Bear's Beauties: Existential Crisis 52 (Patreon)

[center]<<Bear Sandosen>>[/center]

I came to with a groan, my hand moving to my head to try to rub away the throbbing headache. My head felt like the stage of a Riverdance performance, and my throat felt drier than the surface of Mercury.

“Easy,” Nikhol’s voice cut through the pounding fog that was my head, a straw pressed to my lips. I drank the cool water I was offered, and peeled my eyes open. Nikhol was sitting next to me, her orange gaze alight with what looked like barely contained concern.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice raspy.

“The monster exploded when it died,” she answered, moving the glass of water to a bedside table. “In addition to yourself, Kara and Lana were knocked unconscious by the blast. You’re in the sickbay, and were given a general purpose recovery potion. It’s been an hour, Lisa and Cameron are assessing the damage while Taylor, Harley, Ivy, and Hyacinth are inspecting the rest of the ship to see if there are any surprises left behind. But there’s something else that we need to discuss.”

I pushed myself into a sitting position, taking in the room around me. Sure enough, it was the sickbay, Lana and Kara were in the two beds to my left. Turning back to Nikhol, I asked, “Talk about what?”

“Your birth world didn’t have the Force, correct?” she asked, her gaze intent and focused.

“Nooo,” I answered slowly, wondering where she was going with this. “Why?”

“I don’t know if Lana noticed, but I felt you using the Force while fighting the entity,” was her response. My eyes widened and my jaw dropped, but she continued, “It was weak, barely noticeable, but there was more than that. I asked Cameron to provide a copy of her memories of the battle, and ran some analyses while you were unconscious. The results haven’t finished yet, but when you threw Rhonda’s sword, you did so with far more strength than a human body is capable of producing. Even when taking into account the instinctive level of Force Enhancement I sensed you using.”

I stared at her, trying to understand what she was implying. But the pounding in my head was making it hard to focus. Eventually I just bit the bullet and asked, “What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know yet,” came the answer with a half shrug. “Maybe you were using the Force more than I realized, maybe there is something else happening. Either way, you will be receiving training once we have a better grasp of the situation.”

“I leave myself in your capable hands, Master,” I said with a bit of a grin.

Nikhol rolled her eyes, before standing from her chair and leaning over to give me a kiss. Bumping her forehead against mine, she gave a saucy grin as she said, “I prefer Mistress, love.”

I admit, that sent a jolt through my spine that came to a stop just below the waistline. But I ignored it, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. The pounding in my head was rapidly fading, and I pushed myself up to my feet as Nikhol went to check on Lana. I rolled my neck, feeling a satisfying pop as I did so, just before the door opened and Rhonda walked in, holding a datapad.

Looking up, Rhonda’s face brightened when she saw me standing and she ran up to wrap me in a hug. A hug that I returned, even as she physically lifted me up off my feet.

“Glad to see you too,” I said with a chuckle as Rhonda put me down.

“We were worried when you were knocked out,” Rhonda said as she put me down, a bright grin on her face and a wet glimmer in her eyes.

“I’m okay,” I told her, leaning in and giving her a peck on the cheek. Glancing down at the datapad still in her hand, I asked, “That a damage report?”

“Hm? Oh, no,” she said as she held up the datapad. “No, ‘Mione and I were on the bridge, trying to figure out where we fell out of the dimensional travel thingy. We’re in space, but not near Earth. The most we were able to figure out was a structure of some kind, but neither of us recognized it.”

I stared at the wire frame image on the screen in front of me. While there were certainly worse universes to land in, my experience with this one was a lot less than I’d like if we were stranded here.

“It’s called a Mass Relay, they utilize a material called Element Zero that can alter mass to enable near instantaneous travel to far off corners of the galaxy,” I told her, taking the datapad from her and turning the image of the Mass Relay to get a better look. “It’s from a franchise called Mass Effect, with the big bads of it being a race of AI called Reapers who wipe out all space faring civilization in the galaxy every fifty thousand years or so.”

“So a more limited and smaller scale version of the Anti-Monitor?” she asked.

“Close enough,” I agreed with a shrug.

“Were the ‘Mass Effect’ moo-vies, like Star Wars?”

I gave a small chuckle, Rhonda’s cheeky grin telling me the bad pronunciation having been intentional, “No… well, sort of, I guess. The main elements were a trilogy of games that were like a mix of movies and the role playing that you probably remember playing as a kid. There were some supplemental tie-in stories and a fourth game set in the Andromeda galaxy, but I only ever finished the first game. So we’re largely blind here unless we happen to have arrived in a period I’m familiar with.”

“Any cute girls to pick up while we’re here?” she asked, her already cheeky grin growing even wider.

I snorted, handing the datapad back to her and telling her, “I’ve already got a ship full of cute girls, I’m not sure that we need any more. In any case, I’m going to check in with Cameron and Lisa, see what the damage to the ship is.”

Rhonda sobered up, giving me a nod. I gave her another hug, her arms wrapping around my shoulders in return. When we broke apart and I made my way to the door, I gave a jump at the short sharp pinch on my rear. I turned around, to see Rhonda doing her best to look completely innocent. It was ruined by the large blush on her face.

I gave her a knowing look, before grabbing onto her wrist and pulling her in close, planting a hard, searing kiss on her lips. One that she returned with equal fervor. It was short, only a few seconds, but when we broke away, I could see the hungry look in her eyes.

“I wish we had more time,” she said with a bit of a pout. Before she sighed and pulled away, “Go on and check on the damage, I’ll help here.”

I gave a nod, before turning around and making my way out of the sickbay. With a small, quiet sigh, I followed the halls to the back of the ship, where the engines were. It was soon apparent when I reached the part of the hallway where we fought. Blackened marks along the walls, gashes and partially melted segments, and a veritable bubble in the center of the destruction.

The door at the far end was open, and I could hear Lisa’s voice inside, cussing and swearing up a storm. I entered, and saw Lisa pacing back and forth in front of a piece of machinery that looked like a swarm of metal eating rodents had gone at it. Cameron was inspecting an oval shaped piece of hardware, but not one that I recognized.

“How bad is it?” I asked as I walked in, brushing aside the remains of what looked like tiny bipedal robots.

“That Hero-knock off shitheel left a bunch of these robots in the engines and they completely ruined the Interdimensional Drive! We’re stuck in this reality unless there’s a tech base advanced enough that we can repair it,” Lisa shouted, pointing to the chewed to hell and back piece of machinery.

“Ah,” I said, staring at the thoroughly eaten and ruined Drive. “Fuck.”

“Intradimensional systems are still working, as are all forms of life support, offensive, and defensive systems,” Cameron said as she stood up, setting down the remnant of the robot she’d been examining. “More critically, there is one more of these ‘Mousers’ unaccounted for. Based on the information stored within, it was one of five. Lisa and I only found and eliminated four.”

“Joy,” I muttered, as Lisa handed me an extra blaster. “Some good news, Hermione and Rhonda took some scans and I can say for sure that the local technology level should be more than adequate for repairing the Drive. We will probably be able to get a few upgrades as well.”

Lisa stared at me for a moment, before her eyebrows shot up and she said bluntly, “As soon as possible, we are getting me an omni-tool.”

“Correction,” I shot back. “We are getting everyone an omni-tool. I may not have finished the games, but I definitely want one for myself.”

The three of us slowly walked through the engine room, searching for any sign of the missing Mouser. The engine room was so large that we had to split up, and I found myself walking down the corridor of my section alone. A low, droning hum reverberated through the room, seemingly emanating from the pillars and columns of advanced machinery around me. With the need to find the missing saboteur, it made my mind run wild. The sound, rising and falling in pitch and tone, almost sounded like a heartbeat.

Despite that, the sounds of my footsteps seemed to echo through the room, as shadows seemed to flicker, warping and twisting, making my body tense. I knew it was in my head, my brain helpfully pointing out the causes of each piece of cliche horror atmosphere I was seeing, but it didn’t do anything for my nerves.

Eventually, as I ventured deeper into the engine room, a sense of foreboding enveloped me. A premonition, for want of a better word, that something was lurking just past the edges of my vision. Again, my mind provided rational, logical reasons for all of it, pointing out the various bits of the engines making noises.

Then I spotted something, a tiny thing, so small I was surprised I saw it. The smallest scratch in the paint on one of the engines. Looking at it, I could tell it was made by the strange shaped feet of the Mousers. I was on the right trail, it had passed through here, recently too by the looks of it. Best guess was in the last five or ten minutes.

I blinked. How the fuck did I get that much detailed information from looking at a scratch in the paint? I was shocked I even saw the scratch, let alone somehow managed to get a timeframe on it. It wasn’t like I was Lisa, I didn’t have the skill to read such fine details, nor did I have a bullshit power, sorry Lisa, that let me cheat having said skill.

I blame that question for what happened next, I didn’t notice the Mouser I was tracking jumping at me until it was already in that air, flying towards me with an open jaw. I managed to get my arm up in time to block it. The spike that formed its main ‘tooth’ bit through the meat of my forearm, only to come to a sudden, jarring stop that sent shockwaves through my bones. A pained cry tore its way out of my mouth, even as I reached up with my free hand and grabbed it by the head.

My fingers dug into the metal, and I briefly imagined I could hear its frame warping and the metal screeching under my grip, making it pay for attacking me. I pulled its jaw and tooth out from my arm, before throwing it onto the floor and shooting it with my blaster. Once, twice, three times, again and again until it was utterly perforated with holes. When I finally managed to calm down, Cameron and Lisa were running up and I looked up at them.

“Found it,” I said through grit teeth. “Mind helping bandage my arm up before I go to the sickbay again?”

Cameron was tearing off a strip of her shirt, exposing her smooth belly, and wrapping the cloth around my arm before I even finished. Lisa, meanwhile, was looking at the remains of the Mouser with a look of confusion.

“Bear,” Lisa began, befuddlement in her voice, “how did you grip the Mouser hard enough to dent the metal?”

“According to Nikhol, I apparently have the Force now. No idea how,” I said, as Cameron lifted my arm up and down.

“Additionally, your arm is now several kilograms heavier,” she said, before turning her gaze to me. “You should undergo a full medical scan.”

I nodded, “While I’m undergoing that, see what you can do to find out when and where in this reality we are. I have no idea how the local version of the internet works, but if it passes through the Relays we can hopefully tap into that.”