Chapter 238 - Quiet before the storm (3)

As the first strands of sunlight leaked through the window Dax suddenly found himself wide awake as a large grin naturally formed on his face. This had been his normal routine the last few days where he had started living together with Alice, Solaris and Lilly, today was no different. Unwrapping himself from some wings, a pair of arms and a leg, Dax slowly rose to sit upright in his bed, at this moment he truly found himself flanked by flowers on all sides. Getting out of the bed without waking up the girls Dax didn't bother putting on some clothes as he walked across the living room in his birthday suit, reaching the bathroom where he took a quick shower before putting on some casual clothes and an apron as he started making breakfast for 4 people. Starting up a few pans with some butter and a bit of bacon fat Dax quickly made 3 different omelettes, then he whipped up some oats for himself and started making a bloody mary.

"Morning~"

"... Good morning."

Hearing the slight sound of footsteps coming from the bedroom Dax turned around to find Alice who had just woken up. As usual, Alice was the first one to wake up after Dax, due to the fact that she usually needed to travel to the compound in the old part of Kingstead to train with Lux, although today was not one of those days. Getting a morning kiss by Dax, Alice quickly ran off to the bathroom so she could deal with her almost feral case of bed hair. A few minutes after Alice had woken Dax heard another series of unsteady footsteps from the bedroom and from the way they sounded Dax correctly guessed that it was Lilly who had just woken up, annoyed by the bright morning sunlight. Walking around like a zombie for a few minutes, Lilly who had half hazard wrapped herself in her black pyjamas looked like she wasn't quite awake yet, but after a bit, a shiver went through her body and she quickly trotted off to the bathroom. Dax had found over the past few days that the best cause of action to deal with Lilly when she had just woken up was to ignore her, as the person in question would get extremely embarrassed later on if Dax started pampering her when she wasn't fully awake. After watching that adorable display with a smile on his face Dax went back to the kitchen and started making a portion of scrambled eggs for himself as he fried up some toast in a pan to go with it, by the time he had finished up with that the two girls who had gone to the bathroom had returned looking way more alive than when they went in.

"Good morning Lilly~"

"Urg, g-good morning."

Seeming quite shy about looking at Dax and his bright smile Lilly hid her face inside the hood on her pyjamas before scurrying off to the dinner table, starting to complain the second she sat down.

"Isn't the food ready yet, I'm hungry."

"Yeah, yeah."

Dax was fully aware that Lilly was just attempting (and failing) to hide her embarrassment and thus he brushed the rude demand off with a smile as he finished up breakfast. 

"Here you go Lilly~ I'll go wake up Solaris."

Taking a sip of his bloody mary after serving food for Alice and Lilly Dax went back into the bedroom, finding a curled up mass of white feathers in the middle of the bed.

"Solaris it's morning, rise and shine~"

Surprisingly Solaris was the worst of the bunch when it came to waking up in the morning and Dax had already learned the hard way that the angel would sleep all day if she was allowed to.

"Anyone home?"

Poking the mass of feathers a few times to no avail, Dax tried to peek in between them, finding that some unknown force did its best to not let sunlight leak trough. Breathing a deep sigh Dax looked at the bundle of feathers with a wry smile as he came up with an alternative strategy for forcing Solaris out of bed. 

"Solaris you are already awake aren't you?"

"..."

Hearing a slight shift in the angel's breath beneath the bundle of her wings Dax's smile widened slightly. 

"So you're not awake at all?... That's too bad, I was planning to pamper you all morning but I guess I'll just pamper Alice and Lilly instead."

Judging Solaris' reaction from the shift of her wings Dax remained still for a few seconds before turning around as if he was returning to the living room/kitchen before suddenly rushing at Solaris when she opened up her wings to peek.

"Come on, it's time to wake up! The others are coming to visit today remember!?"

"Nooo! I wanna sleep Dax, you meanie!"

"... Looks like she's finally awake."

Hearing Solaris' desperate screams from the bedroom Alice breathed a deep sigh as she returned to eating, then a few minutes later a mass of feathers walking on sturdy legs walked out of the bedroom.

"I'll make sure Solaris doesn't fall asleep again."

With Dax's muffled voice coming from beneath the mass of feathers before it made its way to the bathroom Alice could only join Lilly as both of them breathed another deep sigh in unison.

Both of them were slightly jealous of the way Dax treated Solaris in the morning, although he made sure to make up for that disparity every day.

"We have arrived at the bathroom, my princess."

"Mmm."

With a slight pout on her face, Solaris finally unwrapped her wings from around Dax, after being forced out of the bed she had wrapped her arms, legs and wings around him, refusing to let go before he did what she commanded. Pacifying Solaris with a few kisses Dax finally managed to pry the n.a.k.e.d angel off of him, then, at last, he could get some breakfast.

-

A little bit past noon the doorbell suddenly rang to signify the arrival of multiple visitors, opening the door to great them Dax found Lux joined by Terra and Mare together with Chad and Xi, plus Xi's parents Zhao and Grishu with the teacher pair Jessica and Finn Dax had befriended back at the magic academy. 

"Welcome~ Come on in and relax."

Attempting to pat Lux on the head as he greeted her Dax's hand suddenly screamed out in pain as his cute daughter passed by him without even attempting to return the greeting.

"Are you okay Dax?"

Seeing how Lux had hit his hand with a considerable amount of force Terra showed just a tiny bit of concern for her unreliable teacher as Mare passed by the pair without a care in the world. 

"It's fine, that's just Lux displays her affection for me~ Go take a seat, I'll be with all of you shortly.

"Okay~"

"T-thanks for the invitation Dax, you have my-"

"Yeah yeah, forget about all that formal stuff for today. More importantly, Chad, have you made any progress with this adorable lady?"

Turning down the overly formal greeting from Chad, Dax immediately changed the subject over to his and Xi's romantic life, making the young pair blush deeply.

"Now now, don't be so rough on my son and daughter Dax, you'll make them all embarrassed! Ahaha!"

Cutting in and answering Dax's question for Chad, the dragonkin Zhao laughed loudly as he hit the back of Chad's back with a considerable amount of force, making his wife cut in before the poor Chad's back broke.

"Come on dear, didn't you look forward to drinking with Dax after so long?"

"Ahaha!- Yeah, thinking about it I did indeed! So Dax, are you prepared for battle!?"

"I am indeed, I found a few bottles of some good stuff so I hope you are prepared for a mighty battle~"

While Dax was greeting the other people she had very little interest in, Mare followed Lux into the living room. Scanning the room with a blank expression on her face the small beastkin didn't really find anything that interested her before her sights landed on Lilly.

"W-what is it?"

Suddenly finding Mare's gaze on her Lilly became quite fl.u.s.tered, and for a very good reason. For some reason, Mare had always been extremely perspective of other people, something which could lead to quite a bit of embarrassment if Lilly let anything leak from her. Doing her best not to have any expression on her face, Lilly watched in horror as the small beastkin walked up to her, then without any kind of lead up Mare simply smelled the air in front of Lilly as a tiny smile found its way onto Mare's face.

"Lewd."

"W-w-w-w-w-what!? I-I have no idea what you're talking about!?"

With Lilly turning beet red it appeared that Mare had succeeded sending the elver into a full on fl.u.s.ter with only a single word, but before she could enjoy the situation more, a large hand suddenly found its way on top of her head.

"You have no idea my dear Mare~ You see, this one- Actually I think I'll just keep that part to myself, seeing as saying anything more will get me killed."

Feeling Lux's killing intent getting firmly focused on him mid sentence Dax was forced to reconsider his words as he would like to keep living. With everyone having arrived the improvised party began without any more immediate problems.

Later in the evening after eating and drinking Dax collected all the men together as he went into an unused room.

"It is finally time huh?"

"What is going on?"

While Finn had some inclination to what was going on, Chad had no idea what was going on, all he could gather was that Dax and Zhao had both suddenly turned extremely serious.

"ICI seal this room please."

[DIRECTIVE CONFIRMED, GAG ORDER NOW ESTABLISHED, SEALING EXTERNAL VENTS, SEALING INTERNAL VENTS, ELECTROMAGNETIC SHIELDING ONLINE.]

Suddenly blast shields extended down from the roof above the door and the windows, fully sealing the room before the light was cut out and replaced with a way more ominous type of red illumination.

"Let's start the meeting."

With Finn, Dax and Zhao sitting down in the middle of the room with a strange atmosphere about them Chad wondered if he should leave, but as he found himself unable to do so he reluctantly joined the trio.

"So, let's start with you Dax.... Truth is I've really been dying to know."

With words that could be taken as wildly misleading Finn had a glint in his eyes as he put a hand on Dax's shoulder.

"Then you don't need to worry any longer, Lilly is a hardcore sadist, trough and trough."

"I knew it! She looks so sweet on the outside so I figured she would be a freak."

"Shit, in that case, I owe you some coin Dax, I'll have it tomorrow."

"Pleasure doing business with you Zhao~... Although my back is kind of hurting from all the scratching and biting."

(What the f.u.c.k going on here?)

Feeling like he had misheard Chad felt like he had a really unintelligent look on his face as he realized what kind of meeting he had been dragged off to.

"... Don't tell me we're going to talk about our significant others."

"That's exactly what we're doing Chad, so how far did you go with Xi?"

Turning their attention to Chad, it appeared that Zhao had completely forgotten that they were talking about his daughter as he also seemed interested.

-

While the boys were clearly up to no good, the girls weren't really any more productive with their time.

"So, did it work out? Did he finally pounce?"

Sitting in a circle around Solaris, Lilly and Alice, Lux led the interrogation while the others watched with great interest, making sure the girls couldn't escape.

"... It did."

Being subjected and failing under the peer pressure Alice finally spilt the beans in a tiny voice as her face flushed completely red.

In hindsight, not remaining silent and enduring the torture was a mistake.

"T-then how was it?"

"T-that's none of your business! Besides, isn't it gross to talk about your dad like this?"

"Not at all since I've basically acted as you 3's wingman, now spill it or we will I need to use force?~"

Slowly creeping closer to the group, Lux had a bright, warm and outright sadistic smile on her face.

In the end, the night ended with Solaris, Lilly, Alice and Chad suffering quite a bit of mental damage.

---

"... I feel a sudden urge to punch someone in the face, specifically that idiot."

"You have that kind of feeling a lot recently Ra, focus on the test for just a bit now."

"Sure…"

Elsewhere on a different plane of existence, a pair of sisters were testing their latest creation. Floating in a sealed off room inside their own little black site test range with no official records of its construction, the avoaxian sisters Ra and Mu were in the process of carrying out an important test. On the sea of monitors in front of the pair was a bunch of information about a single craft which was currently operating completely independently. The craft which carried no identifying markers or serial numbers, everything from the most basic transistors to the main power plant had been custom built to a specification the rest of the universe wouldn't be able to match for at least another 200 years of natural process. With no official name, designation or even a Lazarus code word to identify the craft the two sisters simply referred to it as 'the n class cruiser' or ' cross dimension travel experiment number 2006943601', which ever one was easier.

"How is the reactor looking?"

"Like it wants to blow up and destroy this star system, so great."

"Good, looks like we're at max energy saturation then."

Tapping away at a tablet at lighting speed Mu ran multiple different formulas to check every possible scenario while making her older sister check up on last minute readouts.

"And what about the star? Another mass coronal ejection would be extremely bad right now."

"We're good, no signs of irregular starspot activity… Everything is checked and rechecked Mu, we're ready."

Noticing how her sister was overly fuzzy with the details Ra made sure to encourage her.

"This is the one, it's far your best design yet."

While Ra was a genius without comparison, her field of expertise wasn't really suited to what they were doing at the moment, hence she relied on her little sister who was far smarter than herself, although it slightly hurt her pride to admit such a thing.

"... Okay, we're a go for N class cruiser test jump, activating grav drive and setting jump point authentication."

"Authentication was successfully sent, all values accounted for, target sighted… The onboard intelligence is committing to the jump!"

With the test commencing both sisters stopped their work as they focused all their attention on a single monitor.

"... Signal lost. It seems like it jumped without issue."

Losing all connection to the cruiser, Mu immediately analyzed the left over jump signature, finding no problems with it as she started holding her breath along with her sister as they waited with anticipation.

A minute passed, then 5 minutes.

Nothing happened, so far everything was going according to plan.

8 minutes after the jump gravitational sensors started going haywire all over the system, an extra dimensional anomaly had appeared, that was the class N cruiser trying to locate a return point.

This was nothing new to the sisters, a lot of their tests had reached this point and still failed, some tore themselves apart at a subatomic level while others failed to locate a safe exit point and simply re appeared right inside the star, disintegrating along with any data Mu could use to improve her design.

"The anomaly is stabilizing."

"... It is…"

Not daring to say anything more than that Mu had her eyes fixed to the monitor, at this point one could shoot a gun right next to her ear and she wouldn't notice the sound.

"9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… jump point stabilizing, 2… 1…-"

Looking over the data a few more times Mu breathed a deep sigh.

"Test number 2006943601 failed, maintain logs for further-"

"Mu look!"

Getting her sister to focus on the screen once more Mu was shocked at what she saw.

"No way… Why did it work?"

Simply stunned at what she saw Mu found herself at a loss for words, the test had been successful. With the craft returning still in perfect shape it reestablished a connection to the sister's terminal and started dumping information about the travel and what was on the other side, in other words, Ra and Mu finally had hard data.

"It looks like it did!"

With an ecstatic smile plastered on her face Ra turned to Mu who also locked eyes with her, breathing in deeply the two sisters shouted what had been on their mind for so long

""Now we can finally go beat the shit out of him!""