Fists and Fortune 10 – Passing the Baton

“THE MAN IS BACK IN THE HOUSE!” Reysha shouted from the rooftop, when she spotted Apexus in the distance. Two seconds later, the door burst open. The only reason that Korith was leading the charge that followed was that she was faster.

“HURRAY!” the kobold yelled, jumping once out the door and then leaping with incredible strength towards Apexus. Like an arrow, she whistled through the air, until she was effortlessly caught by a prepared and ready apprentice Monk. Even with his reflexes, he had to let the force of her flight go somewhere. Spinning around himself as he stepped forwards, Apexus used his hands to hold her and his wings to maintain balance.

He was starting to slow, when Aclysia’s arms wrapped around his neck. In a deep and incredibly aggressive, needful hug, she cuddled up against him with as much force as her flight could develop. That was, as Apexus realized, a lot more than he was used to. He had to go for a few more spins, before there was no momentum left. Wordlessly, he pulled Korith against his chest and gave both the women attached to him a unified squeeze. They made the world’s most adorable sound and smiled with broad happiness.

Apexus himself was beaming with joy, even if his expression didn’t reflect that as intensely. Due to his origin, emotional displays from him were always less intense, unless they were badly coordinated overcompensation. While the constant and prolonged contact with people outside the group had helped him a lot in regards to reading and, less so, mimicking displays of emotions, the Monk training had also shown him that he didn’t need to force himself. There were people like him out in the world. They were regarded as odd, yes, but Apexus didn’t care about being odd. He just didn’t want his true nature spotted at a distance.

“I’m feeling like a fucking peasant over here,” Reysha giggled, jumping off the roof. She landed with an expert roll, directly translating into a confident stride. Her red tail waved behind her butt. “Everyone can soar through the air and I’m still moving about the regular way.”

“Were you not working on changing that?” Apexus asked.

“Shadow Steps are just more fancy walking,” Reysha waved off. “Anyway, they got the hugs, I want the first kiss.”

“What? No!” Aclysia protested with swiftness and intensity that was both atypical of her and completely expected given the subject matter. “Darling’s first kisses are mine to claim, I loved him first.”

“Gonna have to renegotiate that deal, bubble butt,” Reysha smacked the metal fairy’s ass just as she stepped into range. The skirt of her casual dress did little to dampen the impact and so the half-enjoying yelp of the white-haired woman echoed through their corner of the woods.

“I’m hungry. Maybe I will eat you,” Apexus warned, trying to make it sound like a joke. Standing in front of him, the redhead blinked several times. Each time her eyelids hid those beautiful blue eyes, surrounded by practically pitch-black sclera, the humanoid slime felt something was being taken away from him for a split second. “Was my tone wrong?”

“Oh.” Reysha realized that she had just been staring and waved off. “Nah, that ain’t why I’m standing here all dazed…” Her reddish-brown lips spread into a broad grin. “…can’t believe ya got confident enough to joke about that topic, is all, Apexus. Good on ya.”

The humanoid chimera hummed. Eating her was indeed not something he would have dreamt about making a joke on a few months ago. “So, jokes are more comfortable when done on something under control.” He shook his head. “No, you make jokes about topics outside your grasp all the time.”

“Hey, just because I think whoever came up with wolf girls deserves an ass kicking doesn’t mean I can’t kill a god.”

“Reysha, that is blasphemy on several levels of interpretation.”

“What I’ll do to you tonight is blasphemy to every last Inquisitor out there and that won’t stop me from sitting on your face.” Reysha giggled at her own statement. “Man, can you imagine us fucking in front of a church? The faces would be priceless.”

“You are… so… so screwed in the head,” Korith put together her most confident insult.

“Yup… so where are we on the kisses? I wantz.” Excited, Reysha jumped from one leg to the other. Her boobs bounced a bit, their size enough to make that happen but short of making it as erotic a display as Korith’s every move was. The tiger girl was the most balanced, proportion wise, in the group, with a nice balance between the bottom and the top of her alluring figure.

Apexus had to consider. Aclysia was indeed the staple choice of first kisses. She was his favourite between the three, even if that margin was much thinner than it had once been. For the most part, its existence was inconsequential. The bottom-heavy angel blinked, looking as submissively as she could with those verdant green eyes of hers. To her right, the shortstack was going full puppy eyes. Gold and big, they sat in her roundish face, framed by blonde hair just as bright and pure in colour. Both women, for their many differences, had similar, pointy ears. Both pairs were wagging in anticipation.

Although, in the ear department, nothing was as cute as Reysha’s. The tiger girl’s two fully-functional peaks stuck out of the rest of her wild, red mane from the bit of white lining the insides. Confidently, she stood there, one hand stemmed onto her hips. She licked her full lips and Apexus’ choice was made.

The angel and the shortstack let out disappointed “aawww”s, when Apexus bowed forward and pressed the first kiss of his return on Reysha’s lips. The redhead didn’t let it stop at a quick smooch either. Layering her arms on top of Aclysia’s, she kept the slime close to her. Their tongues were fencing, vying for dominance. Something that escalated and escalated and escalated, turning from a loving kiss into a two-sided battle of the borderline violent kind.

When Reysha started biting his lip, Apexus finally had to let go of his other two loves. He grabbed the tiger girl by the midriff. His large paws were practically enough to wrap around it. That part of her could be soft. At the moment, it wasn’t. The athletic, nearly fatless body that casual linen shirt hid was tense, as the kiss broke and she tried to wind out of his embrace.

The soft pain of being kicked barely bothered the slime. Instead, he lifted Reysha off the ground. A cat that was unwillingly being picked up hissed intensely. Her presence was intense, then it wavered. Apexus felt her slip from his hands and involuntarily pulled his arms back to go where she would fall. That was what actually released the Rogue.

Dropping on the forest ground, Reysha tried to tackle him. The impact was hard, empowered by the same kind of strength boosting Skill Apexus had learned, and counteracted by him using a Skill to empower his own bones. Reysha grinned up at him, he smiled back ever so slightly. Then, Reysha’s presence slipped again for a second.

That was all the time Reysha needed to get to his back. Reacting swiftly, Apexus whirled around and smacked her with an extended wing. It was largely harmless, but drove her off her attack plan. Once they faced each other again, Apexus rushed forwards and caught one of her arms. She tried to shift out of his senses again, but such quickly repeated usage fell off in effectiveness due to exposure and the exhaustion of the person’s mana circuits.

With that, the fight was essentially decided, but they continued wrestling for about three minutes, before Apexus had her pinned to the ground. “Surrender,” Apexus demanded, watching her squirm in whatever way she could. With one hand on the back of her neck and his body straddling her legs, that squirming was essentially limited to her presenting her curvaceous butts in various angles. “Stop moving. I want to try pressing some meridians.”

Reysha considered what she found more entertaining, playfighting or finding out what Apexus could want to test out on her. She could always do the former. The latter was new. ‘New is always better,’ the tiger girl thought. “Alright, hit me with your fancy new Monk shit.”

“There is no excrement involved,” Apexus guaranteed. Right there, in the dirt, Apexus pulled her shirt up to reveal most of her back. He focused on the crystal nail of his right index finger and let it grow to a thin point, like a thin needle. He looked all over her back, projecting the map of the pressure points he had studied onto her.

Most pressure points useful for a Monk were the magical and physical ones, especially those used for their particular style of Martial Arts. Sensation points had a limited usage in combat. Most of the time, it was their non-combat utility that made it worth studying them. With the right combination, it was possible to make liars truthful, to suppress or bestow pain, calm rage, or release long buried sadness.

Apexus had a more fun usage in mind.

“Velen.” Naming the point, the humanoid chimera firmly pressed it with the thin point of his fingers. Reysha lay there, feeling a slight tingle. “Succub.” His finger descended on a bit between spine and shoulder blade. Suddenly, the tiger girl moaned. “Elma. Sister. Petit.” Reysha chuckled at the names, which abruptly ended when the last of those three made her entire body feel like it was ignited – in the most positive way possible. From her toes to the roots of her hair, all of her tingled with the need to get pounded into oblivion. It was like she hadn’t masturbated in three days and was finally given some ladytime. Apexus spread his hand, measured carefully, then pressed a twin meridian, with little finger and thumb. “Venus.”

Reysha’s ass bucked off the forest floor, when she suddenly had an orgasm of satisfying intensity. Moaning and giggling, she spasmed under him for twenty seconds, before regaining her breathing. “That IS interesting,” she grinned over her shoulder. “Can you do that again?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, oh, ya shouldn’t have told me that. I mean… that was nice. Really fucking nice. Not getting fucked nice, though… still, orgasm in under 45 seconds, sign me up.”

“You don’t have to write yourself in.”

“Are ya being obtuse on purpose today or did Maltos smack some of the lessons on communication out of you?”

“The former,” Apexus said and pressed another sensation meridian. Reysha shivered all over, then felt her muscles relax. “I like what I can do to you.”

“That’ll make four of us when those two get to experience it,” the tiger girl hummed.

“This does beg a question: how long is your break, darling?” Aclysia wanted to know.

“You have me until tomorrow,” the humanoid chimera responded and got off Reysha. The redhead stretched, as if she was just awakening from a good night’s rest. A single pressure point did not have the capacity to actually replace sleep. There were ways to postpone it or to let one stay conscious while the body was in hibernation. No way existed to let people skip it entirely – at least not with pressure points alone.

Reysha had just been given a post-orgasmic rush that acted as a muscle relaxer. “Oy, could ya have taken my pants off first?” the tiger girl asked, as she got to her feet. “Ya made me cream my casual outfit.”

“You won’t need it for the rest of today,” Apexus asserted.

“Point taken,” the tiger girl surrendered and pulled her shirt over her head. “Ah, nothing like casual outdoor nudity… on a Summer Leaf, that would be great.” A cold autumn wind, moist with the promise of nearby rainclouds, drifted by them. “Can we go inside? Where it’s not fucking terrible?”

“Yes, let us,” Aclysia added, since she had a soup brewing.

Once indoors, Reysha got out of her clothes and wrapped herself in a blanket. Korith actually joined her in that strategy. Together, they warmed up the bed, while Aclysia pointed Apexus to the pile of lasting food they had stocked up. It would have been enough to feed a family of four for three whole days. Half of it was gone within five minutes, dissolving within the humanoid chimera. It had been a while since he had properly refilled his biomass reserves.

“Uhm, may be a stupid question but the… what do you call them, pressure points?” Korith asked.

“Pressure points, ki points, meridians, we use those interchangeably,” Apexus told her.

“Yeah, those, aren’t their individual names kinda… weird? Like, highly inconsistent?”

“Yes.”

Korith had to remind herself that she got precise answers from Apexus, unless she added the magic word. “Can you elaborate?”

“Discovering the ki points was a work of many generations across many Leaves. Local dialects differ. When they had a summit to sort out which lexicon would become standard, they settled the matter of which school’s chosen name was used through tournaments. It took 74 years to finish the lexicon.”

“…Man, Monks really are special people,” Reysha said drily.

“You make that sound like an insult.”

“Kinda is,” the redhead admitted. Under the blanket, her and Korith’s tails were fighting as much as a tiger tail could hope to fight against that of a lizard. Even with their massive size difference, the kobold was actually better endowed in that area. It wasn’t the only one. “Ya making good progress then?”

Apexus let deeds speak louder than words, raising an arm and showing it turning metallic. “Ironskin,” he named the technique, holding it for as long as he could. “I noticed you were flying faster than before, my melody?”

“It pleases me that my progress manifests in such ways.” Aclysia was dancing a little, while stirring the pot. It was a pretty basic soup in terms of ingredients, except for the herbs they had to throw in there to make it edible for Reysha. Since these weren’t products of dungeons, whose mana was poisonous to most people, Korith could eat this without issue. “I cannot currently speak of extensive new acquisitions to my powerset. Pronthin has been drilling us, which has manifested in good ways.”

“I get slapped around all day…” Korith grumbled. She had no aches, Aclysia made sure of that, but she still remembered the hits she took – particularly those that she failed to neutralize with those defensive Martial Arts she was supposed to learn. “Interesting that both of us learn Ironskin though.”

“I will learn a different variation of it.”

“There’re variations?”

“For Monks, yes. Styles.”

“That’s pretty cool. You two get all the cool stuff,” Korith said, looking between Reysha and Apexus.

“Rogue stuff is the coolest fuckery around, why do you think I went with this Class?” the tiger girl confirmed. “We get all the flashy shit.”

“More specifically accurate would be to say you get all of the ways to apply underhanded and covert tactics that let you confuse the rules of engagement. Pair this with the Rogue’s tendency to be mostly focused on exploiting windows of opportunity over long-term, reliable performance, and you create the necessary components for a class that has the appearance of being flashy. Fundamentally, you trade in short boosts for general utility.”

“How long did it take ya to put together that demoralizing word salad?” Reysha asked.

“About ten seconds,” Aclysia confessed.

“Damn, girl, ya slow when it comes to talking.”

“As has been well-established.”

“…It’s no fun if you just admit your flaws.”

“I am too content to partake in your back and forth of insults and flirts, Reysha.” Humming happily, the metal fairy filled three bowls with soup and distributed them among the organic members of the party. “It has been a few days since I got to cook for you, darling.”

“I eat what you bring me,” he told her.

“It’s not the same, even if I know that.” Aclysia sat down on his lap and made herself comfortable there. Invitingly, Apexus raised his arms to let her and only started eating once she was nuzzled up to him. Cooked food was growing on him, with its varied, mixed flavours. Raw was still the way to go though.  

They would return to their individual training soon enough.