172 A Life Worth Having
Viper held me for a good twenty minutes as I came to grips with my current situation and calmed down. When I tried to apologize for breaking down like that, she kissed me. It started with her only pressing her lips to mine, probably to shut me up and for being stupid, then she started moving her lips and her tongue probed a little.
She quickly sat on my lap and it became a full on passionate make-out session that I couldn't help but be into. I felt a bunch of repressed feelings rush forward in my head, reminding me of all the times she had been there for me, with the last one when she gave me a multi-million dollar airplane without even asking me what I wanted it for.
That last act alone deserved a lot more than the simple thank you I gave her and the apology for losing it, so my working hand slid up her thigh and under her dress. Viper moaned wantonly and spread her legs for me, fully understanding my intention, and I pulled her panties aside and I slipped a finger inside her very tight and soaked opening.
Her moans continued as my thumb made small circles around her covered nub and I slipped another finger inside of her. Her tongue plunged into my mouth, over and over, and I unconsciously matched my finger thrusts to it, giving her the control of how fast I moved. She took it and I fingered her as quickly as she wanted me to.
"MUUHHHHHH!" Viper screamed into my mouth and she squirted all over my hand and her thighs. There was quite a lot of it and it dripped down and soaked into my pants, the warmth setting off my own erection and that made her moan again as she felt me grow. She broke the kiss and her face was flushed red. "H-Hank, we... we should stop."
I shook my head and pulled my hand away from her, making her moan at the loss, and I reached for the bed and pulled us over to it. She looked surprised as I formed a kind of seat under her with my arm and then easily lifted her off of me and sat her on the bed.
"How... when..." Viper asked.
I didn't answer her as I set the locks on the big wheels of the wheelchair and then pulled the securing straps off. Her eyes went wide as I used my working leg and arm to brace myself and pushed my flopping left side out of the chair and onto the bed beside her, like an octopus, and I grabbed onto the headboard with my arm and foot and pulled.
I set myself into the middle of the huge bed, dragging my limp appendages into the right positions, and then used my hand to pull off my socks and then my fingers and toes stripped off my clothes. My erection popped right up and she drooled, just like I had for her lasagne, and she crawled over to me and slipped her mouth right onto it.
Viper's mouth felt so good that I felt like blowing right away. I barely held back, even when she started having a lot of fun playing with it with her lips and tongue. She teased it and licked it, kissed it, nuzzled it, and gave me a look so full of sexiness that I couldn't hold back anymore. I blasted out and all over her face with the first shot, making her moan, and she put it back in her mouth to catch the rest of it.
After she cleaned me off with her tongue, she used her fingers to clean her own face off and licked them clean. She propped herself up just enough to throw off her pretty sundress and she wasn't wearing a bra. That was a surprise, because the perky cleavage I had admired several times had been all natural and wasn't boosted by a bra.
"You're beautiful." I said when she was naked and she blushed.
"Hank, just because we're about to have sex, you don't have to lie about..." Viper started to say and stopped as I used my working hand to point at my still hard erection. Her eyes went to it and she caught her breath, then she let out a cute little growl and climbed onto me.
I stared into her eyes as she lined me up with her extremely wet opening and she stared right back. She didn't take that last step, though.
"Hank, I... I've always wanted this. Wanted you." Viper admitted for the first time. "I have always respected you and your decisions, so I never once tried to do anything. Our friendship was too important to the both of us for me to ever say anything to ruin it."
Again, I remembered all the things she had done for me. Her giving up her private special workplace for me, just confirmed it. "I know, Viper. I've been too much of a gentleman to ever try anything, even jokingly. You mean too much to me to ruin our friendship with flirting or fooling around. I didn't want to cheapen what we have for only a fling."
Viper gave me a beautiful smile and sat down. We both moaned, because it was a bit of a fight trying to get me settled inside of her. She was so tight that it took her several minutes of wiggling around and cute little moans to finally get me wedged in and her ass rested on my thighs.
"Ohhh, I feel so full." Viper whispered and looked down at her belly that was just slightly pushed out. She reached down and rubbed her fingers along it and let out a little laugh. She moved her hands down to my hips, then ran them up to my chest and braced herself. The look of concentration on her face, like she was trying to figure out the best way to do this, made her look really cute.
I didn't say anything or tried to move her with my working hand. She was smart enough to figure out the best way for her to pleasure herself using the snugly grip she had on my meat rod.
"Okay... I think... yeah, I got this." Viper said and rocked her hips a little, lifted up slightly, then she pushed back down without impacting my left side and most of her weight landed on my right, letting me feel almost everything.
My eyes widened at that, because that was quite the feat. Viper grinned at my surprise and then she was off. I moaned as her grip somehow tightened down there and I used my hand to grope her perky breasts and then pretty much lost myself to the sensations. Oh boy, the sensations!
Viper stayed in control somehow and she got off several times before I reached my next peak. She didn't stop moving and let my little geyser blow out a load inside of her, giving her something she didn't realize she couldn't live without. Now that she had it, she was never letting me go.
I kissed her after she muttered that in my ear and she kept going. Since I knew she was going to exhaust herself long before I myself would be, I did my best to help her along. Tweaking her nipples, playing with her nub, and I even poked her with my little finger in her vise-like rosebud. She had another screaming orgasm after that and she was done.
I hugged her and she cuddled right in and fell asleep. I took out a wand and kept it hidden, then cast a detection spell. There was a camera in the room and it was aimed at the bed, so I couldn't do anything about it. I put the wand away and would have to wait and see what the camera was connected to. If it was the government's and not Viper's? I was not going to be happy.
I went to sleep with the thought of how I was going to bring up that I found a hidden camera in the room and not make it sound like I distrusted her.
*
Bobbie woke up in her bed alone and she didn't even look at the empty side. Everything reminded her of her mistake and she did her best to avoid them as much as possible. She took a shower and dressed in jogging pants and a t-shirt that was her staple outfit for the last two months. It was just too much effort to put on anything else, since she had no desire to leave the house any more than she had to.
She went to the kitchen and saw Vance was already up and had made breakfast for himself and his little sister. It was just toast and cereal; but, it still counted, so she gave him a smile and a quick peck on the lips as a thank you. He had really stepped up after... after the incident that was to never be talked about... and she appreciated everything he did to help her take care of Danica.
Of course, she knew that Vance didn't believe her flimsy excuse that their father had fallen ill and couldn't have visitors after her first failed attempt. She couldn't tell him or Danica the truth, though. It would hurt them too much to know that Hank had a massive stroke and couldn't even hug them with both of his arms and couldn't talk to them properly because of his slurred speech.
Bobbie had been horrified at the sight of his disfigurement and the damage he had suffered. In fact, she still had nightmares about it and it had been a month since then. The doctor's reports about him improving after he was released was couched in so many qualifiers that she knew he was lying. With no feeling on his left side, Hank was still severely crippled and couldn't walk. That was not something she wanted her kids to witness and suffer through.
Bobbie had her own bowl of cereal, some healthy stuff Hank had left there, and she grabbed her keys when it was time. The kids climbed into the car with Danica by herself in the back and Vance sat on the passenger side to her right. He had started sitting there almost right away and Bobbie didn't ask him why. His silence was a comfort she liked having so close and she didn't want to lose that.
What she didn't know was that Vance had contacted Rikki Dicker when his first girlfriend said she didn't know who he was and the old woman told him what happened, then went on to explain Hank's injury and why he wouldn't be around for a long time.
She also explained that his mother would go to prison if Hank ever woke up and tried to get custody of Danica during the inevitable divorce, because she was the only reason his mother hadn't been arrested. Vance knew he didn't count, because he was 15 already and would be of age in only a few years. He wasn't stupid, though.
Vance knew if he didn't help his mother take care of Danica and keep her happy, both kids could be sent into the system like unwanted orphans, and he would do everything he could to prevent that. If he had to be the man of the house to do that, then that was what he was going to do. It was working, too. During the last month, his mom had started kissing him every morning like she used to do with his father.
Bobbie parked the car by the middle school and turned to look at Danica. "Be safe, sweetie. Don't use your powers unless you're in danger, okay?"
"Okay, mom!" Danica said and opened the back door. "BYE VANCE!"
"See you after school, squirt." Vance said, his voice even.
Danica stuck her tongue out at him for not reacting to her yell and she jumped out and slammed the door shut. Bobbie winced and then sighed as her daughter ran over to her friends. She didn't say anything, because it didn't matter to Danica how many times she told her not to do that. It was like talking to a brick wall... and she didn't see the irony that her daughter was just like her.
Bobbie pulled back out into traffic and drove a few streets over to the high school, the traffic cooperating for once, and she slipped into a parking spot a few spaces away from where the students were gathering to go inside.
"Have a great day, honey." Bobbie said and gave him a warm smile.
Vance turned his head at the nickname she had only used for Hank and saw that smile. It made his heart beat a little faster and his mind raced as he realized his plan had worked even better than he thought. He really had become the man of the house if she accepted him like that, so he had to take full responsibility for it.
"Yes, dear." Vance said and leaned in to kiss her properly. Brief kisses were no longer good enough, because a man should kiss a woman like he meant it. One of his hands cupped the side of her face as he gave her his best kiss, as inexperienced as it was, and Bobbie let out a little moan and her own hand slid into his short black hair and held him close as she kissed him back.
Vance learned quickly and gave as good as he got, his tongue matching hers, and the kiss went on for a lot longer than it should have. He wasn't going to complain about it, not with how her breasts pressed against his own chest. She hadn't worn a bra in weeks and his free hand slipped up her side and fondled her breast, making Bobbie moan loudly.
The bell rang and Vance broke the kiss, even though he really wanted to keep going. He reluctantly let her breast go and Bobbie let out a slight whimper, which made him smile widely for the first time in months. Bobbie gasped at seeing how happy he was and Vance had to hold back his laugh at the shock on her face.
Vance picked up his backpack and opened the car door, then turned back to give the still stunned Bobbie another deep kiss. He stepped out, gave her a casual wave, and closed the door properly.
Bobbie stared at him as he walked away and put a hand over her mouth. "Wh-what... what... what just happened? How? Why?" She asked herself and sat there for several minutes as she went over everything she did and didn't do over the last two months.
A horn blowing behind the car knocked her out of her thoughts and she waved as she drove off down the street, her mind going in circles as she desperately searched for where she had ever given Vance the impression he could do something like that. She also tried to ignore that it had turned out to be a fantastic kiss and that her nipples were rock hard and her breasts were kind of aching to be gripped like that again.
"I am definitely going to have to give him a stern talking to later about this." Bobbie told herself and drove home to an empty house. She went inside and ignored the small wet spot on her pants and grabbed a tub of ice cream from the refrigerator, diet of course, and plunked herself down onto the couch and watched television.
The day usually passed for her fairly quickly when she did the chores and she would get to them as soon as her craving faded. She ate the ice cream absently and stared at the television screen without really seeing it.
When the ice cream was gone, she let out a sigh at the bloated feeling she had and tossed the empty container into the garbage. She went to the laundry room and came to a stop as she stared at the already done laundry. The little note on top was from Vance and he apologized that he didn't know how to fold things.
"Oh... oh, Vance." Bobbie whispered and her hand reached for her breast to grope it. "My sweet boy."
She leaned against the wall and played with her nipple for a few moments, flicking it and pinching it. She stopped herself before she went too far, or at least she thought she did, then she looked down at the growing wet spot and her other hand quickly dug into her pants and she started rubbing herself. An orgasm hit her pretty quickly and she groaned at a release she hadn't had in a while.
"Oh, damn." Bobbie said and sighed at the state of her clothes. She stripped off and tossed them into the washer, picked up the laundry basket, and went to her bedroom. The basked was dropped onto the bed and she went into the bathroom to have another shower, and maybe she could spend a few extra minutes cleaning herself a bit more vigorously than she usually did.
173 A Life Worth Living
I spent most of the day worried about how to breach the subject of the camera, then Viper surprised me by telling me about it over supper. It was such a relief to find out the camera was hers and that she wanted a way to look in on me when she was working alone in the garage downstairs or if I needed her for something.
"You know, I never thought I would ever need a baby monitor." Viper joked.
I couldn't help it and joked right back. "Well, there's no reason I can't keep trying to give you a reason to keep it after I'm healed up enough to not need it."
Viper blushed and she also looked really shy.
"You're going to kill me if you keep looking so damn cute." I told her and her blush rose to epic proportions. "Yes, just like that."
Viper leaned over the table and kissed me. "Don't you dare die on me or I'll somehow bring you back to life and then kill you myself."
I couldn't help it and laughed. "I'm not going to argue about that not making sense."
"Good, you're learning." Viper said with a grin and went back to eating her spaghetti.
It was actually really nice to have a sit down dinner with her like this. There was no arguing or underhanded comments, which on reflection seemed like a really weird thing to expect every time I sat down to eat.
I ducked my head slightly and went over Hank's memories in my head. They had slunk off into the corner like all the other memories I had, except I noticed I had gained a few things that I normally wouldn't notice.
Why did I try to dismiss Bobbie's abuse like it didn't mean anything and only Viper pointing it out stopped me from explaining it away and making excuses? Why was I relieved that I could eat a whole meal without bickering or an argument starting? That was definitely not normal behavior on my part and it bugged me.
"Hank? What is it?" Viper asked me and put her fork down. "What's bothering you?"
"You really can read me like a book." I said and sighed as I lifted my head to look at her. "I'm sitting here eating a meal with a woman that's not my wife, and all I feel is relief that we can talk without arguing or making backhanded compliments to each other."
Viper looked sad after hearing that. "I'm sorry."
I reached across the table and took her hand. "Are you apologizing that you're a better dinner companion or that I'm bothered by the fact I haven't had a quiet meal in years?"
Viper intertwined our fingers together. "You're upset that you've gotten used to having arguments all the time?"
I thought about how she worded that and nodded. "I think that's what's wrong. In my head, I know what happened with Bobbie was wrong; and yet, the back of my mind keeps trying to justify it and I keep thinking it's my fault."
Viper sighed. "Hank, that's not a normal way to think."
"I know, which is the problem." I said and thought about it. "Do you know what Stockholm Syndrome is?" I asked and she gasped. "I'm going to take that as a yes."
Viper's other hand reached across the table and she cupped the side of my face. "We have a lot to talk about and... if it's okay with you, I need to call a few people."
I leaned my head into her hand. "You're already doing so much for me. I can't ask you to..."
"I need to make those calls first, apparently." Viper interrupted me and stood up. She leaned over the table and kissed me, let my face and my hand go, then walked over to the phone hanging on the wall.
I sat there and didn't listen in to the two whispered conversations she had, because I didn't want her to hate me for eavesdropping, which was also a weird thought to have. She hung up the phone and took a deep breath, let it out, and walked back over to the table and sat down.
"Let's finish eating and then we can cuddle on the couch." Viper said and I nodded.
For some reason, I felt like this was not going to turn out like I thought it was going to. Oh, I didn't doubt that Viper had genuinely called for help, since she did want to help me as much as she could. The problem I had was that the help was going to vigorously object to my interpretation of things. I was biased, after all.
Viper cleared up the dishes and pushed my wheelchair over to the couch. I did my octopus impression and pulled myself onto the couch and settled down in the corner on my left side, that way she could cuddle into my right side and I would feel everything.
We watched a movie and I once again thought it was a relief that I could sit there and not worry about sparking an argument. I could also show affection to the woman next to me in various ways without her thinking I was trying to coerce her into having sex with me.
This was proven when I used a hand to turn Viper's face towards mine and I gave her a slow and tender kiss for several seconds. All she did was blush a little, give me a warm smile, and went right back to watching the television. It was honestly refreshing to feel so relaxed after everything that happened and I was thankful that I had someone like Viper to pick up the pieces of my life.
When I thought about that, I mentally sighed. I wasn't sure what I was going to do about the kids and I couldn't do anything until I could sneak a potion to check the effects. The only time I had been alone since yesterday was when I was left in the bedroom. She didn't want me trying to haul myself around the apartment with half of my body disabled, at least not for a few days until I was used to it.
I agreed, just because I knew she was genuinely concerned I would get caught up somewhere and she wouldn't know until she left work for meals and found me where I would be stuck. I didn't want her worrying excessively like that, because she was already worrying enough for the both of us.
My chance for a brief bout of time alone occurred after Viper helped me climb back into the wheelchair and tucked my floppy arm into my side and secured my left ankle to the footrest. I had a great idea and hoped it worked, because it should give me a few minutes of privacy.
"I think I'm ready to try using the actual bathroom instead of the bedpan." I said and she gave me raised eyebrows. "No, no, I just need to pee. Trying to move my butt off of this thing to perch on the toilet without you around is just asking for trouble."
Viper let out a little laugh. "How are you supposed to reach the toilet while sitting down, then?"
Without missing a beat, I raised my working hand and slowly extended my index finger to be a foot long. Her eyes widened at the implication and she blushed as her eyes dropped down to my crotch and went back to my face.
"No, I haven't had to do that." I said, a bit proudly. I was all natural down there and I hadn't tried the ribbed look for her yet. After what happened with Bobbie, I wasn't sure I should.
Viper's blush didn't fade as she bent down to give me a long lingering kiss that almost made my toes curl up. I popped a boner and she looked pleased at my reaction, then she let out a soft laugh.
"I think I just made things harder for your trip to the bathroom." Viper said, her pun making me groan. She giggled and reached down to pat me there, then she pushed my wheelchair over to the bathroom and left me inside as she shut the door. "Holler when you're done!"
"I might be busy for a few extra minutes, dammit!" I shouted through the door.
Viper laughed and was completely unrepentant for doing that to me. It was a good thing I didn't really need to go, so I had plenty of time now do conduct a few experiments. I checked with my wand first and there were no monitoring devices, so the first test was with a Pepper-Up potion. I checked it with a diagnostic spell and it was fine, so I checked myself.
The damage was actually worse than what the doctor said and I had severe nerve damage and the spell said I had an aneurysm as well. Luckily, it must have happened while they were operating, because it had been repaired and there was no damage to my brain from that, which was a huge relief.
I swallowed the potion and waited a few seconds, then checked my diagnosis again. There was no change, except for a rise in my body temperature and some steam out of my ears. This was a great result, because it meant some effects still worked on me.
I took out a Wiggenweld Potion next, one that was used to heal people, wake them from a sleeping potion, and it gave a stamina boost. I swallowed it down and waited for about ten seconds and felt some energy flow through me. My back straightened and my slouching posture disappeared. I cast the diagnostic spell on myself again and the results were both minor and encouraging.
There was a reason that potions weren't poured down people's throats constantly to stack the effects. You could get potion sickness if you drank too many of them and they didn't work any faster if you drank more than one. You had to wait for it to finish working and then could take another. So, that's what I did. I waited for a full minute and then downed another one.
Again, it was another ten seconds before I felt that small surge of energy and I cast the diagnostic spell once more. Only some of the nerve damage had been healed and I mentally did the calculations in my head for how many I would need to bring myself back to full health. It was a lot and it would take weeks of sneaking off to the bathroom to take them, which sucked.
As I thought about a better way to heal myself, I suddenly remembered my Adventurer Card and the various skills I had on it. I took it out and it had been changed slightly. There was actually a scrolling portion where my skill list was and I flipped through them to look for healing. I couldn't find anything in the 'H' section and frowned. I was sure that I had a healing skill or spell somewhere.
I turned the card over to look at my feats and blessings and softly cursed. All of them had been disabled, including Minor Regeneration, Mind Blank, and my Blessings of Balance, Fortune, and Forge. It was no wonder why I was being so easily manipulated and being hurt constantly. Since I knew they had been granted with divinity, I flipped my card back over and looked for my new Touch of Divinity skill.
How could I have forgotten about that? I asked myself and soon found it. I didn't get angry at seeing it started at Level 0 and had no effect at all, because right beside it was the point cost of 1,000 Karma Points. I clicked it and the 0 changed to a 1 with a bright glow. Thankfully, I was facing away from the door and my body blocked most of it.
I felt something click in the back of my mind and I let out a sigh as my swirling emotions dulled slightly. My eyes went to the cost beside the Level 1 skill and frowned. It now cost 2,000 Karma Points to go to the next level and that could be a problem. If it doubled each level to increase it and there were 10 levels to the skill, then it would cost me just over a million points to get to that final level.
That was kind of terrifying, actually. I flipped the card back over to look at the feats and saw they were all at 10%, which meant I wouldn't be magically getting them all back in full right away, unless I went extremely into debt and would have to spend the next few decades in punishment worlds as I tried to build up enough Karma to pay it off and get back to my regular trips.
Yeah, that was not going to happen. Two in a row had been bad enough and I barely managed to not go all murder-hobo in them. If I had to do constant worlds that were full of horror creatures, all I could do was be a murder-hobo in order to survive. That was not going to be fun at all.
I felt the Minor Regeneration kick in and it was going really slow at only 10% efficiency, so I resigned myself to a long time for recovery, then I remembered something about Hestia being surprised I had so many skills when she accepted me into her Familia... and then I gasped as I remembered the two healing spells I had learned just before leaving that world.
It had been so long ago that I had completely forgotten about them and then I realized not having my Mind Blank perk active for so long had hurt me more than anything else that happened to me. I checked my current Karma Points and did the math. I could afford to buy up to Level 6 and still have some points left over for miscellaneous things, assuming I continued to earn positive Karma.
That would allow me to raise my base level up to 60, with each Divine level granting me access to 10 levels. That was going to be a huge relief and would unlock a few more things, like the next bump to my magic. I sat there for a few minutes as I thought about what to do and a knock on the door gained my attention.
"Are you okay in there?" Viper asked me.
"I'm fine... ugh... just... hold on. I need to clean the pipes." I said and heard her chuckle.
I actually opened up my pants and stretched myself out and peed into the toilet. I wiggled it without touching it and pulled it back, used a bit of tissue to dry it off, and closed myself up. I put my mental gymnastics aside and flushed the toilet, leaving the seat down, and washed my sole hand in the sink for propriety's sake.
"Okay, I'm done." I said and Viper opened the door.
She saw me dry my hand on a hand towel and nodded slightly, as I figured she would appreciate cleanliness, and pushed me out of the bathroom towards my bedroom. It didn't take long to get me back into the bed and settled.
"Goodnight, Hank." Viper said and put the wheelchair off to the side of the room and out of the way.
I patted the bed beside me instead of saying it back. "You don't have to leave and we don't have to do anything." I said, just in case she thought I was angling for more than to hold her.
Viper looked conflicted and spoke softly. "I'm sorry, I have something I need to do and I won't be back for an hour or so."
I didn't let anything show on my face at the rejection. "That's okay. If I'm still awake, I'll see you when you get back."
Viper nodded and went to the bedroom's door. She turned back to face me and looked sad. She didn't say anything and left the room, the door shutting behind her with a soft click.
I waited for several minutes and listened for movement. I didn't hear anything and figured she had left, so I laid back and closed my eyes. I knew the camera was watching me, so I couldn't do anything obvious and thought back to those two healing spells I had gained way back in Danmachi.
One was for personal healing and took a while to set up and cast, especially with my magic limited as it was, and the other was an area of effect that was quicker to cast but took longer to take effect. They both had a bright visual component, so I needed both seclusion and privacy before I could even attempt them.
The second thing I needed was to check my magic spells to see if they were unlocked. If they weren't, I currently could level myself up to level 10 using some of the experience my Adventure Card had been collecting for decades. I was sure I would need to spend my Karma Points to level up my Divine skill at least once more, because that was how I assumed I would be screwed over.
I checked my spells and the personal one was locked until I reached a base level of 25, so that meant I needed to level up my Touch of Divinity skill twice more to get it to 3 and give myself the option of levelling my base level up to 30. Since I had so many XP points on the Adventurer Card that it only showed an infinity symbol, I wasn't worried about being stuck.
In the end I said screw it and levelled my Divine skill up to level 5, making my perks settle at a clean 50% effectiveness, and it left me with 34,330 Karma Points. I could have spent another 32,000 for Level 6, except that would nearly clean me out and I just knew that something would come up and I wouldn't have the points to handle it.
Thankfully, I had opened my eyes and watched if there were any visible effects from me spending so much Karma. There wasn't, since the card was still in my inventory, so I relaxed. I would need to wait for some privacy before I could physically touch the Adventurer Card and use my Divine skill on it to add the experience points to level myself up to my new maximum of Level 50.
I had to hold in my laugh and excitement about that. I was used to working at a diminished level for so long that I suspected becoming so strong so quickly was going to be a huge rush... and I couldn't wait to experience it.
My hand twitched and I had to stop myself from raising it in a cheer, then I realized something important. It was my LEFT hand. I had felt the muscles twitch and a huge smile grew on my face, because my regeneration perk was working hard trying to fix the damage and I couldn't have been happier.
174 The Aftermath
I woke up alone in my bed and couldn't remember falling asleep. My last thoughts had been about how excited I was that my left hand had twitched and that alone wasn't enough to fight off unconsciousness apparently. It took me a few minutes to come up with a reasonable explanation.
I had taken three potions in quick succession that affected my body and the last two had stamina boosts. When they ran out, my natural tiredness hit me a lot harder than it normally would and conked me right out. It made me chuckle to inadvertently discover a quick way to fall asleep and I would have to remember that reaction if it was ever needed again.
My attention was caught when a knock sounded from my bedroom door. "I'm awake."
The door opened and Viper stood there wearing the same thing she wore the night before. My eye popped out and stretched to get a better look at her. She looked a little ragged and her hair was messy, which said more about what happened than anything else.
"What happened?" I asked and let my eye sink back into my head.
Viper sighed and walked into the room and over to the bed with an unsure look on her face. I patted the bed beside me on my right side and she sighed, then she climbed onto the bed and cuddled up to my side and snuggled in. She didn't say anything at first and I didn't push her, because I knew she would tell me in her own time.
"One of the calls I made was to an old friend of mine. She's going to visit later to talk to you about everything... in a professional manner." Viper said and I knew she meant a psychiatrist. "The second call was to Rikki and I told her what you told me about how you were feeling about what happened between you and Bobbie."
I had to blink my eyes at that. "Why did you tell her about that?"
Viper let out another sigh. "Because it's like I told you. That kind of thinking isn't normal and your boss needed to know that you were compromised."
"Oh." I said and then I understood. "Oh, boy."
"Yes, that's where I went last night. I met up with Rikki and a squad of handlers, because we knew that Bobbie was not going to be happy when Rikki started asking her exactly why she had conditioned you like that. No one should so easily accept verbal abuse on a constant basis, neither man nor woman, and Rikki was quite upset about it when I told her."
I let out my own sigh at them going over there to confront Bobbie about it. "How did Bobbie react when you told her why you were there?"
Viper stiffened under my arm briefly. "We never got the chance to talk about that."
"Why?" I asked, confused. "That's why you went there."
Viper lifted her head to look into my eyes. "Hank, I... I don't want to lie to you." She said and her hand reached up and caressed the left side of my face. "Do you really want to know what we found when we checked the surveillance footage?"
"Just tell me." I said.
"Bobbie was... in a compromising position. When Rikki saw it, she ordered the squad to bust down the door to stop her."
"Stop her? From doing what?" I asked, frowning.
"She was... she..." Viper looked really embarrassed. She didn't break eye contact with me, though. "She was sucking off your son Vance on the living room couch."
The world seemed to slow down and greyed out as the World Pause function activated. I ignored the menu pop up telling me it was a pivotal moment in the story, because that was redundant. What I actually needed was the unlimited time that the pause option gave me to think about everything.
It also gave me the perfect opportunity to take out my Adventurer Card to level myself up without any witnesses around and I did exactly that. The divine glow happened for every level I gave myself, so jumping up to Level 50 had me glowing like a small sun for several minutes and I felt a presence cuddle up to my right side.
I put my arm around it to hold it. "Hey there, reading buddy. Long time no see." I joked and heard a soft female laugh echo through the emptiness, because they were just a presence and I had never been able to see them.
I went back to my Adventurer Card and checked the XP total and the experience points still had the infinity symbol, which meant I had gained so much experience at a low level for so long that I never had to do anything else to keep levelling myself up, at least until I reached the Level 10 limit with my Touch of Divinity skill.
With that done, I put it away and realized I had plenty of time on my hands and suddenly had a great idea. "Is there a book you'd like to read? We've only been using the ones I wanted to read so far and that's not fair to you."
The presence at my side shivered slightly and then the gift shop popped up around us. A book floated over from the nearly endless rack and I was given the 50 credit bill. I paid it without hesitation and the shop faded away as we kind of reclined and the book hovered in front of us.
"Sense and Sensibility?" I asked and felt a nod. "Well, I've never read it, so it's going to be a new experience for me."
A burst of happiness came from beside me and the cuddling increased. It was surprisingly similar to the way Viper cuddled me, so I enjoyed it a little more than I probably should have. Then again, my mind was a hell of a lot clearer than it had been before and I suspected that things were going to be different from here on out.
For the next 7 hours, I had a great time reading out the entire book. I had also tried, and failed badly, at doing the different female voices. The presence beside me had laughed almost the entire time and I could feel how much she thoroughly enjoyed it when we finally finished it.
"That was a great book and I learned a lot from the moral of the story." I said and I felt a kiss on my cheek. "I should thank you for letting me carry on like that, too. I kind of messed up with not knowing what they should sound like."
That soft laugh echoed through the space around us again and I felt another kiss on my cheek, only this time it was partially on my lips. I puckered mine and the kiss seemed to hesitate slightly, then the feeling moved over and became a full on one. I returned it as best as I could and the presence at my side slid around me and straddled my waist.
Of course, my body reacted and a breathy moan sounded from nearby. I hugged the presence closely with my sole working arm and didn't try to grope their behind or anything. The kiss ended after a few moments and I could feel something holding their breath, so I leaned forward again and placed a gentle kiss where I thought those immaterial lips were. A hum of satisfaction responded and the presence faded away.
After all that relaxing and enjoying myself, and thinking over what the presence was probably trying to tell me by reading that book that most of the characters had followed the public's sensibility instead of following common sense.
However, the moral of Sense and Sensibility was that both practicality and passion are necessary for a happy life. While having a good character in a person was more important than having a charming personality, both passion and attraction couldn't be ignored. With those thoughts in my head, I knew what I had to do when I unpaused the world of The Incredibles.
"Thank you for the advice." I said into the emptiness and I felt a hand gently caress my right cheek. I smiled at that and brought up the menu. I chose the unpause option without looking at anything else and the world formed back around me and faded back into full color.
I stared into Viper's eyes after her revealing that Bobbie was giving head to my son, and I completely understood how something like that could have happened. Without me there, Vance must have stepped up to help take care of Danica, and Bobbie must have noticed how much he was helping her. Being reliable and able to take care of kids, was huge turn on for a woman.
I also knew that Bobbie had been having a dry spell for almost three months, since we hadn't had sex after that first week back, so any sign of affection from Vance would have set her off. It did make me wonder how far they went at it, though.
"Was that all?" I asked and Viper gasped. "I mean, was that as far as they've gone, or have they been... you know." I said with a wave of my hand and she didn't notice it was my floppy left hand.
"O-oh, I thought..." Viper blushed from embarrassment.
I chuckled and leaned in to give her a quick kiss. "I wasn't dismissing what she did, I was asking for clarification."
Viper nodded. "After she was tackled, Bobbie put up a small fight and Vance tried to help her. A few of the agents ended up with broken bones and one had a concussion; but, once she was tasered and secured, Bobbie admitted that was the first time she had done something like that with him."
"Something like that?" I whispered the question and thought about it. "If that was only the first time she tried to swallow him, they could have been doing other things like heavy petting and making out for a while."
"H-Hank, h-how can you talk about it like it doesn't matter?" Viper asked, clearly shocked.
I smiled at her misunderstanding. "Viper, of course it matters. There's no way Bobbie can keep custody after that and we both know what that means. The government owns her now and the kids are going to be sent into the system or be allowed to stay with me, which they can't because I'm staying here."
Viper nodded again and let out a sigh. "I'm sorry I don't have the room for two more people."
I gave her another kiss and pet her messy hair. "Don't worry about that. I'll call in a favor from another old friend. He has lots of room at his mansion and Danica adores him."
"His mansion?" Viper asked and she caught her breath. "He'll never accept! He hates how disruptive kids are!"
I chuckled and motioned to my wheelchair. "I need to get to the phone to call Rikki and then Ed Mode. They'll handle the details and I'll see if Rikki can find a nice compliant maid to help Ed corral the kids until I'm better."
Viper stared at me and looked like she was going to refuse, then she took a deep breath and let it out. She let me go and climbed off of the bed and brought the wheelchair over to the bed and locked the wheels. She helped me slide off the bed and into the chair, adjusted my floppy arm and leg for me, and secured my ankle before pushing me out into the living room.
"I'll start on breakfast while you're busy." Viper said and parked me beside the wall phone.
I could easily reach it with my stretchy arm. "Thank you, love."
Viper froze and her eyes were really wide. "H-Hank..."
I reached up and caressed her face. "Yes, Viper. I love you. I always have, actually. I just couldn't say it before."
Tears came to her eyes and Viper knelt beside the chair to give me a long and tender kiss. "I've always loved you, too."
We held each other for several minutes before she let me go, wiped at her eyes, and went into the kitchen.
I picked up the phone and dialed Rikki's number from memory. It shouldn't take long to arrange things and Ed's place wasn't that far from either of the schools that the kids attended. It wouldn't be that big of an inconvenience for them to live somewhere else for a while, assuming Vance hadn't been arrested with Bobbie. That might be a little inconvenient to work around.
*
Bobbie sat in her jail cell in the government building and she didn't know what she was going to do. She had let herself be convinced by Vance's insistence that he was the man of the house and he was going to take care of her. Her desperate need to feel some kind of love after so long had played a part of it, too.
Vance had made her feel wanted and appreciated, as if she was a woman and not his mother. That alone had been a pleasant surprise, then she had been extremely turned on as he rubbed her down during the massage and then he started licking her and fingering her, telling her how hot she was, and she came so hard.
Of course she had to thank him for his hard work by doing it back to him, her orgasm-clouded mind had justified. His cute reactions to her skills had given her even more reasons to keep going after he blew a hot load onto her breasts... then the whole world came crashing down around her as government agents broke into her home and caught her with Vance blowing another load down her throat.
Her first and quite wrong reaction, was to stop them from taking away yet another man from her, so she fought. Vance tried to help and was taken down as well, which she quickly regretted. That doubled her own guilt about what happened and then that doubled again when Rikki told her she had violated her probation by using her powers again to attack her agents.
In other words, she was fucked and not in the good way.
How could I have been so stupid? Bobbie asked herself listlessly, her emotions dulled after sitting for hours in an empty cell with only her bathrobe on. At least they had let her keep it after they searched the pockets. It was wrong of me to do those things with Vance, no matter how good it felt.
Her thoughts kept going down that direction and she couldn't help but wonder what it would have felt like to have him inside of her. Yes, it was very very wrong, and more taboo than the worst taboo; and yet, she couldn't help but think about welcoming her son home in such an intimate way. He would have been hers completely and no one would be able to take that experience away from her.
The cell door opening brought Bobbie out of her horrible thoughts and she looked up at a scowling Rikki.
"I called in a few favors, so they're letting me handle your processing." Rikki informed her.
Bobbie blinked her eyes at her in confusion. "My what?"
"Your processing." Rikki said and waved at the door. "The newly reinstated Super Registration Act requires all people with powers to register. An addendum was also pushed through this morning in an emergency session of the government to allow criminals to be chipped to keep track of them."
Bobbie's heart almost shattered and she felt a pit form in her stomach. She couldn't move or speak as she stared at the old woman that had always been there in her corner to support her.
"Before you ask, the answer is yes. Vance is being processed as well. I didn't bother trying to stop it." Rikki said and nodded at the security guard.
The man stepped forward and grabbed Bobbie by the arm and hauled her to her feet. She didn't resist at all as he dragged her out of her cell and down the hallway towards the room where the procedure would be done. An extremely angry Rikki Dicker followed in their wake.
175 Bouncing Back
I had to make a few promises to Rikki to ease the restrictions on Vance, like helping Viper develop cell phone technology. The biggest step on that one was creating a microchip, which would be a huge technological development, considering the current computers were the size of rooms and needed huge cooling machines to keep them operating.
So, I cheated. I had a ruined CB radio and satellite dish sitting in my inventory and that had a bunch of microchips inside of it that I could enlarge enough to try and duplicate using current tools. I still had a few sets of working ones as well if I needed them, which I shouldn't. We only needed innovations, not an entirely different system to install. Viper already had a mobile phone installed in a car and we just had to make it smaller.
Ed was surprisingly understanding on my situation and accepted my combined offer with Rikki Dicker's to watch over the kids and to have a maid assigned, everyone knowing the woman would really be a government agent that would keep them under close observation. We were all okay with that, too.
I hung up the phone and had a delicious breakfast with Viper, then I was perched on the couch and had to wait for my appointment with a shrink. Viper was a little worried that I was perfectly fine with seeing someone that was going to psychoanalyze me and I tried to reassure her that everything was going to be fine. She went to work still worried.
About fifteen minutes later, a quite short woman stepped out of the elevator. She had white and slightly poofy short hair, wore goggles like a headband, had on a lab coat with an equipment belt, and she looked well put together. A few things caught my eye as she approached me and introduced herself as Doctor Sunbright, which was a surprise, because this woman was Ed Mode's sister.
"Ah, you recognize my name. Excellent." She said and had to pull herself up onto the couch to sit beside me. She pulled down her goggles and looked at me through them, nodded her head a few times, and slid the glasses back up to become a headband again and held her hair up, which explained the poofiness.
"I visited Ed a few times over the years." I told her.
"Ah, so you're the Hank he enjoys having visit? It's very nice to meet you." She said and held a very dainty hand out to me.
I took it and stretched my lips out to kiss the back of it instead of shaking it.
"Enchante." She said with a little laugh and I relaxed. "You're quite the charmer, Mister Parr."
I let out a sigh at that. "I don't know if I should keep that name after the divorce."
She looked surprised by that. "You're getting a divorce? What for?"
With that prompt, I spent the next two hours going over everything that happened, was happening, and might happen in the future. When I was done and ended with myself being there at Viper's place and my best friend being so accepting of me and my condition, Doctor Sunbright looked like she was caught up in her thoughts.
"What is it?" I couldn't help asking.
"Oh, it's nothing. Just an odd thought I had." She said and waved my question away.
"No, please. Tell me." I prompted.
She slid closer and gave me a sexy smile. "What would you say if I asked you to ravage me?"
I jerked back from her and gave her wide eyes. "Wh-what? Why would you ask me that?"
She backed off and smiled widely. "I asked because I specifically wanted to check something."
I wasn't sure how to respond to that, so I didn't.
"It's all right, Hank. I didn't mean to scare you with my forwardness." She said and patted my hand. "Would you mind meeting with me again in a few days? I want to hear more about your life before you became a husband."
"Um, sure. It's not like I'll be going anywhere for a while." I said with a one shoulder shrug.
"Excellent." She said and hopped off the couch to smile up at me. "Thank you for talking to me like I was a normal person. It was quite nice to just have a regular conversation for once."
I thought back over her visit and had to agree. It really had been nice to get it all out in the open. "It was quite nice, Doctor Sunbright."
She beamed a smile at me and patted my knee. "Then I'm glad I was able to come over to visit. Have a good day, Hank."
"You, too." I said and watched as she walked across the living room to the elevator. For some reason, I didn't try to imagine what she was hiding under the thick lab coat. Was it the lack of swaying hips or her short stature that stopped me from seeing her as a potential sexual partner? I waved to her after she stepped inside and turned to face me.
She let out a little laugh and waved back. "Work."
The elevator closed and left me alone in the living room. I now had a choice to make. Stay here and wait for Viper to come home for lunch or drag my floppy butt into the kitchen to try and make lunch for her? Decisions, decisions. I remembered Viper's worry about me moving around without her nearby and chose to stay right where I was.
*
"He's definitely been influenced a lot in his thinking." Doctor Sunbright told Viper and Rikki at their not-so-secret meeting. "He kept justifying Bobbie's actions all during their marriage and couched her behavior as frustration over not being able to help people as much as she could, while also completely ignoring that she wasn't really helping her own family."
"The debacle at Insuracare when she punched out her old boss, had been the last straw for the relocation program for Bobbie. I had to cut her loose or the program would have been shut down." Rikki said and rubbed her forehead in frustration. "I didn't think Bobbie would so easily fall to villainy after that."
"It took months for that to happen." Viper said. "Bobbie started getting back into shape and making a lot of money..."
"...which went straight in to fuel her ego." Doctor Sunbright said. "Or super-ego in this case."
Rikki sighed. "What am I supposed to do with this mess?"
"The only thing we can do, Rikki. We take things one day at a time and try our best to help those who needed it." Doctor Sunbright said.
"Hank and Vance." Viper said and the doctor nodded.
Rikki nodded as well. "The both of you keep at it and keep me updated. I'm going to hope that we can get it all sorted out before anything else happens."
"You just jinxed it, you old bat." Viper said with affection.
Rikki groaned and the doctor chuckled.
"I'm going over to Ed's to visit Vance and talk to him." Doctor Sunbright said. "I'm sure it's going to be a unique perspective to discover what he was thinking about as he engaged in such socially unacceptable behavior."
Rikki gave the doctor a bit of a glare. "Please don't say anything like that around him... or your brother... or around Danica. It's bad enough it happened and they're traumatized enough. We don't need to hammer it into their heads that it was wrong."
The doctor patted her arm. "I'm not a novice, Rikki. I'll handle it properly."
"See that you do." Rikki said. "I used up the last of my favors to keep Vance out of the conscription program, so do everything you can to get his head straightened out... or, if needs be, pointed in a particular direction and away from where it was headed."
Doctor Sunbright nodded in agreement, despite the warning. She had been a licensed doctor for supers for years and knew what she was doing.
*
After lunch, Viper brought me down to the garage and we started working out how to reduce the car phone's sheer size down to a more manageable one. We both knew that there wouldn't be a sudden miracle with a technology breakthrough that would give it to us instantly. It would take work, and planning, and a lot of money and infrastructure to produce what we planned for the government.
That was the key to the whole thing, too. The government wanted it. Whatever we made had better be worth the time and investment, so we couldn't give them a defective or insufficient product. The car phone had been a huge development and had been deployed to a majority of the top government agents and members, so they all benefited from them.
They were also sold to a lot of the rich and influential members of society, which ensured it was widespread enough that word of mouth could easily be passed around and raised their status that much higher. If we made them personally portable, that would raise them even further.
It was a good thing that my own work on making the CB radio both long distance and compatible with walkie-talkies was easily adaptable towards the current technology Viper had created for the car phone. Also, she was increasingly turned on as I continued to help her develop a computer chip that wasn't the size of her palm, like the ones she had been using for years.
I called it a microchip during the third day of working on it, because it was barely a third of the size of the normal ones, and I showed her how to solder it together and ensured the proper connections. I typed up a basic communication protocol to flash to it and we finished it up after snapping a hardened cover onto it.
Viper carefully set it aside to show off to Rikki and I thought I heard a cute little whine, then Viper turned to me with love clearly showing on her face and she pulled me close to kiss me passionately. We then proved that her workbench was comfortable enough to sleep on, just like I had joked when she first took me in, and we made love to each other right there among the plans and tools we had used.
With a prototype successfully created, Viper could send it off to be tested and patented. Just that one microchip design was going to revolutionize computers all around the world, because people were going to design even more things with a smaller and much more reliable computer chip available. Well, after it had a factory modified to produce it, anyway. Until then, they would need to be made by hand.
It was going to cost the government a lot of money to get the industrial sector up to speed with them and then it would rake in the money. Having a portable phone be possible was almost a secondary concern after the people in charge realized how big of an impact the microchip was going to have on the world.
Over the next few weeks, the very first brick-like portable phone with a huge antenna was constructed by Viper and myself, almost 20 years before it was supposed to be produced. When it was done, we stared at it, stared at each other, then we both started laughing. The thing weighed like 10 pounds and had huge buttons that were difficult to push and there was no display to show the numbers you had already entered.
"Hooooo, hoooo. That's hilarious." I said, because my idea had been to make the thing with currently available parts and we could worry about streamlining it after we made it work.
Viper hugged me with one arm and wiped at her eyes. Her laughing so hard had made her cry. "The batteries are huge, so there's no helping the bottom part for now. About the rest? We have a lot of work ahead of us to make smaller capacitors and resistors, especially if we want to decrease the tolerances to make it work better."
Since I had both walkie-talkies and CB radioes in my inventory and could examine them whenever I wanted, I had no problem helping her make better parts. "We'll need to document the process, too. If the microchips are having such a huge impact, you can imagine what making those things smaller is going to do."
Viper nodded and gave me a kiss. "You and I are going to keep sending shocks across the tech world, aren't we?"
I gave her a huge smile. "Only until I run out of ideas for us to make."
Viper gave me an equally huge smile back. "Didn't you tell me you had tons of ideas a few weeks ago?"
"Hey, don't throw my pillow talk back at me. I said that to get your motor going." I joked and she laughed.
"It worked, too." Viper said and straddled my waist as she pet my hair. "What was that one you mentioned about a flying drake to bomb enemies?"
I chuckled. "It's a drone. An unmanned drone, actually. It's shaped like a miniature plane and can be remote controlled from a command center, flown over enemy territory using mobile phone technology, and bombs or missiles can be launched from it. No soldiers need to lose their lives in wars ever again."
Viper made that cute whine again and we ended up on the floor and we went at it again. It was honestly fun to tease her like that, because my ideas were appealing to both her mind and her body. She couldn't wait to figure out how to do it and couldn't wait to physically build it.
It was quite a while before we stopped and laid there on the floor, cuddling and basking in the afterglow.
"You know, we should probably try calling the mobile phone eventually." I said and Viper let out a girlish giggle. "Not right now? Okay, it can wait."
"That's good, because I need your cuddles and I will not be denied." Viper said, kissed my cheek, and went back to cuddling me.
I chuckled and held her close as I fulfilled her demand.
*
The divorce happened without my input or opinion. Apparently, I was declared to not be in my right mind to make decisions when it came to Bobbie, and I could admit that was true. I had too many memories about us that influenced my decisions a lot more than they should have about her.
Our assets were split evenly, even with Bobbie sequestered inside a government facility to be deployed when another person with powers was found and she would be sent out to handle them. Discreetly, of course. They didn't want to give anyone ideas about becoming villains to fight against the growing number of people with powers.
Did I think it was bad that the government was fully enforcing the suppression of super-powered individuals? Kind of and not really. If there was no one watching them and keeping them in line, who was going to pick up the pieces when they started wrecking cities with their huge fights?
The collateral damage after a few of Miss Incredible's battles were ranged in the tens of millions of dollars and that was too much for the taxpayers to handle every few weeks when a fight broke out. A few of them had even happened when someone new would appear and challenged her to a fight to prove themselves. Bobbie had always been happy to prove that they were not up to challenge.
Custody was a minefield, because neither of us were in a position to take care of them, so Rikki had Ed Mode declared a government supported foster father and he was granted tentative custody. My daughter Danica thought it was the next great adventure in her life after the island adventure and she embraced her new life completely without complaint.
Vance on the other hand, did not like how all of his decisions had been countered and he was no longer in control. He had stepped up and saved his family and now he was tracked everywhere he went and treated like a child. He bristled under every restriction he was under, even at school, and he resented that he wasn't consulted about anything.
Of course, this was when I finally managed to visit Ed's to see the kids. Vance then found out that I had been awake for almost a month already and hadn't contacted him. He didn't care that everyone thought Bobbie told him already or that I was the one to arrange his release. He shouted at me to leave him alone and to never talk to him again, because I was no longer a part of his and Bobbie's family.
Vance's voice had been filled with so much hatred and venom towards me that it scared me, Viper, and Ed. Doctor Sunbright was called immediately and took him away to talk to him. She eventually called us and only told us that she had a lot of work ahead of her.
Viper and I went home after that and I was resigned to the fact I couldn't help Vance come to grips with everything. I would leave it in the professional's hands and would hope for the best. It was all I could do.