been exactly as good as she'd hoped it would be.

Except... it did kind of pale in comparison to what she'd had a little while ago. Being with Jeanne was thrilling. It held the same excitement as getting Hayworth to loosen up but Jeanne's appeal ran deeper. Jeanne, for much of her afterlife, had been so repressed that in her current desire to make up for lost time she was willing to indulge many of Rachel's more deviant desires and she always enjoyed lovers she could show her true self to. This was especially true as Jeanne was her equal in rank and though the angel was nowhere near as old as her the two of them could still relate to each other far better than they could to any mortal. There was a certain kind of... comforting companionship in the relationship the two of them shared.

And then there was Elaine.

Hayworth had fucked her brains out, sure. But Elaine had fucked her brains out, tossed them into a blender and fed her the resulting smoothie. The woman was a beast in bed and the deviant submissiveness Rachel had shown her had been infinitely more genuine than the acting she'd done for Hayworth.

Rachel wondered for a moment if she might have feelings for either of the two women but then shook herself out of it. She didn't do love. The closest she got was trust and affection. And she trusted Jeanne more than she had any other person in recent memory. And Elaine wasn't far behind in that regard.

Either way, it was while spooning with Francis Hayworth that she realized that pursuing Jeanne and, possibly, Elaine was the far more rewarding path forward.