Chapter 4: First Mission

  Base 15 was far less remote than the secret project moniker led one to expect. It was located West of Rochester, New York, close to Lake Ontario. The eventual goal of Project Divinity would be to liberate the surrounding cities from the monsters and slowly advance towards New York City and then expand operations from there.

  For now though that meant they were surrounded by mostly farmnd and forests and the closest human settlements had been overrun a long time ago. Eine had decided to take them into the ruins of the town of Gaines, although 'town' was a very generous name for the collection of a few dozen houses built around a crossroads.

  From prior scouting trips Eine knew that Gaines had a very light Outsider presence, enough to be worth exploring but not too much to overwhelm their party. Reaching the pce had still taken them over an hour, alternating between going through forests and creeping through fields. Thankfully, while going through the fields Eine noticed no flying enemies that could have spotted them. A Night Haunter or two were easy enough to deal with but absolutely nobody wanted to catch the attention of a Jabberwock, horrible half dragon half goat things that answered to Shub-Niggurath.

  Their target in Gaines was the destroyed church building, not for any religious reason but because it was a nicely central spot in town. And if they could loot something from the nearby store so much the better.

  They reached the row of houses that the church building belonged to from behind, seeing the streets empty as far as they could see. The pce screamed small town USA to Eine. Little wooden houses painted white with plenty of space between them. The one building that defied the trend was the store Eine had heard about, a rge red building, but any hopes of looting it disappeared when she noticed that it was an antiques store. Maybe they'd find some nice trinkets in there but definitely nothing immediately useful like food or ammo.

  As they approached it Eine motioned for Ophelia to hang back as her role was to provide fire support and then motioned for Alexis to take point.

  As they circled around the church building they knew they had found what they'd been looking for: their first Outsider. The thing stood in the middle of the street, previously hidden behind the church building as they'd approached the town. A horrible mass of tentacles that vaguely resembled a tree with a thick stem full of unduting mouths that looked like knotholes at first gnce and multiple tentacles that sprouted from the top like branches. The roots, meanwhile, were three bony-looking goat's legs tipped with hooves.

  “Scan it”, Eine told her two charges.

  DesignationDark YoungProgenitorShub-NiggurathThreat LevelMediumHints:Main mode of attack is to swing its massive branches at foes. If kept at range, will summon portals that briefly allow masses of tentacles to reach through and shred anything they can catch. Avoid these at all costs.

  If allowed to escape, will commune with its progenitor, bringing more scrutiny to the area and potentially jeopardizing the entirety of Project Divinity. For this reason, letting one escape will result in a severe Credits penalty but killing one nets a significant Credits reward.

  Weakness: Magic. If attacking with conventional weaponry, aim for the open mouths or try to sever extremities one by one.

  EXP20Credits500“How do we do this?”, Alexis whispered.

  “Hit it fast and hard”, Eine replied in a low hiss. “Shotgun bsts and sniper rounds into the open maws and I will pelt it with magic. On my command.”

  **

  Evelyn Dupree felt frustrated. Again. In fact, ever since her boneheaded maneuver two weeks ago she could scarcely remember a time where she hadn't been feeling frustrated. She'd made an ass out of herself and snubbed the person she most wanted to spend time with. And ever since then she'd been feeling annoyed whenever she saw Eine around the compound. Even worse, whenever she saw Eine she was usually with that cute blonde Alexis and they were having fun. Without her.

  And it was all Evelyn's own damn fault.

  Even worse, when the two week crash course had finally been over and people had finally been allowed to go outside Evelyn had decided to swallow what little pride she'd had left and go apologize to Eine and ask her to let her come along, groveling on the floor like a character in one of her anime if she had to.

  But then, seconds before Evelyn had reached the two of them, that bck-haired girl Ophelia had stepped into their path and had asked to tag along. And, of course, since she hadn't made an ass out of herself in front of them they had taken her along. Evelyn wanted to hate Ophelia for that. The temptation to bme all her problems on that bck-haired bombshell was strong but Evelyn squashed it down. This stupid behavior had been exactly why Eine was now on a mission without her.

  A normal person would be asking why Evelyn was so obsessed with what this one person thought of her but Evelyn Dupree wasn't thinking clearly. She'd never ever been attracted to another woman and she just could not get Eine out of her head. On top of that, the fact that Eine didn't want anything to do with her was wholly her own fault and she just couldn't handle that.

  So Evelyn decided to do something stupid. Despite being crazy about Eine she knew nothing about the tall, fluffy-haired brunette except that she made her heart flutter. So now that Eine was out on a mission Evelyn decided to look through Eine's stuff, find out what she liked, and then use that knowledge to make amends.

  **

  Eine started pulling the Winds of Magic into herself as she began to weave a construct of air and crystal shards. Normally this spell would have created a cone of shredding shards but in this case Eine tightened the spell up as close to a pinpoint as she could focus it. Once she had the spell ready in her mind she gave her two comrades the go signal.

  Ophelia hadn't been exaggerating when she spoke of her superhuman reflexes and eyesight and her first round hit the Dark Young straight in an open maw, rocking it back so that only the odd number of limbs kept it from falling on whatever passed for its ass. Alexis dashed in and fired her shotgun as fast as the pump action allowed. The firearms training had done its job. Alexis wasn't doing some amateurish spray-and-pray tactic. Instead she lined up each shot carefully, exhaled, and then pulled the trigger. She held the weapon perfectly but even so on her small frame the recoil should have kicked her like a mule on each shot but the armor reduced it to almost nothing, allowing her to move and shoot with a smoothness that was beyond a human without this gear.

  Once Alexis had finished her strafing run but before Eine could loose her spell at it the Dark Young cast a portal right above Ophelia but the vampire was as nimble as Alexis had hypothesized and she jumped out of the way before a mass of spiny tentacles reached through and tore apart the area she'd been in moments ago.

  The Dark Young was spitting blood and buckshot from all the mouths the girls had fired into and Eine dashed forward, spell in hand, and shoved it into the most damaged-looking maw she could find.

  The Dark Young let out a sound that was half sughtered pig and half creaking wood, the spell tearing through its insides and shooting out its back. Eine thought she'd finished it so she wasn't as careful as she should have been when the Dark Young tried to whip down with one of its tentacles. Had it connected it would have inflicted heavy damage even with the suit, but before it could a bullet from Ophelia severed the tentacle, making the Dark Young rear back in even worse agony. But it was another round of shots from Alexis that finally put the beast down for good.

  As soon as it hit the ground it started disintegrating but Alexis was more occupied with the message that popped up in the corner of her vision.

  You have defeated a Dark Young. Awarded 20 EXP to you and 10 EXP to Ophelia Devereux. Awarded 250 Credits to each party member.“Ha!”, Alexis shouted.

  Ophelia and Eine congratuted her, then Eine apologized for her terrible showing. Ophelia spped the back of her head. “You did the most damage. Not your fault that this thing was tougher than a cockroach.”

  Before they could celebrate any further though the doors of the few surrounding houses flew open and... things... emerged, clearly drawn by the loud sounds of the gunshots and the dying Outsider. These beings Eine had never seen before. They looked humanoid but they were covered in cancerous growths and each had at least one tentacle and one feature that belonged to a goat. Some had goat heads, some had backward bent legs and cloven hooves, some had horns and goat eyes on otherwise human heads.

  DesignationThrallProgenitorShub-NiggurathThreat LevelMildHintsIt is unclear whether the cancerous growths are contagious or not. Avoid skin contact at all costs. All forms of damage are effective.EXP2Credits10“Do not look at the goat cancer zombies”, Ophelia muttered.

  Eine's gaze snapped over to her. “Inscrutable Machine?”, she asked, a grin in her voice.

  Ophelia was grinning as well though of course nobody could see it through the helmet so she just nodded. Then she pulled her sniper rifle out and began racking up head shots. These shambling things weren't threatening to someone wielding a gun and so the three of them made short work of them, mowing through the nearly brainless things with ease. By the end, Alexis' notification said:

  You have defeated six Thralls. Awarded 12 EXP and 30 Credits.Ophelia Devereux has defeated five Thralls. Awarded 5 EXP and 25 Credits.Eine Caldwell has defeated six Thralls. Awarded 9 EXP and 30 Credits.They congratuted each other on the good work, though the mood was a bit somber, considering that these Thralls had clearly been infected humans. And unlike Zombies these hadn't technically been dead yet.

  Their pity lessened a bit when they checked the houses these Thralls had come out of and found half-eaten corpses in all of them. Men, women and even children had been eaten by these infected Thralls, though Alexis was confused as to where the distinction was between those who had been transformed and those who had simply been eaten.

  Eine didn't have an answer for her but already decided to look it up. Ophelia had suggested that maybe the Dark Young had transformed some and then sent them out to eat the rest, which Alexis had found the most likely, if the most distressing, expnation.

  **

  At first gnce Eine's room had seemed fairly pin, with very little in the way of personal trappings. The single most conspicuous item was a picture of her parents and her little brother, clearly taken in one of the refugee colonies, telling Evelyn that they were probably alive and well.

  A little bit of digging had revealed an e-reader chock full of urban fantasy novels and also some cheesy romances – lesbian romances, to Evelyn's immense relief. The one in the first slot was named Party of Three and the synopsis sounded so fun to Evelyn that she decided to look for that one when she got back to her own room.

  There were also some more... raunchy novels hidden on the st few pages. As most e-readers sorted books by recently read Evelyn initially dismissed those as something Eine had downloaded, disliked, and then forgotten to delete but then she'd noticed that Eine had not sorted her e-reader by recently read, meaning she'd deliberately pced those on the st page of her catalog. The running theme of those books involved women with penises. Not trans women, mind, but that Japanese fetish stuff of biological women who just happened to have some additional equipment, futanari, Evelyn had heard it called.

  But after a little more digging Evelyn had struck gold. A small treasure trove of smut. All drawn Japanese media. Doujinshi, she knew they were called, lewd fan works, usually of beloved fictional characters fucking. The ones in Eine's bottom drawer were mostly of popur anime and gacha games, exploitative mobile garbage full of cute girls. And all of Eine's doujins showed some of the most prominent female characters of those series', again with dicks, roughly fucking cute girls and even cute crossdressing boys here and there.

  Evelyn had only one expnation for all of this.

  She's got to have a strap-on stashed around here somewhere that she's itching to use.

  And so Evelyn Dupree began digging even deeper, trying to find that alleged strap-on, not realizing that her time for snooping was running out.

  ChrisLensman