Ch.2 - Xenogamy
If this is your first time reading pr0n, then you're under eighteen and shouldn't be here. I think that's universally true... Anyway. In this story, you'll see an asterisk next to a name with whom I went on a little tangent. That asterisk indicates the name of Kraig Ventner, who isn't real. Craig Venter, though, is real, and founded Celera Genomics, which was one of the two major competitors for completing the Human Genome Project. I didn't want to use his real name in the story because, frankly, I respect him too much to use his real name even if he isn't even indirectly involved in yiffiness. So there's some intro; t3h p05t, 4 j00
Over the next few hours, Ges repaired the damage it had wrought while I considered the wisdom of letting it do what it had done. As in, could I get space STD's? And how had it survived until now, if it needed human semen to do so? Of course, it was possible that it could use any species' semen, but I was assuming it needed the nutrition from a human source, or else it would have attached itself to, say, a horse somewhere that could give it significantly more than what I could. Biologically, the source should have made very little difference, given the ridiculous similarities between human DNA and that of other creatures.
Then again, it was possible Ges was a magical creature, rather than alien, lending the possibility that this was another toy Jason or Raiden had found somewhere and decided to send me, except for its pursuers. It could have all been orchestrated in order for someone to infiltrate my home and steal bank account information from my hard drive for all I knew. I mean, in that situation, it would come back with no useful information unless it managed not to die in finding the only piece of hardware with valuable truths on it, but it was still a disconcerting prospect.
Before I picked up Silvir from school, Ges managed to convey to me that restoring my home had left him in a weakened state, so I did more of the work this time and jacked off for him, caught between thoughts of Teva and Raiden and so taking longer than I intended. I really needed to get over losing Teva... damn woman and her damn job! The only consolation I got was that in exchange, she kept a watch over me and had a passive mute on my magical signature, so the mage-hunters would have a hard time finding me unless I did something really stupid, like... like...
Like wipe out a fleet of aliens chasing a possible object of transgression against the laws of one planet or another.
Damn it! I do not have time to worry about mage-hunters at this time! At any time! The group had been formed secretly by an opposing government that Teva never named to wipe out America's top sorcerors, magi, wizards, and witches (depending on the region). The U. S. government was allegedly "doing something about it," but CNN in their "trust the government" way weren't releasing any information beyond that.
I picked up Silvir, letting Ges ride in the pocket on the back of my seat. The seventeen-year-old wolf, named for the shimmering quality of his gray fur (and after his great-grandfather), waved good-bye to some friends and hopped in with his backpack swung around to his lap.
"Hey Dad."
"Hey, Silvir. How'd the chem exam go?"
"Dude, I so beasted that. There was this one problem with, like, six reactants..." All of my children with Teva had taken after the two of us. They amazed me daily with their academic accomplishments, acing papers and winning awards year after year. Diam (really Diamasca) was in the honors dormatory at his college and Aura (really Auralias) had entered hers as a sophomore her first year and was definitely a projected suma cum laude. Silvir (really Silvirince, so sometimes Silve and sometimes Rince and in jest Viri) was third in his class at the moment and holding steady.
For some reason, Silve had recently begun to grow these weird, blue-and-orange, almost neon patches of fur back behind his ears. I supposed they were replacements for not having wings, but even if they weren't they were a nice touch on my handsome young lad.
I had asked Ges to remain unhidden until we got back home and it did as it was told, waiting patiently until I explained all the parts of the situation to Silvir that didn't relate to either mage-hunting or sex. He took it pretty well and struck up an instant friendship with Ges, who learned with glee that it could disappear entirely under the longish fur on Silvir's arms.
Once Silvir was settled, I told him I was going to walk around and show Ges where it was. The alien seemed happy to oblige, which I thought was odd, because it had already indicated how much it knew about human language, culture, and anatomy. Clearly, it had studied a different part of the world. Silvir opted out, saying he was meeting some folks online to play an MMORPG. GoreKraft III, or something. Maybe World of GoreKraft, but if that was the case, we were going to have a little talk, because if that was so, he had been paying for it out of my wallet.
We wandered the suburbs of where I lived and I pointed out the closest shopping center, tried to indicate to it where the residential areas were in their little hives of apartments and neighborhoods kind of thrown around the area in a happy-go-lucky sort of way. It gazed around with an appendage like a floating eyeball after I threw a simple invisibility shield over it, at the very least seeming learn and be interested.
We hadn't been out for very long when I decided to duck back behind a corner of the shopping center where it backed up to the wood so I could spy on the gang that met there to shoot craps and play cards. They hadn't done anything too serious yet, but I wanted the jump on them if I ever heard them plan a robbery; I had seen the group as they vanished to their little hideout a few weeks ago and decided to keep tabs on them. So far, I had gone unnoticed.
As usual, I casually tossed an invisibility shield on and simply strode up to where they should have been, but what I saw was not what I had been prepared for. The guys weren't there, but they had left behind the remains of either the most intense orgy ever seen, or a murder.
Seeping slowly along the black asphalt towards a drain was a veritable pool of semen. Tiny spots of pink were mixed in where someone had bled, but it was clear that the volume, if collected, would form into a whole human body. They had gone too far, and I hadn't noticed in time.
Wearily, angrily, I began to swirl my arms and chant, knowing I was able to bring the unfortunate victim back as long as all the fluids were still there. I had done it before without knowing the procedure- I had acted on instinct. Now, though, I had discovered how to listen to the call of magic in my body and move and speak such that the eternal ether would respond to my summons how I wished.
In general, this meant that I invoked my spirit to guide me in the movements as I danced in slow, fluid motions, but sometimes, it meant a swift, harsh crack of my fingers and sometimes, the guidance would cease when the task was impossible. As it did now. This creature's assailants had consumed a part of him, and so I couldn't help him.
Sighing dejectedly, I let my arms drop and went to a knee in front of the puddle to sniff it and hope I didn't recognize the scent. Luckily, I did not, but my actions prompted an odd reaction in Ges.
It hopped down from my shoulder and into the center of the mess, somehow not immediately melding with it, and seemed to consider for a while. "Really?" I asked it. "You're really going to eat all this?"
It shot me an angry glare (by making a spike with its head) before swiftly becoming one with the material on the ground. As I watched, every drop of the pool began to retract, some pseudopodia reaching out to catch escaped rivulets, and thicken. It rose up into a thick white fountain and continued to grow thinner and taller from there.
Before my eyes, a human shape began to form, with one small problem- in total defiance of gravity, it was standing up straight, but missing a foot. Moments later, features formed, details sprung out, and pigments began to color the victim back in. Within five minutes, a tall, male snow leopard was standing in the buff before me. Ges popped out of his shoulder, formed one "hand" into a needle, and stuck it in his creation's temple.
The alien shot itself over in front of my face, gave a proud, defiant, sweeping bow, and sat on my head as the young man breathed in suddenly and toppled over, hopping for a while as his hypothalamus fought with itself over how to break his fall without a foot with which to do so. Finally, he landed sprawling on the ground and that's when I noticed- his good foot was still coated in semen. Clearly, his had not been the only DNA ejaculated back there. A reason for his foot-lessness rotated through the clockwork of my mind.
Without even thinking about it, I chucked yet a third invisibility spell at him, now holding onto all three at once. It wasn't hard by any means, but it was beginning to actually feel like an effort, rather than the nothing it had been before. I asked the most natural thing I could think of as he tripped again, trying to pull himself up. I stayed kneeling. "What's your name, kid?"
"Lioen," he choked out. He had lost his breath after a whump onto his chest and was gasping to get it back. Strangely, in all the excitement, he observed his missing foot with a bemused eyebrow and sat up to face me, finally realizing that trying to stand was useless. "I can only assume you saved me?"
"Well, you can, and I'm humbled, but it was this guy." Ges waved. "He... it... she... is an alien or some such who, I've recently learned, can resurrect people who have had the misfortune to get cock-vored. At least, cock-vored with no plans for survival." My last sentence was as accusing as I could make it.
He looked at the ground distractedly for a moment. "I thought I knew what I was doing..."
"I haven't seen the remains in as reparable a state as yours in a long time, and even then, I couldn't bring you back on my own. You're lucky we found you before it rained or got too terribly hot." He held a hand to his head, briefly, as though dizzy. "As it is, you probably feel dehydrated. Hold on."
Swishing my hands through the air like a river and whispering, I called the magic again and it brought some water out of the air into a sphere in my hands, which I passed over to Lioen. After a moment of surprise, he drank it with a well-restrained thirst, not gulping it down like an idiot, and even taking time to sip it slowly, which I had not expected.
I let him drink, and then spoke again, softly and seriously. "What did you think you had to gain by risking yourself that way?"
He stared at nothing. "Self-confidence."
"You weren't trying for a melding?" I had heard of those cases, when a fur would act submissive and let him- or herself be vored, and then took over the true victim's body from within. Lioen looked at me with a harsh and disgusted eye.
"Never."
"You thought you could prove yourself- either escape the vore, or create a totem before you were digested and survive that way."
A tiny motion of his head was all I got for a nod. "It's been done before," he murmured.
"Not by anyone your age. Your mind has not matured enough to be able to grasp the situation and deal with it properly."
"So says science."
"So says experience."
He caught my gaze. "So say the weak."
"So say the reasonable."
His eyes narrowed. "What if I'm unreasonable?"
It was hard to fight him. I would have fought anyone telling me something like I was telling him, perhaps a different way, but I would have fought them all the same, and so it was hard to play the role of the elder. "You saw where being unreasonable got you."
His eyes softened finally and he looked away again. "Yes." He drank the last of the water and looked down at his missing foot.
I called his attention back to me. "I feel like I should leave you without a foot. What do you do?"
"What do you mean?"
"Are you a student? An artists? A bum? What are you? How old are you?"
"I'm... I'm twenty and-"
"Eighteen."
His cheeks reddened. "I'm eighteen and I'm a... I'm a student at-"
"Where?" He didn't like to lie. It was hard for him.
"Main... Mainstreet High, I'm supposed to graduate soon..."
"There is no Mainstreet High around here."
"It's new this year, they had plans for a long time, I-"
"Stop it."
"What?" He hadn't realized it, but he had become increasingly agitated as he answered and as he slowed down to breathe, noticed his mistakes. "Oh..."
"What are you?" I asked again.
"I'm... I'm a... wh..." He stopped, looked down, and looked at me again. "Don't make me say it." His eyes had darkened and narrowed to their previous calm state. They were golden.
"Well, first things first. We need to heal your foot, regardless of my opinion of you. Do you understand what happens when you're cock-vored?"
"Besides being turned into a puddle of semen?"
"You are first digested and through a magical process transformed into a puddle of semen, yes, but it may surprise you to learn that it carries your DNA. Initially."
"Initially? So it changes?"
"Yes. The longer the victim remains in the predator, the more DNA is transformed into the predator's. Apparently, the one who got you was in a hurry, whether because he couldn't control his lust, or because he was trying to run away from the scene of the crime and couldn't with a pair of basketballs swinging between his legs. So a volume of cum approximately equal to your foot was transformed into his." He nodded as I explained to indicate he understood. "What that means is that, because Ges can apparently recreate you from your seed, you would need to produce a volume of seed equal to your foot."
He laughed once. "Uh-huh. Because that happens every day. That's gonna be, what, a pint of sperm? Thereabouts?" He knew his basic volumetric measurements. Well done.
I nodded. "If you make a deal with me, I'll show you how to do it. I'm a stronger magician than you may think, and I've learned some... erotic techniques over time." I had to fight not to blush. It sounded as though I were hitting on a teenager.
Again, we were left with him staring into my eyes, as if looking to see whether or not I was lying. "I'll do it. What do you want?" His voice was a pleasantly smooth baritone.
"All I want is for you to stay here and listen to me for about fifteen minutes once we're done. I know I sound like every other patronizing benefactor on the planet, but I can help you. Honestly."
He nodded. "Fine. What do I do?"
His quick response surprised me, but I suppose I would have been nearly as hasty in his situation. Maybe. I moved and knelt down in front of him on both knees, so I was now looking slightly more down at him. He was a bit taller than I was, but he was sitting cross-legged. "This is necessarily going to be weird," I warned him. "Kneel in front of me, like I am."
"Duh." That was why he was eighteen, and not twenty. No respect for his elders. But he obliged.
I took off my shirt and unzipped my fly, then exposed myself to the open air. He glanced down once, and then looked steadily at me. Before he could react, I wrapped my arms tightly around him and thrust forward into a kiss, giving him nothing to suspect what I was doing. Abruptly, I let my fingers swirl in tandem with my buzzing wings, and suddenly, I'm sure he felt his member began to move with a mind of its own, expanding and hardening simultaneously while I refused to let him push me away, thrusting my tongue into his mouth and battling with his to keep him distracted.
We gasped at the same time when his organ opened up and gulped mine down past the head. My whole set of genitals began to expand, my testicles filling out and churning to produce the seed for this until I felt like I had a pair of oranges lying on my thighs. With slow swallows, his cock engulfed mine down to the hilt and kept pulling for more, but couldn't get it. As a result, it would suck some down, but then let it slip back out, just like I was getting head. Except in the tightest passage possible. I backed down the ferocity of my assault on his lips as soon as he calmed down from the initial surprise and realized what was going on. He began applying his own techniques.
The back of one of his hands began stroking down my chest and I felt his other hand's fingers tickling my scrotum, brushing the thin fuzz there and sending a jolt of excitement rolling up into me. I pulled back suddenly and stared at him. "Magic as a sexual stimulant?" I asked him. I had only ever used magical toys, and only magic itself with... Teva... Damn it, don't think about her!
He grinned and blushed sheepishly, and it took me a moment to realized why. I was well over double his age, so I imagine it sounded like I was questioning him as a superior. "It was something I learned..."
I brushed his ears at the nervous zones to make them twitch, then moved down to scritch the sensitive hackles, making him sigh and murr at the feeling. "Don't stop learning," I told him, and moved back in, nuzzling his neck and kissing the crook in his shoulder, anything to keep him from visually witnessing what he certainly tactilely knew what was happening. I felt him purring from the pleasure and vibrating from fear at the same time. He knew that he was effectively doing to me exactly what had been done to him and he knew I was a stranger and he knew I was many years his senior, and he felt like a child in the hands of an adult, something he, having led the life he had, had not felt in a very long time. He was afraid, so I licked his cheek while the pressure grew in my testicles until I was ready to burst.
Despite my many years of life, I began to pant as the sensation amplified and he began tickling the fur on the back of my neck, obviously a fast learner. His own breathing was quickening, but the goal here was not his climax. Finally, with a soft gasp, I dug my fingers into his back and pressed his firm, youthful chest against mine as I came, pumping my seed through my enlarged organ in a series of two-second pulses, sending the load in a torrent into his balls, which stretched and bulged in regular bursts to receive it all as he gasped and held my back in a tight grip, his gaze empty and staring up as I clenched my teeth behind my gums and watched him, not closing my eyes, wanting to make this as impersonal as possible until I knew him.
Finally my climax ended. I lowered my hands to our laps to disentangle our members and stood away from him, my genitals back to normal size. While I zipped up my fly again, he inspected in wonder the size of his testicles, which had grown to something minisculely bigger than mine had been. He looked prettier with them than I did, the downy fur in his groin over his handsome, spotted thighs...
"What else are you?" I asked, tearing my gaze away from his erection that throbbed in the fervor of youth. I couldn't believe I was thinking of so much in terms of his adolescence as opposed to my age - I had sworn never to think that way. I mean, forget the fact that he was just barely over a third my age. Forget the fact that he was just a year older than my son. I was still that spritely... wasn't I?
He looked up at me, and I let my gaze bore into him to distract myself from my thoughts, hoping to reach into this wretched soul I had revived and pull out something worth saving. Something was happening in the back of my mind. A plan was forming.
He crossed his legs in front of him, obviously uncomfortable being naked in front of me. That was good- it meant that he hadn't attached any close emotions to me and that he respected my authority over him as his savior and elder. "I'm- I'm a dancer, kind of. And I learned to sing a little. And I have a Bible at my apartment, so I suppose I'm a Christian... maybe. I read spy novels."
"Sing."
"What?"
"I want to help you, but you might be lying again. You can't dance right now, so sing. I'll put up a sound barrier. Oh, and Ges?" I addressed the creature who hadn't left my shoulder the entire time. "Would you mind keeping him aroused, so he doesn't begin to digest that into anything other than his own seed?" The blob nodded and engulfed Lioen's lap much as he had mine the first time. The leopard jerked a little in surprise, but understood the necessity and allowed it.
For a few moments, I thought he might not honor my request. He simply continued to meet my eyes, refusing to back down. I constructed the promised shield and waited for him. If he didn't do this, I wouldn't help him. After an eternity, though, he opened his mouth and sang.
His voice flowed out like ambrosia, an auric sensation speaking velvet into my ears as it soared through a tenor range like a dove in flight, touching notes like silver bells and letting them resound and fade into a silent nothing like deep space before sending a shooting star streaking melody past the planets and ramming home to burst forth in a radiant sunburst maestoso. Once, his breath caught in a gasp as Ges had to do something slightly more erotic than usual to keep him erect as he concentrated on singing, but he recovered elegantly. His voice had none of the ugly, straining vibrato of the old, but it had lost juvenile nasality and grasped the firm tenuto of a beautiful adolescent, lingering on notes before allowing them to shimmer into life and vibrance, sforzando and subito pianissimo animating a full spectrum of color before he slipped into falsetto as into a splashless dive, rising higher in perfect control like a Daedalus with immortal wings, the feminine sound soft in his throat rather than harsh, as in so many others'. Finally, he fell again, to end on note seven of the scale he had chosen, leaving me straining for the return to the tonal and, as I had been since he began, smiling in childish glee.
"That was phenomenal, Lioen. Does anyone else know you can do that?"
He shook his head, humbly refusing to meet my eyes this time. "I practice out in the state parks at night, and so far, no one has caught me."
"You have an ear for music, then. That was very well done."
"Are- are you a musician, ah..."
My eyes widened. I had never told him my name. "Siber. Siber Terrian." I reached out and shook his hand. "And we need to get that seed out of you. Looks like Ges is having a hard time restraining itself." Indeed, the blob had begun moving more fervently, which I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't heard Lioen's breathing quicken as he spoke. "Don't be afraid of it. It knows what to do, as far as I've been able to tell."
Lioen clenched his teeth as Ges rippled up and down his pulsating member, drawing by now a steady trickle of precum into its silvery body. "Will you hold me, Siber?"
I looked at him, my gaze thin and calculating. "Why?" I asked. All of a sudden, I wondered something that hadn't occurred to me in years. Was he an angel? His voice alone could qualify him, and his sepulchral demeanor only served to augment my hunch. He could very well be the first one I had observed since... *ahem* that is, in a very long time.
"I- I don't know." His voice was catching in more than sexual need. He didn't want to admit what he was about to say. "I'm afraid. I'm confused. I thought I was dead, and I felt so stupid for it, and now I'm alive and... and you care about my voice, and you've given me the only indication I've ever had that I might be able to do something with it, and you're helping me, and... ah!" He didn't become desperate, but he listed off his reasons with something more than pure objectivity, fighting through the stimulation to tell me why he needed me.
As he began to enter the throes of orgasm, I slipped behind him wrapped my arms around his chest, stroking my hands up and down his silky, white fur as he gasped while gushing cum into Ges, who took it all and extended himself down to Lioen's missing foot, which began to fill in by the second. I held him as his muscles spasmed in response to the climax, and he laid his hands over mine as I held myself up so he could lean his head back against my breast and sigh as it finished, his chest heaving with the emotional impact of all that had and was happening to him.
When it was done, his eyes were closed and he was still breathing heavily, but Ges hopped back up to my shoulder. It had a new sphere of white within it , and in that I thought I could see a tiny, almost embryonic image of Lioen's snow white body curled into the fetal position, but it was probably my imagination. Apparently, there had been some extra from the leopard, who was beginning to recover.
After a moment, he dropped his hands from mine and I allowed him to disengage and stand, testing to ensure that his foot worked properly. He stood and examined the appendage, as did I. Besides a silky sheen as on a newborn kit, it appeared to function in all the right ways. He turned to thank the blob, but it held up a "hand" and pointed to its center, indicating that payment had been taken. I smiled at the confused feline. "It consumes human sexual fluids, apparently. Well, that's not true," I ammended. "It consumes, at the very least, semen. Don't ask me how, or what it is in the end. I don't know. I just found it yesterday."
"Okay." I stood and found my shirt, then abruptly realized that in all the excitement, I had dropped the invisibility spells. I hastily set up new ones, hoping we hadn't been seen.
"Well. First, we need to get you clothes. Second, where are your parents?"
His eyes simmered dangerously. "No."
I raised an eyebrow at him. "I will know if you're lying. Where, and/or who, are your parents?"
"My mother is a heroin junky and my father is her pimp. Is that good enough for you? They aren't parents. I don't depend on them. I get my money in my way, and before you ask and try not to ridicule, I won't work at some half-ass minimum wage job because it feels like a dead end, whereas doing what I do, at least I minimize the number of complete dumbasses I have to speak with."
We were back in business mode again; I could tell. At the very least, I could see that he still felt vulnerable, nude as he was. "How much schooling did you take?"
He chuckled darkly. "Schooling? Interesting diction. I made it to tenth grade and dropped."
"Why?"
"Because too many people knew how I made a living and only one girl cared, and then she was immobilized in a car accident. How much of my life do you need? I didn't think you were going to make fifteen minutes this awful for me."
I held my gaze hard. "You're not getting out of this. I can make you into something, Lioen, that you would never be without me or someone like me. I have one last question. What do you want to be?"
He thought, then started to answer, and then thought again. He opened his mouth and closed it, shaped his words, and commenced to speak. "I want to be a... uh. I mean I want to look for... umm... I want to be an archaeologist. Or a paleontologist."
My mind went through a series of jumps. It was hard for him to describe what he wanted... he wanted something to do with ancient history... he wanted to discover something that had been lost... I glanced up at him suddenly, not entirely certain of my response.
"You want to recreate satyrs. And centaurs. And... and furies and mermaids and... Is that what you want to do? Is that your dream?"
His eyes widened in exuberance. "Yes! Yes, that's what I want to do! I mean, I've never seen a centaur- how does one work? How do they reproduce? How do they balance? Or fairies, or mermaids, or even, like, sea serpents and pegasi! How did you guess that?"
I smiled. "I wanted to make dragons. I took the genetics route- summoning them didn't occur to me. I went through the same kind of thing you did. People asked me what I wanted to do for college, I couldn't say, 'I want to make dragons.' I have to say that I want to go into genetics and they ask why, and I have to fabricate something every time. I'm still working on it, though."
His face brightened like the coming of dawn to a cloudy night. "So there's a possibility? You think I could do it?"
"If you let me help you. I know you don't want to hear this, but you can't do it on your own- not from where you are right now."
He was grinning giddily, but made himself stop and put up a hand. "Wait. Wait. I'm sorry I have to do this, but... what proof do I have that you're telling the truth? I know I haven't really made myself trustworthy, but what about you?"
"Do you know who *Kraig Ventner is?" He shook his head. "He's the guy who is currently collecting samples of sea water and sequencing everything in them he can find. Genome sequences, I mean. He also tied with the United States in the Human Genome Project. I have his cell phone number. Do you want me to call him?"
Lioen nodded. "Do it."
I pulled out the machine and punched a few buttons, then waited for the phone to ring. The other end picked up. "Hey, Siber! What's up?"
"I have a skeptic here who doesn't believe I know you, Kraig. Could you prove that you're someone important? Or that I'm someone less important, either way? His name is Lioen."
"Hand him the phone, I'd be glad to."
I did. Lioen took it nervously. "Mr. Ventner?"
"Lioen? This is Kraig Ventner; I sequenced most of the human genome before we ran into a snag and had to team up with the U. S. government. Listen, has Siber told you he can make steel using bacteria and iron rust?"
"N- no, he hasn't."
"Well, he can. Look, I have to go see if this thing I caught will eat uranium; you keep on keepin' on, Lioen, and I wish you the best. Bye!" The line went dead and Lioen handed me the phone, his arm shaking a little as he fought not to grin.
I pocketed the device and said, "Told ya so."
By now, the leopard could hardly contain himself, practically giggling with excitement like a kitten with an ice cream cone. "Okay, then. Okay, yeah, I know I can't do it myself. My parents and I have really screwed up my life, but you could get me back into school? Into a college?"
I broke into a smile. "All you need is a GED and some SAT scores- you'll be older than your classmates in college, but I can send you there. I have the means, and I know someone at an adoption agency to get papers filed in case you need any parent/guardian stuff. I really don't know if you do, at eighteen."
He looked down, embarassed. "Seventeen."
"Really? Well, that settles that." I would have a third son, apparently.
"Siber, you've... you've changed my life. I could do something, even if it's not reviving the 'spirits of ages past,' or whatever. For the longest time, I thought I might... you know... die on the streets." He laughed at himself, softly, before looking at me again. "Thank you."
"You have yet one more trial, unless you know a few spells."
"What's that?"
"You have to trust me not to take your invisibility shield off as we walk to my house. Unless you know where your clothes are?"
He glanced around the place urgently, but to no avail. "I suppose I will, then." He had reclaimed his mask of calm, though a grin flashed through unbidden every few moments. "This'll be weird. It's like streaking, almost."
I blinked a few times. I had never gone streaking before. "Would it bother you too terribly much if I stripped right here and did the same thing?"
He stared at me and raised an eyebrow as if to say, "Really? Really, you think there's something you could do to which I would object besides splatter small children into the sidewalk with a bus? Really?"
But then I thought about it a little more, and I decided it would be more aesthetically pleasingly symbolic if only he were in the nude after his transformation. As we walked, I prayed to God that the shield really was on. There were no calls about public disturbances when I got home, though, so I assumed we were in the clear.
My army now had one member.