Outsiders Pt. 06

The girl cried softly on the floor. She shut her eyes and pretended she wasn't there. A sharp jolt of agony made her body clench up. The pain made her breath explode from her lungs. "Your first assignment," Simon deliberately said to her, "is to listen to me when I am speaking to you. Understand?" She forced herself to open her eyes and look up at the monster that was holding her captive. As soon as the servant in her womb saw its creator with her eyes, it stopped the agony and applied a little pleasure. Her pussy tingled. She nodded yes. The tingling encompassed her whole body.

Simon smirked and said, "Good."

By the time September rolled around, the nation had managed to return to normal. For the most part. The National Guard was still posted at cemeteries and crucial infrastructure, but the curfew was lifted and martial law was no longer in effect anywhere. The religious warfare that threatened to break out never came to pass, mostly because nobody really wanted it, except for a few hotheads that quickly found themselves turned out by the very communities they had claimed to be speaking for.

Life went on as usual. The exception to the norm was that zombies were everywhere. Not the actual undead, but rather their fictional counterparts. Every movie theatre was showing zombie movies, ranging from Romero's genre-building works to the latest blockbusters inspired by the event in Philadelphia. Zombieland was the number one show on TV, narrowly edging out The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead comics boomed and utterly dominated the market, followed by hundreds of similar works. Every superhero was facing down the undead.

Every single facet of daily, American life was adapted to the possibility of encountering zombies. FEMA had issued guidelines on how to deal with another zombie outbreak and now everyone had a grab bag by the door, or in the trunk of their car. Evacuation routes were as routinely discussed as the weather.

Even fashion changed. Oprah did a special in which she completely ignored the fact that the undead in Philadelphia had been undead. She treated them as if they had been infected by a virus and were going to infect other humans with their bite. She brought on experts who recommended, among other things, wearing motorcycle suits to protect oneself from infection, since the suits were made to be untearable and waterproof and were thus bite-proof. Now everyone wore a motorcycle suit. Custom paintjobs for motorcycle suits were the biggest growing industry around.

Senior military and civilian officials were no longer needed to appear on TV daily to reassure the general public, so they stopped giving interviews to everyone who asked. Ben's girls had managed to interview almost a hundred of them during the summer. They even managed to get face time with a government undersecretary. Ben read all the officials' minds and was disappointed to learn that any kind of cooperation between them was out of the question. The military and the civilian leaders were surprisingly of the same mind on the subject of magicians. They would all consider a person like him to be a threat to their power and they'd act accordingly.

If he revealed himself to them privately, they'd try to subdue and study him and his power, without any intention of listening to what he had to say. If he did so publicly, they'd arrange for him to be quickly and thoroughly discredited first and then subdue him for dissection and study. When the girls asked questions about how the government could possibly subdue or defeat a magician, the officials made no comment, but Ben could read in their minds that they'd find people the magician cared about and hurt them to get to him.

Ben was disappointed to learn that the government would not fight on his side, but he rolled with it. He taught the girls about his powers and magic and continued working on Iron Man suits, which turned out to be far more difficult to create than he had originally thought.

He teleported to random, deserted places and shapechanged into dragons almost each and every day so he could cast spells, just for the sake of casting spells and learning what they feel like to flow out of him. By mid-August, he learned enough about the spells to be able to create his first new spell.

He called it Greater Fabricate. He created it as a level eight spell that did exactly what Fabricate did, except that it allowed him to make things out of up to three materials. If he made something out of two materials, the quantity he could make was cut in half. If he fabricated from three materials, the maximum quantity was only a quarter of the original volume. He made three source materials the upper limit of the spell, because casting it with four was too complicated for him to pull off, anyway. He couldn't add it to his personal spell list, but casting it was just a Shapechange spell away.

As soon as he revealed the spell to the girls and demonstrated its capability, the girls asked him if he could use it to make couture clothing. He replied yes and the girls grabbed drawing implements and started to design their own clothing line. Ben turned their drawings and ideas into reality that came in all sizes. He sold the clothes to his contacts for even more money than he made before. He used the cash to buy the raw materials for the suits of powered armor. He worked on the suits in his warehouse, though the quarters were quite close for a dragon.

He made the armors out of a supercomposite made out of titanium, nickel and carbon nanofibers. It was much harder than steel and ten times lighter so the girls would be protected from shrapnel and bullets. Even with the ultralight composite, the armor was far too thick and heavy for the girls to do more than stand still. Raven was the strongest of the three of them and even she could barely shuffle around in it. He needed to put the power in powered armor and he also needed to do something about the gaps in the armor that flexing the joints opened up.

His second attempt at creating the suits started by covering the girls in a thin layer of soft, impact-absorbing foam. He then covered the foam with filaments that generated electricity when mechanically contracted. He learned of the filaments from the minds of the military officials in charge of weapons development. He lay the filaments over the girls' limbs so they'd generate electricity with each flex of the girls' muscles. Each filament was connected to a colored LED light, for the testing phase, and they lit up with each motion. The girls laughed as they moved around in their form-fitting foam suits.

After the girls had had their fun, Ben removed the LEDs and replaced them with electrocontractive fibers which he fabricated over the electrogenerating ones. These fibers were activated by the charges generated by the filaments under them, but they could exert a lot of power, depending on the charge being run through them. Ben fabricated a dozen graphene batteries, each the size of an iPhone, and each battery could hold enough power to run the whole city for the better part of an hour. He hooked the batteries up to the power grid and waited for them to charge. It was slow going, but they would be fully charged before the end of the year.

In the meanwhile, he connected the suits to the main power grid so they could test the power amplification of the contractive fibers. This had the horrible consequence of ripping Raven's arm right out of the shoulder socket when she lifted it with all her strength. Ben, who was already in dragon form, immediately cast Cure Serious Wounds on her and she barely had the time to register the pain before her arm was fixed.

Following that little prototype test, they decided to take a break from creating the suits.

All of Ben's college friends returned to school in September and they gathered in his luxurious penthouse to play D&D every Saturday night. The first night was kind of awkward, as the guys clammed up in the presence of three hot chicks. Instead of quickly catching up on how they spent their summers and proceeding to playing the game, the guys spent more than a few hours exploring Ben's place, fucking around with his media center and repeatedly expressing their disbelief at his sudden influx of cash. By the time they relaxed around the girls, it was so late that they only had time to talk about their summers and the undead, before everyone got sleepy. Ben offered the guys the chance to sleep in his spare bedrooms, but they declined and shuffled off to their dorm rooms.

Next Saturday, the guys were much more relaxed around the girls, though none but Jake would ever go so far as to try and flirt with them, or ogle them too obviously in Ben's presence. Sean said it was just as well that they hadn't started his new campaign, since they now had three extra players. "I had the chance to adapt your encounters' challenge ratings this week," he said, "otherwise, the campaign would be all wonky. It'd be too easy for you at the beginning, because of your greater numbers, but it would become too hard for you as it progressed, since the new players would split up your experience point rewards and you'd all be too low level to defeat the challenges later in the game."

The girls didn't take to D&D with ease. Ben was frustrated with their flippant dismissal of the entire game, even now that they knew his magic followed those exact rules. All during September and October, they'd just sit there, look bored and watch the guys play. When their turns came, they'd ask what they could, or should, do. They made next to no effort to actually play, let alone immerse themselves into the game. While the guys went out of their way to explain things to the girls, over and over, Ben picked the guys' brains about combat as a dragon, under the pretext that he was going to make a campaign which featured a blood feud between dragons.

He was given a lot of great ideas, which he would debate with Felicia on the following Sundays. Some of the spells he was advised on he rejected, like Simulacrum, which cost experience points to cast, or Greater Magic Weapon, which would only enhance fifty bullets per casting and he intended to have much more ammo than that. The rest of the advice led him to adopt a sequence of spells he would cast on himself and his allies right before heading off into battle.

Aside from discussing magic with his familiar, Ben spent Sundays seeing the world with his girls. They would pick out a place to visit and he would teleport them there to do some sightseeing, sample exotic cuisine and meet interesting people. The girls absolutely adored their little Sunday trips. They also made sure to have sex in crazy places during them.

A professor called Ben aside in late October and pointed out to him that his essay was unsatisfactory and that he seemed distracted and inattentive in class. The professor further advised Ben to meet with his counselor and consider which classes to drop from his current load. The brief and polite conversation made Ben realize that he was really dropping the ball, academically speaking, so he resolved to make up for the lost time. It also made him put his foot down with the girls.

On the afternoon of the last Saturday in October, before the guys started arriving, he called the girls together.

"What's up," Lisa asked.

"I've run out of patience with you," Ben said. "I'm sick and tired of watching you squirm during the games, like you're being forced to eat live worms, or something. If you can't get over the uncoolness society associates with Dungeons and Dragons, then so be it. I'm not going to make you demean yourselves anymore. Not after tonight. Tonight, you're playing your last game. During the game, I am going to leave the room every now and then, leaving you alone with the guys. While I shapechange into a Djinni and read their minds, you are going to ask the guys questions about Iron Man and fighting evil and magical adventures and such.

"Before the Sun rises on Sunday morning, I need to know exactly who I can take with me to those European islands in March."

"Us," Raven said. "Obviously, you can take us!"

"I don't think so, girls," Ben said. "I have no idea what I'll find when I get there, but I am certain it won't be anything pleasant. You've already shown your inability to adapt to circumstances you find to be beneath you by refusing to play D&D and-"

"We're playing it," Krista protested.

"-and I can't count on you to adapt to the gruesome and deadly things that await me and those that come with me in March."

"Then why have we been playing all this time," Krista demanded.

"I've already told you Sean's campaign was your audition and you failed it," Ben said. "I'm not mad at you. You were presented with an obstacle and you failed to overcome it."

"I don't see what a silly, little game has to do with," Raven protested, but was cut off by Ben.

"Everything," he half yelled before checking his tone. "Everything. And you keep ignoring and dismissing it." He picked up his Player's Handbook and tossed it on the coffee table, where it landed with a loud thud. "That book explicitly explains and enumerates the spells I can cast." He tossed the Monster Manual next to it. "And that book explicitly details which creatures I can turn into and which abilities I can acquire. And you are ignoring them both! I've received no insight, or advice, from any one of you!"

The girls stood still and quiet, so he continued. "I've already made my battle plan for March, thanks to advice from Felicia and the guys. I'm going to shapechange into a dragon, cast a series of buff spells on myself and a fresh Shapechange spell and then I'm going to teleport invisibly and fight as a spellcasting dragon who will fucking die if an antimagic field is somehow cast, because that shit would turn me back into me.

"Now, I was under the impression that the three of you wanted to help me fight and even fight alongside me, but I don't see it like that anymore." The girls started protesting, but he cut them off with, "The sad thing is that my friends have helped me a hell of a lot more than you and that's without being read into the actual matter at hand. Hell, even Jake's advice was more help than your nigh-indignant lack of input, cause at least he tossed out a bunch of loony tactical ideas I now know not to even consider.

"That got me wondering. Maybe I'm relying on the wrong people to help me out. Maybe I should confide in my friends." The girls looked down at the floor in shame. "The three of you have your orders. You are to make my friends think about how they would behave if they found themselves in an adventure of might and magic in real life while I read their minds from the bathroom.

"Like I've said already, I'm resuming my efforts at making powered armor and I need to know exactly who I'm making and adapting it for. Time is running out. Tomorrow, I'm making up for my lack of studying but, starting next week, I'm going to be teleporting to the islands and reading the minds of the entire population to see if the enemy doesn't already have a presence there. It's long past time for me to get a lead on them."

The girls grumbled under their breaths and then retired to a bedroom to work out how they could best build upon each other's questions to get Ben's friends to think about what he wanted to read in their minds. Ben walked around the apartment, readying it for his guests and putting out an impressive assortment of snacks and finger foods. During all that time, he was becoming more and more nervous. He wiped his sweaty hands on his pants again and again, wondering what had gotten into him. When the phone rang, he nearly jumped in place. It was the doorman, informing him that the first three of his guests were on their way upstairs. Ben's heart almost skipped a beat and he realized he was feeling nervous about his friends' imminent arrival.

Ben thanked the doorman and hung up. He took a few deep breaths to try and calm down. He hadn't been nervous in the slightest when the guys had come over for the first time, but he was now. He didn't know which potential outcome of his little mind reading evening was making him more apprehensive, that they would be eager to join him and get in harm's way, or that they would be freaked out and disgusted by his secret. Whether his friends turned out to be brave, or weak, he felt like a snake for planning to invade their thoughts.

The doorbell rang, making him flinch. He let out a long sigh and mentally shook himself. "No backing out now," he told himself and answered the door.

When Ben excused himself for the first time, claiming he had to go video chat with an Asian business partner, the girls pounced at the boys with their questions. The guys expressed utter disinterest in the possibility of real magic and otherworldly evil. Ben read in their minds that they didn't want to appear nerdy in front of the girls, cause they deep down harbored the fantasy of the girls fixing them up with other pretty girls and they felt that would be impossible if they admitted they ever considered such nerdy things.

Ben rolled his eyes and came back downstairs, claiming he'd need to field another call in about an hour. He asked the girls to help him bring out more snacks and, as soon as they were out of earshot of the guys, he berated them for being so blunt with their questioning. He quickly advised them on how to be more circumspect and then they resumed play.

He started the conversation ball rolling himself, during battles. It was quite easy to do. With nine players at the table, only Sean, the Dungeon Master, actively participated in every second of the game, either making sure the rest weren't cheating, adjudicating matters on which rules gave latitude, or playing as the enemy. The rest of the players decided and made their move, then watched what everyone else did while they waited for the next turn. The downtime was filled with arguing about the best tactics, heckling the player making their move, and cheering the dice to roll the way they wanted. Ben slowly filled the downtime up with talk of things he wanted them to consider. The girls joined in and the topic of talk around the table soon turned into an even mix of how best to clear the dungeon and how they'd use D&D powers to fight a modern-day opponent.

Ben soon excused himself to use the bathroom, placing the dungeoneering on a pause. The girls kept the other topic of conversation going, prodding the boys along with their questions. The guys still spoke dismissively about such nerdy things, not yet given up on the possibility that they might be introduced to a bunch of supermodels by Raven, but the topic had taken root in their minds and Ben read them.

Much to Ben's distress, the guys turned out to be wholly unsuited to wielding magic, or fighting evil. They still dismissed the idea of having magic, or an Iron Man suit, when the girls asked them, but Ben read in their minds that those words weren't entirely untrue. For Sean, D&D was an outlet for his creative talents and an escape from the world of engineering and its rigid rules. The undead had already damaged his reality matrix and he was depressed by the seeming futility of his efforts to master the laws of nature. If he saw that useful magic was real too, he'd consider himself and all his time spent learning about electronics an utter waste and he'd be too depressed to be of any use to anyone.

Kurt had a schizophrenic aunt and her madness had left a deep impression on him. Now that the dead had risen from their graves, he was plagued with doubts about how much of what she said and did was truly insane and how much was real. Ben could see in his mind that he was on the verge of losing his own sanity, questioning everything he believed to be immutable and true. He was on the verge of slinking away to hide somewhere, curl up in a ball and cry himself to sleep every night. Putting him in a suit of powered armor would be a bad idea as he wouldn't feel confident enough in what he thought he knew to be able to act with lethal force against anyone.