10.02.2023
It is I, the Absolute Madman and I really should stop procrastinating so much! I don't know if I will but at least I know I should so that's a start, as the first step to solving a problem is acknowledging that you have it! Now what was step two again? Ascend from darkness or something like that? Eh, who cares anyway! We have much more important matters to attend to, like the comments!:
DragrexTheBrit - Is it even explained anywhere in the ARK lore what Element actually is? Cause I was specifically searching for a chemical element (from the periodic table) that possesses some sort of hydrophobic characteristic or can be refined to do so. The ARK easter eggs are taking a break for now but we'll definitely be revisiting them in the future!
TOPCAT-59 - Thanks!
n1ght4ury20 - It's not gonna be much of a surprise, but I think the choice has been justified enough.
mwebb0116 - I assume that crack is not exactly your cup of Joe is it? Welp, I hope it wasn't too tough to find the fic entertaining and that you won't consider losing the story permanently!
And with that done - enjoy the chapter!:
"You need to find what?" Mina scratched her head with an expression of utter confusion etched firmly on her face.
"An evaporative deposit of alkaline lacustrine environment." Momo repeated once again, basking slightly in the fact that she might've just cracked the code to cure their daughter.
"Can anyone translate that?" Kendo asked as she too failed to understand her friend's/rival's excitement.
"She means a dried out lake." Tokage answered nonchalantly, earning herself quite a few incredulous looks from the class A part of the group. "What? I like dinosaurs and stuff, so I ended up learning quite a bit about the distant past, fossils and archeological processes that took place a long time ago." She explained herself with a shrug.
"So we need to find a dried out lake…" Izuku mumbled to himself before turning to Kendo. "Would you happen to have seen something like that around here?" He asked directly, hope welling up within his heart by the moment.
Kendo noticed the tone of his voice but sadly didn't have any good news to relay to him.
"Unfortunately, no." She answered gently, hating the fact that she had to be the one to say it as well as the sight of his expression visibly saddening. "We found this spot only a couple of days after our unexpected arrival so we don't know the surrounding area that well, only the nearest vicinity." She really hated the way he deflated at her words. "All I know is that the direction you came from is blocked off by the mountain range, so your best bet would be to venture deeper into the forest and try your luck there." That was the best she could say to cheer him up at least somewhat without giving him false hope, that'd probably be even worse than the harsh truth.
"I guess we have no other choice then. A forest is far from the ideal place to search for a dry lake, but it's not like we have other options. If we're lucky then the bullshittery of this world works in our favor for once and we end up bumping into it by accident." Momo mumbled to herself. "It's already too late to go anywhere, so we should get some rest and leave in the morning." She announced and everybody agreed. Although the plan begged one peculiar question to be asked.
"Who is going though?" Neither of them were sure who said it, but it was something that all of them had thought about.
Silence befell them for a couple of moments before Izuku, who'd thankfully come out of his shell a long time ago and was no longer hesitant to insert himself into conversations, spoke up.
"I think Momo is an obvious choice since she's the only one that knows what to look for." He began as he pointed towards the raven-haired girl before pointing towards himself. "And I can't really let her go alone since we are doing this to save my daughter." Izuku said with a gentle smile as he looked back towards the still form of Shu laying on the sled off to the side.
Izuku and the girls had held a quick council on the first day of their joint stay to discuss whether or not they should openly come out and inform their fellow survivors about their relationship - which Izuku and Momo still refused to call a harem despite it literally being in the tags of the fic. They ultimately decided to withhold the information for now as the last thing they wanted to do was to weird out their generous hosts with something that they themselves still had a lot to figure out about. And whilst neither Kendo, Kodai nor Tokage would have any problems with their confession, Shiozaki was a completely different story. They knew fairly well that the girl was very devoted to her faith and hare- polyamorous relationships didn't seem to be something that she'd take well. Which, if you actually read the lore of the religion, makes no sense whatsoever.
And that's why the girls didn't jump in to say that Shuusa was their daughter also, despite the words all but threatening to spill out into the open if they didn't suppress them.
"Besides I'd probably need someone to actually mine it. I may know what I'm looking for, but I'm unfortunately not nearly strong enough to swing a pickaxe with any meaningful force." Momo sheepishly admitted, presenting concrete evidence that no one could argue with. Izuku was built like an entire apartment complex and he also had two massive guns on top of his cheese grater-like abs. That last feature had nothing to do with their planned expedition and everything to do with Kodai being too horni for this world.
"So you already have the brains and the brawn, but two people seem like too small a group to go out into the wild…" Kendo summed up.
"My thoughts exactly," Momo agreed with a nod before pointing to the petite purple-haired girl sitting beside her. "That's why I thought Kyouka could join us. If you're feeling up for it of course."
All the attention was suddenly focused on the punk rock enjoyer and she suddenly was very glad that she wasn't drinking right now cause she'd surely have to do a spit-take at this sudden, completely unprovoked, idea.
"W-Why me?" She questioned with a barely audible stutter and a tiny, itty-bitty blush on her cheeks.
"Well, we have the muscle and the thinker so it only makes sense to bring along a scout." Momo explained quickly as if the reason was obvious, which it may have been, at least to some.
"Damn, now I really hate the fact that our quirks don't work here. I would've jumped at the opportunity to accompany you two cuties if it wasn't for that!" Tokage, not a half-bad scout herself, proclaimed proudly, although there certainly was a teasy undertone in her voice and probably a well-hidden sense of disappointment.
"I mean, I don't have my quirk either, so are you sure I'm the right person for the job? Maybe you should take Kendo for example? Then you'd have two sets of muscle to do the heavy lifting." Kyouka pointed towards an alternative choice, the task not nearly as daunting as the fact that she'd be alone with not one but both of her crushes! And her heart was not nearly ready for that just yet!
"I'd be more than happy to go, but with Momo already on the team I can't really leave. Someone's got to keep this rowdy bunch in check after all." Kendo stated with a smile and a thumbs up.
"Please do not label me as a member of this 'rowdy bunch'. I do not have to be kept in check." Shiozaki protested calmly which earned her a deadpanned look from the amber-haired martial artist.
"Someone has to stay behind and make sure that you don't crucify them for their past and future transgressions."
"Fair."
There wasn't much Kyouka could do at this point so all that was left was for her to agree to join Izuku and Momo on their adventure as well as come to terms with the fact that her heart might not survive this journey.
"Don't worry, even without your quirk you are by far the most observant person I know." Momo said in an attempt to reassure her worried friend, unknowingly making her mental condition deteriorate at an even faster rate.
"Momo is right. There's no else I'd trust with this more than you." Izuku stated, driving the final nail into Kyouka's coffin.
"Yup, I'm going to die." Kyouka thought to herself as her heart rate already refused to calm the fuck down and all they did was say a few kind words and smile at her! "Please let my death be a swift one…"
The entire camp awoke the next day and spent the majority of the morning preparing supplies for the trio that was chosen to go out in search of the cure for Izuku's daughter.
Izuku grabbed his trusty Tek Spear as well as the Salvaged Icepick, some rope and a few other oddities that might come in handy during their expedition, whilst Momo decided to bring the Tek Carbine and a small reserve of ammo just to be safe. Last but not least Kyouka became the bearer of the compass that pointed towards Mina's location - a phenomenon that Momo had yet to explain to the girls of class B. The compass probably wasn't necessary as Izuku's natural navigating skills didn't fail them once so far, but it was better to be safe now than sorry later.
They had obviously packed some provisions for the way so that they didn't have to dedicate a lot of time to gathering food on the go and lastly they had decided to take one of the tents with them, just so that they had a dry place to sleep in case it starts to rain. Catching a cold or worse a flu away from their base would be disastrous and would most likely result in the expedition being cut short due to the risk of pushing forward with a sick person amongst their group.
The preparations didn't last that long so the trio departed with the hopes of making some significant headway right off the bat. And they did.
They traveled quite far before they had to settle for the night. Covering distance does not equal making progress however. Especially when you are covering the aforementioned distance in search of something that you do not find. Neither of them expected to find the solution to their dilemma on the first day however as that would make their entire excursion very anticlimactic, so their spirits were still quite high on the second day.
Two days traveling through a seemingly never ending forest however did take a slight toll on them, especially since neither of them could afford to get a full night's worth of sleep as someone had to stay awake and keep watch over the area while the other two slept. Thankfully the howling that they were almost used to hearing back in the hidden valley had stopped and they had no run-ins with the local fauna so that was at least something.
The third day had the trio entering a more sparsely forested area that could indicate a coming shift in biomes. Before they could reach the aforementioned border however night began rolling in and traveling in complete darkness was not an idea that either of them fancied at all.
They decided to camp out next to one of those giant trees that continued to appear every now and again even though they've left the denser part of the forest behind already.
They dropped all of their stuff right next to the tree that they chose to sleep under and began preparing for the night. Izuku got to work on setting up the tent whilst the girls gathered loose rocks and sticks to make a campfire as the lone nights could get a bit chilly around these parts.
It was when Kyouka leaned against the tree that something quite unexpected happened - she fell through.
"Woa-!" She managed to let out before her voice cut off and was replaced by a pained groan.
Izuku and Momo immediately went over to examine the state of their companion and were surprised to find that the giant tree was apparently hollow on the insane and Kyouka managed to lean against the weakest part of the log which gave in and created an entrance.
"Are you alright?" Izuku asked in concern once he was done admiring their newest discovery.
"Yeah, thankfully my ass cushioned the fall." Kyouka sassed in response as she checked her body for any obvious injuries aside from her bruised butt and wounded pride.
"Need me to massage that bruise to make it ache less?" Izuku teased before diverting his attention away from the girl and back towards the hollow inside of the tree, completely missing the conflicted expression that crossed Kyouka's face at his joke.
"It's surprisingly humid in here, but also a lot warmer than outside." Momo pointed out. "Not to mention the fact that we'd be completely hidden in here and the entrance is barely noticeable as is!" She added excitedly.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Izuku asked and nigh identical grins appeared on their faces.
"We'll finally get to sleep through the entire night!" They both cheered in excitement as Kyouka's face paled. She could handle sleeping next to one of them, but two? That she wasn't so sure of.
How did she end here? And why was she still here? Just to suffer? Momo's Massive Mammaries on the right and Izuku's completely shirtless torso on the left. If this was a dream then Kyouka'd be in heaven right about now, probably making all of her fantasies come true one after the other till she wakes up and has to act like she didn't just take part in what she wholeheartedly believed to be the hottest threesome scenario to ever happen.
This was not a dream however. This was very much real and it kept Kyouka from sleeping, because as soon as she closed her eyes to even try and fall asleep, her imagination immediately bombarded her with various what-ifs and less-than-appropriate pictures. She blamed the fact that she had little to no private time over the past week and a bit.
"I can't take it anymore!" Kyouka whined mentally as her entire body flared up as if affected by a fever.
Momo wasn't joking when she said that the area inside the tree was way warmer than the night air outside. The difference was so staggering that Izuku even decided to sleep without a shirt and Momo ended up unbuttoning her own to a point. Kyouka would have trouble staying cool just because of the physical closeness of her crushes, but the additional eye-candy was a stimulus that she was not able to ignore at all.
At some point in the night she felt as if her control over her own body was slipping and she found her hands roaming all over her skin, trying to scratch an itch that she couldn't really place. She may have had little to no control over her hands but she was more than aware of what she was doing. She had touched herself in the vicinity of her friend's already - and even got caught doing it once! - but they were literally right next to her now! Why was it turning her on even more?!
"Fu~uck…" Kyouka had enough will to stifle the moan that threatened to escape her throat when her fingers glided against her folds; the feeling sending chills up her spine even with two layers of clothes in the way.
It wasn't long till two layers became too much for her taste and she found her hands quickly working to shed at least the pants and make the contact that much more stimulating. With nothing but panties in the way the jolts of pleasure that made her body thrash in bliss became almost unbearable.
Kyouka continued to rub her folds with slow, deliberate strokes that made her back arch every time, but - just like she feared would happen - even that became not enough all too soon. She wanted more. She needed more.
She paused her ministrations just for a few moments as she rapidly, and a little carelessly, pulled her pants and panties completely off, before spreading her legs and finally getting to enjoy that unobstructed contact which made her head spin and her entire body tremble in anticipation of what she knew would soon happen.
That's when her plan was derailed however as her previous moves managed to stir Izuku awake, and whilst their sleeping quarter wasn't that well lit, he managed to piece the puzzle together, especially once he realized that one of Kyouka's legs was resting on top of his and it didn't feel like she was dressed the same way she was when he fell asleep some time ago.
Her labored breath, twitching body and occasional moans that reverberated inside her mouth were also dead giveaways that something was going on and it was probably one of the most arousing realization that Izuku could think of. He just woke up to one of his girlfriends masturbating next to him - how could he not indulge himself even a bit?
Kyouka almost shrieked in panic when she felt a hand push her left leg down, spreading her open just a tad bit wider. Her head snapped to the left and her body relaxed and tensed up at the same time when her black eyes locked with Izuku's green ones.
"Having fun?" Izuku asked in the most teasing way she ever heard him speak and as his hand started traveling up her thigh she already knew that she was about to experience something amazing.
The problem was that she had absolutely no idea what was going to happen, but will forever remain thankful that things went the way they did. She managed to snag herself a girlfriend that night after all!
Yes, I did it. Hear me out though! It was either cutting it before the action really started or leaving you hanging mid-action, so I chose what I believe to be the lesser evil! You can rest assured though that next week we'll finally have a proper smut after the dry spell that was the transition from Arc One to Arc Two, so you can at least look forward to that!
I won't say anything else - mostly cause I gotta bounce on over to Ao3 and post an update there - so have a great day and I'll catch y'all in the next update!