Outsiders Pt. 06

While the explosions lit up the clearing, all three girls opened fire with their machineguns, aiming them by moving their heads inside their rigid helmets. They only stopped firing for split seconds while shifting their aim across the innocents and the copse of trees was cleared within half a minute.

"Halt, halt, halt," Krista yelled out over the comms.

Everyone ceased firing. The red and white trees were all felled. Krista walked over to the unmarked trees and checked them. She ran her armored hand over their barks. Her laughter was heard over the comms. "All clear," she said, followed by whoops of joy from Lisa and Raven.

Ben smiled and did a loop. "Ammo," he said. The girls read their ammo counts from their HUDs and called them out in alphabetic order, by nickname. "Basically, you're out. It's ok, we're done here for today. That was the last target area I prepared. Let's go home!"

He swooped down and landed in the part of the clearing which Raven hadn't grenaded. The girls ran up to him and he teleported them to his warehouse. He changed into himself and the girls doffed their armors there. "Reload and," he started saying but was cut off by the girls who started reciting the list of tasks that needed to be performed to ensure the armors remain functional. "I trained you well." He chuckled.

He oversaw the girls do their maintenance, particularly removing the graphene batteries from the suits and plugging them into the main for recharging, before teleporting them home. "I'll fix us something to eat," Raven said and went to the kitchen.

"I need a bath," Krista said and went to the bathroom.

Ben sat down on the couch and sighed. Lisa sat next to him in silence for a while. "So, tomorrow is your D&D game with your friends," she said.

Ben grunted in confirmation. "We'll probably end Micah's campaign."

"Looking forward to it," she asked.

Ben scratched his chin and said, "Well... Yeah?"

"I mean," she said and paused for a deep breath, "tomorrow might just be the very last time you play with your friends. The eclipse is on Friday." He shot her a dark look and then picked up the remote to turn on the TV. She swallowed nervously. "I meant to say-"

"I know what you meant."

They sat in silence as Ben shuffled through channels, looking for any distraction. Less than a week from now, they were going to fight for the very survival of humanity. No matter how much he masked it, he was in the grips of fear. The battle that had sounded like something out of a fantasy novel was now looming in his mind looking more like the start of "Saving Private Ryan". He sighed and did his best to push the thoughts of failure out of his mind.

Krista called out from the bathroom for someone to come wash her back. Raven hadn't heard her over the noise of all the pots and pans she was clinking in the kitchen. Lisa looked at Ben, who didn't look back at her. He nodded at the door and Lisa went to the bathroom, doubtlessly to talk to the redhead.

Ben sighed and relaxed further in his seat. He kept surfing the channels, hoping to find a comedy, until he came across "Saving Private Ryan". It was the landing scene and everyone was getting riddled full of bullet holes. Ben turned it off and wiped his face with both hands. His heart was pounding in his chest, threatening to give out at any moment.

He didn't know what he feared the most; failing to save the world, or succeeding at the cost of his girls dying on him. The thought of getting killed himself was beginning to look like a reprieve from all the anxiety next Friday was giving him. He felt like he was waiting for his date with an executioner's axe.

"Dinner's ready," Raven called out and started to set the dining table. "Where are they?" Ben pointed at the bathroom door. "Tell them dinner's ready, would you?"

He slowly stood up and shuffled over to the door. He opened it without knocking and was surprised to see Lisa sitting naked on the edge of the tub. Her swarthy skin was glistening with suds and moisture. Krista's long, auburn hair was visible between Lisa's legs and Lisa's plaintive moans left no question as to what the redhead was engaged in.

Ben enjoyed the sight for a few seconds longer, as he had expected to find the two of them in here talking about how to cheer him up, not cheering each other up. He finally said, "Dinner's ready!"

Lisa kept moaning, but Krista pulled her face up and said, "I'm eating!" Lisa grabbed her hair and pushed her face back down before she could say anything else.

Ben chuckled and left them to it. He sat at the dining table and Raven served the two of them dinner. They ate in leisurely silence and were starting on dessert when the girls emerged from the bathroom, looking pleased as punch. They sat down and ate their own dinner, ignoring the other two.

"That was a great idea," he said to Krista. She paused her eating only long enough to give him a quick look with an arched eyebrow. "Firing grenades behind the enemy, making them face the wrong way. I mean, if they hadn't been trees, that would have totally worked." She smiled as she chewed her steak. "You've been reading those army field manuals I got us, haven't you?" Her smile grew wider still. "Good girl! I'll have to reward you for that."

Krista finished with her mouthful and looked at Lisa. "Thanks, Ben, but I think I've got my reward laid out for me tonight," she said, making the Latina blush and giggle.

Raven's calf brushed up against his under the table. He looked at her and was immediately drawn into her huge, blue eyes. She smiled a sultry smile at him and the two of them fed each other the remnants of their desserts. He leaned in and kissed the whipped cream she had on the edge of her lip. She gave a small moan of delight and he kissed her on the lips. She responded to his touch and they quickly lost themselves in their passion.

All thoughts of fighting and war evaporated from their minds as their tongues touched and wrestled for supremacy. His hands reached over to caress her shoulders and she put one hand on his thigh in response. Soon, they broke their kiss and stood up. He took her hand in his and led her upstairs. The girls' giggles followed them until they went into a bedroom and Ben shut the door behind them.

Raven immediately threw herself into his arms, nearly tackling him. He grabbed hold of her and ran his hands all over her back, exploring the perfect body he already knew by heart. She rubbed herself against him and he walked her slowly over to the bed. She sat down on the bed and smiled as she started to undo his pants. She looked him in the eye until she fished out his hardening cock. Then she lowered her face to it and blew over its head.

Ben groaned at the feel of her hot, moist breath on his glans. His cock hardened visibly. She licked out at his glans, making him inhale a gasp. Her tongue danced around his cockhead until she grasped him in her hand and pulled his foreskin back, revealing his most sensitive flesh. Her lips engulfed his glans and she started sucking him off in earnest. Her hand slowly worked his shaft, while the other went into his undies to gently cup his balls. Her tongue worked on the underside of his glans while her lips made a tight seal around it. Her cheeks hollowed as she sucked.

Ben groaned as Raven's expert ministrations were drawing him ever closer to orgasm. Her hand sped up on his shaft and her face started bobbing up and down, drawing him to the edge of her throat and then backing up until he was on the verge of popping out. Her pace kept accelerating and his body responded in record time. His thighs began to buck and he groaned, "I'm gonna... I'm, uh... I..."

Raven murmured in approval and the vibrations of her tongue against his pisshole sent him over the edge. He slammed his hips forward, straining to make it all the way past her tonsils, and shot his load into her mouth. He saw stars dancing on the backs of his eyelids as he gulped for breath. He could feel her swallow against the cock in her mouth. His whole body shook in the most delightful agony as she licked his softening cock clean of spit and cum.

He looked down at her upturned face. She was flashing him her most enchanting smile. He ran a hand along her chin and bent down to kiss her. He could taste himself on her tongue and that excited him. He frenched her until she shared all she had with him, then he gently pushed her to lie back on the bed.

He knelt before her and reached under her ass. He grasped the firm globes in each hand and massaged them, making her moan in appreciation. He lowered his face down between her legs and snaked it under her loose skirt. She spread her thighs wide, letting him smell her arousal. He smiled and kissed the insides of her thighs. They were smoother than silk. He grasped the waistband of her panties and gently pulled on them. She lifted her ass, allowing him to pull them down her legs. She stepped out of them and he lifted them to his nose. She sat up on her elbows and watched him smell them. She softly laughed as he licked at their crotch.

He tossed them at her face and then buried his into her crotch. He nuzzled her outer lips, making her hiss in delight. He kissed them softly and licked up and down until they opened fully on their own and revealed her pink inner lips. He then pulled back and kissed and nibbled at her inner thighs on either side of her pussy. She tried to close her thighs to force him to focus on the center, but he reached around and pinned them to the bed, splaying her.

He continued to tease her until her plaintive moans morphed into threatening growls. Then he touched his tongue to the bottom of her slit and slowly licked all the way to the clit at the top. She shuddered and called out his name at the touch. He repeated it a few more times, getting pretty much the same response every time, and then moved on to penetrate her with his tongue.

She squirmed and squealed at the touch and her actions only became more passionate when he replaced his tongue with a finger. He wrapped his lips around her clit and teased it with featherlight touches of his tongue while he stuck two and then three fingers into her pussy. Her squirms became more and more erratic as her moans rose in pitch and he had trouble keeping contact with her clit. Finally, sensing he had brought her to the very edge, he began curling his fingers inside her.

Raven exploded in orgasm, shuddering from head to toe and wailing out loud as she clamped her inner muscles around his fingers. He let off her clit and allowed her to enjoy the sensations, only twitching his fingers inside of her every now and then to send another round of aftershocks through her system.

When she finally came down from her high, she gasped, "That was awesome!"

Ben smiled and stood up to undress fully. His hard cock was sticking out and drawing her eyes to it. "That was only the beginning." She laughed breathlessly and scooted higher on the bed as he got in beside her.

Around midnight, Ben came down the stairs and went into the kitchen to take a cold beer out of the fridge. He took the cap off the bottle and poured it into a glass, making a nice head of foam.

"Hey, Boss," Felicia said after jumping up on the counter. He grunted in response. "Can't sleep?" He shook his head. "How come? The blonde usually wears you out each time and she sounded pretty active tonight."

"Nightmares," he said.

"About what, Boss?"

"About the girls getting their joints shredded by enemy fire and becoming dismembered to lie bleeding in the snow, begging for my help while I keep flying higher and higher away from them. And then the enemy walks to them with a gun in hand and I wake up."

"That's hardcore, Boss!"

Ben took a big sip of his beer. He sighed and said, "Tell me about it."

"Well, as always, it's Felicia for the win!"

Ben shot the cat a look. Back when he had explained his powers to the girls, they hadn't cottoned on to the concept of familiars right off the bat, but after the guys had explained it a few times in a row, they began insisting he summon a familiar. He then finally told them the truth about Felicia. At first, they had been insulted that he hadn't trusted them with that particular information and gave him the cold shoulder for a few days. It had seemed like an irreparable rift in their relationships, but then Felicia fixed everything by simply interacting with the girls. Even though she couldn't speak with the girls, she could use an Ouija board to communicate with them and she got them to forgive him, somehow.

Ever since then, Felicia was always smothered in attention from the girls. She even gained a few pounds from Raven using her as a taste tester and those really showed on the cat.

"Felicia for the win," he asked her.

"I figured out how to cover the joint weaknesses in your suits of armor, Boss!"

"Seriously?! How!? Show me how!"

"Right this way, Boss," she said and jumped off the counter to jog to the office space. She jumped up on his desk, after first spending a few seconds working up to it, and stepped on the track pad of the laptop. The screen came alive and Ben sat down at the desk.

He scooted his chair in and said, "What am I looking at?"

"This is the schematic of an experimental exhaust vectoring system from a Soviet fighter jet that never got built. Look at it, Boss! It's made up of asymmetrical ducts!"

To Ben, the sections that comprised the jet exhaust looked like plumbing U-bends that have been sawed in half and taped back together to make a straight pipe, even though its cross-section was no longer perfectly circular. He wasn't impressed by the sight. Felicia tapped the track pad again and the animation played. The sections rotated around one another and the end of the engine to divert its thrust in every possible direction.

"So, why isn't there a Soviet, or Russian, super-jet with those kinds of nozzles flying around scaring the shit out of the Ukrainians right now," Ben asked.

"Well, this is a very old concept, Boss. Back in those days, they didn't have carbon nanotubes and the like. The websites I've checked it out against, Boss, state that the engineers could never figure out how to attach the wedges, both to each other and the first one to the engine, in a way that would allow them to rotate on command and yet not be blasted the fuck off whenever the engine was throttled up."

Ben was beginning to see what his familiar was getting at. "But I'm not working around a jet engine," he said. "I just need something to enclose the joints at all times with a circle of composites. If I made something like this for the armor's joints, then..."

"Complete protection from all sides at all times, with next to no loss of mobility, Boss. Am I brilliant, or am I brilliant? Huh?"

Ben was engrossed in the animation as he said, "Yeah, yeah... I'd have to make, like four wedge sections for each joint, separate them from the lining underneath to allow for free rotation and install fibers to rotate each wedge around its neighbors and the rigid sections, and get the programmers back to write up the code to convert simple movements of the limbs into the correct rotational alignments of the wedges and install sensors, but... This is doable. Totally doable."

He laughed in delight and kissed Felicia atop her head, before rubbing it vigorously. "Hey, hey, lighten up, Boss! Please! You're messing up my hair!"

He picked up and hugged his familiar, saying, "Thank you so much!"

"Yeah, yeah, you're welcome, Boss. Now, please, set me down so I can fix my hair!"

Ben set her down on the table and teleported to his warehouse. He went to work on fabricating the prototypes. As soon as it was light out, he started calling his freelance programmers, but they were still sleeping off their Friday night benders and he had little to no patience to wait for them. He tried working something out himself, but was too sleep-deprived to make any progress. He teleported back home where he finally fell asleep on the couch.

When he woke up, it was afternoon and he ate a bowl of oatmeal he Prestidigitated to taste like chocolate covered bananas as he called his programmers. They flat out refused to come in on a Saturday and he had to cough up a lot of dough to get them to come in on Sunday afternoon. He was frustrated by the time delays, but had no choice other than to accept them.

His girls came down the stairs, dressed to the nines, and waved goodbye as they went out for their customary Saturday night club-hop. He was left all alone in his apartment until his friends started arriving. They played Micah's campaign to the end and then watched funny clips on YouTube. Around four in the morning the girls came home and joined them in front of the big screen for some laughs and snacks. Finally, just after dawn, everyone was yawning and Ben saw his friends to the door after they all refused his offer to spend the night there, as always.

Ben yawned and went to bed, himself, reminding everyone to wake him up in time to go brief his programmers. Now that he could completely encase the girls in impenetrable armor, he felt a renewed hope regarding Friday. They were going to stop the enemy and save the world and nothing was going to stand in their way.

He skipped classes all week to get the modifications done by Wednesday night. On Thursday, he and the girls took a critical look at the changes. In addition to changing the joints, he made all the surfaces of the armor more round to better deflect explosive force and projectiles, instead of just stopping them. With the roundness, white color and puffy joints, the finished suits looked like a cross between Bibendum and the Pillsbury Doughboy. The girls tried them on and approved of the work, mostly because nothing about how they functioned had been changed.

Ben stowed the suits and plugged the graphene batteries back into the main. When he finished, he turned and faced the girls. They all held the same pose, with their arms crossed over their chests, faces cast down and they were shifting their weight from leg to leg. He could plainly see that they were nervous. He stood before them and mimicked their body language.

Krista was the first to respond. She raised her head and looked him in the eye. There was no mistaking the fear in her big, green orbs. Even her impish grin couldn't cover it up. "So," she said, prompting the other two girls to look up as well, "tomorrow's the big day."

"Yup," he said.

"And," she drawled expectantly, "what do we do until then?" She gestured at the suits. "We're obviously not going to train some more."

"No, we're not," he said. "We're as ready as we can be." The girls gave perfunctory nods at his statement. He could tell they were anything but convinced of their success tomorrow. He felt the same way himself. The doubt was gripping his insides with an icy cold touch, making his skin break out in goose bumps randomly.

He gave the girls a small, but sincere smile and said, "We have but one last thing to do before we can be sure of our victory tomorrow."

The girls' breaths hitched in anticipation of hearing what the last ingredient was. They turned their ears towards him and leaned in closer with each second, desperately hanging on to hope that he really had the antidote to their doubts and fears.

"We have to have fun," he simply said. The girls stood up straight and shared uncertain looks amongst themselves. He shrugged. "Mull it over all you want, but you know I'm right. We have to do everything we want, so we don't freeze up thinking about something we would have loved to have done, or tried."

"But, we've done everything," Lisa said with a shrug. "We've been everywhere, we've tried every food that wasn't too disgusting... I honestly don't know what else we can do."