[Of Dog, Volpir, and Man (Out of Cruel Space)] - Bk 9 Ch 19

Varya'Nelkn

A sim chamber away from the Bridger cadet's stealth training session, Varya'Nelkn is on a date! A very special date. She'd decided to ask Tyler to play a holo game with her. A recently released remaster of a favorite of hers from when she was a girl. It’s nominally a training simulation, but this particular type of sim has all sorts of extra special effects and story to keep younger girls fully engaged with their training. 

The basic premise is simple enough. Get through obstacles. Fight monsters. Rescue the handsome prince at the end. Nice and straightforward. With the multiplayer mode you could take on increased challenges with a full squad of five princesses! Something Varya had done regularly with school friends and sisters as a girl throughout the various games of the series. 

However, one change that had led Varya to really wanting to play this game with her handsome prince specifically was the addition of a 'prince mode' to multiplayer, or even single player! So if one is lucky enough to have a handsome prince, and he’s the more energetic kind of boy or man who likes this sort of game, then he could play along, and the goal being guarded by the final boss simply becomes... wedding rings. 

She hadn't told Tyler about that part. It’s just a bit too embarrassing and she didn't expect to make it anywhere near the end of the game in a single session. There are nine sets of levels to play through, after all!

The sim starts to light up as the world comes into focus around them: a fantasy depiction of rolling hills and verdant greenery leading towards mountains in the distance, with danger around every corner! She knows this part of the game like the back of her hand, and she knows the whole world map almost as well as that! 

Varya smiles over at Tyler. He's very much gotten into the spirit of the game, after some explanation; he’s now dressed up in an outfit appropriate for an Apuk prince who had taken up a life of adventure. Knee high boots, loose trousers perfect for leaping - without a tail hole, much as Varya wouldn't have minded a peek at Tyler's bum - and a long-sleeved blouse just open enough at the chest to make Varya blush a bit. 

Complete with a sword belt... that contains Tyler's 10mm Sig Sauer pistol, as well as his saber. Concessions to the fact that Tyler couldn't exactly naturally throw fireballs. 

She'd dressed to the nines as well, a full 'princess' look that Tyler had complimented in such a way as to make her swoon. A very traditional Apuk gown and heels that certainly make her feel like a princess… even if they are about to get the beautiful silk number dirty going out and playing. 

But a real battle princess didn't fuss about her dress going to war, so Varya could hardly complain too much about a little sweat or soot from a holo game, could she? 

"Ready?" Varya says, eagerness leaking into her voice as the in-game menu pops up in front of her eyes, resting on the thick green brush that she knows hides the path toward the game’s first objective. 

"Ready when you are, Varya."

"Okay! Let's go!"

She presses 'start' with her mind and the familiar music starts to play as the foliage around them opens up to reveal the path forward. 

"Remember to leap like I taught you over the gaps. You don't want to fall!"

"Oh, I remember!" 

Tyler gamely dashes forward, pistol in hand, and bounces up towards the first obstacle, and the first monster: a squat armored creature that resembles a bipedal Paratak, a boar-like creature native to Serbow. Tyler cleanly shoots it through the head, shattering the hardlight construct, as Varya leaps up to a platform above him to clear the next ground obstacle and get out ahead. It wouldn't do to have her prince protect her, after all, even if Human princes are built of sterner stuff than most princes in the galaxy!

Her prince bounces over the first ground obstacle and they leap in unison up to the second, clearing the distance with another bounding leap forward as Varya hammers another enemy with a well placed ball of green warfire. They immediately leap up to the top of the next obstacle, defeating another pair of enemies in perfect sync. It’s the kind of feat that Varya had had to practice for years to achieve with some of her siblings or friends as a girl, but with Tyler it’s just so seamless that it made her giddy! 

"Try not to touch down!"

There’s another elevated obstacle in the distance, about the same height as their current perch, and Varya leads the way, leaping and soaring to it gracefully. Tyler doesn't quite make it, and makes another bouncy leap to join her at the top of the obstacle with a sheepish grin on his face. 

"Didn't put enough power into it."

She smiles at him, resisting going in for a kiss. It’s not easy, considering how that adorable, sheepish grin of his makes her heart race. "You haven't had much chance for proper practice. Don't worry, I'm sure we'll have you leaping like you were born on Serbow in no time! Come on!"

The couple race forward, making a casual hop over the first major pit fall trap, before Tyler's pistol snaps up mid-flight and snipes another enemy. That leaves Varya to land and smash up through a parapet to grab one of the enemies by the leg, yanking them through the stone and smashing them onto the ground brutally. 

"Go high!" she calls, leaping through the brick work she'd just smashed to bounce off the first platform and up to an even more highly elevated position. Tyler’s hot on her heels as they dash forward, neatly bypassing another, larger pitfall trap and a pair of enemies, and then they drop down, a fireball and a bullet drilling a new type of enemy. It’s meant to be a tough one, something that looks a bit like the primordial Apuk before they’d evolved into their current refined - and, dare Varya say it, beautiful - forms, but the heavily armored opponent shatters just as readily as the others under their combined assault. 

She really remembers them being more of a challenge as a girl… but then, she hadn't mastered green warfire as a girl yet, either.  

Two more of the Paratak-type enemies are on them almost immediately, and Tyler and Varya both leap upwards. He lands safely on a ledge and engages the far enemy, while Varya takes advantage of her momentum to land square on the first enemy, stomping it flat. They both surge forward yet again, coming to another area with more platforms and four enemies, waiting for them with weapons ready!

"Varya! Go long! I'll get the ones up close!" 

Tyler dashes forward, shifting his pistol to his left hand to draw his saber, and instead of waiting around like a nervous mother Varya trusts the man she's starting to fall in love with and leaps up to one of the platforms, dashing forward at supersonic speeds and landing among the far pair of enemies like the wrath of the goddess personified. It takes her a blink of an eye, and yet she’s only just in time to see Tyler finish off the last of his pair with his saber. He races up to her, sheathing his sword on the go and checking the magazine in his pistol on reflex. 

"You good?" he asks, breathlessly, in a way that seems designed to distract Varya from anything else that might be going on. 

"Yes! Shall we?" she says, gesturing towards a sloped obstacle nearby. 

"Let's."

They dash up the slope and leap the gap hand in hand, with Varya resisting turning an artful flip as they land on the down slope and race towards the next one. This set of slopes is a bit nastier, hiding another pitfall trap, but they clear it easily, coming down at practically a full run, hoping an obstacle and turning their momentum into a brutal double kick square into the face of one of the Paratak enemies before Varya burns another down with a precise beam of warfire. 

One final obstacle and they're running up the final slope, leaping clear to land next to the level end. 

"That was fun!" Tyler says, laughing as he tries to catch his breath. 

Varya smiles back, and impulsively ducks in for a kiss. 

"Tyler."

"Yes?" Tyler pants, more breathless than a moment ago now.

"I want to keep having fun with you like this. For like. A really long time. The rest of my life as it happens. Would you marry me?"

Tyler straightens up and takes a couple deep breaths before his eyes lock on hers. 

"You know, that's not how I expected you to ask, in the slightest, which means it's entirely on brand for you."

"I do try to keep things interesting."

"You're pretty good at that... Yes Varya. I like having you around. The girls like you. The kids like you. You're easy to love and I can see myself loving you for a very long time. So let's do it."

"Yesssss." Varya pumps her first, but looks up in surprise as Tyler's hand wraps around her wrist. 

"No no. You celebrate that like this..."

This time it was Tyler's turn to steal her breath away with a kiss.

"...Hah... Goddess of love and light, I hope everyone in the galaxy gets a chance to feel like this some day!" 

Colleen “ROWDY” Rowley

"Uuuuuuuuugh." 

Colleen smacks her head lightly against the table of the bar she’s sitting in, waiting for Bari to come and meet her. It had just been a usual after flight 'debrief', but then Bari had declared that this would be their first strategy meeting for 'Operation Get Rowdy A Boyfriend'. 

That boyfriend being Bari's husband. Her boss's boss. Admiral Jeremiah 'Jerry', ‘good lord that man's got nice eyes and a great chin’ Bridger!

Which isn't the least bit weird. Noooooo. Crushing on your boss's boss because he’s a tough, considerate, charming, loving bear of a man with a lion's heart and a body that could only be described as 'scrumptious' - to use a word that Colleen remembers using to describe hot guys the last time she'd been this age - totally isn't weird. Really. That’s normal enough. He’d been a handsome older man, even before the two of them had de-aged to their mid and early twenties respectively, and he checked a lot of boxes on the list of things that make 'Rowdy' Rowley feel delicate, feminine and lady-like instead of her usual cowgirl helicopter pilot schtick. 

Her being attracted to Jerry makes complete sense. Even her going for it makes sense in this strange world without fraternization rules that she’ found herself in. 

That handsome man she so admired's wife being her primary cheerleader in the seduction of that man, and the leading advocate of joining what is, at last Colleen had checked, something like a twenty-five woman marriage, and it not being some sort of weird sex thing... that’s just confusing. Bari really, truly and honestly wants her to join their family. 

Family. She means a harem, right? Some powerful, studly man's harem, like a piece of meat? How’s she supposed to feel about that as an emancipated Human woman who had spent her entire life kicking ass and taking names on her own terms?

Not that that had gotten her anywhere besides a very cold and lonely bed, romantically speaking. Not unlike Jerry Bridger himself, actually; she knows the man's background. It makes for odd thoughts occasionally, odd thoughts she’s willing to bet she shares with Diana and Sharon Bridger, Jerry's two Human wives. She’s pretty sure that she and Jerry are compatible, reasonably sure that he'd be a good boyfriend and a good husband to her, and that she could be a good girlfriend and wife to him. She’s counting on it, even. She’s a bit too old for uncertainty, no matter what her messed-up hormones were trying to tell her! 

So she couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if she'd had a chance encounter with a certain Marine back on Earth, before the Dauntless, before the Beacon. Before the world changed. 

And yet... while her mind could conjure some rather torrid fantasies about how that might have gone... part of her realizes that, for as weird as the relationship situation in the wider galaxy might make her feel, part of her wouldn't trade this for going back to Earth with him, hand-in-hand, as the one and only Mrs. Bridger.

Because out here? The adventure, their careers, doing what they’re best at? It doesn't have to end. Jerry could keep leading and she could keep flying till they got bored and decided to do something else with their lives. Maybe she’ll want to go to med school and only fly for fun. Or she could go fly commercial spacecraft and rack up the big bucks. Or do small charter cargo hops, like something out of a favorite old TV show back on Earth. 

The opportunities out here are too good to pass up. Even if it does mean potentially having to share the guy she had a crush on with twenty-five rather astounding women... and in her mind, she could absolutely stand up in their company, even with two stellar pilots already in their ranks with Masha and Bari. She has some tricks up her sleeves that Bari hasn't figured out just yet, and she has experience on her side. She’s a leader too. A master of her trade. 

She could contribute to the family she wants to join... because, if she’s honest, that's what it is. A family. Not a harem. Some sultan's harem back on Earth didn't act like the Bridgers did. Didn't look out for each other and work together. Didn't act as a team, seemingly eager to conquer the galaxy together... or at least buy the galaxy outright. 

She could work with that. On the other hand, however… there’s the nagging feeling that she’s about to do something insane, not because of the unique family dynamic in the galaxy… but rather, because of its consequences. 

Colleen is comfortable alone. Not unlike Jerry had been, once upon a planet, if she had to hazard a guess. While being lonely has its downsides, solitude does have its perks to commend it as a lifestyle choice. She does things when she pleased, on her own schedule. If she did court Jerry, if she was successful, that’d change. Forever. In the most kinetic way possible. 

Jerry’s family has a hundred children, and while part of her certainly feels the siren call to obey the directive of the religion she’d been raised in, to ‘be fruitful and multiply’, that doesn’t mean she wants to or is ready to raise a hundred kids. Or even to live in the Den, as magnificent a space as that might be. 

So a lot depends on how these things… actually work. 

If she understands correctly, a big if, the galaxy provides for that. Jerry likes to keep everyone close, but close is on the wives’ terms, her terms, too. She wouldn’t have to live in the Den, even if she changed her last name, and she’s hardly the least maternal of the Bridger women that she knows personally. 

If anything, the galactic situation might make that whole mess easier on her, not harder. Because, while she might not be able to handle being a full time mom, there are women in her prospective family who had been born to raise and care for children like she’d been born to fly. 

And if she did have a sprog or two of her own, she wouldn’t be foisting them off into a daycare system, but the loving arms of her co-parents and husband, which certainly strikes her as more agreeable than the alternatives. 

In theory, she’d been out here long enough. She knows the score. In theory. Would her numbers add up to something satisfactory with Jerry’s equation, though? That remains to be seen… as does the truth of how the galaxy works. Could she actually maintain a degree of distance? A little bit of her freedom? Have her cake and in fact eat it too?

She couldn’t be sure, but Colleen does know one way to find out. 

"Hey, Rowdy!" Bari's familiar voice calls as the feline alien eagerly prances up to her. "Ready to get started?"

"...Yeah. I think I am." 

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