Descend- Coming Together

by David Burke

  Somehow though he was feeling not only what he felt but also what she felt. Now that he was awake the sense of her was just a distant bubble in the back of his thoughts, but no matter how he shook his head he always knew exactly where she was. He even felt the contentment that she felt right now.

  Gently, he shook her. “Mia, something happened. I can still feel the Empathetic Bond with you. Are you still maintaining it?”

  Groggily, Mia said, “No, my head felt like it was gonna split open then I think I passed out.”

  “I saw you falling, and I caught you, but then I must have passed out too, because the next thing I knew was I was waking up with you in my arms.”

  “That’s not entirely bad is it?” Mia asked, a hopeful expression on her face.

  “That isn’t fair. You know I like you quite a lot, but you also know the rules,” Jay replied.

  “Ugh… you and your rules. You are the only one making those rules. Look, you are a great guy and plenty of us are waiting around for you. We appreciate everything that you do but already a couple of the girls have gone over to Tyler and Miguel. I’m not saying they were the best or the brightest. Tammy and Sienna were probably not any loss at all, more trouble than they are worth. But that doesn’t mean that you want all the girls here going to other guys do you?”

  “Um how many girlfriends is one guy supposed to have?”

  “You are making this too complicated. I know that you have this code or something that you live by. We all see it, and it has a certain draw to it, but this isn’t Earth. You have to adapt to the reality that we live in.”

  “I see your point. I guess, I just always had hoped that I would get this one girl who would be amazing, and we’d live happily ever after. Something that I never got to see with my parents. Now I have a whole group of girls interested in me and almost every one of you is that type of amazing girl I dreamed of before. The thing is that I worry that all of you only like me because I’m what Amelia would call ‘a limited resource’.”

  “Oh I see. So you’re struggling with the pretty girl, rich guy dilemma. Pretty girls always think that guys are only after them because of how they look and rich guys the same just about their money. There is some truth to that. It is the natural order of things and even more so here. Nothing wrong with that. It is about what happens after the relationship starts. Do you develop a connection? And one bit of advice. When a girl is hitting on you, don’t quote other girls.”

  “So you’re saying that it’s okay for me to be a womanizer as long as I try to develop a relationship with each of the girls?”

  “Uh, not exactly. Think of it like this. You asked how many girlfriends one guy can have let me turn it around. How many friends can one guy have? Would it be bad if you had twenty friends?”

  “No, nothing wrong with that,” Jay answered.

  “And you wouldn’t feel bad if you were closer to some friends than others, right?” Mia continued her questioning.

  “No, not really.”

  “So why feel bad if you are closer to some girlfriends than others?”

  “I see your point.”

  “That’s cause I’m not just a pretty face. I used to be on the debate team,” Mia said.

  “I love learning about all of you and the cool things you’ve done,” Jay said, smiling at her.

  “Then you have to take the time to get to know us. Something which I might say that you are very good at, but you don’t have to hold back on the other parts while you are waiting.”

  “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  Mia scrunched up her lips like she had more to say but wasn’t sure if she should. Jay waited but when she didn’t say anything he asked, “Is there something else?”

  “Yeah… but not sure you are gonna want to hear this,” Mia said hesitantly.

  “I promise to listen.”

  “Okay, well you know how you are always talking about how you have to get more powerful so you can protect us from jerks like Kenley, the dungeon and even whoever put us here in the first place, right?”

  Jay closed his eyes as he thought about her question. He remembered the urgency conveyed to him in his dreams, which he had begun to think were messages from the future. “Basically, everything I do here is so that I can become more powerful.” Then thinking about how that sounded he added, “Not selfishly, but because I want to save all of us.”

  “If you really mean that then you are overlooking one of the most important sources of power here. You need to be in control of this cluster. Right now you are the leader but some of the girls are already unsure because they feel rejected by you. You don’t want Tyler or Miguel to end up being the leader do you? Think about how screwed up that would be.”

  “So you are saying that I need to be a politician, not just a fighter?” Jay asked.

  “I am saying that whichever guy has the most girls on his team has more power. We are a source of power that you can’t afford to turn a blind eye to. You need to embrace that power and bring us onto your team all the way.”

  Jay felt uncomfortable thinking of the girls as a means to power but he could also understand that there was an element of truth in what she said. This wasn’t Earth and the old rules didn’t apply. Was he really limiting himself purely because of some concern about being seen as a lecher?

  He thought back to the way that Amelia and Jessie had combined powers and the combo practice he had today with Madison and Charlotte. They really were stronger as a group. He couldn’t afford to squander that resource.

  “I need a little time to think about this,” he said.

  “No one is forcing you to do anything and some of the girls don’t talk to me as much as they used to because they see how much time I get to spend with you, but if I had to guess, they are going to force you to make a decision soon.” Mia’s tone changed from comforting to grim as she spoke.

  Jay smiled at her. “I will keep that in mind. So now maybe we need to talk about how long this connection is going to last between us?”

  “Hopefully forever, as far as I’m concerned, but I didn’t do it on purpose. So, I can’t really say,” Mia said and as she spoke he found that he could focus on that little bundle of emotion inside his head that he instinctively recognized as her. When he did, he could sense how genuinely happy she felt to have this connection with him. It was oddly reassuring after their conversation about using girls to gain power.

  Jay started to tell her that he needed to go but she cut him off, “Yes, I know you have to leave. Don’t worry, I’ll miss you but I understand.”

  “Are you going to be reading my mind now?” Jay asked but this time he used telepathy to say it.

  She didn’t miss a beat and answered right back with telepathy, since it seemed that it was a generic ability they all gained when they crossed the first threshold. “I can’t read your mind, silly, but I can feel what you are feeling. You were anxious about keeping the rest of your team waiting but at the same time, regretting that you couldn’t stay with me longer. I can tell that you genuinely enjoy talking to me, so I can be okay with you leaving. Like I said, this is a new world.”

  Jay kissed her forehead and then hopped up before he lost his resolve. Then they ran back to the main area while sharing Durability and his Enhanced Speed. When they were back, he had an idea. “Why don’t you come with me to the training with the rest of the team? I have ideas about how your powers could be combined with some stuff they are making.”

  Chapter 20- Crafting Combos

  When Jay arrived at the top of the ziggurat with Mia, the other girls looked from him to her and then Amelia said, “If I didn’t know you so well, I would say that you had just added another Eve.”

  Jay and Mia explained about their training session. Interestingly the others also had felt the ground move under their feet, like a sudden lurching. When it came time for him to explain about the empathetic bond formed between the two of them all three girls got angry looks on their faces.
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  “You didn’t have any right to do that to him,” Huong said.

  Meikiyo added, “Jay can be naïve sometimes about girls. It was wrong of you to take advantage of that. I had thought better of you than this.”

  Surprisingly it was Amelia who said, “Maybe she can explain herself,” but when Jay started to speak for Mia she said, “Shhh boy scout, we want to hear it from her.”

  Mia looked like she was going to wilt again. Jay groaned inwardly. He had spent much of his effort over the last three weeks not just training with her but convincing her that she was as good as any of the others.

  She started to mumble, “I…uh...didn’t mean…well you see what happened.”

  Then all of a sudden she felt her draw on his Awareness as she forged a link using Shared Potential and she stomped her foot on the ground. “No, I won’t apologize for something that I didn’t do on purpose. It was an accident.”

  Then she put her hands on her hips and looked down on Amelia who was almost a foot shorter than her. “But you know what? I’m not sorry it happened. I wouldn’t have forced it on him, but I’m glad it happened. Now I can feel him in here all the time.” She tapped the side of her head as she finished speaking.

  The three girls all looked at each other and it was clear as day that telepathic communication was going between them. They all had frowns on their faces and Huong was even glaring at Mia who defiantly stood her ground. Suddenly, Jessie jumped into the conversation and said, “Okay, that’s enough. Stop messing with her. She is showing spirit standing up to you all, which I know from personal experience is not an easy thing. You know that she is telling the truth.”

  Huong smiled, Meikiyo relaxed, and Amelia looked at Jessie and said, “Yeah, yeah. You didn’t have to spoil our fun.” Then she looked at Mia and said, “We all know that Jay likes you and it’s obvious that he keeps putting off adding extra members to the team.”

  “Although, why he would do so is beyond me,” Jessie said.

  Huong added, “I know. What man has to be told repeatedly that he can have more girls in his bed? I swear we practically have to beg him.”

  “You know, I’m right here don’t you. It’s not polite to talk about someone in front of them,” Jay said irritated.

  “Well better than talking behind your back. At least you know where we all stand on the issue. Besides, we talk about you all the time in front of you and you are none the wiser, telepathy really is a wonderful thing,” Meikiyo said.

  “All kidding aside, you know that I really care about each of you and will never take that lightly, but does this mean that we are adding Mia to the team, because I think she would be a great fit.”

  One by one the girls voted yes, although Meikiyo was noticeably slower than the others. Then Amelia said, “So if you care about us so much, how come you haven’t acted on our request to be publicly acknowledged?”

  Instantly five sets of eyes were on him all with varying expressions on the faces that held those eyes. “I told you I need some time to process this. I am dealing with a lot here.”

  “And we aren’t?” Huong asked, interrupting him.

  Jay shrugged and said, “That’s not what I meant. I just mean that the responsibility for protecting all of you…”

  Meikiyo interrupted him this time, “Don’t go there again. We already discussed your problem with trying to decide for us instead of sharing with us.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry. You all are the source of my strength just as much as I am to you.”

  “Before we came over here, I was telling him that I think something is going on. I think that the other guys and some of the girls are going to make a play to take over the cluster. He needs to collect as many of us to himself as he can so he will have the strongest force,” Mia said.

  Jessie growled from deep within her throat, “Then we should kill them.”

  Jay shook his head. “That only makes us all weaker. We need as many humans as possible if we are going to defeat whoever has taken us.”

  Huong said, “We could always make more humans.”

  A flush came to Jay’s face at that suggestion as words wouldn’t come. He simply didn’t know how to respond to that and was surprised that his face was not the only place blood rushed to, at Huong’s words.

  Amelia snapped her fingers. “You aren’t getting out of answering the question so easily. So if it isn’t any of those things what is it then? Are we just good enough for your bed but not good enough for a commitment?”

  “Wait, a damn minute here. You were the one who said no commitments, when we started this team,” Jay protested.

  She stared at him defiantly and said, “I’m exercising the universal prerogative of all women to change my mind. I’ve decided I want to keep you around. I don’t want this to just be a temporary alliance for mutual benefit.”

  Jay had seen Amelia be snarky, untrusting, and cynical. He had seen her be funny or passionate and even fierce in battle. He had even seen little glimpses of the wounded and vulnerable woman beneath the rough exterior.

  What he had never seen was her laying her heart out so bare for the world to see. It would have been shocking enough if she had done it in private with just him. If he had rejected her, then she could have saved face still because no one else would have known.

  Now though she had laid her feelings out for all to see. Looking at her, he saw her lower lip quivering. The rapid rising and falling of her breasts spoke to her tension. As the seconds ticked by, he realized that he was leaving her hanging. Soon, it wouldn’t matter what he answered.

  Yet he didn’t want to lie to her. He didn’t want to promise something he couldn’t deliver. It was all too quick. Or was it? What did he know about any of this? He had never felt worthy of being loved and yet four of these women had expressed love for him in multiple ways.

  He told himself, people just don’t fall in love that quickly. If they do, it’s just infatuation or physical attraction. The lie to what he said was that people don’t move things with their minds, shoot fire from their hands, or grow eight inches in two weeks. If his physical and mental evolution could move so quickly, then why not his emotional?

  Ultimately what it came down to was a pair of questions. Did he truly believe this was the rest of their lives? He knew without a doubt that he did. He had no idea where they were or how they would escape but even if they survived the dungeon, this was his new life and he needed to adapt to it.

  Following that answer, the second question was even easier to answer. Did he want Amelia in his life for good? Yes, a resounding yes. Even with all her teasing insults and probing to keep him on his toes. He wanted her. Not just for her beauty or body or even as a partner in the dungeon. He wanted her for himself, not selfishly but because she completed a part of him that he didn’t even know had been empty before.

  If this wasn’t love then he didn’t know what was. He wanted to keep her safe but always have her at his side. Honestly if he contemplated a future, he wanted little children of their own with her curly blond hair running all around. Where that thought came from was anyone’s guess, but he chalked it up to the chemicals in his system.

  The problem was that he didn’t just love Amelia. He didn’t just want her. He loved and wanted Huong with all her nurturing and Meikiyo with her quiet wisdom. Even Jessie was someone that he was growing to love. She, like the others, completed a part of him. Hell, the lecher that he was, he had found yet another type of soulmate in Mia.

  Maybe Mia was right and all these rules that he had in his head were self-imposed. His expectations might have made sense on Earth, but this was a different place. There was no justice in it, and it certainly wasn’t fair to any of these women but he knew in that moment that if they would have him, if they would share him, then he would have at least the first four of them as his wives.

  Mia he was still getting to know, although admittedly the empathetic bond that he now shared with her was a big stepping stone. He still had a ton o
f thinking to do. And had visions running though his head of himself becoming the leader of some big sex cult, but that was just fear and imagination run wild. He would adapt to this new world and he would give fully of himself to them.

  All those thoughts and more passed through his head in a handful of seconds but to the girls watching, especially Amelia, it must have felt like an eternity. Once the decision was reached a firmness settled into his expression and he saw the smile of mixed hope and fear upon her face fall into sadness. It was the look of resignation from one who is used to being let down.

  In that moment, Jay fell to one knee in front of her. “Amelia Carter, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”