-chapter 54-
"Kitty did you eat all the blue bagels?" Zari asked one morning as we all had breakfast together in the dining room on deck 6 which was hilariously large for only 3 people.
"I don't even like those, not enough meat." Kitty replied.
"We'll just have to get some more at the next station." I said.
"Where's the closest one, we need to stop soon." Zari said.
"I don't know, can't be too far away." I replied.
"And then maybe we can get you a bikini." I said to Kitty.
"No." Kitty replied.
"Oh come on." I said. "Please."
"No." She replied again.
"Hey wait, do you have the keys to room 24 on deck 3?" Kitty asked.
"Why? It's just an empty bedroom." I replied.
"It's locked and there's a weird smell coming from it." Kitty said.
"Weird." I replied. "Maybe I forgot to unlock it."
There were a lot of rooms to unlock. Deck 3 didn't have many bedrooms due to housing an airlock and the second level of the reactor room, part of the hangar bay, a laundry room, and a storage room for spacesuits and other also didn't have a lounge and was pretty far away from the kitchen so there was not a lot of reason to spend much time on it.
"Beep! Beep! Beep! Message received." The ship's computer went.
"Hmm, guess we should check that out." I said.
Anyway, Saphira made it to space with her new jellyfish friends. The U.S.C quickly spotted their primitive vessel, and as protocol made themselves known, even going so far as to bring them onboard and take them to a relatively nearby space station. A meeting was had, Saphira helped translate, and they ended up becoming another one of the U.S.C's various member planets in exchange for a wealth of information and technology that would effectively accelerate their space program by hundreds of years. Also Saphira's connection to me was discovered, and, after records were checked and some bureaucrats somewhere finally sorted out where I was likely to be, a long distance message was sent to my ship's computer, which, after traveling through the cosmos for several days, was finally received.
It basically explained everything I just said, as well as where to go if I wanted to meet Saphira, who was now residing at a U.S.C embassy at a station quite far way, but not impossible to reach.
If you're wondering how this was possible, every ship computer has a unique Id not unlike a mac address, so it also acts as a sort of mailbox, messages can be broadcast by long distance radio waves, often transmitted from large terrestrial stations that do next to nothing but automatically relay series of messages all day. Broadcasts within U.S.C space could even be bounced from planet to planet.
"It says the U.S.C found Saphira and we can head over to this station to pick her up." I said.
"Sapphy's alive?" Kitty asked.
"Apparently." I said. "Might as well go see her, we'd be one step closer to getting the group back together and we still don't know where to even begin to look for Phoebe."
"I agree, it'd be nice to have a new face around here for once." Zari said.
And so we turned the ship around and started heading towards Saphira. I composed a message to send to the embassy to tell them Kitty and I were coming. That way they'd be willing to keep her at the embassy until we showed up. I didn't say anything about Zari, for obvious reasons, unfortunately she had such a high ranking position in the Zelusian army the U.S.C would love to arrest her. On most stations this wouldn't mean jack as she just looked like any other alien babe in street clothes, but stations with an embassy onboard were typically more secure. And this particular station was larger than most, with docking bays for full-sized U.S.C battleships and carriers. Our ship wasn't exactly small, but it wasn't a 5 kilometer long star destroyer capable of singlehandedly laying siege to an entire planet. There were ships out there that would make the good old H.A.V.A.C.S look tiny, especially if just the fuselage was taken into account and not the massive wings required to keep airborne, our ship easily dwarfed it in that respect, being about the size of a fairly impressive naval yaught. There were bigger yaughts out there, and then there were luxury cruise ships. But this was literally all two lifetime careers in the U.S.C plus pensions could afford. And to be honest, it was like living in a flying hotel and there was so much extra space we really didn't need a bigger ship, we probably didn't even need one this big.
There were a few personal touches. Part of the manual controls and even some of wiring, light fixtures, and other minor parts were salvaged directly from the Apocalla. The bridge and a few of the bunk rooms was about the only thing intact when I went to visit it, prior to the construction of our ship, none of these things were particularly valuable or military grade so the scrapyard sold them to me for next to nothing. I ran them over to the Janali shipyard and they did the best they could to incorporate them into the ship for another minor fee. In the end, when the construction was finally completed, I finally felt home. It's official name is the Great Sword of Space. We were in a hurry to get it registered so we could leave and I couldn't think of anything more appropriate at the time. Naming it Phoebe seemed too cheesy even for my standards, and calling it the Apoccala 2 seemed disrespectful.
Anyway, a couple days later we made it over to the embassy station.
"Ok, Kitty and I will go get Saphira, you stay here and off of the U.S.C's cameras." I said.
"Right." Zari agreed. "And don't forget to buy more blue bagels."
"OK." I replied before Kitty and I set off.
We entered the station, I ordered a couple of fuel rods to top off the supply, then we took a hover taxi over to the embassy building. It was a big station so it was quite a long ride.
-meanwhile, Zari was just hanging out on her own when she thought she heard someone walk passed, she followed the source of the noise until she eventually found 786564 stealing food from the fridge.
"So that's where they went." She said.
"You're not supposed to be here." They said at the same time.
"How did you get back on this ship?" Zari asked.
"Does it really matter?" 786564 replied.
"Yes it matters, you're stealing our food." Zari said.
"So? I gotta eat something." 786564 replied.
"Rrrrr, the others will have to deal with you when they get back." Zari said before she easily overpowered her and shoved her into one of the empty bedrooms.
Should have been fine until we got back right? Nope, as usual 786564 was determined to be nothing but trouble, she used the service phone (intended to call staff for room service, if we had staff, but for mandatory safety reasons could also call 111 which was the standard equivalent to 911 in this part of the universe.) to contact the local police where she lied to them about being kidnapped. While Kitty and I were on our way to the embassy, the police entered our ship, immediately arrested a very surprised Zari and took 786564 in for questioning. Where it was discovered that 786564 was a clone, and effectively had no rights, so the police then contacted Phanon, the original kidnapping charges were replaced with potential theft charges, but by then they already figured out Zari was very recently a high-ranking admiral in the Zelusian army, so then the U.S.C was contacted. The U.S.C, which had several ships docked here, planned to send out a small squad to retrieve her from the police, where she would be put in the brig on the U.S.C Euripides 3, a Sorelis class battleship that was in for repairs after having an unfortunate encounter with an asteroid field, until further instructions could be received from higher ups. Phanon, on the other hand, wouldn't be able to make it here for a few weeks as they were unwilling to waste the fuel to jump to retrieve a single clone.
Anyway, while that was progressively spiraling out of control, we arrived at the embassy building, where we met Saphira for the first time in almost a century.
"Hi." Saphira said.
"It's true, you are alive." I said. "Where have you been?"
"Where have you been? Where's Phoebe?" Saphira asked.
"I was hoping you'd have a clue, cause I don't. It's just me, Kitty, and Zari, I don't know where anyone else is and I don't even know where to begin to look." I replied.
"Why should I come with you?" She asked.
"Cause we're trying to get the group back together." I said.
"Why? We already lost, the digital world is probably destroyed already." Saphira said.
"Well maybe we can try to fix it, but we have to all be back together first." I said. "I mean really what are you going to do anyway? The embassy isn't just going to let you live here forever eventually they'll throw you out."
"I could back to my planet for the last 100 years or so." She said.
"You could, or you could stay on our freaking awesome space yaught." I said.
"Your what?" She asked.
"We have an indoor pool." I said.
"Um, ok." She replied.
"And if you ever want to see MY baby girl again, we're your best shot." I said.
"Unless you just want to go back home to your precious ocean planet and get tentacle banged by your jellyfish friends." Kitty chimed.
"What the fuck?" I said.
"Well it's probably why she doesn't want to go right?" Kitty said.
"She's probably got some jellyfish boyfriend with like 80 tentacle penises." Kitty said.
"You haven't seen her in 100 years and that's the first thing you say to her?" I asked.
"You don't want me to come do you?" Saphira asked.
"I want you to, I don't know what her problem is." I replied.
"How long have you two been together without Phoebe?" Saphira asked.
"20 years or so, I don't really keep track, it all starts blending together after awhile, so many memories you know, it's like my mind isn't even meant to remember this much." I replied.
"But I waited for over 70 just to be with you cause you had to go and marry that Aranea chick." Kitty said.
"I was basically forced to marry her, and you weren't even there when I did, so screw you." I said.
"Who's this Aranea?" Saphira asked.
"She's been dead for like 20 years or so." I replied. "I have a picture of her on the ship if you want to see."
"So you've been with Kitty since she passed?" Saphira said.
"Yeah, pretty much, and Zari, somewhat, but Kitty is basically my main squeeze now, if that makes sense. " I replied.
"And you think Phoebe will be ok with this?" Saphira asked.
"Well, to be honest, I'm halfway expecting her to have met someone else as well, I mean it's been 100 years Saphy, it's only fair." I said. "If she's happy where she is I may end up just marrying Kitty, and making it official."
That made Kitty quiet really quickly.
"Now come on, after not seeing each other for this long it's only fair you stay with us a couple days." I said. "If you don't want to stay I'll take you back to your planet myself, you can go back in style instead of on some outdated U.N.C civilian transport ship. I mean hell, we have enough space if you do have a jellyfish boyfriend back home we can bring him onboard if you want."
"They can't survive out of water." Saphira replied. "and I don't have a jellyfish boyfriend."
"Well then what's keeping you?" I asked.
"I'll go, and we'll see." Saphira replied.
"Ok then, let's get out of here before our taxi leaves." I said.
-A few minutes later, in the taxi-
"You'd really marry me?" Kitty asked.
"If Phoebe doesn't want anything to do with me anymore than yeah." I said.
"And you'll stop sleeping with Zari?" Kitty asked.
"You know the driver can hear us right?" I replied.
"So?" Kitty replied.
"We'll talk about this later." I said.
"So you're sleeping with both of them?" Saphira asked.
"Not right now dammit." I said.
-30 minutes later.-
"What dock are you parked at again?" The driver asked.
"It's Large Civilian Dock 27." I replied.
"The one that's blocked off with Police tape?" The driver asked.
"What the fuck?" I exclaimed. "Dammit Zari you weren't supposed to leave the ship."
"Make that dock 25 driver." I said.
"Ok sure." The driver agreed." But it will cost extra."
"Sure whatever just hurry up." I said.
We parked two docks down to avoid the attention of the police who were stationed around our ship. We payed the fair and hid inside a nearby restaurant.
"Fuck what are we going to do?" I asked. "Why'd she leave the ship? She's smarter than that."
"I don't know, why don't we just leave without her." Kitty asked.
"Because the police are looking for us too." I said. "We were harboring a fugitive."
"Zari is a fugitive?" Saphira asked.
"Not really a fugitive, more like a valuable former admiral of the Zelusian army." I whispered.
"The what?" Saphira asked.
"There's two armies, the Zelusians and the U.S.C, they've been in a kind of cold war for awhile now, this is U.S.C space, Zari is a former admiral of the Zelusians. The U.S.C wants her, and she's not really allowed to be here."
" They'll grill her for information then they'll fire her into the sun." I said.
"What are you going to do?" Saphira asked.
"Something we haven't really done for fifty years or so." I said. "Kick some ass."
"Kitty you're going to need to digivolve for this." I said.
"Ok" Kitty replied.
"You can digivolved on command now?" Saphira asked.
"It's been 100 years Saphy, things change." I replied.
"And I still can't even digivolve." Saphira moped.
"Well if we get the time we'll get you the same procedure they used on Kitty, but now, we got other issues." I said. "It's been awhile since I needed my pokémon I've been saving them for times like these, they won't age as long as they're in their balls."
"What are we going to do?" Kitty asked.
"Well they've probably taken Zari to the police station already, probably already contacted the U.S.C, and they'll probably try to retrieve her if they haven't yet." I said. "We should hit the police station first."
We hailed another taxi and took it to the nearest police station. Kitty digivolved into lilithmon.
"Allright, I'll send Aggron out, and cause a distraction, you two get in there, get Zari, get out.
"I think it would be best if I helped with the distraction." Saphira said.
"Ok then help with that." I replied.
"Kitty, don't enter until you see most of the police cars in that lot have left."
"Right." Kitty agreed.
"And Kitty remember, don't kill unless you absolutely have to." I said.
"Ok." Kitty replied.
Saphira and I took another taxi a few blocks away, where I sent out Aggron and basically had him go on a rampage destroying things, but trying not to kill anybody. He squished a lot of parked cars, lamps, mailboxes, and other street clutter, and moved very slowly so people would have plenty of time to leave their cars before he squished them as I did my best to steer him away from vehicles occupied by apparent idiots. In about 20 minutes we started to get significant police response. And once that happened it was pretty easy to stay hidden as they payed no attention to me and instead to the giant metal dinosaur wrecking everything. Saphira used her draining rain ability to make them all tired and lethargic, so Aggron wasn't even getting shot that much either. Especially when their lasers ran out of battery and they struggled to replace them. Eventually there was something like 50 police cars surrounding him, as he span around and acted very menacingly unable to really do much without potentially killing somebody. So I recalled him and then sent him out again outside the circle so he could continue to head further down the street.
Meanwhile, Kitty entered the station, completely inconspicuously at first.
"I came here to bail out somebody." She said to the clerk.
"Who?" The clerk asked.
" Um, Billy Gloronia." Kitty replied with a name she had seen on tv.
"Billy G?" The clerk replied. "Really? He murdered 54 people there's no bail, and he was executed 5 years ago."
"Um, Darkness love." Kitty said.
"What?" The clerk said seconds before she was put into a lustful trance.
"I want to see Zari." Kitty said.
"Yes master." The clerk replied as she got up from her desk and led her back into the holding cells where Zari was being kept. A simple slice of the Nazar nail was enough to get through the bars.
"What happened Zari?" Kitty asked.
"Look in the next cell." She replied.
Kitty piered into the adjacent cell, saw 786564 and was instantly enraged.
"YOU!" She said, doing everything she could to keep from stabbing her with the nail.
"Hi." 786564 playfully replied. "Could you let me out of here please? They're going to send me back to Phanon, I'm sorry for everything."
"Screw you." Kitty said. "You can rot in there for all I care. Come on Zari let's go."
"So we're all wanted now." Zari said.
"Yep." Kitty replied.
"Did you meet Saphira?" Zari asked.
"Yeah she's helping Cj distract the cops." Kitty replied.
The left the holding cells and head out into the lobby right when a squad of U.N.C soldiers entered the building, in a hurry due to the recent chaos.
"Get on the ground now!" one of them yelled, as the brainwashed clerk was needlessly gunned down.
"Darkness love." Kitty said as she and Zari fell to their knees.
The soldiers as well as the police chief and a handful of other desk jockeys that somehow hadn't noticed what was going on so far dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, Zari took the opportunity to swipe one of their pulse rifles. Kitty still had a healthy dose of hatred for 786564 and with all these individuals under control she knew exactly what she wanted to do.
"We're at your command empress lilithmon." They all said in unison.
" I want you all to take off your clothes and rape 786564 until all of your cocks have been in all three of her holes, then I want you to make new ones."
"Holy fuck Kitty, jeez." Zari replied.
"Yes master." Replied everyone else as they all headed towards the holding cells.
"I hate her." Kitty said as her eyes glowed red.
"Tone it down a bit." Zari replied.
"No." Kitty refused. "She must get what she deserves."
"What if we don't have cocks?" All the female, and 2 asexual alien soldiers she hypnotized asked. This caught her off guard for a moment, before she simply replied. "Keep anyone from intervening."
Zari starred at her for awhile in shock and disbelief as one of the others opened 786564's cell and the poor clone began to panic as they started to get undressed and feel her up. She and Zari stole the military truck that was stationed outside and went to pick us up, leaving 786564 to a cruel fate. Atleast supposedly, eventually some officers returned to the base, a firefight broke out between them and the hypnotized soldiers, they managed to push through and then found 786564 getting brutally gang raped by all the men. 786564 was rescued, but the damage was done. The police that weren't mind controlled broke, they informed Phanon that she was destroyed, which wasn't hard to believe due to aggron's rampage making the news, while actually sending her off to a local rehabilitation center.
Taking back our ship was easy enough, I just had Magnum paralyze the handful of officers that were guarding it. Then we got the hell out of there while the U.S.C and the Local Police were trying to sort through the chaos. Everything went well on my end, I didn't kill anybody just destroyed a lot of shit.
Zari never looked at Kitty the same way again. She lied about 786564's involvement. She said she just went out to find some blue bagels because she was hungry. Kitty spoke nothing of it and just carried on as normal.
"Zari you want to meet in the pool?" I asked at around dinner time, sensing something was up.
She just looked at me shell shocked, like she had been for most of the evening.
"What happened babe come on?" I asked.
"Nothing happened, everything went perfectly." Kitty said. "I think she's just jealous cause you said you would marry me not her."
"You said that?" Zari asked.
"Well she has been with me longer what did you expect?" I asked.
"You can't marry her." Zari said.
"Yeah I can." I said.
"I'm pregnant." Zari replied.
"What the fuck?" I said.
"They told me at the station, I told you we should have used condoms." She said.
"Well then put it up for adoption, Cj isn't ready to be a father yet." Kitty said.
"Kitty shut up this is serious." I replied.
"We'll take care of it, it will be fine, we have plenty of room here." I said.
"You can't be serious." Kitty said. "90 years of waiting for you down the drain just cause you can't keep it in your pants."
"Kitty shut up, it's my kid, just cause you can't have them doesn't mean."
"So that's what this is about, fuck you, you have no idea how many times my heart has been stabbed just cause I can't and I thought you of all people would be different but your just the same fuck you." She said before she ran away, crying.
"This was worth it just for the entertainment." Saphira commented.
"Shut up." Zari and I both said.
"Before we go any further I'm not pregnant." Zari continued.
"What? Zari, why?" I asked. "Why the ever loving fuck was that necessary?"
"Because you can't marry her." Zari said.
"You know how Phoebe is?" I asked.
"No but, at the station." She continued.
"She was at the station?" I asked. "No, because then you would have brought her back ."
"THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PHOEBE!" Zari interrupted.
"You have feelings for me?" I asked. "So does."
"JUST SHUT UP AND LET ME EXPLAIN!" Zari yelled.
"Ok ok." I replied.
"It was that clone bitch, she got me arrested." Zari said.
"Fuck how?" I asked.
"Just shut up, please." Zari said. "She snuck on the ship somehow I don't know, I locked her in a room to wait for you two to get back, and she must have called the cops, and we were both taken to the station and ."
"Kitty killed her?" I guessed.
"Worse." Zari replied.
"What could be worse?" I asked.
"She used her powers to command a bunch of guys to rape her until they had each fucked all of her holes and then she told them to make new ones." Zari said.
"Well shit." I replied, somewhat in shock.
"And they went."
"Yes they went through with it." Zari interrupted.
"And she doesn't feel guilty at all and, I don't, I don't even know what to do." Zari said as she started to cry.
"And now she thinks you're pregnant." I said. "And she's pretty pissed at both of us, and hell knows what the U.S.C will think. Saphira care to chime in?"
"I don't think she understands the magnitude of what she did." Saphira replied.
"I need to talk to her." I said. "You two stay here. Or go hide somewhere in case she decides she wants to murder you.
-3 minutes later-
"Kitty?" I asked as I peaked into our room.
"What?" She asked.
"Zari told me what happened at the station." I said.
"About what happened to 786564?" She replied.
"Yes, about that." I said. "To know it's that you gotta know it was wrong. You know you'd be court-martialed for that if we were still in the U.S.C, and there wouldn't be a damned thing I could do about it. I'm halfway convinced to turn you in and try to negotiate with the U.S.C to get Zari and I off the hook." I said.
"Just do it already, then you can marry her and raise your baby." Kitty said.
"Yeah, about that, She's not pregnant, she just said that cause she didn't want me to marry you. You fucked up, allright, this is the fucking mother of all fuckups." I replied.
"She deserved it, for what she did to you." Kitty said.
"Fuck that." I replied.
"It's over between us. I can't even look at you the same way anymore knowing you can be cruel enough to do that. None of us can." I said.
"No." She replied.
"Tell me why I shouldn't?" I asked.
"Because I love you and I'm sorry and I'll never do it again." She said.
"Why should I believe you?" I asked.
"Because we've been together for 20 years you stupid human, I messed up, I'm sorry, but what she did to you." Kitty replied.
"You don't even know what she did to me you weren't even awake." I said.
"Don't let this be the end, please, you haven't even found Phoebe yet." She begged.
"God dammit Kitty." I said, trying not to cry.
"One . . . . more . . . . chance." I reluctantly said.
"And if you do something like this again, I'm sure the U.S.C would love to hear about it." I replied.
"And I'm staying with Zari from now on. When I feel like I can trust you again I'll come back to you." I said as I left her alone to cry.
I headed back to the dining room to talk with Zari.
"Well?" She asked.
"You okay with being my main squeeze for awhile?" I asked.
"Forget about that what about her?" Zari asked.
"I can't do it Zari I just can't." I replied.
"Where'd Saphira go?" I asked.
"To the pool where else?" Zari said as she hugged me.
"I just don't want to be around her until I can feel like I trust her again." I said.
"Well I'm here for you, for whatever you need." Zari said.
"You just wanna, blow off some steam in the shower or something?" I asked.
"The shower?" Zari asked.
"Hey Phoebe and I used to do it there all the time, almost every morning back when things were kind of normal and then we'd get dressed before the kids got up and then we'd take Nina to school, and then we'd go to work together. And neither Kitty or Aranea ever really wanted to." I said.
"Yeah, that sounds nice, and then we can just watch tv until bed." Zari said.
"Yeah." I replied before we kissed. "And hopefully we can get our minds off of this mess. "
It was a decent evening all things considered.