“No, don’t be sorry, Matt.” Placing a friendly pat on his shoulder to have him look back to her kind face, Amelia assures him, “I understand what you’re going through, and I know you have good intentions, I could tell that from the moment I first spoke with you. You’re just out of your element around all of us women, that’s all. And you’re right, I have been awfully open with you about this subject. In fact, you may have noticed that I’ve been flirting with you.”
When Matt greatly blushes, she smiles again and continues, “You have a good, innocent character about you, Matt, and there’s something about you that attracts me to you. Perhaps it’s the fact you’re a Dark Warrior. And that’s why…” To Matt’s surprise, she then leans in close to him and kisses him on the lips, sending a jolt of sensations through his body, and finishes, “I would be glad to show you a woman’s anatomy, and more.”
His eyes wide from the experience of the kiss, an experience he has never had all his life, he gets out, “Wow. Uh, I mean, thank you, Amelia, thank you so much. So, do you remember when you told me you could show me you’re not wearing a bra?”
“Yes, I do recall that.”
“Well, um, could you, show me that, now?”
“Of course, Matt. I was wondering when you would ask.” Standing up, Amelia walks away to the door, locking it, and to the far side of the room by the large window, pulling the curtains closed to phase out the sunlight and leave the room in a shady purple hue. She turns back to Matt, a sly smile on her face. “Let’s begin your ‘physical’ education.” Her hands go to her vest, unclip it, and tug it off her, revealing her bare chest to an awe-struck Matt as she strolls back to him and sits down in his lap, her breasts inches away from Matt’s face.
***
Being tackled to the ground for the umpteenth time, the Ax Warrior’s chest armor and helmet are dented and bruised with yellow wounds as Lyn, yet unscathed, hops off him and trots away. Struggling back to his feet, he growls, “Curse you, bitch! How about you stop messing around and actually fight me?”
Lyn, with something like a grin across her muzzle, sits on her haunches before sending up a howl, twisted with a musical note as a spell is cast through it. In the next moment, a lightning bolt jumps off her fur and strikes down the Ax Warrior, nearly splitting his frame and reducing his wounds to red in color.
As he falls over from the heavy damage, he blinks from shock and disbelief before she’s on top of him, bites at his throat, and rips it out. A red flash signals his demorph, and she stands upon the man in his human form, her blue eyes and white fangs gleaming down at him.
Looking up in fear at the Beast over him until she steps off him and trots back to the other women, he gets back to his feet, coughing a little, and runs back to the men, shouting, “Wha-what are you all standing around for, yet!? Morph and attack them, in the name of Cain, damn you!” The other six men, flustered and nodding, morph and step forward. As all of them have brown battle armor, three of them are armed with spears, two of them have energy-shaped knives in each hand, and one of them has his left arm molded into a shotgun.
One of the women cries out, “Hey, Lyn defeated you, fair and square. How dare you go back on the agreement!” As the other women step forward, ready to fight as well, Lyn barks at them, her tone indicating for them to stay back. Turning to her next opponents, as they enter a half-circle formation before her, her wolf eyes glare back at them, her mouth twisting into a snarl as she growls at them.
The fight starts when Lyn makes a lunge towards the Shotgun Gunner, who reacts by firing a round at her. The lunge is a feint as she leaps out of the way and instead goes after a Knifeman, her paws knocking him to the ground and her fangs ripping open his throat, wound energy spraying out of him.
Before the rest of Cain’s men can attack her in response, Lyn flashes in white light and disperses into clones of herself, a whole wolf pack, which descend upon them from all sides, dragging them down and biting ferociously into them. While they desperately try getting the clones off them, they don’t notice the real Lyn herself on the far side of them and raising another howl. The spell she casts forms a swirling aura of cold air around her, containing her within a small blizzard.
Just as the men get rid of the clones and are standing back up with miscellaneous green and yellow wounds on them, Lyn strikes them from their exposed flank. Rushing upon them like a sudden gale, she crashes into each of them with great force, her fangs or claws piercing and tearing through them in blooms of darkening wound energy while her cold aura stings or slices at them with icy, hail-like shrapnel in her passing.
The men all collapse on the ground, each with deep red wounds on them, while Lyn turns around and charges through them once more. Like a torpedo, the cold aura about her propels her over them, its force slamming them and sending them skipping across the ground, each one of them demorphing in mid-air.
As the men stagger back onto their feet, they group back together, fearfully eyeing the white Wolf yet prowling near them, before one of them shouts, “You won’t get away with this!” and they run away across the fields. As they become dots in the distance, Lyn makes a final howl of victory before demorphing, a satisfied smile on her face as she says back to her girls, “Good job, ladies. I’m sure they’ll be thinking twice about hanging around to bother Matt, from now on.”
***
Some time later, back in the college, Matt walks through the halls alone on his way to the building’s entrance with a funny look on his face, thinking back on the “lesson” he had with Amelia. He recalls how incredible and fascinating it was, what she had shown him. He had observed, touched, and even, from her instructing, tasted her, front and back. He is amazed how soft, warm, and inviting her flesh had been to him, how something as simple as someone else’s skin and body was so appealing and arousing to him.
They had also done a lot of kissing. It was awkward for him at first, but eventually he had it down well enough so that it was as simple, and steady, as breathing to him. In fact, they had gotten so far into it that Matt was surprised when Amelia stopped his hands at her waist, telling him with a smile they would approach that subject later.
Matt reminds himself of the actual purpose behind the lesson Amelia had given him. It was for educating and enlightening, not obsessions or false conceptions. He had to learn what a woman’s body looked like in bare flesh, and how she, and especially he, would behave if they were near or in contact, if he was ever going to be comfortable around a woman.
Despite that, however, Matt can’t help but feel excited and anxious for the next time he has a private lesson in the study with her. This first time, he had seen and experienced all of her upper body. The next time, she was going to show him her lower body.
Matt passes by the doors to the gym when they open and out steps Rose, in her usual clothing. His roommate at their cabin, she is also the first woman he had seen since Amelia’s lesson. Staring at her as images flash by in his head, she notices him there and warmly greets him. “Oh, hey, Matt. Coming back from that study with Lyn?”
“Uh, yeah, that’s right. Although, Lyn herself wasn’t there, the only one there was Amelia. Lyn and the others were apparently patrolling the grounds, protecting my good name or something.”
“Oh. And, how did it go?”
“It was, um, fine. Yeah, just fine! Simple studies, and I, I learned some new things.”
“Ah, well, that’s good.” They resume walking towards the exit of the building together, Matt slightly behind and beside her, as she asks, “What kind of studying did you do?”
“Oh, she helped me take notes for alchemy. You know, because Professor Loske spends the whole time lecturing and demonstrating in class, and then gives us the homework at the end of class!”
Laughing, Rose says, “Well, maybe you should do what I do, take notes during class, and then you won’t have to do them after.”
“Haha, yeah.” Deciding to change subjects before she can ask anymore about his time with Amel
ia, he asks her, “And how was your workout with Serpanz today?”
“Oh, it went alright. Some strenuous cardio, warm-ups, exercises, the usual. Then we sparred without our battle morphs. Turns out, she’s a great grappler!”
Matt was glancing at Rose’s chest, comparing her breast size to Amelia’s and finding hers are clearly smaller, though still a fair enough size and roundness that he couldn’t grip a whole one in his fist, when he blinks back to paying attention and asks, “Um, pardon? What’s a grappler?”
“It means she incapacitates her opponent by wrestling her to the ground and binding her up so she can’t move, threatening to break a limb she has a hold of or strangulate her. She got me a few times with my head between her legs, cutting off the circulation in my neck, while pulling back on my leg to the point she almost snapped it. A very uncomfortable position to be in, let me assure you!”
“Hah, yeah, sounds like it. But why would you be practicing to fight outside of your battle morph?”
“Well, think about it, Matt. Let’s say you had to fight someone or defend yourself in an environment where you couldn’t morph, like here, in the college. You would want to have some way of defending yourself, and that’s where techniques mostly found in martial arts become very useful.”
“Ah, I see.” Matt again stares at Rose’s neck, then chest, wondering what her skin felt and tasted like. Snapping himself out of it, they pass through the doors out of the college as he says, out of the blue, “Hey, you wanna race, Rose?”
“Huh?”
“You know, go into battle morph, and rush off across campus to our cabin. First one there wins! What do you say?”
“Hmm. What do we get if one of us wins?”
“Uh, let’s see. Oh, the loser has to do one thing for the winner, no matter what it is, at any time of his-or-her choosing. Sound good to you?”
Considering the fairness of such a contract, Rose smirks as she holds out her hand. “Sounds fine to me.”
Smirking back, Matt reaches over and shakes her hand, saying, “Then it’s a deal.” The two look at each other for a moment more before flashing into their battle morphs and taking off across the fields, running at high speed or cruising along on air balance.
***
Stepping out of the cabin behind him, closing the door with a thud, Sean takes a deep breath of the autumn air around him, releasing it in a content sigh. In his usual brown apparel, he grins to himself. “Okie dokie, then. Time for another night at the casino!” Not caring that he still has a bunch of homework to do from his classes, he has convinced himself he could do it later, with Rose’s help, as he begins strolling down the path through the plot of cabins around him, whistling a happy tune to himself.
A note in his whistling is dragged low and to a stop as he spots two things in the distance, becoming larger and recognized as two, humanoid figures as they come closer. Still not sure what they are until they are a couple hundred yards away, identifying them as the battle morphs for Matt and Rose, he only has moments before they would be upon him in their high-speed race, backing away and trying to wave his hands as proper reactions eluded him. “Whoa, whoa, wait a second…Spirits, why!?”
Rose, completely focused on keeping pace with Matt’s air balance as she runs beside him, doesn’t notice some guy in her way until seconds before colliding with him when he screams. To avoid collision, all she can do is leap off to the left side, sliding across the ground to a stop beside one of the cabins. She turns and watches with shock and frustration as Matt sails past the guy, who she now sees is Sean, slows to a stop in a decelerating run, and taps the front door of their cabin, shouting, “Yes, I win!”
Growling and glaring at Sean, Rose stomps toward him, declaring, “Sean, you idiot, why didn’t you move? You cost me the race!”
“Gah, uh, wait, what? What in the name of the Earth Spirit were you guys doing!?” Bewildered, Sean backs away from Rose.
“We were racing back to the cabin in our battle morphs, and whoever lost owes the winner one favor, without objection, whenever he or she wants. And you made me lose!”
“Er, well, uh, it’s not my fault that you weren’t watching where you going! Who the hell randomly races around in their battle morphs, anyway? They’re for fighting, not racing!”
“Ah, good point, Sean. How about we get right to the ‘fighting’ part, then?” Rose leers at him, forming leaf daggers in her hands.
As Sean stutters for some kind of response that could get him out of trouble, instead of deeper into it, Matt steps in between them, out of morph, and acts as the voice of reason. “Whoa, hey now, let’s calm down, guys! Rose, you have to admit, it’s not completely his fault you lost. You should have seen him standing there and avoided him without any trouble. But Sean, you should still apologize for being in the way, and maybe she’ll reconsider stabbing you multiple times.”
“Duh, oh, fine! Rose, I’m sorry for being an idiot and not getting out of the way as you two were coming down the lane. And, uh, please don’t hurt me!”
Sighing as she diffuses her frustration, Rose demorphs. “Yeah, and sorry for putting all the blame on you. I should have been more aware of my surroundings.”
“You are most graciously forgiven, Rose. After all, I’m not the guy to hold grudges, and I certainly hope you’re not the girl that does! But anyway, I’m just gonna head off now, before I do something else stupid. Later!” To Matt and Rose’s surprise, he enters his battle morph and speeds off on air balance into the distance, getting away from them as fast as he can.
Blinking and coughing a bit in the dust from his burst of air balance on departure, Rose says, “Heh, for a guy who knows how to use his battle morph now, he’s still somewhat timid, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. I guess some habits die hard.” Matt then suggests, “Well, shall we go inside?”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” The two walk up to their cabin, unlock the door, and head inside.
***
Sitting on the couch in the living room of the cabin a few minutes later, drinking casually from a bottle of vodka, Matt reflects on the past day, especially his time with Amelia, when Rose walks down the stairs from her bedroom in a pink bath robe and heads for the bathroom behind him, saying, “Well, I’m going to take a shower, before dinner gets here.”
“Okay.” Matt squints his eyes as a thought comes to him. A thought that, if he dwells any more on, it would make him upset, and he knows may make Rose upset if she found out later. Before she gets into the bathroom, he speaks up, “Uh, hey, Rose, wait up. There’s something I should tell you.”
“Oh?” She stops at the bathroom door, turning around. “And what’s that? Will it be quick?”
“Um, yeah, I hope so.” Standing from the couch, he walks around it to face her. “So, you remember how I was telling you what I did with Amelia in the study hall, today? Well, my alchemy homework wasn’t the only thing we did. We also did another kind of, uh, studying.” He looks away from her, afraid of how she was going to react when she gets the message.
It takes a moment for Rose to get it, but when she does, she gasps, her hands moving to conceal her chest and pelvis even though she is covered, and exclaims, “Oh, Matt, you can’t be serious! You slept with her?”
“Whoa, no, no, it never went that far! She just showed me, uh, the upper body.” He gestures to the chest area.
“Ah, just that much, huh.” She brings both her arms across her chest, embarrassed as she is sure he could envision what her chest looks like bare, and says, “You’re not going to do anymore of that with her, are you?”
“Well, the next time, we decided she was going to show me the lower body.”
“Oh, Matt!” She grimaces while putting a palm to her face. “You can’t just go rushing into such, such, activities, like that. It’s not healthy, you could become obsessed over it, and you could hurt others, and yourself, through it!”
“Yes, Rose, yes, I am aware of that.” Speaking calmly and as rationally as he could,
he continues, “That’s why her and I started these lessons. It’s so that I am well aware of a woman’s, er, physical features, and therefore won’t find myself intimidated or fantasizing over them.”
“…I don’t know, Matt, it still doesn’t sound right, to me.”
“Yeah, maybe. But it would be better than keeping me in the dark about such things, only to make terrible mistakes in trying to find out on my own, wouldn’t you agree?”
“…Well, yes, I guess.” Easing back towards the bathroom, Rose says, “Perhaps we should just drop the subject here, and hope for the best to come from your lessons with Amelia, eh?”
“Yeah, I suppose. Unless…” A sudden idea comes to his mind as Rose turns for the door. “You were willing to do that favor you owed me, here-and-now.”
It takes another moment before Rose understands, and she slowly turns back to face him, her face pale and pleading. “Oh please, Matt, you wouldn’t have me do that over some silly deal, would you?”
“Well, it’s nothing too outrageous, if you think about it. I was just going to suggest you show me all of you, right here, before you took your shower. I won’t even touch you or come close to you, just, um, observe you. That’s not so bad, right?”
“I don’t know, Matt. I’d still feel dirty doing it.”
Thinking quickly of some unfathomable way to convince her to do this for him, a spark comes to Matt as he suggests, “Then, how about I show you me, as well?”
Her eye brows rise as Rose looks back to him at his suggestion. “Pardon?”
“You know, you show me, I show you. It would be fair, as we’d both see something of the other we would never get to otherwise. Oh hey, to make it simpler, I could just take a shower with you! How does that sound?”
Alkalians Page 16