Divinity Rescue Corps
Interlude- A Hair’s Breadth From Implosion

Cinzy didn’t like the look of what the four of them were staring down. It was a team of half a dozen, four of them Guardians and Rangers except for a Rogue and… was that one a Wizard or a Sorcerer? The former she could handle, but the latter she definitely could not. The other match ups she was not wonderfully pleased to see, but they could work.

“I don’t know what you’re doing here, but we’re on a mission,” Cinzy called out across a narrow stretch of land.

On one side sat a swamp buzzing with tiny swarm Nakamamamon, and a large hippo-looking thing yawning with enormous jaws. On the other side was a sheer mountainside rising some sixty feet before disappearing. A pack of confused goat Nakamamon were peering at them while stuck to the side of the mountain with that mystical power they seemed to have.

The gap of land wasn’t twenty feet wide, gravelly but also full of patches of sticky mud. Ivy and Isabelle stood to either side of her, while Tara hung back.

“You match the description of the team we were charged with bringing in,” the lead Guardian called back, though he didn’t have a way to project his voice across distances, so he yelled it instead.

“These amateurs,” Ivy scoffed. “Didn’t bring a Bard.”

Cinzy could have kissed her. She’d grown fond of all three of them over the last months working together, and she’d had to listen to the sounds of cooing, cute bedtime talk, the low seductive sounds, the giggles. She’d been forced to listen to their other bedtime sounds, which included the snoring.

But she hadn’t felt any kind of attraction to Ivy until this very compliment. For so long on their expedition she’d felt so useless, and then ineffective when she did have a job. It hadn’t been until the egg situation that she’d finally gotten the respect she had been hoping to attain all along. She’d solidified during the prison break, but it was always nice to have your coworkers see the need for your job.

“Come peacefully!” the Guardian called. “You will accompany us to Flunt-on-the-Rustle, where you will convince the Healer Fletcher to come willingly. No one has to get hurt.”

“Go peacefully and let us be about our business!” Cinzy called back. “There’s no reason for you to turn from Guardians into Attackers.” She threw on Entrancing Countenance Best Suited for Candlelight and Chaos, an ability that amplified her Likability and transformed her into something like a goddess. It asked for a Likability Token, and she paid it gladly.

The resulting wave of magic gave her normally luscious locks the sheen you could only get from a commercial. Her hair lengthened out and went cascading down her back, past her butt, only to be picked up by a soft breeze made just for her. Her clothes, worn and filthy, became spotless, fresh, and form-fitting. The shirt actually retracted up above her belly button and the skirt went up to mid-thigh, while the socks lengthened to her knees. Her cleavage pressed itself up and out, and her already stunning figure got just a little more taut. She stepped forward, drawing the eyes.

“Now, even if we were the people you’re looking for, which we are not, there’s no reason for you to bring us in.”

The resulting check was not even close. She scored a dozen successes. Ever since she’d hit level 25 and her success chance went from around 40% to around 50%, she was talking down angry Nakamamon and getting them out of situations like this left and right.

This was how she’d gotten them traveling gear, provisions, and a fresh change of clothes. Sure Tara could find them berries in the wilderness, keep them away from camouflaged creatures that would prefer to eat them, and create a shelter in just a few minutes, but Cinzy could talk her way into tents, already-cooked food, baked bread, prepared meat, and soothe literal dragons into not bathing them in fire and then gobbling up whatever was left.

The lead Guardian stepped forward.

“We already have Fletcher’s lover and his mother,” the Guardian leader said, “we know all about what he’s doing and where and why.” A moment of confusion sat on his face before regret came over him. He blinked away the effect of her ability.

“The Agency gave us a mission, and I will… I will…” He looked around and saw that all the other members of his team, save the Sorcerer, were practically drooling all over themselves staring at her. “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me.”

He threw his hands up.

“Look, boss, we need to get by here,” she said. “We’re not looking for trouble. It seems like you’ve got this mother abduction thing just about wrapped up. And none of us here are mothers, or anything close to that.” Although she did wonder about that last part.

She started forward, still looking like a vision of perfection. The eyes of the other four were basically replaced by beating hearts, and that made her want to smirk at the unfortunate Guardian leader. Ivy and Isabelle kept pace, and Tara kept behind them, and down a bit to stay out of sight.

“I have been charged with a mission!” he bellowed. An aura flared to life around his feet, and almost immediately the four entranced people in his group blinked and seemed to wake up. As they did, the effect began to deteriorate: her hair shortened and tangled itself up into its usual form again, her skirt and shirt lengthened, and her bountiful bosom slowly settled back into its usual shape.

“Gotta hurry,” she urged, and threw on another ability from her list of long-named abilities. Unrelenting Echoes of Emotion Evoked by Enchanted Enunciation required her to talk, and keep talking, in order to throw off the Wizard and the special abilities of her opponents.

“You simply cannot understand,” she said, sniffing back tears that suddenly sprang into being, “what we have been through, and where we need to go. We’re curing cancer. Wouldn’t you consider curing cancer to be a worthy pursuit? Wouldn’t you want anyone in your family to come through the portal so they could be seen to by a Healer over here? Is it so wrong to want your loved ones to be healthy?”

The somber mood was infectious, and handed all these kids a penalty on activating their abilities: an extra Token on any active ability, as well as higher difficulty on all their checks. The pleas for clemency and mercy kept spewing out of her mouth as the tears kept right on coming. She just needed to make sure the Sorcerer wasn’t—

The Guardian roared and leapt back, then shook the Sorcerer. “Get it together, Ryan,” he hissed. “We need you.”

The other members started to protest on Cinzy’s behalf: they were going to save a woman’s life. There was magical healing here. Why couldn’t they just let Cinzy and her team through? What was the harm—

The Sorcerer shook his head once, but Tara was already on it. She sprang up and loosed an arrow. Cinzy knew it was flying true the moment it shot out; the look on Tara’s face told her as much. Again though, the Guardian in charge used another ability to interpose himself between the danger and the Sorcerer. The blunted arrow thunked against the Guardian’s head and knocked him off his feet.

Then all hell broke loose.

This Sorcerer wasn’t as good as Trent, but he also wasn’t the stone type. Instead, the whole swamp at their right rose up and pitched toward them in a sudden, tiny tsunami. Ivy and Izzy had just a moment to throw up their shield and grab onto their charges before the chest high water slammed into all of them as one.

A moment later, Cinzy was being dragged toward the rock wall, and Tara was using yet another ability.

The hippo thing came out of it swamp, angry and roaring.

This, finally, broke the opposing team. Two Rangers snapped out of Cinzy’s spell, as did the other Guardian and the Rogue. All but one Ranger turned and ran screaming away from the enraged, very large, swamp hippo… creature. Cinzy wasn’t as keen on learning all their names as Tara or Fletcher, and especially not this one. She wished she had Poppy back, so she could at least have someone to complain to about the bugs and the rough sleeping. She was a being made for soft beds and attention lavished on her, not for sleeping with only a thin strip of fabric separating you from the ground.

Cinzy clung to Ivy, who had grown to enormous size and charged through the Sorcerer, Ryan, and his Guardian protector. Cinzy spent her Agility Tokens, all two of them, to keep her feet under her. She actually ran along the cliff wall while still clutching to Ivy’s enormous arm.

She had no concept of all the things that were happening. She specialized in Likability and Ingenuity, but the scene was too chaotic for even her to track. Goat Nakamamon were involved. The hippo Nakamamon opened its maw and sprayed out a thick sludge that looked like mud, causing several people to scream. Cinzy didn’t know who, though she was definitely one of them.

A moment later Ivy hefted her up and over something, or someone, before tossing her. She went airborne for a few terrifying moments, before Isabelle caught her and set her down on the gravel and mud. She was going to get her only change of clothing that wasn’t filthy completely gross. She rolled awkwardly over her backpack and watched as Isabelle bashed aside a goat, and was it her imagination or had that been thrown at her?

Another second later Tara was next to her, firing another arrow into a wild melee consisting of the other team’s three Guardians and Ranger, against the hippo creature.

“Let’s move,” Tara said, and helped her to her feet. Together, they used Tara’s aura to put some serious distance in between them and the other Agency team. When it became clear that a bonded Nakamamon was following them, they let it approach before Cinzy charmed the heck out of it. The large salamander made of sand, almost as large as she was, shook its head and stared at them with topaz gems for eyes. She continued talking to it in soothing tones, promising everything would be fine, all would be well, just go right to sleep little cutie.

The creature yawned, exposing a tongue jagged with little stone shards. It then fell right asleep.

They kept their guard up, and soon made it to a patch of woods. The forest gave them a bit of chance to breathe.

“Fletcher’s in trouble,” Tara said, hand again drifting down to what looked oddly like an actual baby bump. She was less than two months along… how was that possible? She shouldn’t be showing until month four or five.

“We have to get to him to warn him,” Isabelle said.

Ivy nodded. “They know he’s in Flunt-on-the-Rustle.”

“But they haven’t moved on him yet,” Isabelle added. “There’s some reason they’d have to keep out.”

“Knowing him, there’s a god situation,” Tara said.

“And knowing him, there’s a sex situation,” Cinzy said, with a hard eye roll and a painful jolt of jealousy.

“Hey, why not both?” Tara asked, grinning. “Both is good, right?”

Cinzy had to turn away and pretend not to listen while Ivy told Isabelle how amazing she was and how well she’d done, and how hot she looked batting a Nakamamon aside when it was used as a missile. Then she had to listen to the two of them muttering lovey-dovey stuff to one another, and then hear them making out. Not a lot of making out, mind; they weren’t completely oblivious to her and to Tara being here.

The hot stone coalescing in her guts both loved and hated when they did that. Part of it clawed at her throat from beneath and made her jealous. The other part of it shot heat down into the junction of her thighs and made her horny. She didn’t want Izzy or Ivy to sidle up behind her while they were bathing and wash her back, or kiss her ear, or cup her boobs, and she didn’t want one of them to crawl between her legs some night. Regardless of what she didn’t want, she couldn’t stop the thoughts from intruding, and the fantasies with Fletcher to include the tattooed Guardian eating her out while Fletcher slowly forced himself up her ass. She couldn’t stop Isabelle from sitting on Fletcher’s face while Cinzy rode him.

She was going to fork him until her brain melted out of her ear. She was going to hear him say the words she wanted, even if she didn’t know what those words were. She didn’t know if she wanted him to tell her he loved her or if she wanted him to tell her to get down on her knees and suck his cock more. She desired both, if she was being honest, and possibly both at the same time.

“Oh, Cinzy, my sweet love, you look so good on you knees and with your tongue out on my cock. I love that. I love you.”

She could be down with that. She would make him love her. Pfft, he probably already did. Guys didn’t talk about their feelings. Guys didn’t know their own feelings. Guys were idiots. Cinzy understood this as fact.

“We need to get to Flunt-on-the-Rustle yesterday,” she blurted.

The other three turned to her.

“I thought your feet hurt and you wanted to sleep every night.”

“We’ll have to travel by night anyway, right?” she asked in a rush. “Now that we know they’re after us, and now that we know Fletcher is in danger?”

“Aww, does somebody desperately need to see our little Fletcher Wetcher?” Ivy asked in a baby voice.

Cinzy came real close, then. Really close to doing the one thing that would both allow her to win and completely crush Ivy. But she wasn’t about to go ramping up her ability usage and going through all those hard-won Tokens she’d gotten through hours of meditation. Part of her, the sadistic beauty queen who had entered pageants and won, who had been able to destroy other girls in high school with a single cruel rumor.

She wasn’t that person anymore… but she could be. That person was only one bad decision away.

No, she wouldn’t seduce Ivy and get she and Isabelle to break up. No matter how angry she got.

Ivy didn’t see it, but Isabelle sure did. She pulled Ivy away from Cinzy with a look of absolute terror on her face.

“Boo,” she said quietly, “you need to not goad Cinzy, okay? Before she does something we’re all going to regret.”

Ivy grinned and started chuckling, until some bit of understanding passed over her face. Her face fell, and she allowed herself to be pulled away.

“Yeah, remember when you said the other team were idiots for not having a Bard? Just imagine what would happen if she turned that stuff your way, you horny idiot. I don’t know if Stalwart is going to save you from that.”

Ivy groused about how Cinzy couldn’t take a joke, but far enough away that Cinzy could only hear the grumbling and not the words.

They needed to get to Fletcher double time. Who knew what was happening with him there, alone?

This is Christopher desperately in need of the sort of protection only his teammates could give.

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