Divinity Rescue Corps
Postlude- An Absolutely Destroyed Ring

Tara’s head was pressed to the floor. She couldn’t see anything, but she could hear everything. This was what heightened Ingenuity and Physicality did for you. Also, the rush of mana coming out of the portal had done the unthinkable: it had recharged their mana. Which was again draining out, but slowly. Right now, she had her passive perception ability, and could hear everything with total clarity.

Boots clomping. The men discussing in low tones just what in the hell had happened here, and how anyone from the other side had allowed it. Also speculation about who called the Ragnarok and why.

Ragnarok was clearly a doomsday scenario call, necessitating the explosive devices stuck to the portal ring to blow it apart. Someone had panicked and thought all the Nakamamon were coming through from the other world, and they were all gonna die, because apparently people didn’t read the material or listen to the briefs. Some idiot in charge had lost his nerve, called the code in, and now the portal was done.

Tara counted them lucky to have gotten Fletcher and his mom through, then incredibly lucky to have gotten Regina through as well. Tara really liked Fletcher, but Regina was in love with the dumb idiot and his big, giant, orgasm-inducing penis.

The Agency personnel had known the moment Drat went through with McCauley Skulkins that things were going wrong. Their enhanced hearing told them that the mana signatures had spiked, that they were dealing with a possible incursion, and to lock down the compound. Fletcher was prepared to languish in a cell with his mother, and watch her slowly succumb to the cancer, but the team was not. Drat, Trent, and all the girls were prepared to do whatever they deemed necessary to get Fletcher and his mother through that danger portal. His mother had brought Fletcher into the world, and she deserved to live. Fletcher had chosen to be a Healer, and he deserved the chance to continue doing that all-important work.

“We’ll be okay,” Cinzy whispered over and over again. “We’ll be fine.”

Tara wasn’t so sure. Sure their enhanced stats were good compared to the majority of the soldiers here, but they didn’t have guns, didn’t have the biometric access or the intel on where they’d be taken.

And then there was the problem of the destroyed portal ring. So far as they knew, there was only the one. Cinzy and Regina had both been convinced that was nonsense, but without any proof it was hard to take them seriously.

Ivy was crying somewhere off to her right. Loud sobbing. Wailing. Tara knew it was Ivy because the soothing sounds of Isabelle’s voice kept being interrupted by the soldiers shouting “Shut! Up!” at her. Also “No talking!” and “Head on the floor!” Followed by “That’s enough!” or “No more of that!” and finally, “I’m not gonna tell you again.”

Which, of course, required him to tell her again.

“It’s fine,” Cinzy muttered, over and over again, from Tara’s left. “It’s all fine.”

The concentrated mana potion from Fletcher was already done wearing off. The initial depressing shock of losing out on your mana began to fade to normal. She’d been here before, once, on R&R, disliking the feeling in the first few minutes but then getting used to it. She imagined the feeling was like being on caffeine, then coming off caffeine cold turkey. After the headaches and the simmering aggravation, life was basically just dull, gray, and less exciting.

Not that she drank caffeine, so it was just a guess. People on caffeine always gushed so hard about drinking coffee and how incredible it was. Come to think of it, she’d never met anyone who’d gone off caffeine, period. Did they all die? Or did they just fail, and get back on the wagon?

Once the Agency goons got her up, handcuffed and ankles chained together, she resorted to her Tara specialty: just blabbing.

“You should’ve seen you guys freaking out. Not a single casualty and you still destroyed the portal ring after about ten seconds of being under attack.”

“Shut up.”

“You couldn’t even take my two younger brothers in elementary school. Or my cousins, and they’re in diapers. You guys were totally unprepared. I guess I don’t really blame you, because there’s never any kind of—”

“Shut. Up.”

“—dangerous activity. But I mean I can’t believe they didn’t get you guys over there and at least level you up some.”

“Enough.”

“You can’t possibly have a Physicality of 7,” she said. “My boyfriend could take you down without even breaking a sweat, and he’s a forking Healer.”

“Um, he’s not your boyfriend, Tara,” Cinzy said. “He’s my boyfriend.”

“He’s nobody’s boyfriend!” Isabelle called from behind. She was in tighter shackles than the others, including a mask. “Dick like a club, too,” she mock whispered to the guard escorting her. “We’re talking one hit from that thing would’ve laid you out. I wouldn’t doubt he could beat you to death with it.”

“Babe?” Ivy asked over her shoulder.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” Isabelle told the guard, who was giving her the oddest look. “I should’ve said talleywhacker. Makes it sound more like a weapon.”

“Most embarrassing way to be killed though, wouldn’t you agree?” Tara asked. “Honestly, I get it. You probably got a look at him when the shenanigans kicked off and you saw what he had packing in his pants, and went ‘oh shirt, it’s Ragnarok, there’s no way we can compete with a guy who’s packing that kind of equipment in his pants. Destroy the portal ring with him on the other side.’ I get that. It makes perfect sense. Whenever I look at him, I think ‘holy shirt, I’m so forked’ while getting down on all fours. And then he starts stuffing it inside me.”

“We can all hear you,” Cinzy said, louder than necessary.

As for the guards, they’d been somehow shocked into silence. They marched the girls into cells. The guard had stopped trying to shush her, which is why she kept right on talking a mile a minute. This was the Tara way: get into a new situation, defuse all tension by just gushing forth with tons of talk. She told them all about how she was pregnant for sure with his child, and once she was out of here she was going to take the newborn to meet her family, and she was going to spoil it completely.

The guard looked vaguely horrified. He exchanged several disbelieving looks with the others before vacating the holding cell area.

They were taken, one by one, to interrogation rooms. The Agency’s people informed Tara that she was in a great deal of trouble. They were looking at court martial, they were looking at jail sentences, and these were federal prisons they were talking about. They had the whole situation with the portal room on tape, and that was damning evidence.

Yeah, she thought, good luck trying to get that in front of a military tribunal when your Agency doesn’t exist. Pffft, these people were stupid.

They were bluffing. The only thing they could do as of now was hold her in a cell. She’d been through worse than having meals delivered to her, unlimited reading material, visits to the yard for exercise, and plenty of time to work out. It would also give them the time and opportunities they needed to plan and execute their escape. They had Tokens.

One of the guards tried his best. He really did. “You must also know that we are considering Christopher Fletcher, Regina Hampstead, and any other associates to be AWOL. Do you understand that that means?”

“Absent without official leave?” she asked. “I’m vaguely aware of the term and the consequences.” She remembered reading through the manuals, or skimming them, but her heightened Ingenuity had brought her recall up several notches.

The man on the other side of the interrogation table sneered behind his not-very-intimidating sunglasses. He looked like a bad ripoff of Agent Smith due to the twenty extra pounds around his face, neck and midsection. As in, not nearly as scary as he wanted to be.

She yawned. “What’s your next question?”

Eventually the four of them were reunited, and then left alone after the one guard couldn’t handle anymore graphic descriptions of her taking potent loads from Fletcher in the other world, and on the road trip up here.

“Good, he’s gone,” Isabelle said.

“Tara,” Cinzy said in another mock whisper.

“What?”

“I thought you were just… I don’t know, kidding? I thought you knew we couldn’t get pregnant over in the other world and were fulfilling some kind of kinky fantasy.”

“Ugh, no way. I mean, yeah, he really filled me up. Like, a lot.”

“I don’t know that we need all the details,” Isabelle grumbled.

“Okay Missus ‘I Shouldn’t Have Said That,’” Cinzy added, chuckling.

“Dripping down my leg, dripping on the floor, so much,” Tara muttered, her mind adrift. “It was awesome.”

“Okay really though,” Cinzy said. “You don’t have to take it that far.”

“You got them to leave,” Ivy said, before sniffling. “We need to discuss a plan.”

“A plan? Great! What’ve we got going for us?” Cinzy asked.

“Ivy and I thought this kind of thing might happen,” Isabelle said, “which is why having a little spat was so stupid. I’m sorry, boo.”

Another sob was the only response out of Ivy. Tara peered out of her cell and tried to see what was going on to her left. She regretted being the first one marched out. Cinzy could probably see whether Ivy and Izzy had snaked their hands through the gaps in the bars and were awkwardly holding one another. She imagined they were. Love was so good. Tara loved love.

She was pulling for them to get married, decide they wanted kids, and then have Fletcher get them both with child. Then her little one could have a few half siblings to coo and burble with, to be sneaky little buggers, to write all over the walls with crayon, and get into mischief together. Sure a lot had to happen in order for that fantasy to become a reality, but a girl could hope. Tara wasn’t as hardcore about her bisexuality as Isabelle or Ivy, but she thought all women looked even more beautiful when they started to get with child.

“Hmm,” she told herself. Maybe she did have a bit of a problem. An addiction. She wasn’t certain you should find your friends more attractive if they were full to bursting with baby. That was not a normal thing people wanted, right? She decided it wasn’t.

Well, now that she’d admitted it to herself, she had successfully conquered it! Awesome!

“Fletcher worked out that you can still use Tokens,” Isabelle said after a time, at the end of Tara’s internal revelation.

“That… is all we’ve got?” Cinzy asked.

“Uh, yeah. We’re going to wait for our moment.”

“What about the portal?” Cinzy asked. “Do you guys have any idea what the portal situation is? Will they just repair it?”

They all fell silent. On the list of things that needed to happen, apparently ‘Fletcher fixes the portal’ was also up there.

“You think he’ll cure his mother?” Ivy asked.

“Pffffft, Psssh,” Tara said. “I’d be more surprised if he hasn’t already.”

This is the end of Divinity Rescue Corps: The Third Chapter

December 20th, 2024-February 27th, 2025