I do not own Gears of War or any of its characters.
Recovery
Joseph groaned as he stirred. He opened his eyes into a squint, looking around slowly. He was in a hospital, again, and just like before, all of the others were around him, all but Lizzie, who occupied the bed next to his own, and JD, who was missing. He slowly pushed himself up, Del helping steady him as his body protested.
"How do you feel?" Del asked.
"Like I got blown up by the Hammer of Dawn," Joseph said. "Since I'm alive, I'd guess it shut off."
Del nodded. "About the same time it hit the Minotaur."
"You and Lizzie took a beating in the blast, but your armor blocked all of the shrapnel, except for a few small grazes to your legs," Kait said. "And you and your armor both shielded Lizzie from the worst of the blast, so she's actually in better shape than you."
"You got tenderized pretty good," Del said.
"How bad?" Joseph asked.
"A pretty bad concussion that'll take a month or two to heal," Del said.
"Kait's going to be sore, but her concussion should be healed in a few weeks," Kait said.
Joseph nodded. "Where's my armor?"
"Baird's holding onto it," Marcus said. "We grabbed your Lancer, too.
Joseph nodded. "Did it survive?"
"Not a scratch," Marcus said. "It ain't exactly pretty, but it's plenty tough."
Joseph smiled. "That was the idea, yeah." He frowned. "Where's JD?"
Everyone's face fell.
"He got caught in the blast, too," Kait said. "But without your armor to protect him, like you, and by extension Lizzie, had, he got hit hard. He's in a coma, and his right arm's..."
"It got burned," Del said. "Bad. They had to do some surgery to fix it."
"Shit," Joseph sighed. "He going to be okay?"
"He'll recover," Marcus said. "The arm will take a while, but he'll be fine other than that."
Joseph nodded, then glanced down at himself, seeing he was wearing a set of white pants and a white shirt, provided by the hospital. He groaned as he pushed himself up beside the bed, then walked over to Lizzie's and climbed into bed with her, yawning and setting his head beside hers. She stirred, smiling, and turned her head, kissing him languidly.
"You're my hero," Lizzie smiled.
"Mhm," Joseph hummed. "I know. And once your concussion heals, you get to wait on me hand and foot while I'm broken."
Lizzie groaned, rolling her eyes. "Oh, joy. Just what every girl dreams of."
"We'll let you guys rest," Kait decided, the others following her lead and excusing themselves from the room, Joseph and Lizzie both passing out again within seconds.
Joseph sighed in relief as the warm water washed over his back. He'd been confined to the hospital much longer than he'd expected, nearly the entire first month of his month-and-a-half recovery, but it had worked out since he'd need some light physical therapy to help his muscles recover from the beating the explosion had given them. Lizzie had been kept nearly the entire month as well for her therapy. Her concussion had healed within a week, but despite him and his armor protecting her from more severe injuries, her muscles and bones had suffered more strain than his, so she'd needed the therapy as well, and had been able to start it sooner than him. But now, finally, they were free.
"It's so good to be home," Lizzie sighed, stepping into the shower behind him and wrapping her arms around his shoulders.
"Excuse me," Joseph complained jokingly, turning around in her arms and wrapping his own around Lizzie. "I was trying to shower."
"Too late," Lizzie shrugged.
For a moment, they stood in a comfortable silence, content to simply hold each other. However, finally, Joseph pulled back enough to kiss Lizzie, and Lizzie sighed, pressing tighter against him as their tongues slipped out to slide against each other's. Lizzie slid a hand down his abdomen, wrapping her fingers around his erection and directed it toward her.
"Please," she almost whimpered against his lips.
He sighed dramatically, stepping forward to pin her to the wall of the shower as he pushed into her, Lizzie moaning as he filled her. "You're so rude, Lizzie. Making me skip my favorite part."
"Hey, I love having you eat me just as much as you love doing it, weird as you are to enjoy giving more than receiving, but..." she stopped, moaning as he began to thrust into her slowly, "but I haven't been allowed to feel you inside of me for a month. I need you to fuck me."
Joseph smiled, moving his lips to her throat and latching on, suckling at her skin harshly, the way he knew she loved, and pressed into her and withdrew slowly, setting a slow rhythm before quickly beginning to speed up. Lizzie moaned and rolled her hips against him, urging him to go faster until he finally gave in to her silent pleading, giving her what she wanted and pounding her tunnel mercilessly. He lifted her by the ass, allowing her to wrap her legs around him and freeing up room for him to thrust deeper. Lizzie cried out in pleasure as he did, her already painfully tight tunnel clenching tighter around him as he began to drive her quickly toward an orgasm. After a couple more minutes, she broke, bucking and spasming around him as she wailed in pleasure. He continued to fuck her roughly through her orgasm, and as she settled, she continued to buck back against him more deliberately. Within a couple more minutes, she began to quiver around him again as he felt himself getting close to his own climax. Lizzie felt him growing close and tilted her head against him, Joseph obediently kissed her hungrily.
"Inside," Lizzie panted. "I want...inside."
Joseph groaned, kissing her even more hungrily and passionately. He redoubled his efforts, plowing her tunnel relentlessly for a few more minutes before Lizzie crested, her tunnel clenching and dragging him over the edge with her. He grunted, nearly pulling out on habit before catching himself and hilting his erection back inside of her, erupting and flooding her. Lizzie moaned heavily, rocking her hips to milk his member of every drop before his member finally deflated, slipping out of her. Lizzie lowered her legs to the ground, taking a moment to catch her breath between languid, tired, loving kisses.
"I love you," Lizzie finally breathed.
"I love you, too," Joseph smiled, kissing her again. "Now if you're done wasting my hot water, do you mind if I take a shower?"
Lizzie smiled. "Only if you wash my back."
Joseph smiled, kissing her before they began to wash themselves, only for washing themselves to turn to washing each other, which turned to teasing each other, which turned to a dripping-wet round two on the bed, uncaring that their lack of taking the time to towel off was getting the bed soaking wet.
Joseph walked into Baird's workshop and smiled as he saw Baird polishing Joseph's armor. He walked over to him, and Baird sighed.
"You never take care of the things I give you," Baird complained. "First the DeeBees I send for reinforcements, now I get your armor back all scorched and dirty. You just don't respect my work."
"Of course I do, Baird," Joseph said. "Otherwise I'd never have asked you to make it for me."
Baird shook his head. "I adjusted your Corpser Claws. They will now only curl up to your sides, so they won't get in the way of your guns and you won't have to keep it off between uses."
"You're the best," Joseph smiled, admiring the weapon he'd used to save Lizzie.
The Corpser legs were all simply bone, which for a Corpser was only slightly less solid than steel and was entirely bullet proof, but the last segments, which were the actual claws, were their even harder exoskeleton and were augmented with Locust Crystals. The exoskeleton was naturally arranged into long, plated spikes. In order to make them more deadly and require less force to do their job, Baird had capped the slightly-rounded tips with Locust Crystal spikes that attached to a steel frame that ran backward along the sides of the claws and one section over the top of the middle, this strip bearing Locust Crystal spines like saw teeth. The three metal strips were also fastened to the head with thick rivets and where they connected just before the first joint of the legs, there was a steel band looped tightly around the leg and then fastened with a Locust Crystal cut into a threadless bolt and driven through the leg and steel band, then attached by way of a small metal pin fitted through a hole cut into the rod on the end, then flattened on both sides of the Locust Crystal bolt, locking it permanently into place. It was a surprisingly simple way to augment the claws, but it was sheer genius nonetheless. On the other ends of the legs was a steel harness designed as a row of overlapping plates giving the appearance of a spine, which bore industrial-strength magnets to securely attach it to Joseph's armor in the back, then a pair of metal plates that clamped around his sides, also using magnets to secure them, in order to add armor to where his chestplate itself lacked side armor. The entire harness was augmented with a layer of Locust Crystal, just like his chestplate, and he could turn the magnets on and off with a small button at the top of the spine, allowing him to put the weapon on or take it off in seconds as needed.
"Have I ever told you you're a genius?" Joseph asked.
"You could always say it more," Baird said. "Lord knows my inventions will be the only reason we win this war."
"Speaking of which," Joseph said, growing serious, "it's going to get worse before it gets better. Five times I nearly ran out of ammo in Settlement Two. There are almost more Swarm than we have bullets, and all of the Swarm require more than one bullet."
"Yeah, it was the same way against the Locust," Baird nodded.
"Yes, but during the Locust War, you didn't have the technology to do something about it," Joseph said.
"What'd you have in mind?" Baird asked.
"Fabricators," Joseph said. "If we can have full-sized ones that generate automatic turrets and ammo for them, and smaller ones that can generate fully-loaded magazines for any weapon, why can't we have one the size of a magazine that generates bullets as you fire?"
Baird stared at him for several moments before looking toward the ceiling. "Iris?"
"The idea is feasible, Baird, but would take time to work out the programming and any potential errors or limitations," Iris, Baird's AI assistant, informed him. "For example, without adjusting the safety parameters and increasing the Fabrication speed, fully-automatic fire would be impossible, as it would have to generate each bullet in between shots and fast enough for the weapon to cycle the newly Fabricated round into the chamber."
Baird hummed thoughtfully. "We'll look into it. It's actually not a bad idea, if we can get it to work."
Joseph nodded. "If you can get it to work, you'll probably be recognized as the smartest man of all time."
Baird waved him off, despite grinning at the thought. "Take your stuff and get outta here while I figure out how to create infinite ammo weapons."
Joseph grinned, grabbing his gear before turning and walking away, leaving Baird and Iris to struggle to invent an endless magazine.
Joseph sighted in and squeezed his trigger, firing for about three seconds before there was a jam and the Fabricator Magazine stopped. He ejected the magazine and handed it to Baird as Iris reported that its magnetic rail feeder had functioned too slowly by a half second, resulting in the bolt missing the back of a bullet and instead catching it in the middle and jamming. The Fabricator Magazine was Baird's first, and nearly successful, attempt at creating an endless magazine. Almost as soon as he'd begun trying to invent one, he'd realized that generating one bullet at a time fast enough for a Lancer's full-auto fire was impossible. It was perfect for Longshots or Markza Marksman Rifles, where one was single-shot and the other was semi-automatic, and he was already mass producing Fabricator Magazines for those, but for a fully-automatic, or even burst-fire weapons, it was too slow. So instead, he'd adjusted the expectations slightly. He'd created a Fabricator Magazine that would generate a full magazine's worth of ammo and store them inside of itself like a normal magazine, using a magnet rail system to feed them upward into the gun when it was inserted into the magazine well. The Fabricator Magazine would refill itself within five seconds, so if a Gear had four of five of them, he'd have infinite ammunition, aside from having to reload, even in heavy combat. At least, in theory.
As Joseph wrenched the Lancer's bolt back, freeing the stuck bullet Baird adjusted the programming for the magnetic rail. Joseph tried again, but this time, it fed too fast, and two bullets were shoved into the chamber together. Baird adjusted the magnetic rail again, and Joseph tried a third time. This time, it functioned perfectly. It even refilled itself at a rate that was able to extend the amount of time Joseph was able to fire by about half a magine's worth of ammo before it finally ran dry. And it had only taken Baird half a month to figure it out.
"Iris, get the blueprints and exact programming specifications over to the factories," Baird said. "Maybe this will give us the edge we need to be able to survive this war."
"Of course, Baird," Iris confirmed.
"It'll certainly help," Joseph nodded. "Ready for another project?"
"Carmine, kid, you're killing me," Baird groaned.
"Oh, but this one's easy," Joseph laughed. "An all-terrain Track Mule that's powered by solar energy and can hold a charge for about twelve hours."
"So, basically, a vehicle that never runs out of gas," Baird clarified.
Joseph shrugged. "Basically."
"Kid, don't you think I'd have done that by now if I had that kind of tech?" Baird asked.
"So you're telling me, Damon Baird can create a laser that can cut and shape Locust Crystals and can create a Fabricator Magazine to generate an endless supply of ammo, but a bike that can hold a solar charge for twelve hours is too much to ask?" Joseph asked, raising an eyebrow.
"No," Baird said. "I'm saying get the hell out of my hair and come back in two weeks when your bike's finished."
"Baird is using a metaphor, since he is, in fact, bald," Iris said helpfully.
"Thank you, Iris," Baird sighed then muttered. "Stupid computer."
"You're welcome, Baird," Iris replied.
Joseph laughed, leaving Baird's workshop with the Fabricator Magazine, as Baird had promised him it was his if they could get it working properly, and headed to Lizzie's apartment. As he walked in, however, he frowned as he saw Lizzie was in armor and had his gear all ready for him, too.
"Now what?" Joseph asked.
"We're being sent to help Kait and Del convince Outsiders to join the COG," Lizzie sighed. "Oh! Is that it?"
Joseph nodded, grinning and holding up the Fabricator Magazine. "The factories should already be starting mass production."
Lizzie grinned. "Perfect! Now get your gear on. We're late."
Joseph sighed, nodding, and kissed her before beginning to pull his armor on.
Leave a review.