Bear's Beauties: Existential Crisis 55 (Patreon)

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

All in all, Diana took the revelation that the Anti-Monitor had his own version of, well, us pretty well. Especially the summarization of the Iron-Man armor as “Think a version of Batman that had the nickname of World’s Greatest Engineer with a fetish for power armor.” Her response was to nod, send a message to the rest of the League, followed by a declaration.

“I will be going with you,” she said quite firmly.

“Not that I’m complaining,” I began. “But you did catch the part where we are treating the time in that universe as a vacation, right? We won’t exactly be able to do much until we get the ship fully repaired.”

She smiled, “I did, but as my business on Earth is settled, now seems a suitable time for me to join you as we discussed before you left to secure aid from the alternate Earth. Additionally, I wish to meet the women who joined you when you left that world.”

Well it wouldn’t hurt, and I would be lying if I said I’d never considered how introducing the Coven to her would go. With a shrug, I stood and held a hand out for her to take. With that warm smile of hers, she took the offered hand, and I narrowed my eyes in concentration. Moving between worlds was weird, and I suspected that I would never get used to it.

All the same, the sight that we were greeted with as we arrived was quite pleasant. Nikhol was bent over, on her knees with her rear pointed in the direction that Diana and I had arrived in. Her face was buried between Kara’s legs, and from the way the blonde kryptonian’s hips were moving it was quite obvious what the sith lady was doing. Straddling Kara’s own head was Lana, who was enjoying the ministrations of the younger blonde’s tongue. All three were naked.

I glanced over at Diana and said, “I’m pretty sure my dimension hopping power has a sexual destination baked into it.”

The three in the middle of a lesbian threesome all gave a start, Nihkol’s head lifting from here she’d been devouring Kara and Lana turning to look at us. Both sith’s eyes immediately took in both me and Diana, and Nikhol gave a grin.

“Well, don’t just stand there, we have room for two more,” Nikhol said with a purr as she reached back with a hand and spread open her lower lips.

Well, how could I refuse an invitation like that?

[hr][/hr]

I left the four women to talk and catch up, Kara happily describing the benefits of the chokers to Diana, and made my way to the Engine Room to see if Cameron needed anything. I didn’t think she would, but it wouldn’t hurt to check. When I got to the Engine Room, it looked a hell of a lot better than it did the last time I was here. Granted, that time resulted in a chicken legged, rodent hunting robot chomping down on my arm.

Cameron was easily spotted, sitting at a table with a number of raw materials in front of her as she consulted a set of blueprints. Walking over to her, I checked to make sure she wasn’t working with anything delicate before wrapping my arms around her midsection.

“Hello, Bear,” she said easily as she tapped a few buttons on her omnitool.

“Planning on having that built into you?” I asked her.

“I have already added it to my endoskeleton,” she responded, leaning back slightly against my chest. “It is a most useful technology, though I have made sure that my subroutines and consciousness are not connected to it.”

I blinked, thinking that it would be useful to be able to interface with it mentally, before realizing why, “To make sure you aren’t hacked?”

“Correct. Even if the risk is small, the danger I would represent should anything manage to do so is unacceptable. I will not allow myself to be used against our Family,” she said, her voice turning hard at the end.

I chuckled, gently kissing the top of her head and sitting down next to her, “Any issues with the repairs?”

“None. I will be reviewing the blueprints for another two days before I begin the construction properly utilizing both the onboard fabricator as well as the micro fabricator in the omnitool,” she explained, making me blink in surprise.

“Reviewing the blueprints will take that long?” I asked.

“Yes. The technology is extremely complex, and the importance of it means that it must be working perfectly. Therefore I am taking measures to ensure that it works at full functionality once it is installed.”

I wasn’t even remotely tech-oriented, so I simply trusted her on her assessment on how long it would take. Pulling up my own omni-tool, I opened up the future version of Kindle and got back to reading the ebook I’d started the other day. Turns out that this timeline had a lot more Sherlock Holmes novels, as the temporary death at Reichenbach Falls wasn’t a thing.

Lisa got a bit annoyed when Taylor first told her about this fact, but it was all in good fun. Either way, I took in the misadventures of the neurotic detective that weren’t written in any of our own timelines.

[hr][/hr]

“So, we have a few possible destinations,” I said the next morning, looking over the whiteboard with everyone’s desired vacation activities. “The colony of Elysium has a festival that’s a combination of the Olympics and Highland Games in a month and a half, so that gives us a specific time frame that we can work with.”

“So we need to decide on a few destinations before then,” Lisa mused aloud, sitting between Taylor and Hyacinth.

The entire ship was in the Rec Room as we planned out our itinerary for our time in this universe, arguing back and forth for specific destinations and activities. Sirius was the only one who hadn’t chipped in an opinion, due to the fact that for some reason he’d shifted to his Animagus form as soon as he caught eye of Diana. We finally settled on making a trip into Asari space first, setting course for a planet a short ways away from Illium that hadn’t been in the games, but was noted as having a library on it that was older than the discovery of the Citadel.

That got Taylor and Hermione excited, but I have to admit, the look on Nikhol’s face when she heard that there were physical books there from that time had me a little worried. Still, the trip to the system was uneventful, and within two days we had the Yamato parked outside the system and the first group was heading out on the shuttle. Said first group consisted of Nikhol, Hermione, Taylor, myself, Diana, and Kara.

Of the six of us, Hermione and Nikhol were clearly the most excited, the former practically bouncing in her seat as Nikhol piloted us to the planet. Once we landed, the two… to be perfectly honest, nerds were out of the shuttle before the rest of us had even finished getting out of our chairs. I shared an amused chuckle with Taylor and Kara, and we joined the two bookworms as they all but raced to the library.

It was easy to see, as the structure dominated the city skyline. At a conservative guess, I’d say that it rivaled some of the big name skyscrapers from early 21st century Earth. But rather than being a single, straight tower, it more resembled a pyramid, for lack of a better way of putting it. It wasn’t a full pyramid, the top of the building was flat rather than pointed, but there was a very noticeable incline along the sides of the building. Eyeballing it, It’d say that the sides of the roof were roughly half as wide as the base.

It was also a lot more spartan and plain than the rest of the buildings, the basic shape and gray exterior having none of the lights and frills that the surrounding buildings had. It almost looked like an entirely different architectural philosophy had gone into building it. Hermione had a wide smile on her face as she approached it, looking up at the building with unabashed eagerness as we made our way over. In contrast, Nikhol kept her face and demeanor impassive as she eyed the building, and Taylor was clearly biting her lip in order to keep herself from breaking out into a fit of giggles.

“Well, ladies,” I said with an exaggerated southern drawl and I dipped into a low bow, gesturing to the main entrance. “Shall we?”

Kara giggled, Diana smiled, and Taylor shook her head with a laugh. The six of us walked into the building, the front lobby being large and open, with several people milling about in the areas where the other books were housed. However, my attention was drawn to two people standing in the middle of the room, talking to each other and occasionally glancing over to where we were. The first one, an asari who looked to be in the equivalent of early-twenties, had a large book held in her hands. The other was a salarian, tapping away at their omni-tool.

I could have made a scene, but considering that we were the only humans in the building so far as I’d seen, I decided to assume that it was because of that rather than anything malicious. Instead, I joined the girls as they made their way to the kind of map displays you see in big casinos and conventions. Never thought I’d see one in a library, but given the sheer size I’d be concerned if there weren’t any maps.

A quick look showed that the library was organized by floor, with each floor being a different topic. The first sixteen floors alone consisted of history, a fact which made my eyebrows rise followed by a low, impressed whistle.

“So, does anyone have a place they want to start?” I asked.

“Protheans,” Hermione and Nikhol both said in unison. As they did, the map responded, highlighting the entire ninth floor.

“Convenient,” Kara muttered as the bookworms led the rest of us to our next destination.

[hr][/hr]

By the time we managed to drag Hermione and Nikhol back to the shuttle, more than ten hours had passed. Most of us enjoyed the books on different subjects, and either the rules on talking were the same even in alien libraries, or the fact that we were humans unnerved the other library goers into leaving us alone. Not that it seemed to bother either of the two bookworms, as Hermione yammered at a mile a minute about what she’d read while Nikhol had a happy, satisfied air about her.

It was only as we landed back on the Yamato that something Hermione said stuck out and caught my attention. Turning to where she was talking to Taylor, I walked over to them to see if I’d heard right.

“…said she’s heading for a dig next week, and was doing some research on the other sites in the area,” Hermione babbled at a mile a minute, only to pause as I drew close.

“Girls,” I said with a nod. “What’s this about?”

“Someone that gave Hermione some recommendations on where to start her reading,” Taylor said with an amused smile at the bushy haired brunette.

“She was nice,” Hermione said, a smile on her face. “Seemed pretty young despite going on major archaeological digs too, late teens, I think.”

“Liara T’soni?” I asked, having a sneaking suspicion.

“Yeah, how’d…” Hermione trailed off, her gaze sharpening. “She’s part of the story of this universe, isn’t she?”

“Yup,” was my immediate response. “She’s one of the brainiacs of the Normandy crew, and she’s definitely a lot older than you were thinking.”

Hermione shrugged, “I wasn’t always the best at guessing ages, so what, twenties?”

“Try ninety six.”

The look on Hermione and Taylor’s faces at that revelation was absolutely hilarious.