Outsiders Pt. 04

The first bolt struck the rocket-launching vehicle in the center of the group and smashed it into smithereens. From the remains leapt a secondary bolt of lightning and struck the target of Ben's choice with half the force of the original bolt, which was still enough to fry all of its electric and electronic parts. From each struck vehicle a bolt leapt up to strike the next one Ben targeted until all eleven vehicles were struck. All the strikes happened in the same second. The robots were destroyed and the smell of burning metal, with a hint of ozone, rose up to invade Ben's nostrils.

He cast a spell of Invisibility on himself and flew above the base, doing two passes while surveying it for any sign of hostile activity. All that he saw were fires and dead men. Some soldiers were crawling out of their hiding places and staring shell-shocked at the carnage. NCOs began barking out orders, trying to assemble the survivors into rescue teams. The soldiers slowly responded to the barked orders and began gathering first aid kits and examining bodies. The looks on their faces told Ben all that he needed to know. The robots had killed all who were out in the open, or could be flushed out.

Ben flew back to where he recognized the reporter had been. The entire building was leveled and a lot of casualties in civilian clothes were strewn about. He saw cameras and microphones and guessed they had been journalists. He focused on his link with Lisa's mind and let himself see his den through her eyes. He quietly spoke the word of Greater Teleport and appeared there, invisible.

"Lisa," he softly said, making all three girls jump and scream. "Sorry." The girls, who had changed into everyday outfits during his absence, waved their outstretched arms around, trying to feel where he was. "You two, stay here!"

"Which two," Raven asked.

Ben pulled out his eyelash in gum arabic and touched Lisa's shoulder as he cast the spell of Invisibility on her.

"Oh," Krista said in response to Lisa vanishing before her very eyes. "Us two."

Ben sent Lisa the order to close her eyes and accept his teleportation. When his magic resumed flowing, he grasped her firmly and spoke the word of Greater Teleport while envisioning the place where she said the spell was.

They appeared twenty feet in the air above that part of the base's green. Ben had a hard time keeping them aloft with his Fly spell, but he managed. Lisa weighed less than his maximum carrying capacity was. He looked around and confirmed the placement of the bodies in the vicinity before sending Lisa the order to face straight down. He sent her the order to cover her eyes with her fingers so her field of vision was extremely limited. He sent her the order to peek at the grass under them.

He felt that she was only seeing the green of the grass under them, without any symbols, or anything else. He flew them slowly around, being careful not to fly near any bodies that she might see. When he felt her finally see a symbol, he flew them over the round spell until he felt that she had seen all of it. He focused on his den and spoke the word of Greater Teleport. The two of them found themselves in the den.

He sent Lisa the order to perfectly recall the spell she saw on the lawn and draw it exactly. Raven and Krista both yelled in fright when the desk chair moved back on its own. "We're back," Ben calmly said. He ended his spell of Invisibility and appeared in the den.

"Where's Lisa," Raven asked.

Ben pointed at the drawers on his desk opening. "She's drawing for me," he said.

"What happened," Raven asked.

"I don't know, exactly," Ben said. "A bunch of remotely controlled combat robots were used to shoot up the whole base."

"Who could have done that," Krista asked.

"I don't know," Ben said. "That's for the army, or the FBI, or whoever to find out. What I need to know is what this spell has to do with anything."

He ended Lisa's invisibility and went into the kitchen to pour himself a stiff drink. He picked Scotch and downed it to steady his nerves. He had only seen real blood and gore once before, when Simon had been killed before his eyes. The base massacre was much worse than that. He felt glad that he had managed to keep Lisa from seeing it. He poured himself another shot of Scotch and let the smoky aroma hang on his tongue this time, to distract him from what he had seen.

He stifled his sobs and blinked away his tears when Lisa finished the drawing. He took out his small prism and cast the Read Magic spell on himself to examine this new calamity. He sat down to read while the girls hugged Lisa and tried to offer her comfort. Lisa insisted that she hadn't seen anything and the girls believed her after a while. They all looked at Ben with worry on their faces and waited for him to finish.

The central symbol of the spell told Ben where to start reading it and he quickly realized the spell itself was meant to draw the power of nearby human sacrifices and focus it into constructing something. Something that was a very small part of a very great whole and it wasn't the final part. Ben bit his lip in frustration. He was in possession of too small a piece of the puzzle to be able to figure out anything more than the rough scale of what was going on.

As he read on, he was reminded of Schrödinger's psi equation that described the behavior of electrons in their clouds. He had once seen how the equation was solved and the symbols inscribed along the inner edge of the spell reminded him of that. He sighed and shook his head as he cleared his mind of all thoughts of quantum mechanics. "I'm dealing with deranged cultists, here," he reminded himself, "not post grad physicists."

As he skipped that part and read on, he saw that the spell had a runoff valve. If the energy reaped by the sacrifices around the spell exceeded the amount required for the construction of its product, it would keep gathering the energy and funnel it towards the caster.

"Lisa," he called out to the girl that was standing over his shoulder. They both flinched. "Sorry. Can you remember how the symbols were swirling along the outer rim, just inside the circle?"

"Yeah," Lisa said. "They were swirling counterclockwise, unlike the rest of them." She indicated the runoff lines of the spell with a finger. "It was these lines, I think."

Ben's fists tightened. The spell was a success and whatever it was meant to build had been built. The excess loss of life was funneled to the caster. It looked like the bad guys had won. He stood up, pulled out his eyelash in gum arabic and cast the spell of Greater Invisibility on himself.

"What are you doing," Krista asked.

"I'm going back to the base to find whoever cast the spell and I'm going to go medieval on their behinds," Ben calmly said. He felt his magic resume flowing and cast the spell of Greater Teleport while envisioning the base's lawn.

Simon stood by the base's outer wall and grimly watched the useless, little insects running around like chickens with their heads cut off. His spell had been a success and the element of Air had been constructed, bringing his work on the portal one quarter of the way to being finished. The excess power reaped was inside him, awaiting his disposal, yet he was not happy.

Someone, or something, had destroyed the murder machines with lightning that came out of nowhere and then jumped around from robot to robot. The robots had been supposed to kill everyone on the base, right in front of the news cameras that had been invited there to the presentation of the future of warfare, before leaving the base and going into the city to reap its inhabitants. The distance of the robots from the spell's original location didn't matter, they were consecrated by it and all souls they reaped would be drawn to him.

He forced himself to not dwell on the loss of all that power. He had power inside of himself and it was enough for him to continue his work. He was tempted to reenter the base and use some of it to kill more people as his spell was still there to reap them and draw their energy to him.

He looked at the armed, angry soldiers the base was lousy with and decided against it. Fighting them would likely cost him all the power he had reaped today and there was also that unknown that fried the robots to consider. He guessed it was probably the work of Ben Kidder and he was impressed by the young man's magical prowess. His decision to stay away from him was proving to be a smart one, regardless of how much it bruised his ego. "Besides," he told himself, "he'll fall alongside everyone else as soon as I complete and activate the portal."

He ended the spell and used some of his power to draw a veil of unnoticeability around himself. He changed into Daniel's civilian clothing to better blend in. He decided he would continue his work someplace else. Someplace far away from here.

Ben materialized forty feet above the ground and looked around. There was no sign of any bad guys twirling their mustaches. He cast the Dispel Magic spell on the lawn where Lisa had seen the sacrificial spell. He didn't want the energy of any soldiers that were dying to be drawn to its caster.

He took a photo of the lawn with his cellphone and sent it to Lisa's phone, asking her to confirm that he had dispelled it. She texted him back that the photo was clear, with no symbols on it.

Ben put away his phone and used his still lasting Fly spell to scour the whole base, looking for any kind of clue. He sprinkled his silver powder and talc mixture in the air and cast the spell of See Invisibility on himself, but he saw no one and nothing invisible on the base.

Down on the ground, paramedics, firemen and soldiers were running around, desperate to find survivors or a clue as to what had happened. Ben overflew them, recasting his spells of invisibility and flight until he had methodically scoured the entire base. He did a single sweep of the base's surroundings before running out of spell slots above level one. He stopped by everyone who was talking on the phone to eavesdrop, but no one was reporting on the success of their mission, or saying anything suspicious. He used his very last ninth level spell slot to cast Greater Teleport and go back home.

Ben materialized at home and poured himself another Scotch. He had seen so much death and it was getting to him. When his invisibility ended, the girls heard him weeping and went into the kitchen to see him bent over the bottle. They quickly intervened and dragged him to the bedroom. Raven hugged his head to her bosom and the girls rubbed his back and shushed him like a baby while he cried.

He stopped crying only when he was utterly exhausted so the girls fed him some fruit and got him to drink some water before putting him to bed. Numb from all the death he had seen, he lay in his bed for half the night, listening to the girls' worried whispers in the hall outside his bedroom. He only truly fell asleep when Felicia came to his bed and asked him if he wanted to talk about it. He wordlessly declined her offer and she curled up on his chest and purred. The soft purring finally sent him to dreamland.

On Sunday, every TV station in the country was reporting on the robotic rampage. The Secretary of Defence gave a press conference in which he expressed his condolences to the families of the slain soldiers and announced that the government was cancelling all research into the military use of robots. Journalists asked about airborne drones, but the secretary deflected their questions and the conference ended quickly after that.

Ben got what he needed from the conference. Army Criminal Investigations Division was going to take lead in investigating what happened at the base. He planned to observe their efforts and find out who really killed all those people. Whoever they were, they were still human and left human traces behind for forensic investigators to discover.

The girls gently probed him for answers about what happened at the base and he told them that someone had killed all those soldiers, but he let them believe that was the sole purpose of the spell Lisa had seen. He didn't trust them to have the strength to handle the truth. He asked the girls to keep one eye on the twenty-four hour news cycle at all times and look for anything else suspicious.

"I want to catch those crazy bastards," he said, "and end their threat to humanity, once and for all."

The girls agreed and at least one of them was awake at any time, surfing the web and news stations, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Ben used his magic to teleport into the Army CID headquarters invisible and spy on their investigation. He knew they were hopelessly in the dark going in, but he was surprised to see them actively avoiding doing any actual investigative work. They were careful about meticulously gathering up all possible evidence and then boxing it up for storage without even giving it a cursory glance. He had hoped their approach to things would change on Monday, with the start of a proper work week, but it didn't. It only got worse.

Their efforts were concentrated on hounding the friends and relatives of the only ROV operator that hadn't been shot or blown up. His autopsy report showed that he had died of idiopathic cardiac tamponade and that he had a tear in his airway, near his heart. Ben knew the same person that had killed the three zealots was responsible for the massacre. He wrote on the lead investigator's own notepad that he needed to read the autopsy reports of the three men, but the investigator just ripped that piece of paper off after reading it and threw it away in the trash. He had already decided, or been ordered to decide, that the operator was at fault and that he had been a domestic, lone wolf terrorist.

Ben snuck orders into Army CID's internal lines of communication for lower ranking officer to go and dig up those autopsy reports, but his efforts resulted solely in those records being seized and hidden away under the authority of the Patriot Act.

Ben teleported invisibly to the local robbery/homicide division of the police department and was shocked to learn that they had been ordered to stop investigating the three dead zealots and that the cops gladly obeyed that order. He couldn't believe that all those people who were paid to investigate crimes were so glad to just clean up the immediate mess, do the paperwork on it and then ignore all the evidence that would likely lead them to the actual perpetrator. He hadn't expected to find Team Gibbs working the case, but the level of incompetence, disinterest and outright sabotage he encountered while spying on the investigations genuinely disturbed him.

On Tuesday, after his girls made love to him to cheer him up, Ben invisibly teleported photos of the autopsy reports and some select Army CID orders to one respected journalist in each of the city's three premier newspapers. On Wednesday, after the girls finished fucking Ben's brains out and he recovered from it, he saw that not a single one of those newspapers reported anything about it and one of the three journalists announced quitting his job with the publication to join the Army's public relations office.

Consumed with wrath, Ben teleported invisibly into that man's house and used his home computer to publish the photos of the autopsy reports and select memos online.

On Thursday, the journalist was quietly arrested and no major news outlet picked up on the truth of the story, even though they were all still reporting on the base massacre. Instead of telling the public about the investigative coverup, they were all pumping the airwaves with a carefully coordinated character assasination of the ROV operator that had actually been an innocent victim and probably the first to be killed on Sunday. Only crackpot conspiracy sites picked up on the photos and republished them, thus rendering their credibility null and void.

Ben punched a hole in the den wall out of frustration.

"Calm down, Ben," Krista quietly said.

"Calm down?! How!? How do I calm down!? The whole world has conspired to hide the truth about what's happened and they're all enabling the bad guys to get away with it! And I know that they'll strike again! I've told you that already."

"Ben, they don't know the real truth," Krista said.

"They're all spreading lies that they know are lies," Ben yelled at her. He stopped himself and took a deep breath to try and calm down. Even his enhanced wisdom was being tested by recent events.

"The authorities have to project the illusion of being in control," Krista said, "regardless of whether they are on top of things, or not."

"Do you need ice for that," Raven asked, indicating Ben's hand. The skin over his knucles was broken.

"No, it'll be fine," he said. "I just need to pour some rubbing alcohol on it. But get me a bandage, would you?" Raven nodded and went to the bathroom.

Krista took his chin in her hands and gently urged him to meet her concerned eyes. "Ben, there's nothing you can do about the media," she said. "Now, is there?" Ben reluctantly shook his head in agreement with her statement. "So why don't you concentrate on what you can do, hm?"

"Like what," Ben asked. "What can I do?"

"Well," Krista said and nodded around them, "the quarters are close. Not that any of us girls are complaining! We like being so close to you, but the morning wait to use the toilet is a little annoying, don't you think?"

Raven came into the room and handed Ben the bottle of rubbing alcohol. He opened it and said, "And what do you want me to do about it, Krista? I don't have the cash to afford anything bigger right now."

"We were going to start an air freight business," Krista said.

Ben poured the disinfectant over his cuts and grimaced at the burning pain. He held his hand out for Raven to bandage it up. "I can't spare the spell slots," he said. "At any moment, we might spot a new massacre brewing," he nodded at Lisa surfing the news channels, "and I need to be able to get in there at a moment's notice and intervene. Bring these bastards to justice."

Krista looked to have something to say, but she bit it back. She smiled instead and said, "You have all the answers, Ben. I know you do. You just need to relax so they can come to you. And I know how to relax you." She winked at him and smiled as she pulled a cushion off the couch and knelt on it, right in front of him. She worked his zipper open and reached in to squeeze his flaccid cock. "Raven, darling, show him your tits!"

Raven set aside the medical supplies and pulled her shirt off. Ben's dick started to harden as soon as her pale pink areolas were revealed. Krista pulled it out and gently stroked it to full hardness before she started to lick at his glans. Ben lifted his hands and grabbed Raven's tits. He massaged them just the way he knew she liked and the blonde soon had to hold on to the back of a chair, lest she lose her balance in her arousal.

Krista's wet mouth engulfed the head of his cock while her hand pumped his shaft. Her other hand reached out to gently tickle his balls and he started to gasp out loud. He groaned as he climaxed into Krista's eager mouth. Krista swallowed his load and licked him clean. She stood up and looked him in the eye as she said, "Raven and Lisa need a lover, Ben. Why don't you take them into your bed and give them what they need, hm?" She gave his still hard cock a gentle tug to illustrate her point. "I'll man the post."

Raven took him by the hand and led him to his bed. Lisa followed. He had Raven take off her panties, sit on his bed and spread her legs. He resumed worshipping her tits and sent Lisa the order to eat her out. He concentrated on his link to her mind and enjoyed the pleasure he and Lisa were giving her. Raven squirmed under the onslaught of their mouths and soon came, wailing and thrashing about.