Mike & Karen Ch. 29

Breakfast, the informal dining room, Sunday morning, the present...

Karen sat in her habitual spot at the end of the table, sipping her coffee and going over some research items for the week on her tablet before getting on with her day. Sitting not far away was Tatyana, who had just finished her breakfast as well. It was a relatively lazy morning, and Cole Porter was singing 'Let's Misbehave' from the speakers in the walls, providing a relaxed atmosphere.

A small news item flashing at the top of her screen she read made Karen pause.

She opened the article and then sighed, putting down the tablet. She shook her head and pressed a button on her smartwatch before speaking to it. "Michael?"

"I didn't do it," came the reply in a deep voice.

Karen continued. "I hate to be the one to tell you, but Ping has been arrested in Vancouver on charges of espionage for Beijing."

There was a pause before her husband answered.

"Dammit..."

"Oh dear," Tatyana sighed, pulling out her Rubus from the pocket of her jacket, followed by a stylus. "I guess we have an opening in the guest list now for the housewarming, ma'am."

Theresa was already bringing in a tray of clotted cream and Armagnac to mix into her employer's coffee.

***

Disclaimer: All characters are 18 years of age or older while portrayed engaging in sexual activity. This story is a prequel/sequel (sprequel?) to my other work, Alex & Alexa. As always, many thanks and gratuitous panty shots from Freja and Jeanie to my long-suffering editor and beta-reader for their assistance in polishing up and improving this work. Reviews are welcome; flames will be snickered at and deleted with extreme prejudice. Enjoy!

Please Note: There are incest themes with a secondary couple in this story. Just a forewarning.

***

Mike & Karen, Chapter XXIX- The Littlest Reign of Terror

A campus study hall, an April Sunday, 1987...

"Well, there we have it," Mike said, setting his pencil down on the table and looking satisfied. "The Grand Unification Theory, complete."

"The whaty-what?" Mona asked, looking up from her beverage at him, as did Lisa and Janet. The only person who the statement attracted no attention from was Karen, sitting at her corner of the table, reading an Elizabethan poetry book.

"Grand Unification, or the Unified Field Theory," Mike iterated, nodding as he looked at the endless pages spread in front of him, a screed of virtually unintelligible numbers and symbols to anyone who wasn't possessed of a vast intellect. "The entirety of the all reality, proven by numbers to be the product of a single, simple magnetic force."

"For real?" Lisa said, getting out of her chair and coming around the table to look over Mike's shoulder at the interminable math. She was joined by Mona, who also seemed curious leaning over Mike's shoulder and pressing her boobs into it. "Like, the whole universe?"

"The whole megillah," he declared with a triumphant nod, gesturing to the papers with his massive hand. "Quantum mechanics and relativity reconciled. Everything is accounted for and explained. The Big Bang, galaxies, stars, black holes, string theory, even life. Everything is represented and accounted for."

He paused for a moment and squinted his eyes as he looked at the pages. "Hm, except..."

"Except..." Mona said, curious.

"Jewish redheads," Mike said, frowning as he scanned the sheets of foolscap. "There's nothing here that accounts for them existing."

"What?" Lisa blurted, her eyes wide.

"No, really," Mike continued, looking through the endless numbers. "If these calculations are correct, they shouldn't even be possible."

"W-whaddya mean?" Lisa breathed, somehow going more pale than normal, her voice brittle with mounting panic. "H-hey now..."

"Passing strange," the giant student mused, shaking his head. "Reality proven, and they're just an illusion, nonexistent. The numbers are solid."

"What do you mean?!" Lisa almost shouted in terror. "I'm right here! Can't you see me?!"

"Oh, wait..." Mike said, leaning down and erasing something with his pencil and then writing in a new number. He looked at it and nodded before glancing up at the others. "Sorry, didn't carry the three."

"Oh, my God, CUT THAT OUT!" Lisa exclaimed loudly, collapsing into a chair and breathing heavily, looking like she'd had a near-death experience. "I just peed a little!"

"C'mon, honey, let's go get you changed," Mona cooed, helping Lisa up and then escorting her out of the study hall, still hyperventilating. Janet joined them, shaking her head. Mike just watched them all passively until they were out of sight.

Finally, Karen looked up from her book, her eyes narrowing at him. She reached over and pulled the sheets in front of him to herself, looking over the endless numbers and figures.

"These are just old calculations from Horvath's lecture on Travelling Salesman from three months ago," she said, frowning. "You deliberately got her worked up over nothing."

"She seemed bored," Mike said cheerfully, shrugging. "Just helping out."

"I have to live with that neurotic little twit, DeBourne," she almost hissed, skidding the papers back to him. "You, sir, are Satan's toe jam!"

"Don't make me take pencil to paper, Gordon," he said, holding up his writing implement. "How hard could it be to disprove someone like you?"

"Thanks, I think," Karen murmured, accepting the backhanded compliment and flirt before returning to her textbook to hide her blush.

There was never a dull day with DeBourne around, that was certain.

***

One of the Manor studies, Sunday afternoon, the present...

This particular study hadn't been converted to its intended use yet, and therefore was open for the function it currently filled, a cosplay fitting and dressing room. The center was wide open, with body forms spaced around. The walls were lined with sewing machines, sergers, and electrical equipment meant for molding forms out of Worbla and threading wires through it.

Jenny was standing in the middle of the floor, wearing only an ultra-thin, flesh-coloured unitard, while Alexa, Jeanie, and Freja were busily measuring and fitting pieces of an outfit to her. She looked naked, but she showed no embarrassment at all.

"Goodness, but this outfit you're making is complicated," Jenny remarked, looking down past her tits at the three younger girls kneeling around her. "You said Kat wore this rig when she went to the conventions?"

"So she says," Alexa replied, measuring the countess' thigh around. "I mean, we weren't here for it, so I've only seen the pics and videos now. Since we have the basic patterns, it's just a question of resizing it to your frame. We've already checked Kar, hers still fits fine. We'll just touch it up, add a few bits and bobs. We can even resize most of her Sylia hardsuit for you, for the group cosplay with my aunts, assuming they're all coming. Mike seems to think that Janet and Mona are in for sure."

"And you are certain my hair will fit under the wig you need to put on me?" Jenny asked.

Jeanie nodded. "Shouldn't be a problem, Lady Greyskull. I can't wait to see you in a bob cut, half-white, half-black. All that sexy armour and carrying a chainsaw and a big ol' gun. Macho women with guns are hot."

"At least my Barbarella costume will require significantly less work," Jenny mused, overlooking Jeanie's faux pas about her title. She'd been warned, after all. Apparently she'd been calling Alex 'Alvin' for the first week or two she'd known him, until he fucked the right name into her programming. It was a process. "Skintight material, some transparent domes for my baps, a bubble space helmet, and a silly-looking ray gun. Voilà, done."

"Do you think maybe your sister, she might want to attend and do the cosplaying as well?" Freja asked, fitting a shin plate in place and measuring.

"What, Mill?" Jenny mused, making a wry face. "Hardly her type of thing, I think. She isn't unfun, but she's not much for crowds, admittedly. I can always ask after she's settled in."

"She's arriving Tuesday, right?" Jeanie posited, taking her time measuring the countess' inseam, enjoying the creamy softness of the countess' inner thigh.

"Indeed," Jenny confirmed, nodding and then holding her arms out to the sides while Alexa measured her bust. "It's been a few months since I've seen her, hermited away in Shellness Abbey as she is. I almost feel bad for sticking her with the title of Baronetess of Sheppey sometimes."

"Is it not always a good thing to be a titled person, regardlessness of where it might be?" Freja asked, unconvinced.

"Imagine being the bigwig of Bornholm, Fre," Alexa said, still measuring Jenny's bust and taking her time.

"Oh," Freja said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "Ingen, I take it back, you were most meanful to your sister, my lady."

"It shouldn't take too much to modify Kar's group cosplay hardsuit to fit you, Aunt Jen," Alexa remarked, cutting Freja off from griping about inbred, redneck Danes. "And I'm totes stoked about Becky agreeing to cosplay Miss Spencer. She'll be amazing at that."

"I freely admit, I had no idea who this Miss Spencer was until I watched Alex play her in his game," Jenny mused. "But yes, I must concur, she will be sublime in that role."

"What about that Nanu chick?" Jeanie asked. "Think she'll wanna cosplay, even if she can't speak English?"

"It's never stopped Fre," Alexa said, smirking at her soulmate and winking. Freja responded by scowling and sticking her tongue out. "But yeah, I'm sure she'll wanna. Once she understood that Mike, Kar, Alex, and myself were doin' it, she was all tits-forward about it. She seems to have a hero worship thing goin' on."

"And at least you and Val aren't the shortest people in the building anymore, Fre," Jeanie pointed out, earning her a sour look from her wife.

"Her tits, they are very bigsome compared to mine, on that tiny frame," the Danish girl grumbled. "Tale om uretfærdigt..."

"Hey, on her frame, her tits look as big as Kar's and mine do," Alexa pointed out, which wasn't really helping Freja any. "And she's apparently a li'l demon in the sack, to hear my big sissy talk about it. But don't worry, Fre, you can no doubt kick her ass."

"It is comforting to know that I cans be good at beating up little foreign girls," Freja muttered, making her wife snicker. Freja moved behind the countess and began measuring her butt. It wasn't strictly necessary, but it was a nice butt. "At least you two are now belongings to an exclusive club."

"Yeah, that li'l clique you and Becky have goin' is pretty hot," Jeanie agreed, resting one of Jenny's feet on her knee and taking the dimensions. Jeanie had basic sewing and tailoring skills, but she was looking forward to perhaps learning more. "Like the world's smallest and most exclusive union."

"It's simply nice to be part of a group that Kat has no business dominating," Jenny stated before looking down at Alexa. "Are you certain we cannot allow your nephew in, lovey? He is so very blond, after all. I have no doubt we could find uses for him."

"First of all, he's got an appendage, a big one, that precludes his membership, Aunt Jen," Alexa said, measuring her neck and shoulders now. "We're a goddesses guild. And secondly, if you want a club that isn't dominated by Kar, then believe me, you'll want one dominated by Alex even less. He's an even bigger tyrant than my sissy."

"True," Jenny sighed almost ruefully. "Thankfully, there's his father to toss me around and dominate me."

"TMI, your ladyship," Alexa quipped, making the other women laugh. "Jeanie, y'sure you're good with just the one outfit for the con?"

"A hundo p," Jeanie said, nodding as she shuffled around and measured the countess' other foot. "I mean, I don't mind making multiples of the same outfit in case the earlier ones get... messy, but if I have more than one type, I've gotta start thinkin' and explainin' to people, and that just doesn't sound like fun to me."

"And it is a cute outfit, now that I have seen the design of it," Jenny added.

"Hopin' so," Jeanie replied with a nod. "I'm hopin' it's a 'fuck me' outfit."

"You'll be a hit with any Welsh attendees, certainly," Jenny mused with a smirk, making Alexa giggle.

Jeanie just sighed and let that quip fly right over her head. She was too busy measuring to reach for it anyway.

***

A favoured bar, Sunday night, 1987...

"You gotta sing it, oh, everywhere

In New York City, Memphis, Delaware.

We'll sing it loud and you'll be proud

To sing it with me until eternity.

So you hear this melody

Well, sing it along and you'll feel free.

You feel uptight and upside down

Well, sing it along and join me around!"

The three girls leaned into the mic at the front of the stage and all sang together.

"Dong dong diki diki dong

And your heart goes dong diki diki dong.

Dong dong diki diki dong

And your heart goes dong diki diki dong!"

Karen was sitting in a chair at a large round booth off to the side of the bar, a wry expression creasing her lovely face as she watched. She slowly picked up the shot glass in front of her and knocked back whatever was inside before putting it down. Nope, that hadn't helped.

"Who did we decide sang this song?" she asked. "A la Carte?"

"This cover, anyway. It was dopey enough when Golden Earring did the original," Mike muttered, sitting at another spot around the table and also looking on. "A girl disco group from Europe did it no favours."

"Didn't you just finish performing a Bay City Rollers song up there?" the bronze-haired girl asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

"The Rollers are eternal," Mike said firmly, his electric blue eyes showing her meant it. "This ephemera will pass."

"Not soon enough," Karen sighed, distressed that she was somehow agreeing with him. Why did her friends always insist on singing the cheesiest songs they could find? Then again, she was here of her own accord, and nobody had put a gun to her head. Karaoke was never meant to rival La Scala.

"You gotta wear your pair of ugly old jeans

To dance in California, Nashville, New Orleans

You gotta swing and you turn your move

To make you feel glad, you gotta make me groove!

You hear this melody

Just sing it along and you'll feel free

You feel uptight and upside down

Just sing it along and join me around!

Dong dong diki diki dong

And your heart goes dong diki diki dong

Dong dong diki diki dong

And your heart goes dong diki diki dong!"

"Gordon, if you ever hear my heart going dicki diki dong, please get me to the hospital immediately, because something is very diki diki wrong," Mike sighed, shaking his head as he watched the three goofy girls onstage having fun torturing everybody's ears. "How did you not manage to train this out of them?"

"Why is this my fault?" Karen protested, looking at him while the song faded out and the girls all exited the stage to loud cheers from everyone else in the bar. They came back to the table and gave Mike and Karen hugs before seating themselves. Beers were brought over for them, along with some girly shots ordered by Karen.

"So what were you two brainiacs squabbling about?" teased Janet with a grin as she picked up her pint. Cold beer tasted great after a killer karaoke number. "Some universal constant the rest of us can never understand?"

"If that includes bad music, than yes," Mike said. "Which of you is Dong?"

"Aw, don't be like that," Lisa said while Mona and Janet laughed and put their heads on his vast shoulders. Lisa and Karen were sitting in actual chairs, because Mike took up the center of the booth, leaving room for only two more. "Y'hear all that applause? We're a hit."

"And did you notice the applause began once the song stopped?" Mike quipped, making Lisa frown and then stick her tongue out at him. He looked down at Mona. "You're probably Dong."

"What, because I'm black, I've gotta have a big dick?" she asked, still snuggling him.

Mike shrugged. "I haven't seen it yet. I meant that these two are white, so they'd be Diki and Diki."

"I don't wanna be Diki!" Lisa whined.

"I concur with Heyman," Karen added, nodding. "I've seen her in a dickey, not a good look for her."

"Shudduuuuuup," the Jewish girl grumbled, preferring to not remember that day. "We don't talk about the dickey incident, remember?"

"Maybe a li'l dickie is what you need to lighten your mood, Li," Janet teased, reaching over with her foot and stroking Lisa's shin. "Plenty of it on campus, after all."

"And you're welcome to all of it on my behalf, you slut," Lisa sighed, shaking her head. "The farther away I keep the dickie, the happier I am. 'sides, Princess'n me have Nero if I feel like gettin' it in. An' she has Roland and Durandal."

The other girls all laughed. Karen put her arm around her friend and kissed her cheek. Despite the rather greasy environment, she cherished nights like these, with the people who mattered most to her. Admissions about some of those important people were harder than others, and certainly never public admissions, but even she couldn't control how she felt about everything in her life.

What she did about it was what mattered.

And she was nowhere near ready to make any decisions about that.

***

The foyer outside the offices of the Sciences faculty, Monday morning, the present...

Karen sighed (mostly inwardly) as she approached the desk, seeing that someone new was now sitting behind it. A nondescript male student was looking off into space, leaning back in the excessively comfortable chair the position had been furnished with. She may have hated this stupid participation trophy program, but she wasn't in charge, so she might just have to get used to this, for now. The least she could do was try to be cordial.

She approached the desk with a smile. "He-"

The student yelped and jumped out of his seat, papers on the desk flying everywhere and a coffee cup tumbling through the air before smashing on the floor. The yelp was followed by a howl of pain as the student cracked some bony part of his anatomy on the study desk, causing him to hop around frantically.

"Ow!" he shouted, still dancing about. "Ow! Ow! Ow!"

"Well, good morning to you too," Karen said somewhat dryly, watching the young idiot wobble and limp frantically, making it sound like his leg had been taken off with a band saw in slow motion. "Nervous little thing, aren't you? I'm Doctor Gordon. And what shall I call you, aside from an ambulance and a priest for last rites?"

"Gnnnnnn..." he choked out as he hobbled back to the chair and eased into it before going back to nursing his knee. "R-Robert... my name's Robert."

"Well, Robert, I don't recognize you from any of the scientific disciplines, so what department have you hailed from, in some desperate attempt to earn your degree in a non-linear manner, if I may ask?" Karen queried, still standing there and watching passively. She didn't want him to expire in the foyer, since dead students raised questions, which led to paperwork. Didn't they understand how busy she already was?

"Nnnffffff... "I'm... I'm from Wycliffe..." he grunted, grasping his knee still, his eyes squeezed shut.

"Oh, no, really?" Karen sighed despairingly. "I was hoping that the Divinities would be better than to partake in this nonsense. Tell your professors I now have issues with them and will have my revenge. Biblically."