Chapter 46
Bugger This for a Lark, We're Out!
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"You sure all three of the carriers have portkey targets on them?"
Mindy nods, putting her wand away. "Yeah, the carriers are in orbit, maintaining their position over the capital and then around the equator with even spacing. All our trackers are off-planet and holding their distance from us to within a couple of dozen feet, so they have to be there. But I think we are going to have to change the plan and just wreck the first one. Give the other two a reason to come closer, because I can't portkey us a third of the way around the planet in a single shot. It just isn't gonna happen."
It's been yet another week, and in that time a few things have happened. They got the Kodan soldiers marked. They finished the four ships. And they are now getting looks from everyone here that oscillate between hate, worry, and hope.
The Kodan response to their defense at the hospital had been to level the capital from orbit using something called a 'meteor gun.' They had felt the impacts even here, some forty miles away from the nearest collision. Of course, the fact that the fourth Gunstar, their Gunstar, had disappeared from the massive tent covered in scraps of trash they were using to hide things from the eyes in the sky probably isn't helping their host's overall mood any.
Mindy smirks at him. "Did you get the car?"
Dave laughs. "Yes, dear. I got the car." He raises an eyebrow. "Then I got the other car."
Her eyes go wide. "Other car?"
He laughs. "Yeah, when I wasn't working on our Gunstar I've been putting together all the pieces for one of these air-cars they have out junked in the lot. Found all the bells and whistles between the various models, too. I don't have the time to finish it if we want to get this done and get out of here, but I have all the parts stowed away in one of the garages. Damn things come with an optional fold system and a crazy fast sub-light speed too, never mind that they can kiss the edge of four hundred miles an hour while on a road. Hell, they are even effectively armored. They have to be to go that fast in the atmosphere and on the ground without the first kicked-up rock destroying the whole damn thing. Honestly, I just made sure I had all the parts I needed and then wheeled it in a couple of nights ago. I figure next we have some downtime we can go ahead and put the thing together, rune-enchant the hell out of it, and we'll have some pretty sweet and at least somewhat normal-looking wheels next time we're somewhere that has actual cars." He smirks. "Well, kinda sweet. The pieces I have would look a little like the A-Team van if it was a hatchback. I think the frame was originally a delivery vehicle. But the rear is big enough to be worth a space expansion, and anywhere we go it is bound to look like a one-of-a-kind prototype. That's cool of a kind."
Mindy looks at him confused. "Everyplace we've been so far has had cars."
Dave rolls his eyes. "Yeah, the taxi ride we took in London doesn't count. Magical Britain is a car-less void of stupidity, I don't care how many old Ford's are rambling around the forbidden forest."
He smirks. "You know, if we really don't want to be here any longer than we have to, we can just send a bomb to the portkey rather than go ourselves. They don't have magic or aura here. Hell, they don't even have force fields, which I suppose might interfere. Magical energy gets screwed up by other energies too, after all. We could be done in the next three hours. No-fuss, no muss, just a done deal."
She smirks at him. "You are really tired of these people too, aren't you?"
He nods, shaking his head irritably. "Yeah. The next one of these idiots gives me a dirty look for trying to save the people at the hospital, I'm liable to rearrange him some. No lie."
She nods. "You know what then? I say we do it. What do we want to do for a bomb?"
He shrugs. "We know we can make working Photon Bolts, how about we kick off a rune to duplicate them and then just send up a bunch with a couple of them on a thirty-second timer? Should do some damage, and it isn't like they'll have any idea what happened."
Mindy raises an eyebrow. "Why the thirty-second timer?"
His response is a wicked smirk. "So he has time to run to somewhere else in the ship before we send him another care package. Two or three of those? Interior explosions? I don't see those things being able to tank interior damage like that. We'll do the first one, and then 'borrow' an air-car from one of our ever-so-gracious hosts to do the other two. We can be done with the carriers by dinnertime, probably."
Fourteen hours (and one annoyed fan-fiction author) later, they once again find themselves in the gray mists. The man doesn't look quite as happy to see them as he usually does, though he certainly doesn't look upset.
"Well, that was a way to handle things. No question there. I'd ask why you hate the Rylans so much, but I caught your speech about them."
Dave sighs. "Well, when you are sorting out places to send us, you might try someplace we would actually be, you know. Wanted and appreciated? Might be a nice starting point?"
For the first time in their association, the black man looks... Annoyed. Not hugely. Not mad by any stretch. But decidedly annoyed. Then he smirks.
"Wanted and appreciated, eh? I think I can manage that one. Good luck, and just so you know? There is a goddess that will be watching this one very carefully. I was actually planning to avoid it for just that reason. But as a favor to her and to give you what you asked for, I'll send you to her latest pet project. Don't be shocked when you get there and are speaking a new language. Just one of the little services that we provide."
He goes to raise his hand, fingers ready to snap, when Mindy cuts him off.
"What goddess? And why the hell does she care?"
The old man smiles, and while it isn't a cruel or mean smile, it is definitely the kind of smile one might have if they know exactly who farted in the car and they ain't talking.
"Aphrodite. And you'll figure it out. I have faith."
Then, as it often seems to, things fade to black.
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Her eyes snap open, and she knows that something happened to awaken her, but she can't think of what that might be just now. She is far and away more comfortable than she can recall being when she wakes up unless it is in a hospital bed. At least she knows that Dave is here with her, even if the mini-map wasn't showing her that, she can feel his chest moving under her. It's pitch black in here though. Can't see a damn thing. Then she starts moving. More accurately, everything starts moving. Panicking, she engages her Aura for the protection and what light it offers while Dave stirs below her. In that shadowy mass of purple light, she can see that they are piled in the back seat of a car. A sedan of some kind, maybe. No, given the way the seats are arranged, this would almost have to be a limousine. But the limo itself isn't actually moving. It's been placed in a big metal crate...
"Game face on, Dave. We might have a problem."
Dave finds himself trying to concentrate on what she's saying while staring at her naked body covered only in purple flames with little bullet points for nipples in the cool accommodations. In the end, he looks away and sighs, slipping out from under her and sitting on the seat while he tries to get the morning wood to back down.
He starts putting his armor on with the system at the same time she does, and in the light now of both of their auras, he picks up what she is talking about.
"So, now's the part where you tell me you've been awake for like five minutes and you have no idea why we're in a limo that's stuck in a shipping container, being driven through the street, right?"
She rolls her eyes. "Smartass. Yes, that about sums it up. Thoughts?"
He considers for a few seconds. "Just that there must be something going on around here that's pretty messed up. Most places they've dropped us, they made it a point to put us somewhere we'd get picked up and taken to a hospital. The only two places they didn't were Vacuo, which we needed to be where we were to save the tribe I assume, and that waste in the alternate Australia where there were no hospitals. This thing has a serious new car smell going on though, and whoever is driving the truck is making largely turns and stops that make me think he's on a grid with traffic lights. So if they put us here, and probably on a ship originally, then all I can think is that they don't like the idea of us going to the hospitals here for some reason." Then he shrugs. "Beyond that? Honestly, I say we get out of here and at least find out if the sky is orange or something. Waiting until some rich guy takes possession of his new ride seems like a horrible idea."
She nods, having pretty much come to the same conclusion herself. Getting out of the limo turns out to be easy enough, as the car battery has power and the windows work. Once they are out, it gets a bit trickier. Mindy makes her way over to the door of the container and rattling it a bit lets a few flashes of light enter, but that's about it.
"I can get out by punching a hole and using my teleport once I can see outside. You want to just use your portkey that targets me when I do? Maybe dissolution yourself first, make it a little less likely that anybody sees you?"
Dave shrugs. "Sure you can't just take me with you?"
Mindy looks contemplative but shakes her head. "I'd like to find out, but I don't think during an escape from a moving vehicle and onto what I am hearing is a busy street would be the right time to try it."
Dave frowns slightly, but nods. "Fair. In that case, we'll try your idea. Maybe dissolution yourself before you go? Give you the option to get a bit away and out of sight before I port out to you."
In response, she pulls her wand out of its place in her inventory armory with a swipe of the quick-change system and the chameleon effect flows over her body.
Which meant that her Aura now appeared as a vaguely woman-shaped avatar of purple flame. Realizing the issue, she shuts that down. Swapping back out to the swords, she uses the tip of the now magically reinforced Combine super-metal to carve a small hole at eye level.
"Make sure your radio is on. If the crate here stops you hearing me once I'm out, give me a slow count to thirty before you pop over."
Thirty seconds later, he appears next to her in an alley and shakes his head in annoyance.
"Between the range and how easy they really are to block, we need to get a better com setup at some point. Any way to do a rune scheme for that?"
She frowns as the pair of them keep a lookout.
"Honestly, I'm not sure. I feel like there could probably be an answer in a pair of Legilimancy based rune sets that were tied together and we each wore one, like in our helmet or something. But I'm not sure what kind of range we'd get out of it. Besides, I'm not a fan until we figure out how we'd get that set up where I didn't have to experience most of my bones getting broken when you thought about it, and you didn't have to go through the panic and ridiculousness that was my dad trying to deal with me having my first period at ten, from the perspective of the one bleeding from their crotch."
Dave pales a bit. "Yeah. I can get behind that line of thinking."
Mindy looks up thoughtfully and then turns back to Dave.
"Hey, I'm gonna go ahead and get my falcon on for a few minutes, pop your full map open and see if you get out fill-in when I see the city from a birds-eye view."
Thirty seconds later, huge chunks of the city were filling in for him, and thanks to the truly aerial viewpoint, shadows on the map are few and far between when she comes back ten minutes later.
When she lands and turns back, she is shaking her head. "I think we're in Japan somewhere. I made out a lot of street signs and some writing on buildings, and it was all in Japanese." Then she motions to the concrete and corrugated steel building that surround them. "We're still on the docks, basically. These are all warehouses and some unloading cranes are only a dozen blocks away maybe. Only weird thing is how few people are actually here working."
At Dave's questioning look, she elaborates. "Based on the sun's placement it's close to noon, and there's only three cranes working out of probably a hundred or more. Plus, a good portion of the warehouses here are empty. Either an awful lot of people recently left town, or yeah. Something weird is going on."
Tapping his fingers absently on the dumpster he is next to, Dave considers their options.
"Well, we have a ridiculous amount of money, according to this. The galleons to Yen ratio gives a number too big to actually fit in the box. It just has an 'up-arrow' at the end of it. Without a contact or a valid identification, I would imagine we are kinda screwed on actually renting an apartment or buying any property, but I figure we still have two pretty valid options. We can either get a place that goes by the day or week and is willing to just accept cash and a ridiculously huge deposit rather than a credit check, or we can just set up shop in one of these warehouses that are abandoned. We need the room anyway, we need to sort out apparition now that we're not constantly being watched and we're not under the Hogwarts wards all the time. Besides, I'd like to put that car together. I have all the stuff, but we need space and time. If we make it a point to not get involved in whatever the hell is going on here for a while, or at least until it drops in our laps, we can maybe get some work and studying done."
Mindy nods, not being able to manage a problem with any of this. "Sit tight a few minutes, I'll see if I can find us a winner."
Dave leans casually against the dumpster and thinks about things while she is gone off in her sparrowhawk form again. By the time she returns fifteen minutes later, he has a basic idea what they need to do and discusses it while she is leading him to the warehouse in question.
"So, we need to sort out apparition, like I said. Eventually, that is one I'll be trying to get down wandless. I'd also like an opportunity to ramble around a bit in my animagus form. I've only managed level sixteen in it and I am pretty interested in seeing if hitting twenty-five will get me my own falcon form. I like my horse, don't get me wrong. It's been fun, and the fringe benefits are great."
His eyebrow wiggle causes Mindy to laugh. In addition to his... New gifts in certain areas, they had also noticed that his stamina for normal activities had skyrocketed. Or perhaps more accurately, normal activities no longer depleted his stamina bar nearly as fast, and it would regain stamina at only a half normal rather than a tenth when he was exerting himself. All that plus a mess of damaged nerves slowing down his own ultimate response to stimulation means that Mindy tends to sleep with a smile these days.
"But even with that, I'd like to be able to use it for scouting around if I can. Even just being able to keep up with you would be nice. I've actually been thinking about trying to add the runes they use for broom flight to a harness that I would wear under my armor. Probably wouldn't get near the speed of a broom, but any flight could be useful in a pinch. Get the car put together, and once the car is done and we have that set up as a place to live, I am thinking about reworking our four bulk storage into dedicated shop space for two of them, storage for a third, and sort out a reasonable garage setup for the fourth."
Mindy nods as she leads him to a side door on a large building. "There is a window open near the roof, so I got into this one and looked around. It has a couple of things that make me think it would work well for us. First is that nobody has set foot on the floor of this thing in fuck 'n years, the dust in there is for real. So I don't think we are going to need to worry about anybody stopping by to be a pain in the ass. Second, there is an actual flat roof and roof access, so we can set up the panels and get stuff charged up if we want, though I suppose that once we have the car sorted out it'll have a generator on it we can use instead. And lastly, this one has a complete office area in a raised section toward the back. Same place the roof access is, actually. I would guess the utilities are shut off, but having an actual bedroom and floor with carpeting would be nice. Besides, we have magical versions of the kitchen and bathroom stuff anyway."
Dave shivers a bit. He doesn't care that the thing is self-cleaning, self-sanitizing, vanishes the contents of itself when you close it, and is actually comfortable to sit on. Having a trunk compartment that is actually a toilette is just gross. Convenient, yes. But gross. The portable shower is nice though. A water generator and heater built into a stand with a hoop that will hold a curtain around the top. The whole thing folds up into a two-foot-by-one-foot box, and sets itself up or takes itself apart by simple rune activation. It even has a temperature control valve that manages how much of the incoming water is run through the heating elements and the option to vanish the water that makes it to the ground every few seconds. They were both things Mindy had put together after the first week on Rylos when she realized that it wasn't that she couldn't find the ladies' room, it was that all the facilities were unisex.
She was un-thrilled to learn this.
Mindy continues. "Anyway, I'll go ahead and set up a basic muggle-repelling ward to discourage anybody bothering us for no good reason, and an alarm ward to let us know if somebody is heading this way with a good enough reason to ignore the first one. Key us both into them, we should be good."
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It takes them until well after dark to get a few offices cleaned up and their own bathroom setup installed in the restroom located near what almost has to be a break room. They have their own kitchen accommodations set up in there as while the place obligingly has a tile floor and a few built-in cabinets, all the appliances are missing. Fortunately, they have their own. Mindy makes her way back up after setting out the perimeter ward-stones, and they both activate the anchor stone by bleeding on it while pushing their magic into it.
Dave brings out dinner for them in the form of fried chicken and steak fries that was originally made by the Lovegoods, and they eat while sitting comfortably on trunks that they've added a cushion to the top of, using another pair of stacked trunks as a table.
"Bed's set up and made, and I went ahead and set up the solar and brought the extension down the stairs. Topping off my batteries now, we can swap out yours tomorrow say about noon, assuming we get some decent sun. I don't really have any idea what the weather is like in Japan."
He takes a bite and then continues.
"All things being equal, it might be better for us to try not to make too much of a racket or use too many lights at night, so I was planning on pulling out the parts for the car tomorrow, figure we can screw with it then. Other than the car, learning apparition, and getting some time in on our animagus forms, is there anything else you wanted to work on?"
She considers for a few seconds and then nods before taking a sip out of her water bottle.
"I have some possibilities for your communications issues. Thought about it a bit, and it occurred to me that I was making this shit way harder than I needed to. Rune-based listening charms attached to the face-plate of our respective helms would be enough to get a clear voice for at least a good ten miles and would be pretty much unblockable without magic wards already in place. The only tricky bits about it really are going to be an on/off switch and trying to apply a directional, adjustable gain microphone. I don't need to hear you breathing, after all. Aside from that, the only thing on my agenda is getting infinite magazines along with cleaning, cooling, and repair charms on our guns. Maybe the rocket launchers too, since I already spent the time to work out copying explosive compounds for the Photon Bolts. Now that we have the option, the fact that it is still out of reach is making me a little crazy. Other than that, I want to try taking you with me when I use my semblance. Seems like it could be pretty useful. Can't believe we didn't think of it before."
Dave nods, considering what else they might need to be working on.
"Sounds good for now. I took a look at our food situation and barring something stupid happening, we're good for at least four months. Then we'll be down to rice and oatmeal again. So, I say we work on all that and whatever else we think of while we wait for whatever is wrong here to find us rather than the other way around."
Mindy can't help the smile that stretches across her face. A chance to chill and actually break in some of their new skills? Yes, please!
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The clip-clop of horse hooves on concrete awaken Mindy the next morning, and she smirks her way down the stairs of the office they have just co-opted to see what he's up to. When she exits the bottom of the stairwell, she just stares.
He was big before, but now he's just huge. Now he's probably nine and a half feet tall, and there's something else too...
"Crap, what the hell happened to you?!"
He nods, then makes his way back over and becomes human again.
"The size thing? Yeah. It makes sense though, we were physically eleven then. Still children. Not sure what kind of horse I grew up to be though, this is kind of ridiculous."
Mindy nods but is also looking at him curiously.
"Change back for a second, I want to double-check something."
He raises an eyebrow in curiosity, but he does so. Mindy makes a leap onto his back in her pajamas and lands as softly as a dewdrop as far as Dave is concerned.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. You are developing a patch of deep purple on your coat. Kind of like my feathers, just a sheen of purple that you can see when the light is right. A couple of them, actually. On either side of your spine, just over your shoulders. Think it has to do with the 'soul-blend' thing?"
She hops down and he turns back to human.
"Couldn't say. I didn't notice anything unusual about your form yesterday, but to be honest, we were a bit distracted. Wanna change over now and I'll check it?"
Mindy shrugs and does so, a hopping flight to his outstretched arm and he is gently stroking her feathers while he turns her around a few times.
"I think you are developing a couple of small green spots on your chest here. But just the faintest bit that you can see in the light, same as me with the purple. What's your Animagus level at?"
She hops off and becomes human in flight, dropping lightly to the floor, then checks her stats page.
"Twenty-two. But to be fair, I get a lot more opportunities to use mine than you do."
He nods, thinking. "Yeah, but this one seems like it is a lot like the map. We don't have to be making crazy XP to level it, we just need to be using it. I think I'll be taking my breaks standing up from now on."
She motions back upstairs and heads that way, with him following once he realizes that she is after one of two things. He's more than happy to have breakfast or assist with the other one.
By lunch he has all the parts for the star-car lined out on the warehouse floor and the two are deciding exactly what they want to do with it while Mindy is fiddling around with her rune set that she is trying to sort out for their communications. And the next week goes about as you'd expect.
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"So, apparition. The act of placing yourself somewhere other than where you are instantly by way of the use of magic." Mindy looks up from the book she was reading from. "Honestly, we already have the skill and Gamer's Mind. I mean, sure anybody can make a mistake especially with the one rank we have in it. But I think we can be reasonably assured that if we aren't already dealing with some pretty serious distractions, we ought to be alright. Especially if we can actually see where we are going to pop to. You want to go first?"
Dave sighs. "Sure. I guess I need it slightly more than you do, bird lady."
Her discovery that yes, she can take a passenger with her semblance with it just costing her double the Aura points was a hell of a boon, but he still isn't thrilled about being dependant on her and portkeys for his fast travel options. He concentrates, follows the instructions in the book and on his brain, and expends some of his magic points. The cracking sound of the displaced air in both locations is loud enough that Mindy is glaring at him, but he seems to have made it the ten feet he was trying for and kept all his bits and pieces.
Always a good sign.
After Mindy does the same, she shakes her head, kind of annoyed-looking.
"My semblance is way easier. We'd need to get pretty good at this to bother screwing around with it in combat. Right now it's too loud, too disorienting, and too flashy. But we do need to get good enough to get places quickly. Portkeys are great for long-distance travel to places you've already been, but not so hot for going quickly into places you haven't seen already. What's left to do on the star-car?"
He shrugs. "Most of it's done. Tanks are removed and replaced with generators, the side panels and frame are reinforced and will self maintain and repair. The electronics I have on it already handle most of the other things intrinsic to the vehicle itself. The space expansion on the cargo area went fine, and the false floor should work for keeping the thing useful for its original purpose. The trapdoor to get under that and into the two-story living quarters is big enough to accommodate me in my armor easily, and I went ahead and laid it out so the bottom floor is a bedroom and living area, while the floor just under the trapdoor is for setting out the kitchen and bathroom trunks. I mean, it's tight in there. But living out of it is very doable if we have to. The only thing left magic-wise is the portkey system if we are going to finish that. The runes are on the frame, but we don't have the control mechanism installed yet. Unless we are willing to go scrounge the local equivalent of a radio shack though, we'll probably have to rebuild and repurpose one of those tablets they gave us on Rylos."
Mindy wrinkles her nose a bit in irritation. "Don't those tablets contain the schematics on basically everything Rylans have built for the last ten thousand years or something?"
Dave nods. "Yeah. Hence why I am not thrilled to destroy them for this. We could potentially use one of those laptops we pulled from Harry Potter land, but that screen would take up a third of the dashboard for no good reason. We could set the whole thing up on a smartphone, something like those computers would be a lot of overkill."
Mindy cocks her head to one side. "Couldn't we install a computer in such a way that it would be covered up if we weren't using it? Having a computer in the cab I could see as useful for other things too."
Dave considers, then nods.
"I'll have to remove the Rylan version of an airbag. Some kind of spongy energy field thing. But honestly, if a wreck was nasty enough to hurt us that bad, I don't think their little energy field would do much for us anyway. It'll take a couple of days though, I'll have to find a way to transfer the Rylan programming to what the laptop can take, and then we need to hook it up to the rune scheme. I'll let you know when I get there and you can have fun with it."
Mindy smirks. "Want to work on the Animagus form for a while? Maybe swap between that and Apparition for the day? I know you're getting close."
In a show of annoying solidarity, Mindy clammed up when she hit twenty-five in Animagus. Wouldn't tell him what the soul-blend thing was and wouldn't try it before he did, though she has claimed that he'll love it. He nods.
"Yeah, I guess we really should. No clues?"
She shakes her head. "Nope, but it kicks in at twenty-five. You've been at twenty-four what, two days now? I'm betting you can make this happen today and you'll wake up tomorrow with some good news if we work at it."
Seventeen hours later...
Dave checks his wake-up messages and grins.
"Abraxan? Those flying horses the size of elephants from the fourth movie? So I can switch between a Human, giant horse, and a horse-bird hybrid?"
Mindy smirks. "I got Hippogriff. I guess the system wants us to have our own head or the one in our own animagus form. But check your status page on it. There's a surprise.
Dave does so. "Partial form? Isn't that what we already have? Part of one thing, and part another?"
Mindy motions him to follow her and she heads down to the warehouse floor.
"No, partial like this."
She concentrates for a moment and wings spring out from her back. Black and tan wings, with a shimmer of iridescent purple on the black spots.
Her wingspan is in the neighborhood of twenty-six feet, and she spreads them out and flaps them just once, rocketing twenty feet into the air while a hundred dust bunnies go fleeing for cover as the downdraft sends them flying.
She drops back on the ground with bent knees. "There was a drop-down menu, I could have picked centaur too. But I always thought I would make a good Valkyrie, and apparently, we'll get more options as we increase our skill more."
Dave nods and picks the same. It's hard logic to argue with. The speed and stability of a horse plus the ability to use a heavy machine-gun at the same time is definitely something worth looking into eventually, but for now? It's tough to beat the idea of being able to fly places.
While shooting things.
Then he winces a little. "Better stand back. Gonna try this Abraxan thing first, and I can only imagine the wingspan is going to be epic amounts of silly."
Centering himself in the massive warehouse, he concentrates and feels his form take a step further than his normal transformation. He looks down and then blinks. He's taller again, probably in the neighborhood of twelve feet. So full Abraxan size then. Maybe even on the big side for them.
Then he spreads his wings. The same black with iridescent purple that the spots on his coat were. These however stretch out more than fifty feet across, and he knows somewhere in his soul that even then, without magic he'd never get off the ground. With it is another story. But the form is entirely too big to practice with in a warehouse. The winged human form though, that could be doable.
Going back to human and then popping out wings of his own isn't the easiest thing to do, but when he has and has verified that part of the transformation actually alters his armor to accommodate, he smirks at Mindy, then taps her on the hand before jumping back, around, and into the air.
"You're it!"
The next four hours involve limited flight around the pillars in the warehouse, and by the end of it they are almost too tired to have bedroom fun before they lay down for the night.
Almost, but not quite.
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The next morning Dave awakens to find that Mindy is screwing around with the Herbology trunks that Pomona got for them.
"Whatcha doing?"
She looks up and sees him blinking a lot as he sits up.
"Not much, I just figured that if we were going to be here a while, it might be worth it to set these up and get them producing is all. Actually, I'm considering getting out the supplies and making a few basic medical potions today. You and I would almost never need anything like that, but I was thinking about when we killed the Goliath. There were at least a dozen of the men in the village that had been shot and we could have saved with just some blood replenishers and maybe some skele-gro. I double-checked her claims that sixty percent of healing potions are Herbology only, but I think what she meant to say was that sixty percent don't require magical animal bits. Some of them require mundane animal bits, but toads and pufferfish should be pretty easy to come across, comparatively anyway. I also found a substitution manual. You know, like when you're baking? If you're trying to make this, but you are missing that, a spoonful of A and a pinch of B will do? Same deal, so if we do decide to go for pure Herbology, actually most things can be made that way. It's just that the end result isn't as powerful if you do it with alternate ingredients."
Dave nods as he makes his way toward the kitchen area. "But having a weakened version is better than not having it at all, I gotcha. I'm going to start tearing apart the dash on the passenger side and get the system set up for the portkey once we've had breakfast, I'll leave it up to you to finish the inputs when I'm done."
And so they do.
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Another week later...
The two are down on the floor of the warehouse sparring with each other in their Vacuo workout set of heavy leather underclothes when they once again hear a booming crash from somewhere outside. It's been getting more and more common as time goes on, and the two of them have stoically made it a point to not ever even look outside. There is far too much they want the time to get done for themselves, and they both know without even looking that getting involved in whatever is going on out there will wreck their attempt at a vacation. This one, however, is a little different. Mindy looks over at Dave as the scream of terror makes it to them from somewhere within a few blocks. He nods.
"Yeah, looks like the vacation is over. It was nice while it lasted. Maybe you get airborne and find out what's going on? I'll head toward the scream on foot."
They both take a few moments to get their working gear on, and then Mindy shoots through an open window near the ceiling, while Dave carefully locks the door to the warehouse once he has stepped out.
Mindy finds the issue fairly quickly. It's accompanied by the crackling sound of electricity run amok. When she gets there, she sees a pair of obviously oriental women in what can only be bondage gear that are shooting lightning toward a car. One that sits in front of a storefront. With big smiles on their faces.
A storefront that has civilians in it. All of which are panicking.
An effort to determine why they are attacking a car leads to her discovery that there is a woman hiding behind it. Young seeming, but with uniformly gray hair that reaches just barely to her shoulders. She is wearing a pair of half-moon spectacles with the frames being red and a light purple dress. Possibly the least appropriate combat attire imaginable, though it occurs to Mindy that she might not have known that the electric S&M twins, as they almost have to be twins given their similarities both in facial structure and in attire, were planning to attack her today.
Then it dawns on her.
She's seen these people before. It was forever ago now, but it was in one of those cheesy as hell anime that centers around a boy so worthless he could be replaced by a sock puppet holding a dildo and somehow ends up with all the hot women anyway. She hadn't managed to make it past the first few episodes before she got fed up with the ridiculousness. But what she remembers tells her that in spite of what she sees, the two lightning bitches aren't actually the bad guys. Misguided maybe. Jumping the gun, assuredly. But evil? Not so much. They are even under the delusion they are doing their target a favor.
But if they are here, then... Oh fuck. She really can't let Dave out of her sight in this place. This is a fucking terrible place to have a powerful, skilled boyfriend and even if he knew what was going on, she's not sure it'd help. He's too nice a guy to smack around some dumb bint who is pouring her heart out to him, and all it takes is one fucking kiss...
She screams out as her falcon form dive-bombs the two. She needs to get this done quickly and get back to Dave. She isn't quite sure what she is going to tell him, because she loathes admitting she actually watched more than ten minutes of this tween-friendly attempt at super-powered, soft-core porn. But she knows she needs to get back to him. Ripping her talons across the wrist of the first and the forearm of the second as she goes by, she hears their wailing scream of shock as the inch-deep furrows in their flesh start draining their blood supply onto the ground. Then she whips around the car and lands next to the hiding woman. A woman whose eyes open comically wide as she becomes an armored human in front of her.
"I can get you out of here if you trust me."
In her desperation, the woman nods, holding out her hands.
"Thank you, I am Kochou, number twenty-two. Who are you?"
Mindy grabs the girl around the waist and using her semblance she teleports them to the roof of the shop. Then she peers out over the side of the building.
"I'm Mindy. No number, not an alien." Then she reconsiders. "Okay, that might not be entirely true. But I am human, anyway."
Then she mutters under her breath and taps the side of her helm as she sees Dave running toward her still bleeding and shocked targets.
"Dave? Yeah, I had to hurt them to get them to stop, but I know a little about this place and I don't think they are actually bad guys, just stupid and reactionary. Go ahead and heal 'em up, but do not, I repeat, do not let any of the bitches in this city kiss you. Ever. I'll explain when we get home."
Then she turns to the woman on the roof with her as Dave kneels down and starts a combination of wandless, silent, low-level flesh mending spells while at the same time cleaning and then wrapping the wounds in pure white cloth bandages.
"That is my boyfriend. I do not share. Now, do you have your... What the hell are they called, Ashikubey's or something?"
Kochou shakes her head. "No, I've not yet discovered my Ashikabi. I've only been on my own a few months though. I had hoped to find him quickly enough to avoid all of this, at least until the competition started, but those two recognized me." She pauses. "Are you sure you're not a Sekirei? I mean, you do things that humans normally can't. Though in truth, I don't know of a Sekirei that can change their shape like you do either."
Mindy, eyes still glued to Dave, answers as best she can while still being as vague as possible.
"I am positive I am not a Sekirei, so you can stop worrying about that. And as long as you don't have an Ashikabi, you're welcome to stay with us if you like. I know enough about your species to know that once you have an Ashikabi you wouldn't be able to keep your trap shut about us if they asked you or they were threatened, so once you have one we cut off contact and the two of us move house so you can't find us. That acceptable to you?"
The woman stands slowly, her mind awhirl as she considers her options. Finally, she nods.
"That would be acceptable, and thank you."
Mindy turns back to the street and sees Dave has stood up and helped the two girls to their feet. He is speaking, and while she can't quite make out the words between the growing crowd of rubberneckers and the wind, she can recognize the tone of the doctor-to-patient instructions. Then he turns back toward their warehouse and starts walking, tapping the side of his helmet as he goes.
"Meet you back home? And why do I think that your explanation is going to involve that near-porn you were showing Luna?"
Mindy growls as she leaps to the next rooftop over, followed by her newly rescued guest.
"Well, it doesn't. This one is an anime that I never watched past the third or fourth episode. My telling you not to kiss them has officially gotten you all caught up. Beyond that, you can just shut the hell up or I'll have to start going over the list of websites we found in your browser history when Dad and I were researching your dumb ass."
The silence stretches for a few moments, and then:
"I'll be good."
Mindy smiles.
.
S
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Author's Note:
Sorry. Trying to continue in the last universe was legitimately crushing my soul. So I could either cut it short or get sidelined into a writer's block that would keep me worthless for a month. Decided to go this route. Obviously.
Sekirei, for those that are not aware, isn't really as 'hentai-ish' as Mindy is making it seem. It does showcase the Japanese fascination with large breasted and powerful, yet somehow subservient women and the clothing choices don't do anything except show off the various flesh tones used while at the same time managing to cover anything that could give it a XXX rating. It does, however, have a 'soul bonding' mechanic in it that she is decidedly not interested in dealing with. We'll get into that later, but for now?
Thanks for reading, reviews are grand, and a favorite/recommendation is nice to see if for no other reason than the primary fandom is obscure enough that it might be the only way to get a wider audience. Have a great day!