Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/11983188.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/F
  Fandom:
      Little_Witch_Academia
  Relationship:
      Diana_Cavendish/Atsuko_"Akko"_Kagari
  Character:
      Diana_Cavendish, Atsuko_"Akko"_Kagari, Sucy_Manbavaran, Lotte_Yanson,
      Hannah_England, Barbara_Parker, Amanda_O'Neill, Constanze_Braunschbank
      Albrechtsberger, Ursula_Callistis_|_Chariot_du_Nord
  Additional Tags:
      Semi-Public_Sex, Underage_Sex, Fluff_and_Smut, Secret_Relationship,
      Dragon!Akko, Alternate_Universe_-_Fantasy, Alternate_Universe_-_Riders_of
      the_Storm, Hot_Rider-On-Dragon_Action, Bad_Puns, Drug-Induced_Sex, Magic
      Made_Them_Do_It
  Series:
      Part 2 of Pyrehearts
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-09-03 Completed: 2017-10-10 Chapters: 10/10 Words: 33817
****** Unquenchable Thirst ******
by ruff_ethereal
Summary
     Akko and Diana's time in the Forest of Beginnings has ended, though
     their new relationship upgrade is here to stay. Diana wants to keep
     it mostly under wraps, but her newly awakened libido is making things
     difficult, to say the least...
Notes
     We're sinning from the starting gate and at every leg of this race,
     folks.
***** Chapter 1 *****
Sunday, Late Afternoon
To most students, returning to the hallowed halls of Luna Nova from the Forest
of Beginnings was an occasion of great joy and celebration, and the end of a
prolonged period of suffering.
For Akko and Diana, however, it was just the beginning of a long, long, long
series of unpleasantness, starting with having to deal with Professor Ursula’s
having seen the former’s head between the latter’s legs in a scene that was
rather impossible to misconstrue as anything other than hot, passionate,
dragon-on-rider action.
And though Ursula was able to keep up the polite smile and the feigned
obliviousness, Diana and Akko were not nearly as skilled at poker faces. They
spent a few moments in painful silence, feeling the mood get more and more
awkward, before Diana broke the quiet.
“Professor Ursula, please know that if there is anything—anything at all—I can
do to ensure your silence, just say the word and I will use every single
connection, power, and privilege I have as a Cavendish to--”
Ursula held up her hand, and smiled. “Diana, Akko, it’s not necessary to bribe
or convince me at all, your secret’s safe with me.”
The both of them heaved sighs of relief, before giving Ursula thankful looks.
“Thank you, Professor,” Diana said, while Akko just beamed, tearing up at her
idol’s giving her even more reason to love her.
Ursula smiled back, before her face turned serious. “If there’s one thing I
will have to ask of you two, though, it’s to have a long, deep, and serious
discussion about you your relationship upgrade. Believe me, rider-dragon Bonds
get VERY complicated once you throw sex into the mix.”
Diana and Akko both nodded, their cheeks burning red. “We were already planning
to, Professor Ursula,” Diana replied.
Ursula nodded. “Good. You two can use the ready room, if you’d rather not have
this conversation back in your quarters, or elsewhere.”
“It will do just fine,” Diana said as she left, beckoning for Akko to follow.
They exited the warp stone chamber and into the ready room. Akko perched
herself on one of the available seats, Diana double-checked that the door was
locked behind, before she sat beside Akko on another chair. The two of them
looked at each other, quietly collecting their thoughts, all manner of feelings
flowing between them:
Nervousness. Embarrassment. Hesitation. Curiosity. Reassurance.
“So...” Akko started, “back there, when you tried to bribe Professor Ursula…
does this mean you don’t want other people to know that we’re a thing now…?”
she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
Diana nodded. “Yes, but I assure you, Akko, that’s only because I’m not yet
ready for the public to know about us—not before I’ve had time to think and
prepare for how I’ll reveal our relationship. As you know, with my being a
Cavendish, I’m held to a muchhigher standard than everyone else, and there’s so
many conventions and expectations I need to uphold, I can’t just--”
Akko put a hand on her thigh, Diana stopped. “Can I please tell at least Sucy
and Lotte?” Akko asked. “I promise I’ll keep them from spilling about it to
anyone else, and I definitely won’t go shouting from the rooftops and the
spires about how I’m your girlfriend now, even though I reallywant to.”
Diana looked at her, debated it for a while, before she slowly nodded. “Yes,
you may, but just… do it in our room, with me around, please.”
“And have them sign something something so there’s a guarantee that they’ll
catch hell if they do…?” Akko added.
“Yes,” Diana said. “Picked that up from our Bond?”
“Yep!”
Diana chuckled. “Hah, looks like it’s going to save us a lotof time and effort
with communication...”
Akko nodded. “Mhmm! Still going to be a lot of things better said out loud like
this, though: I love you, Diana,” she said, her eyes warm and loving.
Diana blushed. “I love you too, Akko,” she said, before she leaned in, closed
her eyes, and kissed her.
Fwoosh!
Akko’s dragon fire surged into Diana, rapidly engulfing her entire being, the
intense heat concentrated near her stomach. “Fuckme!” she cried as she pulled
away, smoke and little tongues of flame pouring out from her lips.
“Oh shit—are you okay, Diana?” Akko asked.
Diana coughed and beat her chest, before she sucked in a deep breath, and
exhaled a steady plume of smoke. “I’m fine, I’m fine...” she said, before she
stopped, her eyes widening. “… Actually, no, I’m not fine, I’m suddenly feeling
incredibly,painfullyturned on all over again—help...” she whimpered as she
squirmed in her seat.
“Wow, you’d think your body would have gotten used to my dragon fire by now
with how many times we”--Akko made a seductive dragon sound--”back in the
Forest,” she said as she slipped off her seat and knelt down between Diana’s
legs.
“Well apparently it hasn’t, and still needs your assistance!” Diana cried as
she struggled to pull down her pants, Akko taking over and getting them down by
her ankles. Her panties were already wet and stained dark with fresh arousal,
and Akko couldn’t help but stop and put her nose on it, inhale the scent of her
excitement and the remnants of their most recent trysts.
“Akko...” Diana whimpered, looking down at her pathetically, desperate need
pouring in her side of the Bond.
“I’m on it, I’m on it!” Akko said as she pulled away, hooked her claws into the
band of Diana’s panties, and carefully tugged them down between her thighs.
“I’ve got you, Diana, don’t worry,” she said as she put her claw on top of
Diana’s pussy. “Ready?”
Diana quickly put her own hand atop Akko’s claw, her fingertips starting to
glow as she harnessed her magic. “Ready.”
Their Bond tattoos pulsed and thrummed, the ruby red swirls on Diana flowing
like water, the icy blue streaks on Akko thrumming and humming like a fire.
Diana whimpered and moaned as she felt hot, slippery fluid form over her pussy
and Akko’s claw, till they were both soaked and drooling with it.
Enchanted lube was a temporary solution at best, dissipating very quickly
without a sustained effort to replenish it; but with Diana leaking ever more
arousal as Akko rubbed her nails up and down her pussy, and her serpentine
tongue licking and toying at her clit, they needn’t have worried about that.
“Ooh...”Diana moaned as she leaned back into the chair and grabbed the back of
Akko’s head. “Y-Yes, Akko, please, keep going...”
Akko hummed in reply, her pointed ears twitching as she buried her face back
between Diana’s legs, pressed her lips and tongue against Diana’s pussy lips.
Diana moaned and gasped, whispering increasingly heated and breathless words to
Akko, literal steam escaping from her lips.
Technically, their Bond was more than enough for Akko to get an accurate read
of whatever Diana was feeling at any moment… but really, there was just
somethingabout hearing Diana say it out loud, the worsening warbles and
tremours in her voice, the moans and the whimpers in between her words, some of
them cut short by a gasp or a moan.
A hot puddle of her Diana’s arousal began to on the seat of her chair,
trickling across the worn-smooth wood and to the tiles below them. Her panties
started to stretch, the metal buckles and zippers of her pants clinked and
jingled as she spread her legs wider. The dragon fire inside of her started to
burn hotter and hotter, making every last sensation all the more intense, the
pleasure consuming and overwhelming her thoughts till it was all she could
think about, all she wanted,all sheneeded...
… Then, suddenly, Akko stopped, the flames suddenly turning into a painful,
hungry gnawing now that they she wasn’t feeding and stoking them.
“Akko...?” Diana whispered, tendrils of smoke pouring out of her mouth, her
eyes wide open and wild.
Akko pulled her face from between Diana’s legs, her lips and scaley cheeks
shiny and dripping with her arousal. “I want to put your chair against the
wall, so I can climb on, claw-fuck you and kiss you without either of us
falling off. Can I?”
Diana trembled, the heat inside her exploding like you’d just dumped a barrel
of gasoline on it. “Get rid of your clothes and do it—now.”
Akko’s clothes burned into cinders, revealing her bare skin, her bright red
scales, and the patterns of her Bond tattoos few ever saw. She effortlessly
picked Diana and her chair up, carefully walking forward and putting them right
up against the wall.
She checked to see if it would move, and when it didn’t budge, Akko climbed on,
kneeling in the space between Diana’s legs, one claw on the wall for balance,
the other already back on her pussy.
Diana looked down and watched, crying out and panting as Akko slipped her
arousal-soaked nails into her, effortlessly pumping them in and out. Lewd, wet
noises filled the air, the drip-drip of Diana’s arousal spilling onto the tile
growing more and more frequent, and Akko’s own starting to join the mess.
“Diana?”
Diana looked up, saw Akko’s eyes, crackling and burning with lust and dragon
fire. They started to close as she leaned in for a kiss, and shot wide open
after Diana grabbed the sides of her head, lunged forward, and closed the
distance.
Lips locked, tongues slipped into mouths and tangled with each other, muffled
moans of pleasure rumbled in throats. Akko kept on pumping her nails in and out
of Diana’s sopping wet pussy, arousal pouring and spilling out onto the seat
and the floor, splattering onto Diana’s inner thighs, dripping from Akko’s
claws. They pulled away for breath, Diana grabbed onto Akko’s shoulders, tilted
her head back and cried out, feeling the fire inside her grow into a massive
inferno, every last fiber of her being alight, before finally...
“Akko…!”
The dragon fire inside Diana exploded, a flash of white coming over her vision,
before her whole body shook and writhed from the shockwave, her pussy spasming
and gushing like crazy onto Akko’s nails and claw, very literal smoke pouring
out her mouth, her fingernails digging and scratching at her scaly shoulders,
before they fell away, limp.
Diana alternated between coughing up smoke and sucking in air she sank into her
chair, sweat pouring down every inch of her skin, her body still shaking from
her orgasm. Akko pulled her claws out from between her legs and hugged her,
pressing her naked chest up against Diana’s soaked shirt, affectionately
nuzzling her cheek, their Bond tattoos glowing as Akko absorbed the excess heat
from her.
Soon, Diana’s breathing calmed, her heart began to beat at a normal pace, and
the overwhelming heat disappeared, replaced by a pleasant warmth washing all
over her body as she melted into a puddle of sweating, smoking, satisfiedgoo.
Akko hummed as she pulled away, giving Diana an affectionate lick on the cheek.
“I love you, Diana,” she murmured.
“I love you too, Akko,” Diana whispered breathlessly, her lips curling into a
smile as tendrils of smoke lazily poured out of it.
They relaxed for a few moments more, before Akko climbed off, helped Diana onto
a different, drier chair, and started looking for something to clean themselves
up. She was in the middle of grabbing one of the towels when they both heard a
knocking on the door.
“Girls?” Ursula asked. “Uh, I’d just like you both to know that the walls here
aren’t soundproof, there’s a company of Freelancers coming here soon, and
there’s deodorizing sprays under the sink.”
Akko and Diana’s eyes widened, their faces burning red all over again.
In record time, the ready room was cleaned up and the evidence of their tryst
literally or figuratively burned, Diana was dressed and groomed, Akko was
saddled and loaded up with all their bags. They were soon out the dragon-sized
door and back to the campus proper, Akko rushing through the crowds as quickly
and steadily as possible, Diana riding on her saddle and resisting the urge to
wince with each step, the two of them keenly avoiding eye contact with anyone
they passed by, human, dragon, or Fae folk.
Thankfully, it was standard practice to assume that anyone coming back from the
Forest just wanted to get back to their dorm, a Bonded pair or a company of
Freelancers.
===============================================================================
CRASH!
Akko plowed through the balcony side doors of their room, the sturdy wooden
bars breaking in a shower of splinters, Akko herself skidding and spinning
across the marble floor until she crashed into the giant air bags on the far-
wall.
THOOMPH!
Diana wheezed, her knuckles turning white as she tightened her grip on the
reins of her saddle, and Akko climbed out of the cushions. She undid the straps
of their bags, letting them fall to the floor with heavy thuds, the clatter of
some of their equipment and clothes spilling out.
On any other day, Diana would have demanded she put them all away properly, but
all she could think about now was getting into the miniature hot spring that
was their “bathroom.”
Akko made a beeline for it, Diana wincing and whimpering as she bounced about
on the saddle. Akko slowed to a stop at the shallow end, carefully picked Diana
up, and lowered her down into the water. Diana yelped and tensed up as she sank
past her waist, before she sighed happily and relaxed.
Akko transformed into her humanoid form, naked but for her saddle, now in the
shape of a leather body harness. “Is there anything I can do to help, Diana?”
she asked as she leaned on the edge of the pool.
“Can you please get me out of my clothes again, and get my comm-crystal out,
too...?” Diana asked.
Akko nodded. Soon, Diana’s clothes and Akko’s saddle were hung up to dry on the
side, and the both of them were in the water, Diana resting her head on Akko’s
shoulder, their comm-crystals resting nearby on the rim.
“Better now…?” Akko asked after a few minutes of pleasant silence.
“Muchbetter...” Diana said. “Though I’m rather certain I shouldn’t do anything
but lie down and read for the rest of the day...”
“We really need a plan for when we”--Akko made a seductive dragon sound. “We
definitely can’t just keep doing like we did back in the Forest.”
“Agreed...” Diana replied, frowning. “I’m going to start remaking both of our
schedules: we’re going to need a lotmore ‘bonding time’ from here on out.”
Akko chuckled. “Geez, Diana, planning to make up for lost time?”
Diana blushed. “W-Well, yes, I am! But more importantly, this a manner of
practicality; I’ve studied most every book and material about the Dragon-Rider
Bond, and I knowthat pairs that get intimate for the first time tend to get
rather… enthusiastic about it in the beginning, due to the novelty of it all.
“Regardless of how active our respective libidos are from here on out, I’d
rather we have to fill in free time, than struggle to find more of it in the
heat of the moment.”
Akko snorted, steam trickling from her nostrils.
Diana blushed harder. “Pun not intended...”
Akko’s face softened. “Do you want me to go get some supplies from the
dispensary?”
Diana nodded. “Please do, though be discrete about it: just the absolute
essentials, a day or two’s worth for the moment. I don’t want anyone connecting
the dots this soon...”
“I will,” Akko said. “I could go right now, if you’d like; they stock stuff for
aftercare, too, and I’m sure they’ll have something for you.”
Diana hummed. “That would be excellent, thank you.”
Akko kissed Diana on the cheek. A burning mark in the shape of her lips glowed
on the skin for a moment, before it faded away. “I love you, Diana, see you
soon,” Akko said as she got out of the water.
“I love you too, Akko, and please, take your time if it means throwing off
suspicion,” Diana replied as she grabbed her comm-crystal from the side.
Diana spent the next fifteen minutes remaking their schedules, and sending out
all manner of messages to the various establishments and organizations of Luna
Nova. It pained her to see all the replies beggingher to reconsider cutting
them off from her time and expertise, but thankfully, no one argued when she
said she needed time to herself and Akko.
Figuring out how they were going to be doing things now that they were getting
intimate counted as “newly arisen, unexpected issues” with their Bond, right?
She spent the rest of the hour taking a proper bath with soap, water, and no
hot rider-on-dragon action, dressing in her most comfortable nightgown, then
laying on her bed, reviewing the lessons and upcoming quizzes and exams now
that they were back in Luna Nova.
It was shaping up to be a peaceful, quiet night settling back into school life,
until Akko came rocketing back in dragon form, several massive crates strapped
to her sides and back.
THOOMPH!
Diana’s eyes widened as she looked past her tablet and at Akko struggling to
pull herself out of the deep crater in the air bags. She quickly put it down,
got off her bed, and stormed off to Akko, wincing and slowing down as her pussy
began to ache once more.
“Ilaya’s Grace, Akko, what did you not understand about ‘the absolute
essentials?!’” she cried as she got near.
“That’s what I told them!” Akko said as stepped past their saddlebags from
earlier. “But they wouldn’t let me leave unless I brought ALL of this back!”
she replied,
Diana grimaced; with Akko’s well-known clumsiness, ineptitude, and penchant for
causing all manner of collateral damage, she probably shouldn’t have been so
surprised the dispensary staff would cover every singe base they could think
of.
If it was any comfort, the crates looked just like any other, meaning passersby
couldn’t have even begun to guess about the contents, or assumed it was any
number of innocent, inconspicuous supplies. For all they knew, it could have
just been an extra large shipment of the things they needed regularly.
However, there was still another concern: “What in Isigrol did they give you?”
Diana asked.
Akko pulled out a messenger tube from one of the crates; Diana opened it, and
found a shipping manifest. Aside from the delivery of their usual enchanted
fire extinguishers, useful potions and drugs for an avid magic-user like Diana,
and nutritional supplements for Akko, there was an incredibly large number of
items for sex, be they for protection like heat-resistant “claw covers,” for
aftercare like “Rough Rider’s Remedy (TM) Topical Ointment: ‘Flaming Hot
Special,’” or even for helping aiding the act itself, like “Rough Rider’s
Remedy (TM) ’Supernova’ Sexual Lubricant.”
Diana was well aware that Luna Nova was avid to keep its reputation as being
very well-stocked, in spite of the declining enrollment rates realm-wide, but
it wasn’t until that moment that she truly realized just howwell.
“Do they expect us to use allof this…?” she whispered, embarrassed beyond
relief.
“Probably not!” Akko said. “I guess they just assumed I’d be getting steamy
pretty often. That, or I’d end up with a LOT of people and folks who
reallycan’t handle dragon fire.”
Diana nodded. Out of morbid curiosity, she opened one of the crates; inside
were incredibly large sealed packages, all of them labeled “Flying Dragon’s
Large.” She sighed as she turned to Akko. “Couldn’t you have at least mentioned
that you’re getting intimate with a human? There’s no way we can use these
things!” she said as she gestured to them.
Akko couldn’t blush in dragon form, but the look that came over her face was
evidence enough, the embarrassed feelings pouring in from their Bond only
confirming it. “Uh, actually… we kinda can...” she muttered.
Diana raised eyebrows at her, before she looked back at the box. She hadn’t
noticed it earlier, but there was a small, definitely human-sized box attached
to one of the corners. She opened it, found several vials; she picked one of
them off its holster, and read the label:
“Fuck Physics (TM) Alchemical Sex Aid: ‘You bet your ass it’s going to fit!’”
Diana’s face turned red. She slowly, carefully put it back in place, closed the
box, pulled the lid back on the crate, and made sure every single locking
mechanism on it was securely in place. “… I’m going to go to bed now, Akko…
don’t bother cleaning up, we can sort this all out Tuesday after class, among
other things...” she muttered as she began to leave for her side of the room.
“Wait, Diana!” Akko cried, before she started opening crates, found and pulled
out a box of something. “Take this—the menders said it’ll help with your uh,
problem,” she said with the box between her teeth.
Diana took the partially soggy and bitten cardboard box, and read the label.
“Rough Rider’s Remedy (TM) Vaginal Suppository: ‘Lady’s Lifesaver.’” Her face
continued burning red. “… Thank you, Akko, that was very considerate of you...”
she mumbled.
“You need some help getting it in?” Akko said. “I know I always do when it
comes to backdoor deliveries.”
Diana shook her head as she carried the box off with her. “I’ll manage on my
own, Akko; remember, us humans are a lot more flexible than you dragons.”
Akko giggled. “Don’t I know it...” she purred.
Diana scowled and kept blushing. “New rule: no sexual innuendo, or
intentionally riling me up in public.”
“Got it!” Akko said, puffing up her chest as she rose in attention, before the
two of them went their separate ways, Diana to her bed, and Akko to her nest in
one corner. They settled back in and went to sleep soon, ready to go back to
their normal lives in Luna Nova, save their new, secret for the moment romantic
relationship.
… Or so they thought.
***** Chapter 2 *****
Sunday, Late Night
Diana lay on her side in bed, staring at the far wall, unable to sleep.
The luxurious sheets were freshly laundered, the pillows fluffed, and the
entire area around her completely in order, everything exactly as she left it
the day she and Akko left for the Forest of Beginnings, or exactly how she
expected it to be with the incredibly specific instructions she’d left for the
housekeeping imps.
Even the Rough Rider’s Remedy had done its job quickly and well, her pussy no
longer feeling sore nor burned.
The reason was rather obvious: for the past few weeks since that fateful night
at the lake where Akko had taken her virginity, they had been sleeping
together, either snuggled up together in Akko’s humanoid form, or Diana nestled
in the crook of her neck while she was in dragon form.
“Akko, we’re going to have to learn how to start sleeping separately again,”
Diana had said a week earlier. “We can’t keep waiting for the other to lay down
beside us before we can even start dozing off.”
“Aww, do we really have to?” Akko replied, giving Diana the dragonic equivalent
of a pouting face.
“Yes,” Diana replied. “Our schedules simply won’t allow it, with how important
it is for me to to get to sleep on time, and how erratic and spontaneous your
activities and adventures can be alongside your sleep schedule.”
Akko sighed, billowing out a thick trail of steam from her nostrils. “Okay… but
can we do it little by little, so we can still cuddle at night? It gets really
cold out here and all...” she said, smiling hopefully.
“But of course, Akko,” Diana said, ignoring the part of her mind that was
warning that this could be a very bad idea indeed with some serious future
consequences.
She just hadn’t realized that the one who’d have trouble sleeping was her, not
Akko.
It was rather impressive, how someone so full of wild, uncontrollable energy
like her could switch off just like that, her massive dragon form currently
curled up in her fire-proof nest, her breathing slow and steady, clear smoke
pouring out of her nostrils at a regular pace like a machine.
She supposed that was one of the many reasons she was that way in the first
place: she could just get rest whenever there was even the briefest opportunity
to, able to recharge her batteries almost anywhere and at any time.
How unfortunate that she could not be nearly as lucky.
Diana sighed, and turned in bed, debating opening her comm-crystal and getting
more of her assignment backlog done, but with her workload intentionally light
for the time being, and her canceling so many of her arrangements with the
various organizations of Luna Nova, she didn’t have much she could do.
Well, unless she wanted to do something so boring, rote, and time consuming
like manually fixing and solving the efficiency issues with the Classic Media
Club’s holo archive, but Diana wasn’tthat desperate for something to occupy her
time.
“Why not wake-up Akko and ask her for some help?” quietly suggested a part of
Diana’s brain. “She always leaves you ready to pass out at any moment, among
other things~”
“Absolutely not,” she thought back, scowling as her cheeks turned red.
… A solution of that vein wasn’t entirely ruled out, though.
Diana blushed even more as she rolled onto her stomach and planted her knees on
her bed, hiking up her nightgown then pulling down her panties. She hadn’t
masturbated in bed for a long time—not since she first discovered this new
aspect of her body, one she had to keep secret from the servants, company, and
her family, and especiallyout of the awareness of her numerous freelancing or
aspiring permanent partners throughout the years.
But maybe now was a good time to restart the habit. After all, she had total
privacy up in this tower, and Akko certainly wouldn’t mind if she woke-up and
saw her like this...
Diana bit her lip, feeling herself grow veryturned on at that thought. Ilaya,
what would she do if she did catch her like this? “Probably start by asking why
I’m just here, presenting myself and not even doing anything...” she thought to
herself with a little chuckle.
“… I reallyshould fix that.”
She reached between her legs and put her fingers on her pussy, gasping as she
touched it. It wasn’t quite Akko’s claws, constantly warm and pumping dragon-
fire into her, and she missed that thrill of her nails gently scratching her
inner walls, but it wasn’t as if she didn’t have her own tricks.
She began to rub up and down her length, her fingertips glowing as she siphoned
off and gathered her arousal, keeping it from going to waste dripping down her
thighs or onto her sheets, putting it to much better use making her fingers
nice and slick, or spreading their warmth all over the rest of her pussy.
“Mmmnn...”
Way on the other side of their luxurious quarters, Akko snorted, a tiny lick of
steam erupting from her nostrils, before she went back to sleep.
Diana didn’t notice, too far away, and too busy focusing on the lewd,
delightful sounds of her slick fingers on her drooling pussy. She bit her lip,
moaning and giggling as she began to ease a finger in, grinding her chest
against her bed, her nipples hardening as they rubbed against the soft, smooth
silk of her nightgown.
“Aaahnn~!” she gasped as she slipped her finger in, the glow on her skin fading
as her concentration broke, her arousal raining and leaking all over her sheet
and her inner thighs as her magic lost its hold.
Back then, this would have meant a frantic, unwanted break from the action as
she tried to make sure her mess wouldn’t be too big and suspicious; now, she
just moaned as she started to pump her finger in and out, feeling her warm,
silky walls grow wetter and wetter…
This time, Akko completely woke-up, confused, figuratively and literally
getting hot and bothered as sexual pleasure and wordless beckoning poured in
through Diana’s side of the Bond. It wasn’t so much a gentle hand trailing on
her cheek and coaxing her to follow it, so much as an enthusiastic army of imps
surrounding her, hoisting her up in the air, and carting her away.
Curious, Akko went along for the ride.
Diana put her other hand between her legs, whimpered as she spread herself
open, panting and drooling from how exposed she was, shaking as she started to
slip in another finger, and another, finding out just how much she could fit
inside of her now, delighted, scandalized giggles escaping her lips.
“Ishould have never stopped masturbating in bed,” she thought. Sure, the
bathroom was much more convenient, most assuredly private, she frequently
didn’t even need to put any effort into erasing the evidence, and had a nigh
unlimited supply of hot water for all kinds of “alternative applications” for
her magic, but it just didn’t have the feel of her smooth, silky sheets and
nightgown on her skin, the softness of her bed letting her take whatever
position she wanted in comfort and ease, the--
“Diana?”
--Dragon partner, roommate, and girlfriend who you could wake-up, and have walk
in on you...
Diana looked back, her nightgown hiked up over her rear and bunched on her
lower back, her legs spread wide open, her arousal-slick fingers inside her
drooling pussy, her cheeks burning bright red, her lips open in a small “o,”
and her eyes wide in surprise and embarrassment.
From the railing that separated the dragon and humanoid halves of their room,
Akko smiled sheepishly—an impressive feat, with a muzzle, razor sharp teeth,
scales, and bony protrusions on her face. “You uh, you need a claw…?” she
asked.
“Ilaya have mercy on me,” Diana thought as she bit her lip. She quickly pulled
her fingers out of her pussy, pulled her nightgown back down over herself, and
awkwardly rolled over to a seating position, legs closed but her panties still
between her ankles.
“I-I’m sorry, did I—did I wake you…?” she asked, briefly wondering just
hownoisy had she been.
“Yeah, kinda,” Akko replied, “I couldn’t actually hear you from over there, but
there was a whole lotta”--she made a seductive dragon sound--”coming from your
end of the Bond.”
Diana blinked. “O-Oh.”
Akko gestured her head towards the balcony-side doors. “I can leave, if you
want to finish up in private,” she said.
“No,please—don’t go, I don’t want to inconvenience you because of me...” Diana
replied. She paused. “… Actually, you could stay and watch me…?” she quickly
looked away. “… If… if you’d like to, I mean...”
Akko blinked, before her lips slowly spread into a grin. “Just a few questions:
you want me watching you in dragon, or humanoid form? And do you want me
getting off while you get off, too?”
Diana chewed her lip, pondering her choices, feeling herself getting hot and
bothered whichever one she chose, but unable to decide. “Pick for me, please?”
Akko hummed, a figurative and literal spark of mischief in her eyes. “Help me
clear a path, please,” she said, gesturing her head to all the ancient tomes,
artefacts, and odd magitechnical devices Diana had laying around in her side of
the room.
Diana nodded and got off her bed. The two worked for a few minutes putting
everything away or just shoving them to the side, giving Akko enough room to
climb over the railing and walk without crushing anything. The ancient wooden
floors creaked under her weight, her claws clicking and scratching at the
finish, but the Celestial Spires were some of the most durable structures in
all of Luna Nova, and theirs was no exception.
Diana walked back to her bed, Akko trailing just behind her, her hot, excited
breath pouring down over her; Diana sat down on the edge, Akko laid herself
down, her head resting just before Diana, her massive ruby eyes focused on her.
Whatever position she chose, there was no doubt that Akko was going to get a
good view; as Diana’s cheeks began to heat up, her heart began to beat a lot
faster, and her pussy started to get wet all over again, she started to think
about what position exactly she’d use for their very first…
“Well, no need to overthink things,”she thought.
She sat up straight, legs held together, hands in her lap. Her lips began to
spread into a smile as she shrugged off the straps of her nightgown and tugged
it down, saw Akko’s eyes following the ever lowering fabric, till she stopped
just right over her chest.
Diana leaned back and put her hands mark on her bed, giggling softly as she
spread her legs open again; she gasped as she felt a wave of Akko’s hot breath
pour over her body, hummed as she felt traces of that familiar enchanted heat
start to seep into her.
“Getting excited…?” Diana whispered as she started to bring a hand back between
her legs, fingers lazily dancing over her stomach.
“Mhmm...” Akko rumbled back. “I can smell so much of you even from here...”
Diana narrowed her eyes. “Don’t stick your nose in to try and get a good whiff
like you usually do...” she said sternly. “… Tonight, at least,” she added, her
expression turning playful once more.
“Got it, got it,” Akko said, her breaths getting shallower and hotter. “So, uh,
when are you going to get on with the main event, if you don’t mind me
asking…?”
“Patience, Akko,” Diana hummed as her hand slipped between her thighs, pulling
the skirt of her nightgown higher, baring more skin for Akko. “All good things
come in time...”
Akko whined, her eyes burning with anticipation.
Diana shifted about, pulling the front of nightgown right up to her stomach,
her wet pussy exposed to Akko, her breasts and her hardened nipples following
suit. She began to pant she felt Akko’s hot breath pour over the sensitive
skin, sweat starting to drip down her body.
Diana looked up at Akko, watching her eyes intently following her hand as it
crawled off her nightgown and brushed past her bush, switch to her pussy as she
placed two fingers on either side of her pink, glistening lips, and spread
herself wideopen.
“Aaahhn...~”
Akko let loose a giant blast of hot breath. Most people would have had issues
with getting enveloped in flame dragon’s breath, to say the least, but Diana
just closed her eyes as it blew past her, ruffle up the locks of her hair,
strengthen the pleasant heat between her legs on her chest.
“Sorry!” Akko said. “Do you want me to step back?”
“I’ll say if and when it gets too much, Akko,” Diana hummed as she opened her
eyes again. She began to slip her middle finger into her pussy, teasingly
working it back into her self, gasping and moaning as she did. “F-For now, just
watch...”
And watch Akko did, the fire within her and Diana’s display only getting hotter
and hotter, working more fingers into herself, pumping them in and out of her
slick, drooling folds, her other hand reaching up to grope a breast.
Diana had planned for this to be a slow, teasing show, less of the passionate,
fiery bursts their sex usually was, but it was hard not to get swept up in the
excitement and arousal from Akko’s side of the Bond, the heat as her breaths
started to turn fiery, her own growing need for orgasm.
There was a part of her that wondered: was all this excitement just from the
newness of their Bond, the experience so heightened because of the novelty? Was
she secretly an exhibitionist for all this time, never realizing she wanted an
audience for something that was supposed to be so private until now? Or was it
all on Akko, one of those side-effects of the Bond where certain preferences,
traits, and ideals could unintentionally cross-over to the other half of a pair
and become their own?
As Diana fell back on her bed, balls of her feet planted on the floor as she
lifted her hips up in the air, fingers pistoning in and out of her sopping wet
pussy or groping and toying with a breast, she decided:
“Fuck it, I’ll figure it out later.”
Diana’s pace slowed as she neared her orgasm, the air filled with the lewd,
noises of her masturbating, Akko’s heated, shallow breaths, Diana’s own
whimpers and moans. Her hands and her Bond tattoos started to glow as her magic
surged and swelled inside of her, the pressure building up until she could take
no more, and cried:
“A-Akko, I’m cumming…!”
Diana’s magic went wild as she came, waves of pleasure of intense pleasure
surging all throughout her body, her arousal gushing and squirting all over
Akko’s scaley snout, hot and glowing a faint ice blue. She looked up, feeling
her heart beat faster as she watched Akko’s lick all that mess clean off her
snout, hear her hum in pleasure after.
“Akko? Change for me and come over her, please,”she said mentally.
Akko did, now standing naked before Diana. She grinned as she gave her pussy a
few more shaky, weak pumps, before she pulled her dripping wet hand out, and
held it up to her. “Wantsome more...?”
Akko grinned back. “I was just going to ask,” she said out loud, before her
serpentine tongue was wrapping around her fingers, licking and tickling her
palm, noisily slurping and licking Diana’s arousal off, before Akko took them
into her mouth, razor sharp teeth gently raking across her skin as sucked up
the rest.
Akko pulled away, her tongue rapidly mopping up the spit and arousal dripping
from her lips. She smiled and hummed, before she looked sheepishly at Diana.
“Hey Diana… can I kiss you?” she asked.
“Only if you help get ready to go to back to sleep,” Diana murmured.
“Deal.”
Akko gently picked her up and laid her back up with her pillows at the head of
the bed, pulling her nightgown back on her, and making sure she was laying on
the side least soaked and stained with her arousal.
Akko bent down, Diana leaned up, and they shared a kiss—a little spark than a
blaze surging into Diana’s body this time, but no less wonderful.
“Good night, Diana,” Akko said as she pulled away. “I love you.”
“Good night, Akko,” Diana mumbled as yawned and closed her eyes. “I love you
too...”
Still awash in the warmth of her afterglow, she fell asleep immediately.
===============================================================================
Monday, Morning
Diana woke up with a warm, bright beam of sunshine on her face. She let out a
happy hum as she got up and stretched, feeling so much better than any other
morning in recent memory. She debated against using their Bond to wake up Akko
as usual—she had rudely woken her up last night, she deserved to catch up on
some of the sleep she’d lost—until she looked at her comm-crystal on her
bedside table, a holographic projection of the time active, its digits shaking
and flashing red.
Diana’s eyes widened.
“Fuck.”
***** Chapter 3 *****
Chapter Notes
     I would REALLY appreciate some comments to know how I'm doing and how
     you folks are liking (or not liking) this story.
Monday, Morning
Diana burst through the doors of her first class, two seconds to spare before
she was officially declared absent. The servant pixies yelped as a few of them
almost got slammed into the wood and the far wall, the students near the
entrance instinctively pulling back as Diana rushed past them.
The rest of the class and Professor Pisces watched as she made her way up the
aisles, frantically weaving through her classmates and throwing out excuses and
apologies, before she finally plunked herself down in her seat, between her
friends Barbara and Hannah.
The two girls looked at Diana, noted the untamed strands of her hair going
every which way, the buttons of her vest left undone or put in the wrong hole,
and the look of exhaustion and panic on her face, her eyes wild, sweat pouring
down her skin, and her breath coming in pants.
Pisces recovered, quietly noted Diana as late, not absent in the tiny,
waterproof ledger inside her bowl, and began the day’s lesson.
Hannah and Barbara thought of asking her questions, but Diana’s focus was
suddenly entirely on the class and her notes, as usual; reluctantly, the two of
them followed suit...
“Diana got you up all night again, Akko?”
… Amanda, however, had no such reservations.
She, Akko, and Constanze were in General Magitechnology class, the third busy
doing most of the day’s project as usual, the other two talking through a
temporary Link, claws held underneath their work table to avoid suspicion.
“Ah, yeah, kinda,”Akko replied. “I mean, it wasn’tall night, but we were up
late.”
Amanda rolled her eyes. “Mithros, does she even understand theconcept of ‘rest
and relaxation,’ or is she just all working,studying,and training, all the
time?You two just got backfrom six weeks in the Forest, what did she even have
you do...?”
Akko tensed up slightly. “Oh, you know, stuff, and… things.”
Amanda raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Mhmm. Whatkind of ‘stuff’ and ‘things?’”
“Stuff and things between me and Diana, that neither of us want other people
knowing,”Akko replied. “Look, can we change the subject?”
Amanda snorted. “Hell no! The most interesting shit that goes on in this school
alwaystends torevolve around you two;I want in on the action before I hear
about it second-hand.”
Akko sighed. “Okay, you’ve got a point.”
“Fuck yeah I do! Now come on, spill!”Amanda smiled warmly at Akko. “Don’t you
trust me to keep a secret?”
Akko frowned. “Ido, butI can’twith this, Amanda, sorry,”she said before she
pulled her hand away, then severed the Link.
Amanda grumbled as the glow of Freelancer’s mark faded. “Oh come on, Akko,” she
whispered, “it can’t be that private, can it?”
“Yes it is!” Akko whispered back.
“What, did you two finally--” Amanda discretely made a seductive dragon sound,
with a little “?” at the end you could hear.
Akko blushed, steam pouring out of her nostrils.
Amanda’s eyes widened. She immediately grabbed Akko’s hand, her mark flashing
as she tried to reestablish their Link. “Holy shit, holy shit,”Akko “heard”
barging into her brain, “did you guys finally fuck?!”
“Ms. O’Neill! Ms. Kagari!” Professor Croix called out. “Would you two like
share with the rest of the class whatever it is that’s got you both riled up,
or will one of you switch seats with Ms. von Braunschbank-Albrechtsberger and
let the rest of us work in peace?!”
Akko and Amanda flinched, looking like dawngrazers being pounced upon by a
silverfang, before Amanda sheepishly switched seats with Constanze. She glared
at her two partners, before she quietly pulled the day’s contraption and her
tools towards her, and went back to work.
The rest of the class was spent in painful silence, the distress clear on both
Akko and Amanda’s faces, tails swishing about nervously, claws fidgeting,
Akko’s wings instinctively tensing to help her bolt from potential danger.
Constanze soon finished up her section of the work, pointing at the both of
them in turn, at the simple jobs and parts they were supposed to do and
install, before she packed up her personal tools and got wellout of the way.
Akko started turning dials and tuning resonator crystals, Amanda pretended to
slot in power cells as she grabbed Akko’s wrist, her mark flashing once again.
“Shit, Akko,you can’t just leave me hanging like this! I need to know if you
and Diana”--she frantically made a seductive dragon sound.
“And why’sthat?” Akko whined.
“Because me and the others made bets about when or if you two would screw, and
I’m about to lose a WHOLE lot of money if you two did!”
Akko’s eyes widened. “You guyswhat?!”
Fwoom!
“AAAAAHHHH!” Amanda screamed as dragon-fire spiked from Akko’s wrist and into
her claw.
The power cell she was holding flew up into the air, she and Akko both stood up
to try and catch it. Constanze’s eyes widened as she pointed at and tried to
alert them of protective gloves they were supposed to put on, but it was too
late: the cell slipped out of Amanda’s claws, her nails rupturing the casing,
dragon-fire surged into the breaches as Akko wrapped her nails around it, her
magic reacting to the highlyvolatile substances inside.
The normally green colour of the power cell turned an ominous, ferociously
glowing and pulsing ruby red, Akko and Amanda stared at as Constanze, Croix,
and every other student in the lab ducked for cover.
Boom.
Diana waved the chemical cloud from her face, thankful for her and her friends’
safety masks shielding them from the worst of it. Hannah and Barbara stopped
screaming and slowly let go of each other, eyeing the potion bottle in front of
them warily.
“I hate combat recipe days...” Barbara muttered.
“Now, now, girls, knowing how to synthesize a Choking Horror and other volatile
potions while you’re out in the field is a valuable skill,” Diana said as she
waited for the bubbling solution to settle, before she put it off their camping
burner and held it in her gloved hands. The runes on the back of the leather
started to glow as she channeled her magic, and faded as Hannah put a hand on
Diana’s wrist.
Diana looked at her curiously. “Did I miss something, Hannah?” she asked, calm
on the outside, sweating on the inside, worry rapidly gnawing at her.
“Well, no, not really, you got it all right as usual, it’s just… I think you
should charge it with mana water, instead of pumping in your magic like you
usually do.”
“Well why’s that?” Diana asked, carefully putting the potion bottle down on
their lab table, one hand on the base, the other on the neck, as was proper.
Hannah and Barbara looked at each other. Their masks hid most of their
features, but the hesitation on their faces was clear as day regardless.
“You’re really off today, Diana...” Hannah started.
“Actually, really, reallyoff, and not just today,” Barbara continued. “Ever
since you and Akko got back from the Forest, you’ve changed.”
Diana laughed to keep from panicking. “Girls, it’s just been a day! How can you
say with such confidence that I’ve changed?”
“Well, there was yesterday, when you rode Akko straight past everyone and
everything like a missile; you didn’t even notice us when we waved and said
hi...” Hannah replied.
“I wanted to get back to our room immediately,” Diana replied. “You can
understand how much I’d be desperate for my own bed after sleeping in tents,
bags, caves, and trees for the last six weeks, right?”
Neither of them looked convinced. “Then we heard that you suddenly quit every
single one of your clubs and extra curriculars—all the presidents and
organizers were so freaked out that you gave notice to all of them, all in the
same night, and same hour,” Barbara said.
“Really worried and curious, too...” Hannah added.
The runes on Diana’s gloves started glowing as her magic got riled up along
with her. “I made my reason clear, and they said they understood. You of all
people should know that anything involving Akko will be rather time-consuming,
and best given plenty of room for the unexpected, right?”
They ignored her. “And thenyou came in late for class this morning, and you
looked like a complete disaster,” Hannah continued. “You’re alwaysearly, or
right on time, and always look perfect—except for today.”
“What happened back in the Forest, Diana?” Barbara asked. “Did anything serious
go down between you and Akko…?”
“We just want to help you, Diana, honest...” Hannah added, before the two of
them looking at her with concerned, caring eyes.
The Choking Horror potion started to bubble and roil; too busy looking at each
other, none of them noticed. The three of them continued to stare at each
other, the mood growing tense, before Diana soon relaxed, the glow of her
gloves’ runes fading, and the solution settling down as if nothing had
happened.
She looked at Hannah and Barbara in turn and said, “Hannah, Barbara, I
understand you two are concerned for me, but please: trust me when I say I can
deal with this all by myself, and prefer to do so. Should I need your help, I
won’t hesitate to ask for it, but right now, the best thing you can do for me
is to give me my privacy, and your words that you won’t intrude.
“Would that be okay…?”
Hannah and Barbara looked displeased, but relented. “Okay, Diana...” they said.
“We trust you.”
Diana beamed. “Good! Now, with that out of the way, let’s get back to the day’s
work, shall we?” she asked.
Barbara pulled out some containers of mana water, Hannah got a measuring tool
normally for alchemy on the go. “Be sure to double-check the amounts,” Diana
said, “it’s frighteningly easy to overcharge Horror-class potions like this.”
Hannah and Barbara did, found the amount correct, and poured it in.
Boom.
===============================================================================
Monday, Morning
“You know, ever since the Fates Bound you two together, I prayed to the
Pantheon that you’d start rubbing off on each other, adopt the better traits of
your partner as your own,” Professor Finneran said as she looked at Akko and
Diana, both sitting across her desk with their heads bowed. “In hindsight, I
suppose I should have realized such a wish could backfirecatastrophically.
“Such reckless behaviour and lack of control, disastrousbeginner’s mistakes,
screw-ups you’d expect from children, I’ve come to expect from Ms. Kagari,
however reluctantly. But you, Ms. Cavendish?” Finneran sighed, put her hand to
her face, and shook her head. “I find I have no words…”
“I won’t press you two for a full report of whatever it is happened in that
Forest, as is tradition, but I do ask that you spend your time in detention
reflecting and discussing of when the events there led you astray.
“And just so you know, if the chamber dampens your ability to communicate
through your Bond, the surveillance equipment won’t be recording audio, and
you’ll have a screen so they can’t read your lips. Any other questions before
you start your detention?”
“No, Professor Finneran,” Akko and Diana both said, before Finneran dismissed
them, and the guards escorted them both to the Sorcerer’s Square, then to an
MDRC.
A Magic Dampening and Restraining Chamber—infamously and informally known as a
“Blue Room”--was a common facility for handling out-of-control elemental
weavers, dragons, and Fae folk. If you were a non-magical being, or one whose
Gift hadn’t been discovered or awakened yet, it seemed to be just a large,
spherical chamber whose inside happened to be covered in mysterious blue
panels, and wouldn’t be that much different from any other isolation chamber.
To magical beings, however, it was a special kind of hell, one Diana had only
read about or heard of secondhand until now.
She was already feeling uneasy the moment the entrance to the chamber was
opened, and by the time it shut and sealed behind her, it had evolved to an
all-encompassing feeling of wrongness. How to describe the feeling, without her
magic humming and coursing through her veins like a second set of blood, to see
her and Akko’s Bond tattoos and eyes grow dull and lifeless, to be completely
incapable of using any of her spells, or even will her magic to her fingers to
summon a little puff of frost, or wet her fingertips...?
“This fucking sucks!”Diana cried, finding even her voice sapped of its life and
vigour.
“Eh…” Akko shrugged, “you get used to it...” she mumbled as she shuffled behind
the silk screen, and onto one of the comfortable chairs provided for them.
“Mithros, they were legally allowedto put you in here so many times before?”
Diana said as she followed suit, taking the chair across her. “That’s just…
just… just...”
Rage bubbled up inside her, the MDRC’s magitech just casually pushed it right
back down. Diana struggled for a few more moments, hands shaking as she balled
her fists, before she sighed, and slumped forward, her elbows on her knees and
her chin in her hands.
“I’m sorry, this is all my fault, isn’t it...?” she moped.
“Well, no, not really,” Akko replied, “it was me and Amanda that broke that
power cell and caused that explosion.”
“But it probably wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t wake you up last night,
kept us both awake, and cause us to sleep through our alarms, all because I
wanted you to watch me jerk off so I could sleep!”
“To be fair, it was pretty awesome.”
“But was it worth ending up here…?” Diana asked, her eyes watering.
Akko shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you need a hug?”
“Yes,” Diana sniffed. “Can you come over here for me? I can’t seem to muster
the will to get up...”
“Let me try,” Akko said. After a few unsuccessful attempts, she managed to get
up off her chair and hug Diana.
Her grip was weak, her body lacked much of its usual heat and warmth, and it
didn’t completely stave off the awfulness of the blue room… but Diana buried
her face in Akko’s shoulder and felt comforted all the same.
“Thanks...” Diana murmured, her lips tugging up into a smile, before the blue
room nudged them back down.
“You’re welcome...” Akko replied. “Just so you know, I’m probably going to
start sinking soon, and you’ll have to talk to me looking between your legs.”
“I can manage,” Diana said, before her face turned serious. “We need a plan to
tame my libido, while it’s restrained for the moment. A betterplan, with more
specifics, and contingencies! Giving ourselves plenty of free time, getting
supplies from the dispensary, and not flirting with each other in public just
isn’t going to cut it.”
“What do you have in mind?” Akko asked as she started to slip down past Diana’s
shoulders.
“No sex on school nights. Cut off times for initiating intimate acts. Planned
days of the month where we can go on dates, and maybe fuck each other’s brains
out without consequence, if it comes to that.”
“I’m reallygame for that last one,” Akko said, her voice muffled as her face
was in Diana’s chest. Without their magic and their emotions dampened, neither
really got anything from it.
“More supplies—potions, those old-fashioned chastity belts, or maybe just even
sex toys that we can guarantee can get us off if the other happens to be
unavailable. Going to have to start searching for meditation techniques, try to
calm down my libido, or just learn to let my sexual desire come and go like the
tide. Damn, I wish they gave us some pen and paper, or our comm-crystals worked
in here, I need to write this all down...”
“I’m sure you’ll remember it all anyway!” Akko said as she looked up at Diana
from her stomach. “You’re super smart and great like that.”
Diana managed another small smile. “Thank you, Akko, but still, better to rely
on objective materials than subjective memory. Regardless of whether or not we
enact any or all of these measures, however, I swear I will tame this
unquenchable thirst of mine, before it becomes our ruination.
“I love you, and also love having sex with you, but I don’t want our new
relationship to be the end of every other good thing about us!”
“Aww, Diana, that’s sosweet...” Akko said as her head sank down between Diana’s
legs, her chin on the cushion, and the rest of her slumped on the floor. “I’ll
be with you on this every step of the way!”
“Thank you, Akko.”
“And in case we fail, I’ll be totally cool with more punishments like this! I
get in trouble all the time, anyway, I reallywon’t mind some of them being
because we--” she made a rather lifeless seductive dragon sound “--when we
probably shouldn’t have.”
“… Please don’t encourage my bad behaviour, Akko.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
They spent the rest of their detention in silence, slumped, listless, and
sighing from time to time. They were only in there for an hour and a half, but
as it usually did, it seemed like their punishment dragged on for much, much
longer.
When their time was finally up and the doors opened, they would have shouted
and whooped for joy if they could, but as it was, they just stepped out into
sunlight, fresh air, and raw magic.
Diana sighed happily as her Bond tattoos and her eyes regained their usual glow
and luster, power rapidly surged and flowed through her veins once more, and
the last of the Blue Room’s hold flew off of her.
She was free.
Beside her, Akko cheered as she stretched her wings and tail out, releasing a
celebratory puff of flame into the air. “Aahhh, being in blue rooms suck so
much, but getting out of them feels so good!”She folded her wings, and turned
to Diana. “So, what’re we going to do now?”
Diana opened her comm-crystal. “Well, it’s fartoo late to get to our current
class, and we’re excused from flight training for the moment… it seems like
we’ve got about two hours free until lunch.” She smiled at Akko. “You thinking
what I’m thinking?” she thought mentally, a mischievous look in her eyes.
“Uh, actually, I was thinking we could go back to our room and start writing
down all those plans you mentioned, but sure, we could go have some ‘Just got
out of detention’ fooling around! You’ve got study hall by yourself after lunch
anyway, and you can just work on our plans better without me around as a
distraction.”
Diana paused. “… Huh. Thank you, Akko, for indulging me, offering that great
suggestion,and pointing out that matter I hadn’t thought of.”
Akko smiled. “You’re welcome. By the way, I learned from Amanda that no one
really ever uses the bathrooms way on theeastside of theSquare, unless
they’resmoking, jerking off, or gettingsteamy.”
Diana blushed. “Good to know.”
The two of them marched through the Sorcerer’s Square, passing by students
practicing their spells, field testing their various contraptions, and the
numerous magical merchants and diversions there. They reached the bathrooms
Akko had mentioned, found them completely empty, upon which Diana pulled Akko
into the nearest available stall, locked the door behind them, and pinned her
against the wall before she pressed her lips right over hers.
Diana moaned as she felt Akko’s dragon fire surging back into her system,
before she stopped, pulled away with her eyes wide in worry. “Shit,
forgot—someone could catch us like this,”she thought.
“Gotta be quiet about this, yeah,”Akko added.
Diana nodded gravely, then frowned. “… Why am I getting soturned onright now…?”
“Thrill of getting caught! It’sapretty commonkink, from what I’ve heard,”Akko
said. “Really sucks if you actuallydoget caught, though,believe me.”
Diana smiled. “So I guess we’re going to havebe really discrete about this.”
Akko smiled back. “Mhmm~ and I’ve already got an idea on how we’re going to do
each other...”
After some very careful maneuvering and listening in for anyone that might have
discretely slipped in after them, Akko propped herself against the wall, Diana
leaned back into her with her legs spread and her hands on Akko’s waist for
support. Her cheeks burned red as Akko gently wrapped a claw over her mouth,
the other reaching up her skirt and into her panties.
“Ready?” Akko whispered into her ear as she tugged down Diana’s panties, down
between her thighs.
“Mhmm...” Diana whimpered, her voice muffled, her pussy already glistening.
Very, verycarefully and gently, Akko laid her nails atop Diana’s pussy, just a
feather-light touch that sent a tiny lick of dragon-fire into her, like a
matchstick…
“Mmmrrpfff~!”
… And just like every other time, Diana’s body reacted like a gas stove, hot
arousal starting to drip onto Akko’s claw, down between Diana’s thighs, and on
the tile below them. She bit her lip in embarrassment as she felt Akko’s hold
over her mouth tighten, the nails on her pussy stop completely.
“Are you sure you still want to do this…?”Akko asked. “The walls may be thick,
but they aren’t soundproof.”
“Yes,”Diana replied. “Is there anything we can do that might help?”
“Something that’d gag you better than my claws, for one—I might cut your face
trying to keep you quiet, if you keep squirming and moaning like that! Not that
Imind the squirming and the moaning, just, you know: public bathroom.”
Diana quietly hummed in agreement. She thought for a while about what could
possibly silence her rather enthusiasticsounds of pleasure…
Akko COULD try to form a scarf or a ribbon out of her magic, but when not being
worn by the dragon that created them, the risk of it suddenly, literally
disappearing in a puff of smoke and embers was very real, and veryrisky.
Diana had a handkerchief on her, but she had used that same item during Alchemy
class earlier, and there might have been some leftover Choking Horror residue
that would ruin the mood as soon as she took a particularly deep breath.
There was the prospect of ripping off the downy insides of her clothes, but
Rider uniforms were a good deal more expensive and specialized than common
clothes, and the school’s tailors and seamstresses often had innocent,
important inquiries about how they got damaged in the first place…
… Then an idea hit her.
“Akko, let me go, please.”
Akko obeyed, Diana carefully stepped forward, and put a hand on the stall wall
as she slipped her panties off her legs and past her shoes, then balled it up
in her hand.
Akko’s eyes widened. “Holy shit, are you going to…?”
Blushing, hands shaking, sweat beginning to drip down her forehead as her heart
began to race, Diana did.
***** Chapter 4 *****
Chapter Notes
     Thank you very much for the recent spate of comments! They really
     helped, and I appreciated the feedback. Hope you guys continue to
     enjoy where this big flaming pile of sin is going now.
Monday, Late Morning
Of all the things Diana was not expecting to do this day, it was stuff her own
arousal-soaked panties into her mouth as a gag, so as to keep from making too
much noise and potentially alerting others to the fact that she and Akko were
having sex in a public bathroom.
But then again, ever since they were Bound together at that year’s Unity Gala,
every single day tended to be full of surprises, unexpected twists and turns,
and moments of self-discovery neither of them would have experienced had their
paths never crossed.
Moments like discovering that Diana wasvery turned on by the knowledge that she
had stuffed her own underwear into her mouth as a gag, that she could smell her
own arousal with every breath, that Akko was staring at her, her jaw hanging
open as she tried to wrap her head around the incrediblylewd sight in front of
her.
“Holy shit, you actually did it,”Akko said mentally, her mouth currently only
capable of hanging slack and drooling.
Diana looked away in embarrassment—could she still rightfully say she felt it,
when she had been so shameless, though? She ignored the conundrum, and asked,
“Could you… could you test if this’ll work…?”
Akko reattached her bottom jaw and nodded.
Cheeks burned red as Diana leaned into Akko’s chest and clutched handfuls of
her vest, while Akko reached behind Diana, held her skirt up with one claw, and
carefully put the other back to her pussy, magical heat radiating from her
nails and onto the glistening lips.
“Mnnfff...~” Diana moaned, her voice muffled. She started to make all manner of
muted noises of delight as Akko rubbed and toyed with her pussy, let out a
faint cry as she put them on her clit, dragon-fire surging in and fresh arousal
dripping onto the sensitive skin as Akko teasingly circled her nails around it.
“W-Well…?”Diana asked, her knuckles white, her panties rapidly getting soaked
in her drool, her inner thighs slick and shiny with rivulets of arousal
dripping down them.
Akko smiled. “ Unless we’ve got another dragon or a Fae with really good
hearing in the stall next to us or right outside the door… I’m pretty sure
we’re good.” Her face softened as she pulled her claw off, and rested it on her
hip . “And speaking of which: y ou okay, Diana?”
Diana nodded. “I am.”
“Sureyou still want to do this?”
“Yes.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Like a desperate, sex-addicted whore getting her fix with some stranger in a
public bathroom.”
“… Is that agood, or abad thing…?”
“I honestly don’t know, but Ido know it’s really fucking turning me on, and
that’s all I care about for the moment.”
“So you still game for your first time getting claw-fucked in a bathroom?”
“Yes.”
Akko smiled as she put her claw back on Diana’s pussy, started getting her
nails as soaked and slick with Diana’s arousal as possible. “Wow, this isreally
turning you on, isn’t it?”she asked as lewd, wet sounds started to filling the
air.
“Mhmm-hmmff...” Diana whimpered, heated, shallow breaths pouring out from
around her gag. “Mithros, this is so wrong… we could get insomuch trouble if we
get caught...”she thought as she began to quiver and shake
“Do you want to stop?”
Diana’s eyes suddenly narrowed to slits. “No,and don’t youdare stop—not unless
we’ve got a damn good reason to!”
Akko blinked, before she grinned. “Got it~!”
Things heated up quickly after that, as Akko slipped her nails into Diana and
started pumping them in and out of her drooling pussy, Diana leaking and
squirming as she the fire inside her was stoked and fed, quickly growing to a
full-blown inferno. Her muffled moans and whimpers; the wet sounds of her
getting claw-fucked; the drip-drip of her arousal raining on the floor, all
grew louder and louder…
… But not quite as loud as the bathroom’s door quickly opening and shutting
behind someone who just stepped in.
Akko’s ears twitched, her claw stopped where it was midway inside Diana’s
pussy, her mind reflexivey sent a wordless, frantic warning. Diana’s eyes
widened, an icy chill running down her spine, the dragon-fire inside her
flickering and weakening, if only for a moment.
They prayed whoever it was would leave, or at least be quick about their
visit—maybe a few quick puffs of some illicit drug before it was hastily put
out and conserved for later, a drop-off of a package meant for discrete, covert
delivery, or even them using the facilities for their intended purpose...
… So of course whoever it was took the stall right next to them, and from the
sounds of quiet shuffling about, a bag’s zipper being undone, and the steady
turning of a physical book’s pages, they clearlyintended to stay for a while.
“Ffffuuuuuccccckkkk...” Diana thought, her pained whimpers thankfully still
muffled.
Akko frowned, carefully pulling her nails out of Diana’s pussy, holding her
other claw underneath to catch the worst of her leaking. “Do you want to try
and run for it?”
“I don’t think I can evenwalk like this, Akko...”Diana replied. “Do you think
you can reabsorb your dragon-fire from me?”
“Not unless you want to spend the next couple of hours here,or youuse your
magic to help!”Akko replied. “My fire justkeeps going till it’s all burntout,or
something evenstrongerputs it out.”
Diana’s eyes watered.“Then are we just stuck like this...?”
Akko frowned, about to nod, before she suddenly got a spark in her eyes and her
lips curled into a smile—the look that foretold the beginning of her latest
misadventure, another “brilliant” idea, or the moment where it was officially
too late to change her mind about something.
Akko gently grabbed Diana’s hands and pulled them off her vest, before she
began to lower herself down to the floor.
Diana blinked, her tears stopping as she watched Akko. “Akko, what are you
doing?”
“Helping you,” Akko said as she grabbed Diana’s hips, brought her face right
between her legs. “Do whatever you need to do to cum as quickly and quietly as
possible, okay?” she said, before she pressed her tongue right on the base of
Diana’s drooling pussy lips.
Diana stiffened and cried out, the sound just barely muffled by her panties.
She planted her palms on the wall and started taking deep, quiet breaths as
Akko ate her out, slowly, carefully running her tongue up the length of her
pussy, giving her clit a little lick and a powerful spark of dragon-fire,
before she did it all over again.
It was good—damn good—but not the intense ramp up of pleasure and heat that’d
bring her to an orgasm; as it was, it was just stoking the fire in Diana’s
belly, prolonging her torture.
“Think of something sexy?”Akko offered.
Diana tried.
She tried to think of Akko, the effort she was putting in to help her, the risk
she was willing to put herself in just to satisfy her new impulses, the
arousal, affection, and encouragement pouring in from her side of the Bond…
… But while that made her love Akko all the more, it didn’t get her any closer
to an orgasm.
She tried to think of where they were, hiding out in a bathroom stall in a
forgotten corner of the Sorceror’s Square, the scandaland the lewdnessof it
all, the refined and proper Diana Cavendish doing something so dirty…
… Before she remembered their unexpected intruder, barging in none the wiser to
her and Akko’s tryst, and ruining everything.
… Or were they really so ignorant...?
Did they see her and Akko slipping into the bathroom, knew they couldn’t have
just been using it for its intended purpose, what with all the much more
convenient restrooms nearby, and this particular one’s illicit reputation?
Did they deliberately wait outside, maybe intentionally waiting for Akko and
Diana to think they were safe so they could catch them right in the middle of
the act, maybe debating investigating or leaving until their curiosity got the
better of them?
Was their entering reallyjust an unlucky coincidence for them, as was it
something much more intentional…?
Akko stopped eating her out, tried to reassure her no one probably saw them
ducking into the bathroom, and would likely assume something innocent, before
she realized Diana was getting turned on.
Really,really turned on.
Diana whimpered and shook, the flames inside her growing painfulwithout Akko
stoking and feeding them. “Akko, why’d you stop…?”
“Do you think they can hear us next door…?”Akko replied as she resumed her
licking, sending an extra powerful burst of dragon-fire into Diana’s clit that
time.
“Hrmpff…?!” Diana cried out as her eyes widened in horror, that icy chill ran
down her spine again… though with a very different reaction this time.
“They probably can,”Akko continued as she put her tongue back on the base of
Diana’s pussy. “Probably have their ears pressed right up to thewall, trying to
hear every little noise you make,keepingquiet whilegetoff to you...”
Diana whimpered, making little muffled noises of distress, of fear, of
excitement.
“I wonder: how quickly would they cum if they could see you like this?”Akko
mused as she wrapped her lips around Diana’s clit, sucking on it, toying with
it using her tongue, lavishing it with hot spit and even hotter dragon-fire.
“All helpless, horny, and desperate…gettingsofucking turned on by the thought
that someone’s getting off to you, listening to you moan and squirm, waiting to
hear you cum…!”
And just like that, Diana did.
She cried as her world exploded into white once more, her knees shaking as her
arousal gushed and poured all over Akko’s mouth, her cheeks, her chin,
dribbling and spilling on the front of her vest, soaking the enchanted fabric
through.
Diana gasped as her orgasm began to fade, a trail of pale frost forming on the
wall as her knees buckled, and she she slowly collapsed to the floor and into
Akko. “Fuck.Me.Akko, where did you learn to talk dirty like that…?!”she asked
as Akko carefully pulled her panties out of her mouth, then wrapped her arms
around her.
She smiled sheepishly. “Heh, turns out a lot of the skills you learn from
acting workshops and show business summer programs can come in pretty handy
where you’re getting steamy!Setting the right mood is a pretty big part of a
great act, after all...”
Diana chuckled softly.“Of course...”
They spent the next ten minutes in there, Akko absorbing the leftover embers of
her fire, waiting for Diana’s strength to come back before they started erasing
the evidence.
Akko disintegrated her soaked clothes, vapours rising up in the air instead of
the usual cloud of embers; torched them with her breath, and manifested a new
uniform as the scent sprayers detected the smoke and activated. Diana used her
magic to siphon off her arousal from her own clothes till they were mostly dry,
sent it and the puddles on the floor down the drain, before she used the
grooming kit she always had on her to clean themselves up a bit, made it look a
lotless like they had just had hot, kinky sex in a bathroom.
After Diana did all that she could, Akko closed her eyes and listened in,
either for their unexpected guest or anyone new that had slipped in; when all
seemed quiet enough, they slipped out of the bathroom and back to the Square,
looking and acting as casual and inconspicuous as they could.
“That was aterribleidea...” Diana thought as they passed by a group of
students, trying not to avoid eye contact as they greeted her, make her post-
coital limping less obvious.
“Yeeep...” Akko replied, a little-too-giddy smile on her face.
“… Incrediblyfun and worth it, but stillterrible.”
“You want to maybe try this again after a couple of
weeks,ornextmonth,maybe?”Akko asked.
The corner’s of Diana’s lips tugged up a little higher. “Yes.”
Their conversation stopped dead as a rogue breeze from an air weaver blew past
them. Akko was unaffected, until she noticed Diana suddenly blushing and
desperately trying to keep her skirt from blowing upwards.
“Fuck.”
Diana and Akko were about to make a hasty, hopefully inconspicuous dash back to
the bathroom, when they noticed a green pixie frantically floating towards
them, fighting against the last of the rogue gust. It carried a bundle wrapped
in enchanted, leaf-like cloth, and hovered around them both until Akko held out
her claw, and it floated down into it.
The pixie and the enchanted cloth faded away like leaves blowing away in the
wind, revealing Diana’s panties, still soaked, but neatly and carefully folded,
the minuscule indents on it indicative of more pixies having done the job.
Akko quickly passed it to Diana, who stuffed it into her pocket. “Was that just
one of Lot--?!”
“Best not to think about it, Akko!”Diana interrupted. “We’re lucky enough as
is.”
Akko nodded.
They made haste to the nearest deserted corner, Akko casually stood around and
blocked anyone’s view of Diana as she quickly slipped her panties back on, then
off they went, to a nearby launching pad, up to the skies, and to their room.
===============================================================================
Monday, Late Morning
“Oh, Mithros,that was waytoo close...” Diana muttered as she lounged in their
hot spring/bathroom again, submerged from the waist down with the box of Lady’s
Lifesaver nearby.
“Mhmm...” Akko said as she laid beside her in dragon form, still wearing her
saddle. “Looks like our luck’s starting to turn back the other way again.”
Diana frowned. “Indeed… we have to start that planning and contingencies for my
libido. Now. Before something trulyawful happens, and things get even more out
of control than they already are.”
“I’m all ears,” Akko said, resting her head right next to Diana.
They spent the time leading up to noon planning how to deal with their new
problem, putting Diana’s earlier ideas into writing and exploring them in more
detail, points and subject matter they would want to research on, and a brief
foray into things they’d want to try, now that they had all those supplies from
the dispensary.
“Would you be amenable to, you know, trying to see if, ah, any dragon-sized
part of you will fit…?” Diana asked, blushing bright red. “I’m just curious, is
all! This can be a one-time thing, or not at all, if you’re not comfortable
with it.”
“Well, without alchemy, we’re definitelylooking at months to years of constant
size training, and a wholelot more yoga and flexibility exercises in your
schedule! With alchemy, though, we can definitely do whatever the hell it is
you like, with whatever part of me you want, whenever you like.”
Diana’s eyes widened. “Is the, ah, ‘Fuck Physics’ brand really that
effective…?”
Akko smirked. “You ever wanted to see a teeny, tiny girl who’s about a hundred
pounds soaking wet take a nail longer than she is tall, live, and still be able
to walk and rave about how great it was after she cums?”
Diana’s mouth fell open. “… I… I… I do, actually... but I’m not entirely sure
if I should…”
Akko chuckled. “Don’t worry, Diana: it’s alwayslike that when you’re just
discovering your fetishes for the first time.”
The conversation stopped as Akko’s stomach rumbled—with all the volatile gases
and enchanted fire stewing in there, it was not a sound to be ignored. “Oh,
geeze, looks like its time for lunch...” she muttered as she got up. “You good
enough to ride again, or do you just want me to bring something back for you?”
“Go on without me, Akko, and no thank you, I’ll just see what we have here,”
Diana said, waving her off. “I think it might be good for us to keep away for
the rest of the day until the second half of our detention, lessen the risk of
temptation.”
Akko nodded. “Just call me if you need me,” she said as she leaned her head
right before Diana.
Diana stood up, and planted a kiss on the tip of Akko’s nose. “I will,” she
said.
Akko lumbered out of their bathroom, off their balcony, and to the mess hall,
her slow, clumsy flaps booming and echoing in the vast walls of their room.
Diana hoped she wouldn’t land toobadly, since she wasn’t there to compensate
for her lack of flying skills.
“Maybe I should have went with her anyway...” she thought, before she frowned.
“…Or maybe I’m just making up excuses and sabotaging my own plans.”She sighed
and leaned back into the smooth stones that lined the spring. “Honestly, Diana,
it’s like you haven’t been spending the past 10 years more or less on your own;
you’ve lived without Akko in your life before, you can do it all over again!”
Did she wantto, though...?
She scowled and quashed the thought. “This isn’t a question of if you wantto,
it’s that youneed to,” she grumbled as she pulled out her comm-crystal, started
doing as she always did whenever she faced a problem:
Research.
There was an incredibly large amount of information out there about her
situation specifically—fire aligned dragons, weavers, and fae folk
awakeningthings in their Bonded partner, long thought dormant, non-existent, or
not nearly as active before was nothing new, it seemed.
Information and theories on the phenomenon and its other effects were
bountiful, the reputable and well-reviewed research papers were aplenty, and
advice on how to get a handle on it or mitigate its effects abounded abounded…
but even more numerous than it were the written and recorded accounts of the
individuals in the relationships, media that was specifically inspired or based
entirely off the phenomenon of “Burning Desire,” and guides and pointers that
weren’t so much about taming it, as finding all manner of ways to “fan the
flames.”
Diana found her hand straying to the latter articles, sites, and sources,
before she grabbed her wrist, forced herself to toss them out of her search
results, and let the Fountainhead’s sorting and suggestion algorithms do the
rest.
She sighed as much less… scandalous and irresponsible options populated the
projection in front of her.
“Self-control, Diana, self-control,” she said to herself as she started sifting
through her choices, setting a priority order for her reading list. “This is
all for your and Akko’s benefit. The sooner you get a handle on this
insatiabledesire of yours, the less headaches and complications you’ll risk,
and the more you’ll enjoy the time you can and do indulge it with her…”
She paused.
“… I wonder what Akko’s doing right now…?”she thought.
***** Chapter 5 *****
Monday, Noon
“INCOMING!”
Humans, dragons, and Fae folk down on the ground screamed and ran for cover as
a giant, ruby red comet streaked through the sky, getting larger and faster
with each passing second. Up in the control towers, all was calm as usual as
the staff there noted the familiar blip on their radar, started redirecting
traffic, and calling in the necessary crews.
“Kagari, coming in hot,” one of them said coolly.
Carts full of cargo, large equipment, and the occasional animal were rapidly
being hauled off to the sides, or at least, away from Akko’s trajectory; for
her part, she tried to steer away from them, but without Diana’s steady hands
on her reigns, all she really could manage were big, clumsy sweeps and turns.
Souls just freed from the paralyzing terror that gripped them now now prayed to
whomever of the Pantheon they patronized, or hit the tarmac and curled into
balls, hot air from Akko’s wake rushing past them and nearly blowing them away.
Emergency shields were put up over devices too large to move easily or unable
to be packed easily, Akko clipped and bounced off one and was sent spinning.
Akko screamed as she closed her wings and hit the ground with her claws,
leaving deep, jagged patches of gouges in her trail as she skidded, slid, and
spun to one the dragon-sized, flier-friendly entrances of the mess hall. She
clipped one side of the doors and slowed down a good deal, but kept on
spiraling down the main track out of control, land-bound dragons, her fellow
fliers, and their Riders showing off impressive acrobatics and reflexes as they
dodged, went up the walls, or launched themselves right over her.
She was about to reach the kitchen-serving pit in the center of the hall. The
beings on Akko’s side abandoned their place in line and fled, the aquatic
dragons and beings in the canals on the other side followed suit, in case she
hit the guard rail and her momentum threw her over the pit and into the water
again.
Fortunately for everyone, she managed to stop just before it. Her head and
front tilted and teetered dangerously close to falling right over the railing
and onto all the food, chefs, and servers inside, but Akko quickly shifted her
weight backward.
Whumph!
She sat down on her butt, and came to a complete stop.
The servers and chefs in the pit sighed in relief, and went back to work.
In the control towers, the staff started calculating the damage and necessary
work, a few making notes to visit a shrine of their patron deities after their
shift as they could have been worse. “Kagari has landed. I repeat. Kagari has
landed,” the same one from earlier said, before they and the others went back
to business as usual.
Inside the mess hall, everyone relaxed, conversations resumed, meals were
returned to, and bets started getting collected. At the pit, one of the servers
started dumping several dozen pounds worth of roast chicken into a giant tub
made of fire-proof wood.
“Cavendish hitting the books than getting grub again?” he asked as he raised it
up for Akko with the help of a machine.
“Yeah, she is,” Akko lied, before she thanked him, gripped the bucket in her
teeth, and went off in search of a free space.
She found Sucy and Lotte already having lunch at their usual corner, both of
them in their dragon forms with their own tubs of food in front of them. Akko
set hers before them, and smiled. “Hey girls!” she said.
“Hey Akko,” they replied, Lotte smiling and waving her tail at Akko, her
sprites doing the same with their tiny little limbs before they continued
munching on vegetables and herbs, while Sucy raised one of her two heads from
her giant pile of probably poisonous mushrooms and exotic plants.
The “eyebrows” on that head rose as she noticed Akko’s saddle. “Huh,” Sucy
said, “not having lunch with Diana? That’s new.”
“Ah, yeah, she’s staying back at our room, getting back to studying and
schoolwork! You know how she is,” Akko said as she reached down and took
several whole chickens into her mouth, humming as the juices spilled on her
tongue and the bones cracked between her teeth.
Sucy smiled. “You sure it’s not because you’re in trouble with you girlfriend
again?” she teased.
Akko started choking, shredded chicken parts, grease, and steam flying out of
her mouth. That wasn’t new, but the way her other head caught Lotte and her
spirits stiffening and panicking out of the corner of her eye certainly was.
“W-What?!” Akko cried. “No, no I’m not! In trouble, or girlfriends with Diana!
We’re still just partners! The platonic, non-romantic kind that just happened
to be Bound together, not the kind that kiss and--” she rapidly shut her mouth,
bursts of steam escaping her nostrils.
“Maybe it’s because they just want to start spending time away from each
other?” Lotte offered as she recovered. “They did spend just six weeks alone
together in the Forest.”
Sucy was unconvinced, but nodded her speaking head, the one in the mushrooms
eyeing them suspiciously. “Right...”
Akko cleared her throat, and let out a painfully awkward chuckle. “Geez, Sucy,
do you alwayshave to be teasing me and Diana about being a couple when we’re
not?”
“Yes, because it’s fun.”
Akko sighed. “Just know that me and Diana definitelyaren’t girlfriends,
alright? And can we please change the subject?”
“I second that,” Lotte said, before she reached down and took another mouthful
of greens.
“Fine,” Sucy said. “So, how is the Forest? Still standing? Or is it now a giant
barren, wasteland of broken trees and burnt-out husks?”
“It’s still standing and not destroyed!” Akko replied as she reached down back
to her chicken. “And for your information, I didn’t break or burn down thatmany
trees!”
“You sure about that?” Sucy asked. “Whenever anyone puts you and Diana together
for any length of time, it’s like combining several pounds of potassium and
liters of water—guaranteed to be one hell of an explosive reaction.”
“I’m sure,” Akko replied, glaring mildly at Sucy. “We had this really big
problem in the beginning, but we smoothed it out and everything was great after
that!” she said before she took a giant bite out of her tub of chicken.
“That’s good to hear!” Lotte said.
“Uh huh. And what was that ‘really big problem’…?”
Akko’s slowly raised her head from her tub, chewing slowly. She swallowed, and
asked Sucy, “Do you really need to know…?”
“Yeah, considering I’ve got a massive personal stake in finding out what
happened,” Sucy said. “I suppose Amanda’s already told you about the bet?”
Akko steamed up again.
Sucy raised her heads, both of their mouths splitting into grins. “Does this
mean I can collect my winnings now?”
“No,because me and Diana haven’t—you know!”
Lotte frowned. “Sucy, is this bet reallyworth ruining your friendship with
Akko…?” she asked.
“It is, because I’m going to get 10,000 Piorina’s from Amanda’s call alone,”
Sucy replied.
Akko and Lotte’s jaws dropped, the latter’s sprites stopped, stunned.
“So? Did I win? Because I’ve got big plans for that kind of money, Akko,
bigplans...” Sucy said, chuckling.
Lotte put her jaw back in. “O-Okay, that’s a LOT of money, but still...”
Akko frowned, hesitated a moment, before she stepped forward and placed a claw
on the ground, her Bond tattoos glowing. Lotte and Sucy looked at each other,
before the former put her own claw above Akko’s, and the latter wrapped her
tail around their ankles, both their Freelancer’s marks glowing as they opened
their minds to each other.
“You girlsreally want to know what happened between me and Diana in the
Forest?”Akko asked.
“Uh, duh?” Sucy replied.
Hesitation came pouring in from Lotte’s end, before it stopped, and she quietly
said, “… Yes, yes I do.”
Akko took a deep breath, and started. “What happened between me and Diana in
the Forest is that we talked a LOTabout a huge problem Diana hadn’t
expected...”
===============================================================================
Several weeks ago, back in the Forest…
Diana and Akko were sitting at the mouth of a cave, hiding from the storm
outside. Akko was in dragon form, Diana curled up beside her stomach with one
of Akko’s wings protectively folded over her for warmth.
It was quiet, but for the howling winds, the pouring rain, and the steady thrum
of Akko’s stomachand the fire inside it.
“… I’m sorry,”Diana said.
Akko blinked, craned her neck to look at her. “Sorry for what?”
“All the thoughts, distress, and panicking I’ve unwittingly subjected you to
ever since we got here. I’m usually so good at keeping my emotions and
troublesome thoughts at bay, but I’m beginning to realize that the constant
work I threw myself at probably contributed more to that, than any sort of
self-control and emotional maturity on my part…
“Atsu—Akko, I really amvery truly sorry for all the unpleasantness and stress
I’ve caused you, even if it might seem to you like I’m only really out to try
and force you to reach my level of standards, regardless of whether or not you
can actually get there.
“Your opinion of me may be forever damaged, and perhaps irreparable, even, but
I hope that we can still continue to work together, as the Fates seemed to hope
we would.”
Silence again, but for the storm outside, growing stronger for a moment as
lightning flashed and thunder boomed.
“… I actually don’t mind, you know.Hearing about all your problems.”Akko
replied.
Diana’s eyebrows rose.
“Well, actually, I kinda do, but… how do I put this…? I always thought you were
Little Miss Perfect, you know? Always got your shit together, excels at
absolutely everything, does incredible things with any dragon or company she
partners up with, all that’s left is for her to find the Perfect Dragon Partner
the Fates have been saving up for her.
“I actually wondered if our getting Bound together was some sort of huge cosmic
screw-up.
“Like someone was at their desk pairing people up, and whoops! Blacked out for
a couple of seconds, now they’ve gotta call their supervisor! Or maybe
someone’s playing a really, really, reallycruel joke, and any day now, we’re
going to wake up and find that our Bond tattoos are gone, and we can’t hear
each other’s heads anymore.
“But now that I know you’re not Little Miss Perfect, and you’vedefinitely got
your own issues—even if they’re not as bad asmy issues… it makes me feel
better.
“Is that wrong…?”
Diana paused, and shook her head. “No. No it’s not. I’d say it’s more dangerous
to ever think that someone can’t ever do wrong,has no flaws. Eventhe Pantheon
can be all too mortal, after all.”
“Oh. Okay. Good.”
The storm continued to rage on outside, Akko and Diana silently watched and
listened for a while.
“… I suppose this is why Bonds get so tested, and Freelancer Companies break
apart during their stays in the Forest,”Diana mused. “No Fountainhead, no other
beings but yourselves, no creature comforts nor serious distractions, just work
and training all day, before you’re suddenly alone with your thoughts and your
issues, no escape unless someone happens to get injured or sick enough for an
emergency evac.”
Akko hummed. “I think we’re going to make itout okay, though.”
Diana raised her eyebrows again. “And what makes you so sure of that?”
Akko smiled. “Because wereBound together. Andmaybe I’m wrong about us being
some sort of cosmic jokeorclerical error, and we reallywere meant to be
together… I’ve been wrong aboutlots of things before, right?”
Diana chuckled. “Generally for questions on quizzes, homework, and the dates
for both…butyes, whose to say you can’t be wrong on this, too?”
Akko grumbled. “Watch it—I can always take my wing back, you know.”
“My apologies, I’ll stop,”Diana said.
She and Akko watched the storm for a little while longer, before the two of
them fell asleep to the sounds of the rain, slowly, gradually weakening as the
storm neared its end.
===============================================================================
Back To Present Day…
“… And aside from the training, the exploring, the working, and trying to spend
some time away from each other every once in a while, that’s pretty much all
what we did: talk about our problems and work them out, like any Bound pair is
supposed to in the Forest.”
“Awww, how sweet!” Lotte said.
Sucy sighed. “And there goes my hopes for some XZ-237 cultures...”
“Better luck next time, Sucy,”Akko said, smiling as she let took her claw back,
and the Link started to unravel.
Lotte took her own claw back, and Sucy coiled her tail back behind her once
more. The rest of their lunch proceeded as it would any other day, before they
went their separate ways, Akko trotting off to her next class (much to the
relief of the construction crews still fixing the tarmac and the floors), and
Lotte and Sucy flying off to theirs.
“Hey, Lotte?” Sucy asked as she curled herself up into a ball. “You don’t think
that all Akko and Diana did in the Forest was talk about each other’s problems,
right…?”
“Actually, I do, because I trust Akko, and if she was lying to us, then I’m
sure she has a very good reason to,” Lotte replied as she spread her wings.
“And if you want to keep chasing this bet money of yours, you can find some
other way to get to class.”
Both of Sucy’s sets of eyes widened in surprise and interest, before she
decided not to press the matter. As Lotte picked her up in her mouth and took
off, however, she began to wonder if she could find someone else to help her
investigate, see if she really had won that ten grand…
Meanwhile, Akko changed into her humanoid form, ducked inside the nearest
bathroom and into a stall, sighing as she pressed her back against the door.
“Whew, that wasway too close…”she thought as she pulled out her comm-crystal
from her saddle’s pockets. “Good thing your fantastic acting skills saved the
day, Akko!”she thought, smiling as she started sending a message to Diana.
“Hey, Diana, you busy?” it read, without the abbreviations and the emoticons.
“No, I’m on a ferry to the library. Is it anything important?”
“Yes. I think Sucy suspects we’re a thing now, and is reallykeen on finding out
for sure.”
“Sucy? Surely, you jest! What in the realm could she possibly have to gain from
prying into our personal lives?”
“10,000 Piorinas, thanks to a bet she made with Amanda about whether or not
we”--Akko wrote a seductive dragon sound--”back in the Forest.”
There was a long, noticeable delay in Diana’s reply. “10,000 PIORINAS?!” A
short pause, before she was typing once more. “You know, what forget it: those
two and whoever else participated in that nonsense can do what they like with
their money. I assume she was rather persistent about her inquiries?”
“Yep, but don’t worry, I handled it just fine!”
Another pause.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“My apologies, Akko, but when it comes to secrecy, wit, and verbal finesse,
you’re not exactly the name that comes to mind. Nevertheless, I sincerely
appreciate the effort; I reallydon’t want her nor anyone else to find out until
I’m ready...”
Akko smiled. “I’ll throw her and anyone off the trail for as long as you need
me to, Diana.”
Distant and faint as the sensation was, Akko smiled as she felt a little
trickle of warmth and affection pour in from Diana’s side of the Bond.
“Thank you, Akko.”
Beat.
“What’s your Flashchat ID again?”
Akko told her. “Why do you ask?”
“In a moment. Are you somewhere private, where no one can see your comm-
crystal?”
Akko blinked, her heart beginning to beat a little faster. “Yes.”
There was no reply from Diana, until less than a minute later, a holo popped up
in front of Akko, the unmistakable image of an up-skirt flash. Akko stared at
it, her eyes widening and her jaw slowly falling open, until it automatically
disappeared five seconds later.
“Is it gone…?”
“It’s gone, don’t worry. And trust me, I didn’t save it, and no one saw it.”
“Good. Would you please delete all the messages from earlier too?”
“Only if I get to see more of that later tonight.”
“Oh, you’re definitelygoing to see much more than just that, believe me~”
Akko blinked, before she grinned. “Wow. Lewd.”
“Too much…?”
“No. Just surprised. In a good way. I reallylike this new side of you, Diana.”
“As do I, Akko.” A pause. “Ferry’s landing, have to erase all the evidence.
Love you.”
“Love you too,” Akko said, before she dutifully erased her message history,
shut off her comm-crystal, and ran off to her next class. Way over on the
landing pad of the library, Diana tipped her ferry griffin with a treat, before
she headed inside to report for study hall.
Both were worried about the latest problem that had arisen from their new
relationship, but for now, they had schoolwork to attend to.
===============================================================================
Monday, Late Afternoon
Sucy and Amanda were in art class, both in their humanoid forms, the first
ingesting chemicals before breathing or spitting it on their materials, the
second using turning her metallic claws into various tools to cut, shape, and
carve their sculpture.
“You seem pissed,” Sucy said after she softened the rock up top with her
breath.
“I’ve got detention after this, why wouldn’t I be?” Amanda grumbled, lopping
off too large a block.
She cursed, while Sucy caught it in one of her hands. “Don’t you alwayshave
detention?” she asked, before she drank some adhesive, carefully spat some of
catalyzed substance on the chunk and stuck it back on.
“It’s the extratough sort of detention, when you reallyscrew up and there’s no
skipping it, not unless you want hell to pay,” Amanda grumbled as she did.
“Accidentally blowing up expensive magitechnical stuff does that.”
“What happened between you and Akko, anyway? You two don’t usually fuck up this
much.”
“Shit did,” Amanda replied. “Honestly, Suse, I get in trouble all the time, do
you think I remember every single detail about them?” she asked as she put her
blade claw to the rock once more.
“I’d think you would, if it happens to involve losing a 10,000 Piorina bet,”
Sucy said, her voice low.
Amanda stiffened, the edge of her blade almost on the stone again. She slowly
turned it back into a claw, discretely looked out for their professor, before
she motioned for Sucy to grab her claw.
“What do you know?”Amanda asked as she established a link.
“Something’sdefinitely up. Akko got more riled up than usual about the
girlfriend jokes, and she’s definitely trying to avoid the topic as much as
possible. She really was probably telling the truth when she said that she and
Diana had heart-to-heart talks a lot back in the Forest, but I get the sense
that there was a whole lot more than that.”
Amanda sighed. “Then I guess you and I are going to have to start working out
an installment plan, because I don’t have that kind of money on meright...”
“You may not have lost this bet, you know.”
Amanda stopped, and looked at Sucy suspiciously. “And what makes you say
that…?”
“Just the facts: neither Diana nor Akko have outright said they’ve finally
resolved all that sexual tension, but Akko is acting really suspiciously when
the subject is brought up. Could be that they actually did do it and they’re
trying to hide the truth… but it also could be that she and Diana just
discussed it, but it didn’t end in hot Bonded rider-on-dragon action, and they
really are still just friends.”
Amanda frowned. “And what are the odds ofthat?”
“I don’t know, but since when did poor odds stop you fromtaking a risk?”Sucy
asked, her lips slowly spreading into a smile.
Amanda grumbled. “Sucy, just so you know, I feel like I’m working extra hard to
find out that I’ve lost ten grand. So what is it you need me to do…?”
“Just show up by my dorm, and I’ll tell you the rest...” Sucy said.
The two of them returned to their sculpture, neither their classmates, their
professor, nor Diana and Akko the wiser.
***** Chapter 6 *****
Monday, Late Afternoon
The Dustbowl.
As its name implied, it really was just a giant, dry basin full of useless dust
and rock, neither magically charged enough for any significant forms of alchemy
or elemental weaving, nor with any useful physical properties, aside from
turning them to filling for dead-weights.
It was blazing hot and prone to dust storms, with little shade nor water
sources to be found anywhere. It was isolated and challenged even the most
powerful receivers from accessing the Fountainhead—and even then, just
barely.And there were many more, much more convenient, and much better equipped
training grounds in Luna Nova, even if the ever increasing budget cuts were
starting to seriously limit their uses.
Few ever came to this place, unless they really needed to, and so it was to
Diana’s displeasure that she would have to be returning to it two more times
this week, and who knows how many more visits in the near future.
Even her ferry hippogriff would rather have wished to be anywhere else than
flying here, its beak curled into what Diana assumed to be a deep scowl.
She made sure to tip it generously with two treat bags, before she petted it
and wished it a safe journey back to Luna Nova. It cawed amiably and nuzzled
its feathery head against Diana, before it did so post haste, trotting downwind
first so she wouldn’t be blasted by dust as it lifted off.
As it began its ascent back to Luna Nova, Diana put her hand over her eyes and
scanned the horizon. She squinted against the harsh glare of the sun, noticed a
large speck growing larger in the sky. She began to step to the side as Akko
became larger and faster, the trails of smoke and fire in her wake now visible.
Diana gathered up her magic as she listened to the whistling sound of rushing
air and faint screaming, before she threw up a wall of water in front of her.
BOOM.
Dust exploded from Akko’s point of impact, Diana calmly stood behind her
barrier, watching the pristine ice-blue magic quickly turn into mud, feeling
the rest of the blast harmlessly rush past her. The clouds settled, the barrier
fell into the ground and evaporated, Akko coughed, hacked, and caused a few
explosions with her breath, before she relaxed and stopped.
“Akko,” Diana said, smiling and nodding.
Akko carefully blew some of the clouds from her face, her inner pair of eyelids
firmly shut. She stumbled out of the crater and moved about half-blind for a
moment, before she found Diana, and smiled. “Hey Diana! Were you waiting long?”
she asked as she lowered her head to her.
Diana stepped up and kissed her on her scaly nose. “No, I just got here,
actually,” she said as she caressed a side of her muzzle.
The two of them stiffened and pulled away as they noticed a beam of light
streaking from Nova and through the sky, arcing downwards and landing right
before them. They tensed up and put on their most professional faces, before
the new arrival’s features began to reform.
Ursula smiled. “Diana, Akko,” she said, flapping her wings and shaking her
tail, little leftover sparks of her magic flying out and blinking out of
existence.
“Professor Ursula,” the two of them greeted, Diana with a little nod, Akko with
a sparkle in her eyes.
“Did you hear about our detention and volunteer to be our professor for it?”
Akko asked.
“Ah, actually, no: no one was volunteering for it in the first place, and since
I’m the most junior member of the staff… well… you know…” Ursula said, looking
off to the side.
Akko frowned.
“… But please, know that I was quite happy to hear that it’d be you two I’d be
supervising,” Ursula said as she turned back to them with a beaming
smile—figuratively and literally.
Akko beamed right back, though hers was more like a fiery spark.
“Would you two like to commence your remedial training now?” Ursula asked. “I
don’t want to rush you, but I reallydon’t want to stay out here any longer than
we strictly need to...”
Akko sat down on her haunches and raised her head high. “Ready to do whatever
you need me to, Professor Ursula!”
“I’m prepared and eager to get this over with as well,” Diana said, standing at
attention.
Ursula nodded. “Happy to hear it! Now, you two know the drill...”
Diana and Akko nodded, stepped some distance apart, closed their eyes, and were
still.
Ursula’s eyes and the crystalline sections of her hide began pulsing, humming,
and glowing. The blindingly bright desert around them seemed to turn to night
as she absorbed the suns’ rays, before they were all cast in an ethereal glow
like moonlight.
The glow faded from her eyes she looked at the Akko and Diana’s auras. “Hmm…
veryinteresting...”
“What do you see, Professor Ursula?” Akko asked, eyes still closed.
“Well, both your power levels are incredibly high as always, and your resonance
is in close harmony—still a ways to go from perfect synchronization, but it’s a
marked improvement from before your time in the Forest. However...”
“’However’ what?” Diana asked uneasily.
“Well, it’s better if you two see for yourselves,” Ursula said as she weakened
her light. “You can open your eyes on three. One, two, three!”
Diana and Akko did so carefully—Ursula’s brilliance could be quite literally
blinding. Their vision adjusted, Akko turned to Diana, while she turned her
head upwards.
“… Huh...” Diana muttered.
Normally, her aura looked like a pillar of water, several flows slowly
spiraling upwards and outwards like a vortex in reverse. Now, you could barely
see any of the ice blue trails for how much of Akko’s raw, ruby red magic was
thriving and burning in its place, what few flashes of ice blue fluid quickly
consumed, and the fire burning hotter as a result, like it was gasoline.
“Is this agoodor a bad thing…?” Akko asked.
“Well, it’s certainly nothing to worry about too much, that I’m sure of,”
Ursula replied. “See your Bond?” she nudged her head forward.
Akko and Diana looked at the “bridge” between them, a pulsing, glowing flow of
magic like purple magma.
“As you can see, it’s still more or less equal, with neither side overpowering,
seriously disrupting, or shrinking away from the other.”
“But why is my magic all over Diana’s? I may have, uh, you know… given her a
LOT lately, but we always, uh...” Akko trailed off awkwardly.
Diana blushed, brought her fist up to her mouth, and coughed. “… Harnessed and
used its power nearly completely each time...” she said quietly.
“Y-Yeah, that!” Akko said. “Shouldn’t her aura have gone back to normal now?”
“Not if her aura’s so keen on feeding it!” Ursula said. “From my experience,
you two usually operate by Akko providing raw power, while Diana controls,
tempers, and harnesses it to more useful, directed applications. Now, it’s
still Akko providing raw power, but Diana’s only feeding even more energy to
it.
“Think of it like the difference between pouring gas into an engine’s fuel
tank, versus on top of a bonfire.”
“Should we be trying to get her back to normal…?” Akko asked as Ursula dimmed
even further, the light and heat of the Dustbowl beginning to return.
Ursula shrugged. “It’s entirely dependent on you two. Honestly, if it doesn’t
cause any sort of serious problems with your daily lives, academics, or combat
performance, I say explore all the new ways you can harness and use Diana’s
magic now that it’s in this highly excitable state.
“That, or try and change roles, have Akko attempting control and focus while
Diana channels raw power, and see what comes out of that—switching it isn’t
just for the bedroom, you know,” she said, chuckling.
Diana blushed. “I actually would like to attempt to return to how I was
before—or at least, seriously lower the intensity of my magic’s…” she struggled
for words “… excitability.As is, it’s teetering dangerously wildly between
being a verygood thing, or a potential catalyst for catastrophe, no in-
between.”
“Would you happen to have any advice on what to do, Professor Ursula?” Akko
asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do! But I’m afraid it’ll have to wait until after
you’ve served your detention and we’ve teleported back to Luna Nova. Would that
be okay with you?”
“It’s fair enough, Professor,” Diana said, Akko nodding.
Ursula hummed. “Good! So, now that the cause of your recent ‘issues’ seems to
be excessively excited magical stores, today’s exercises are going to be
focusing on letting all that power out...”
Akko and Diana listened in, their expressions serious as they switched back to
training mode.
For the next few hours, Akko and Diana caused all manner of chaos in the
Dustbowl: Akko spewing magma onto the walls and forming new gouges and caverns,
Diana’s hands on her neck. Diana forming and firing off massive shards of ice
with one hand and the other in Akko’s claw, the crystals shimmering and shaking
violently before they exploded into storms of shrapnel. The two of them firing
boulders at targets and off into the distance, Diana kneeling atop Akko’s head
and aiming, while she used her mouth like a cannon.
The were frequent breaks for mana water, their focus to return, or just to
catch their breaths, but as the sun kept on shining, the dry, dusty wind kept
on blowing, and the exercises got more and more demanding, Akko and Diana found
themselves weakening and tiring, until they were both slumped against each
other, panting and sweating, hiding in the shade Ursula was providing with her
wings and her magic.
“I think that’s enough training for today, girls,” she said. “Ready to get out
of here?”
Akko and Diana both made affirmative-sounding groans.
Ursula focused her magic once more, all three of their forms started to turn
into bright, ethereal light, before they shot off into the sky, arcing back to
Luna Nova.
===============================================================================
M onday, Early Evening
The chandelier at the Celestial Spires’ hub began to glow brighter than usual,
before three rays of light shot out from it to a ritual circle on the floor.
Ursula reformed first, Akko and Diana were next, the two wobbling about in a
daze, before they fell.
“Do you two need me to help you up to your room?” Ursula asked as she caught
them both.
“Yes, please, Professor,” Diana mumbled.
“Thank you, Professor Ursula,” Akko said as she transformed into her humanoid
form.
Ursula picked the both of them up by the backs of their uniforms, and carried
them off to the tower they called home. She set them down at their kitchen
table, before she transformed and started bustling about, getting them water
and snacks.
“I suppose you two haven’t forgotten about my offer of advice for your other,
more privateproblem, hmm?” Ursula said as she sat down with them.
Diana and Akko nodded. “If you’ve got any advice specifically for taming my
out-of-control libido, it would be much appreciated,” Diana said.
Ursula smiled sadly. “Sorry to sound like a broken record, or like I’m just
rehashing what you’ve already heard, but as your professor and mentor, all I
really can confidently say is that you two should communicate often, try and
make plans in your schedules specifically for intimacy, but prioritize your
studies and training first and foremost—you are here to become Storm Riders,
after all...”
Diana sighed, and nodded solemnly.
“… But as a dragon who was also young, and in love: don’t be afraid to share
any things you particularly want to do and especially don’t want to, check-in
frequently before, during, and after the act, make your consent clear at all
times, and choose your risks verywisely.
“It’s, ah, really only ever fun if you don’tget caught...” Ursula said, looking
off to the side.
Akko’s eyes widened. “Wait… were you and your old rider lovers, too?!”
“Akko!” Diana snapped.
“I’m sorry! It’s just, you know—I never knew, and this is huge--!”
“Well I’m surprised, too, but you don’t see me suddenly bringing up such a
sensitive topic!”
Ursula held out her claws. “Girls!Girls! Girls!”
Akko and Diana sat back in their seats and quieted down, if still antsy and
fidgeting.
Ursula took a few calming breaths. “Diana: it’s fine… I am more than prepared
for you two to ask questions about them, though please do understand if I can’t
guarantee answers for all of them.”
Akko and Diana nodded. “So, did you two have the same ‘problem’ like we do?”
Akko asked.
“Oh, yes, definitely: Akko and I may be from different subspecies, but it seems
one only needs to be Fire aligned for, ah, such a problem to occur.”
“And how did you deal with it, if we may ask...?” Diana continued. “Specific,
detailed answers would be appreciated.”
Ursula paused.
===============================================================================
A Decade Ago…
“And you’re sureyou two can’t make it?” Professor Badcock asked through holo.
“Yes, Professor Badcock...” a much younger Croix groaned, her cheeks flaming
red, sweat pouring down her skin, a haze in her eyes that just screamed“sick.”
“I promise me and--” she stopped and coughed, before she groaned again “--
Chariot will get better ASAP, and take the soonest retest we can...”
Badcock frowned. “Please don’t, especially if this entails any sort of
cockamamie attempts to cure yourselves. You two just take as long as you need
till you’re both back at 100%, though do be warned: I will be expecting
muchmore than that come your special exam.
“Does that sound fair, Ms. Meridies?”
“Mhmm...” Croix mumbled. “I’d like to try and get back to sleep now, Professor
Badcock...”
“You and your partner rest well, and try not to push yourselves so hard next
time,” Badcock hummed, before she shut off the connection.
The air was tense for a few moments as Croix and Chariot waited and dreaded
Badcock or someone else calling again, but when a minute passed and it seemed
like neither she nor any of the other staff were suspicious, they both sighed
in relief.
“Oh, Illias, I can’t believe she bought it...” Croix muttered as she tilted her
head back on her desk chair.
“Shh, careful! You might jinx us!” Chariot whispered as she knelt between
Croix’s naked legs.
“Shit! Right, sorry...” Croix muttered.
They tensed up and waited again, but it fortunately, the Fates decided to spare
them some more luck that day.
“… So,” Croix started, “I guess this means we’ve got the rest of the day off.
Totally illegally, which means we can’t leave our room, or talk to anyone
outside of ourselves...”
“Mhmm…” Chariot hummed. “Probably shouldn’t stretch it too far past today,
though—then they mightreallyget suspicious.”
“So I guess we’re just spending the whole day here in our room. Alone.
Together. With no one bothering us, probably.”
“Yee-eep.”
Croix blushed, an eager smile spreading on her face. “… Could you try and do
that thing where you make me see stars again…?”
Chariot giggled. “I’m going to see if I can get some planets in, this time~”
she said before she dove back in.
===============================================================================
Present Day...
Ursula smiled sympathetically, her face betraying nothing. “I’m afraid that I’m
not willing to share that, nor would our solutions probably work with you two.
Akko and I may share an alignment and similar personality traits, but aside
from the fact that my former rider was not a Water weaver, she was very
different from Diana in many other ways.
“Every Bonded pair is unique in their own way, so it’s really only the two of
you that can figure out works and what won’t.
Diana frowned, and nodded. “I understand, Professor Ursula... thank you for
indulging our curiosity, I won’t pry further.”
“Are you sure you really sure they won’t work…?” Akko asked.
“Very,”Ursula said, nodding solemnly. She checked her comm-crystal, and noted
the time. “Oh dear! It appears to be getting rther late; I’m afraid I need to
leave, girls, or else I’ll fall even furtherbehind on my work...”
“Go on ahead, Professor Ursula, we’ve taken up enough of your time,” Diana
said.
“Bye, Professor Ursula!” Akko said, waving.
Ursula headed back out the main doors and to the hub, leaving Akko and Diana
alone in their room.
“Hey, Diana?”
“Yes, Akko?”
“Are you still horny? Because I’m pooped from the training earlier, and I just
want to go to sleep now...”
“No, actually, because it seems all that casting drained my libido as well as
my magic,” Diana said.
Akko chuckled. “Well, I guess that’s a fix for when you’re really horny, and we
can’t—” she made a seductive dragon sound.
“A desperate last-resort, for sure,” Diana said. “I don’t think it’ll do either
of us well if I’m constantly exhausted. We’ll have to look for other solutions-
-” she yawned “--tomorrow...”
“Glory be to that!” Akko said as she climbed off her chair. “You need me to
carry you to your bed?”
Diana blushed. “Actually, Akko, could we sleep together in your nest tonight?”
Akko brightened up. “Sure! But what happened to trying to sleep apart after the
Forest?”
“My lack of energy to take a proper bath, and my equally lacking desire to foul
up my sheets, are what happened,” Diana replied.
Akko laughed, snorting a plume of flame out her nostrils. “Come on, then: let’s
go be tired, disgusting, sticky, dusty, and sweaty together!” she said as she
transformed into her dragon form.
Diana smiled as she pulled up the reinforced patch on the back of her uniform.
“Ready when you are, Akko.”
Akko picked up Diana by the scruff of her neck, carried her over to her side of
the room, and onto the fire-proof sheets, pillows, and cushions she called her
nest. “Do you happen to have any clothes I could borrow?” Diana asked as she
was set down onto them. “I don’t want to sleep in used uniforms again for a
long while yet.”
“I’ve got just the thing!” Akko said, before she padded off to her small
collection of human-sized clothing, and came back with a carefully wrapped
bundle.
Diana unrolled it, and smiled as she saw what it was. “A Shiny Chariot official
t-shirt… of course.”
“Elemental-proof, too~ Those cost super extra, it’s just not fair.”
“I’ll make sure not to mess it up too badly, Akko,” Diana said as she started
taking off her uniform.
“Oh, I won’t mind if you rough it up a little—I, uh, actually have some
ideasfor some things we can do while you’re wearing it...” Akko said as she
laid down in her nest.
Diana eyes widened as she undid the straps of her shirt. “Well then…” she
smiled. “Feel free to tell when we’ve got the opportunity, Akko~”
Soon, the two of them were curled up together, Diana resting in the crook of
Akko’s neck, a wing protectively wrapped over her.
“Good night, Akko...” Diana mumbled, before she kissed a patch of scales on the
side of Akko’s head. “I love you.”
“Good night, Diana, I love you too...” Akko muttered, gently nuzzling her head
against Diana’s body, before they laid their heads down on their pillows and
went to sleep.
===============================================================================
Monday, Late Evening
Riders, dragons, and supports chatted, played, competed, trained, studied,
fought, hooked up, broke-up, got back together again, and all manner of other
activities, the Barn positively brimming with sounds, lights, sights, and
smells as usual.
In humanoid form, Amanda casually weaved through the mess like all the other
veteran dormers, dodging flying projectiles, stray magical orbs and spells, and
the odd being careening through at high speeds, making her way past the common
areas companies had taken for themselves, the livelier of the rooms being used
as hang-outs or fronts for activities that stretched the or broke the rules of
the student handbook, and stopped at a dragon-sized door adorned with all
manner of warnings, written and symbolic.
She knocked on the much smaller humanoid section cut near the bottom, but
unlike all the other times, didn’t barge in immediately—she had learned the
hard way the first time, and didn’t want a repeat.
A minute later, it opened, but just a crack. A familiar sleepy, half-lidded eye
carefully peered out, and from behind the wood, Amanda could feel Sucy’s mouth
spreading into a verybig, fanged grin.
Sucy pulled the door the rest of the way open. “Please, come in,” she said as
she gestured inside.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Amanda said, waltzing past her.
Sucy peeked out, looked side to side, then shut the door.
“So what is it you need me to do, anyway?” Amanda asked, looking around
curiously and warily at the floor-to-ceiling mix of alchemical equipment and
vibrant, almost untamed plant-life that was Sucy and Lotte’s room.
Sucy beckoned for her to follow, and they came over to one of her many
alchemical stations, a pinkish fluid bubbling in the glassware, a case of
Fireki’s Fizzy Fun soda (“Peppy Pickled Plum” flavour) beside what Amanda
assumed to be the end point of the apparatus.
She stayed behind and watched as Sucy tinkered with her various tools and
instruments, turning dials, watching tubes, introducing new reagents to the
mix, before it finally ended with a tiny, pink ball on a foil wrapper.
Sucy carefully sealed it, then handed it and a bottle of Fireki’s to Amanda.
“Open it and drug it as discretely as you possibly can.”
“Pfft!” Amanda snorted as she took the bottle in one claw, formed a secret
compartment on her other wrist to put the pill in. “Too easy! Watch, and be
amazed, Suse.”
“Just do it,” Sucy said flatly.
With the claw that held the pill, Amanda turned the base of her claw into a
bottle opener. She popped the metal lid, her wrist and claw rapidly shifting
and dropping the pill in, too fast to see. It barely made a splash as it
slipped in, and thanks to it being almost the same colour as the soda, you
probably wouldn’t have even noticed it before it dissolved.
Sucy grinned. “Good. Verygood...”
“So I’m assuming I give this to Akko, but what is this, and what’s the rest of
the plan?”
“It’s a very, very mild aphrodisiac, and you wait for it to kick in a few
hours,” Sucy replied as she made a new pill, and dumped the drugged soda. “This
won’t incite any sort of sexual feelings in Akko for anyone, but should she
have any beforehand, it willmake them stronger.”
“Strong enough for her to really want to bang Diana, if the two of them are
banging?” Amanda said as she was handed the new pill and two more bottles,
before shoving them down her shirt and into a hollowed out portion of her
chest.
“Exactly,” Sucy replied. “Then, the two of us just take turns observing them
during the classes we have with them, and should one or the both of them have
the ‘I just had sex’ look, we move on to more intensive investigations, if they
don’t just tell us outright.”
Amanda nodded. “I’m liking this plan, Suse—even if it might mean I’ve lost ten
grand.”
“Just make sureAkko takes it, alright?”
“Sucy, please! This isn’t my first covert ops mission,” Amanda said. “I’ll make
sure Akko chugs every last drop of this stuff.”
“You better,” Sucy said. “We’re going to have problems if Diana’s the one who
takes it.”
“Pfft! Fuck yeah we will! As soon as it hits, she’ll probably just sit around
in class all day sweating and squirming, blame it on cramps, or something...”
Sucy opened her mouth to speak, before someone knocked on the door, and they
heard the unmistakable sound of a key going into the slot. Amanda acted casual,
Sucy hid the rest of the bottles under the counter, just before Lotte entered
the room.
“Welp, thanks for the help, Sucy!” Amanda said as she waved and strode out.
“I’m gonna leave before you try ‘volunteer’ me a test subject again.”
“Any time,” Sucy said, “I could always use more data on metal dragon
reactions.”
“Evening, Lotte,” Amanda said as she passed by her.
“Good evening, Amanda,” Lotte said as she came in with her books. She headed
over to her side of the room, started putting away her things until she heard
the door shut again. “Are you two planning anything?” she asked.
“No,” Sucy replied.
Lotte eyed her suspiciously, before she reluctantly let it go. Quietly, she
hoped that if they were planning something, it wouldn’t end toobadly...
… So of course, when their plan went off the rails the next day, it was quite
the fiery, explosive disaster.
***** Chapter 7 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Tuesday, Early Morning
Diana woke up to her stomach growling, and the uniquely fascinating and foul
scent of flame dragon morning breath, with a hint her own personal stench.
Having long gotten used to all three, she just pulled herself off her pillow
and the crook of Akko’s neck, stretched and patted her scaly hide, before she
went off for a much needed bath.
While Akko could get away with smelling like fermented shrimp paste burning on
a stove, Diana had no such excuse, nor did she want people to mistake her
presence for someone having sneaked in the infamous food from the northern
archipelagos.
She’d just begun to pull off the Shiny Chariot shirt, when she felt a familiar
“ping” in her mind, shortly followed by a pair of warm claws placing themselves
over her hands, and a chin resting on her shoulder.
“Need some help?” Akko asked eyes flickering with mischief.
Diana smiled. “Later, Akko—getting ready for class first, food second, then we
can see if we can squeeze in some eating of a different kind,” she replied,
before she craned her neck and kissed Akko on the lips.
Her eyes widened as the flow of dragon-fire between them was just a brief
spark, one that failed to ignite anything in her as usual. “Of course…” she
muttered as she relaxed. “Basic chemistry: no fuel, no fire—Leopolus’ Curse, I
feel so stupid right now!”
Akko looked at her curiously. “Uh, sorry Diana, but I’m not really following on
whatever it is you’re trying to get me to see...” she said as she took her
claws and chin off her.
“It’s a possible solution to my overactive libido, is what it is,” Diana said
as she turned around to face her. “Akko, how do you feel about going on a diet
for the next week or so?”
“Depends: what kind of diet are we talking about?”
“One devoid of refined sugars or high-fructose syrups, excessively spicy and/or
fermented foods, and the bare minimum of culinary enchantments.”
Akko frowned. “So does this mean no soda, or ice cream, or pickled plums?”
“I’m afraid so, Akko, but I promise we’ll start experimenting and reintroducing
them as soon as we can get some control data—just 24 hours of fasting, how’s
that sound?”
“Hrrmm…” Akko grumbled.
Diana reached out and cupped her cheek. “You’ve survived six weeks without
them, can’t you survive another day? For me?”
Akko sighed and looked away. “Well I did that mostly by distracting myself and
counting down the days before we were back in Luna Nova...” she looked back at
Diana, and gave her a small smile. “… But okay, I’ll add another day to it—for
you.”
Diana leaned forward and kissed her again, the spark igniting between them
again, a pleasant surge of heat running down her back. “Thank you, Akko. Though
it might not be scientifically sound or recommended for the purposes of this
experiment, you can binge on whatever you’d like tomorrow morning, my treat.”
Akko’s eyes widened. “Does that mean--”
“Cackling Calavera Crunchies? Yes.” Diana sighed. “I owe you that much for
this, I suppose…”
“Yay!” Akko cried, before she launched forward and hugged Diana. She cried out
as she sent them whirling round and round to keep from falling. “You’re the
best, Diana,” she said as her hind claws touched the ground.
Diana took a moment to stabilize herself and wait for the world to stop
spinning, before she smiled and said, “Thank you, Akko.”
“Any suggestions on what I should have for breakfast?”
“Fuerte Flakes should be good for our experiment,” Diana replied.
Akko’s ears and features drooped, before she sighed, and nodded her head.
“Okay, got it,” she said as she stepped out of the bathroom and to their
kitchen.
She wasn’t too happy to be pulling out the box of Fuerte Flakes from their
pantry instead of the many other, much more tempting offers, but still, she
poured out a big tub for herself. “It’s_only_for_a_day,” Akko thought to
herself as she poured milk into it with a hose. “You can survive a day, right?”
She smiled and was happy…
… up until she took her first bite, and grimaced.
As selfish as it was, she really rather hoped that this wasn’t the solution to
their problem; regularly having flavourful foods orsex with Diana was not a
choice she wanted to make.
===============================================================================
Tuesday, Evening
There really was no better way to be aware of how many snack dispensing
machines, what brands and foods the Luna Nova student population most favoured,
and what they would do to bypass strict teachers or classroom rules, than to be
on a diet and be unable have any of those said snacks, Akko found.
She was fine during her morning classes, focusing and paying attention to her
lessons as much as you could reasonably expect her to, but as she and Diana
split ways for the latter’s more advanced and research-focused subjects, Akko
lost the calming and focusing effect of their Bond, and her willpower was
rapidly burnt up, it was starting to turn into a day of suffering.
The Fuerte Flakes, the skinless chicken breasts, and the dry jerky she couldeat
weighed like rocks in her stomachs, and tasted about as good. She wasn’t
hunched over and groaning from hunger pangs, but even the likes of Finneran
seemed concerned that she wasn’t nearly as energetic as she usually was. And
found herself staring far too much at anyone eating snacks next to her, eyeing
bags of chips, bottles of soda, and wrapped up candies like Lotte did the 117th
feature film of the night fallseries where Arthur and Edgar got right up to
each other’s faces, barely any distance between the two of them, fire burning
in their eyes...
… And just like that iconic scene, they sneered at each other one more time
before turning away and going their separate ways, and break the hearts of
legions of fans yet again.
“You know you can just ask for some, right?” Jasminka had said earlier, still
regularly shoving mini-doughnuts into her mouth.
“I can’t,” Akko replied, eyes still locked on those creamy, vanilla and
chocolate rings emerging from that colourful box. “Diana’s got me on a diet: no
sugar, spices, and enchantments.”
Jasminka actually stopped, her features falling in an expression of deep
sadnessand pity Akko had never realized possible. She nodded, and spent the
rest of their class with the box of mini-doughnuts and her eating them hidden
from Akko’s view.
“Thanks,” Akko said, before she tried to return to the lesson further delving
into the Autana’s unique symbiotic relationship with the realm.
Now it was dinner time, and thanks to a message from Amanda asking her if she
could make it up to her for causing Akko to get detention again, she found
herself reluctantly joining the droves of humanoids and human students making
their way into the Mess Hall.
Save for a school-wide feast, there was no livelier time than dinner time.
With majority of the students finishing the day’s studies and wanting to kick
back and relax, many more just coming back from afternoon training exercises,
and the rest loading up on energy for their drills later that night, every
single table and corner was filled with diners and food, some of the best the
cooks could whip up.
Hearty, slow cooked stews, roasts dripping and glowing as they rotated on the
spits, and smoked fishes and meats, some of them absorbing flavour and growing
more tender all day, or even the days before. Elaborate, colourful salads with
rich sauces and seasonings, vegetarian roasts cooking alongside the whole
animals and the giant slabs of meat, and steaming hot pies and bowls just fresh
from the oven. And of course the desserts and the drinks: sodas and juices from
most every continent of Stratos as demand and the budget allowed, moist and
fluffy pastries lovingly frosted, sprinkled on, and/or topped, and containers
being carefully removed from the freezers, frost pouring from the chilly
delights they held.
All the sights, the sounds, the smells of food, beings eating food, beings
talking about how delicious the food was, how happy they were to finally be
able to eatthat food…
… It was maddening.
Still, Akko made a promise, and Amanda had seemed really, honestly apologetic
in her message, and she didn’t want her to think that her rejecting it was her
still being mad at her for the explosion.
She hurried down the long, humanoid-sized tables with a tracking holo in the
corner of her vision, getting closer and closer to Amanda’s signal, trying not
to breath in too deeply, ignoring the rumblings of her stomach, dodging the
aromas that weren’t gently caressing her and coaxing her to follow them so much
as grab her head, and drag her to the source by her horns.
Amanda spotted her first, smiling and waving as she leaned back on the bench
she was sitting on and patted the free seat next to her; she frowned and looked
concerned as Akko slipped in beside her. “Mithros, Akko, you look like you’re
about to fucking snap… long day?” Amanda asked as she put a claw on her
shoulder.
“Mhmm...” Akko whimpered as she slumped forward, trying to keep her eyes from
straying to the whole roast boar a trio of Gigantes were sharing. “Diana’s got
us both on a diet.”
“Wow. Right after the Forest, too. That’s justcruel.”
“She’s got a good reason for it...” Akko mumbled. She sucked in a deep breath,
forced a smile, and looked at Amanda. “So, you said you wanted to apologize for
yesterday?”
Amanda grinned. “Hell yeah I do!” she said she reached into her chest with both
claws.
Akko’s eyes widened. “Oh my gosh! Pickled Plum Fireki’s!I haven’t had those in
FOREVER!”
“I know!” Amanda said as she laid them down on the table. “How about you and me
have a chug-off to celebrate…?” she asked as she popped the caps, handed one to
Akko.
Akko’s grin turned competitive. She raised her claw, eyes sparking with fire as
she was about to swipe the bottle right off the table… but her nails stopped
right before they touched the glass. “Sorry, Amanda, I can’t…” she muttered as
she pulled her claw away, her features, wings, and tail drooping. “Fireki’s is
definitely on the ‘can’t have’ list.”
Amanda frowned. “Aww, c’mon, Akko, you just spent six weeks in the Forest, and
obviously just had a reallycrappy day because of this whole diet business—one
drink’s not going to ruin everything, is it…?” she hummed as she held the
bottle up to Akko’s face.
The carbon bubbles tickled her nose, the temptingly sour, salty, syrupy aroma
seeping in soon after. Akko’s claw trembled as she lifted it up again, claws
slowly wrapping around the bottle… then she stopped, and slammed i into her
lap.
“Sorry, Amanda,” she said as she turned away. “Diana’s probably going to kill
me if she finds out I broke my diet.”
“I won’t tell, and it looks like she’s not around!” Amanda said, smiling. “Just
one bottle, one chug-off? We haven’t had those in WAY too long.”
“Tomorrow, I promise!” Akko said. “I’ll even buy you a whole case of Fireki’s,
your choice!”
“But why not the ones we’ve got right here…?” Amanda asked, holding it out to
Akko once more.
It was snatched out of her claws.
“Because, as Akko repeatedlysaid, she’s on a diet, and regardless of whether or
not you two or anyone else in this dining hall says anything, I have othermeans
of sussing out the truth,” Diana said as she held the bottle close to her
chest.
Amanda scowled at her, Akko smiled and sighed in relief.
Diana turned to Akko. “Akko, I apologize for the distress I’ve caused you
because of our new diet, and I applaud your self-control and willpower—I’ll
make sure you’re duly rewarded in good time.” She turned to Amanda. “As for
you, Amanda… if you’re so insistent on having this ‘chug-off’ right here and
now, I suppose you’ll have to do with me as your competitor instead.”
Amanda blinked. “Wait, aren’t you twoboth on a diet?”
“Yes, but Akko’s the bigger concern, given how volatile her biochemistry is,
and if getting rid of temptation means having to humour your childish
competition, then so be it,” Diana said.
“Diana, I wanted to do this with Akko—I even went through the trouble of
getting her favourite flavour! You know how hard it is to find this stuff in
this continent?”
“Well we can’t always get what we want, and I’m sure she appreciates the effort
and the thought, but I only care about maintaining our diet.”
“Can’t you just let her have this onebottle?”
“No. Something this carbonated, loaded with sugar, and culinary enchantments is
the very imageof what I want Akko to avoid. Are you sure I or another being out
here can’t be your competitor? You can find someone who likes this flavour, and
is amenable to a ‘chug-off,’ can’t you…?”
The air grew tense as Diana locked eyes with Amanda’s, both of their gazes
growing sharper by the second.
“Well, Amanda…?” Diana asked.
Amanda raised her bottle. “You chug until the very last drop then you slam it
back down on the table, and if there’s any—and I mean any, even just a little
bit of soda left in the bottom of the bottle, it doesn’t count, alright?
“And don’t think of spilling most of it, or using your magic to vortex it down
your throat, that’s cheating.”
“Please, Amanda: I follow my family’s code of honour in all things I do, even
such immature challenges as this,” Diana said as she did the same.
Akko spun around on the bench, looking at the two of them with a huge grin on
her face. “Ready? On ‘chug’: three, two, one—chug!”
Amanda and Diana knocked both their drinks back, the bright pink fluid bubbling
and fizzing like mad. Amanda slammed her bottle down first, completely empty,
Diana sputtered and coughed Fireki’s down the front of her vest, her bottle
about a quarter full.
“Hah! I win!” Amanda cried, throwing the horns up into the air.
“OH ILLIAS, AKKO, YOU—hic!--DRINK THIS STUFF FOR—hic!--PLEASURE…?!” Diana
cried, pink bubbles flying out from her mouth with each hiccup.
“It’s an ‘acquired taste,’ I hear,” Amanda said as she wiped her mouth on her
sleeve.
“ACQUIRE—hic!--ACQUI--hic!--AC--hic!--FUCK!--hic!--AK—hic!--KO--hic!--MAKE
IT—hic!--STOP!” Diana cried as the air started to fill with the bubbles.
“Don’t worry, Diana, I know just what to do to stop Fireki hiccups!” Akko said
as she got off the table and lead Diana off.
“This—hic!--bet--hic!--ter—hic!--work!” Diana grumbled as she followed after
her, leaving a trail of bubbles in her wake.
Amanda watched them weave their way through the crowds and out the cafeteria,
waiting for the bubbles near her to pop on their own, before she pulled out her
comm-crystal and discretely messaged Sucy.
“Hey, Suse, change of plans: couldn’t get Akko to chug the soda without blowing
the secret, so I got Diana to do it instead. She only managed to drink like 3/
4’s of it, though.”
The reply was almost instant: “Get to somewhere private and call me NOW.”
Amanda raised her eyebrows, before she did just that, slipping into one of the
bathrooms and hiding in a stall. She called Sucy, and her face popped right in
front of her in seconds. “What the fuck did you not understand about ‘Make
sureAkko takes it?!”
“Relax, Suse! It’s just mild stuff, right?”
“ForDRAGONS, you dumbass! It’s a very, very mild aphrodisiac for DRAGONS!Did it
ever occur to that thick skull of yours that it’d take several metric shit tons
more of chemicals to even make a dentin a dragon as large as Akko VS a human
like Diana, and that I’d be designing with a Flame Dragon’s multi-stage, multi-
stomached digestive system in mind?!”
“… No…?”
Sucy groaned. “Oh,fuckus, we’ve got a situation...”
“How bad are we talking about here…?” Amanda asked.
Their conversation was interrupted by new calls on both ends, from the same
person:
Diana.
The two of them looked at each other, before they reluctantly answered her.
Holos of her Diana’s appeared before them, cheeks burning, sweat pouring down
her skin, frosty pink breaths pouring out of her mouth, Bond tattoos glowing
and surging as she growled:
“You two get to my location right fucking now.”
Beep.Trackers appeared in the corners of both their screens as Diana’s face
disappeared.
Sucy looked at Amanda. “If you bail on fixing this with me, I’m putting in
oxidizers in your food and water,” she said, before she hung up.
Amanda’s face fell, before she burst out of the bathroom, down the halls, and
to wherever the hell Diana’s comm-crystal was transmitting from. “Note to
self,”she thought as she transformed into dragon form for more speed, “start
giving a fuck about odds again.”
Chapter End Notes
     Akko has four stomachs.
     The first is a “digestion chamber” filled with very strong acids and
     aggressive bacteria, that breaks down food and other materials into
     nutrients, and their raw magical energy, amounts depending on
     concentration.
     A roast chicken breaks down mostly into the former, mana water into
     mostly the latter.
     The second is the “sorting chamber” which acts as a junction between
     Akko’s third and fourth stomachs, which have very different functions
     from each other.
     The third is the “storage and fermenting chamber” of the volatile
     gases, pure magic, other bacteria, and chemicals that give Akko her
     dragonfire. It actually has a direct line to her lungs, of which she
     has five individual sacs.
     The fourth is a “defusing and disposal chamber” that stores the
     excess of those gases, bacterial, chemicals, and indigestible
     material, renders them inert and unreactive, before sending them to
     her excretory system.
     Digestive health is life-and-death to flame dragons—whereas humans
     get flatulence, they might literally explode.
***** Chapter 8 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Some Time Back, Before the Forest of Beginnings
“Haaah, it’s so not fair that I can only eat so many pickled plums at once...”
Akko mumbled as she laid on her back in dragon form, her belly noisily,
ominously rumbling from the barrels’ worth of the stuff she’d just eaten. “I
hope one day, there’s a spell or a potion that lets me just eat as many of
these as I’d like withoutexploding...”
Diana sighed as she looked at the open barrels laying around, and the juice
spilling all over their floors. “And for now, I sincerelyhope your gorging on
these won’t become a problem…” she muttered as she started siphoning them off
the floors with her magic. “Honestly, Akko, it’s as if these won’t last for
months, with or without our intervention...”
Akko rolled on her side, her distended belly slouching towards Diana. “Do you
want some?” she asked. “I think there’s probably some leftover in one of those
barrels.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised, with how you just grabbed, gulped, then dropped
them...” Diana muttered as the juice started to grow into a sizable ball. She
took a moment to peer into one of the barrels that landed right side up, and
did indeed find a number of pickled plums left at the bottom, spared from the
abuse of Akko’s teeth or drool.
“Try em!” Akko said, catching wind of her thoughts. “You won’t regret it.”
Diana briefly considered it, before she shook her head. “My apologies, Akko,
but I’m not thatcurious.”
“Aww, you sure? I can give you a little preview~!” Akko said, before Diana felt
feelings of satisfaction, delight, and a phantom sour and salty taste on her
tongue.
Diana gently pushed her out of mind, and returned to clean-up. “Still not
convinced, Akko, sorry.”
“Okay,” Akko said, “but if you ever decide to try them, tell me how you found
them, alright?”
“I will, Akko,” Diana replied.
And now that she had tasted pickled plums, she did not hesitate to tell Akko
what she thought of them:
“Akko, that was one of theworst things I have everconsumedin my entire
life,”Diana said, through their Bond as she was still hiccuping bubbles. “And I
say this with Sucy’s ‘Inui Juice’ included.”
“Maybe try drink it more slowly next time?”Akko replied as she lead her out of
the Mess Hall. “It takes technique and training to chug Fireki’s right.”
“Not when this is how it feels afterward!”Diana replied, ignoring the curious
and amused looks from passersby. “It’s like my entire bloodstream’s been turned
into thatdamned soda after an earth weaver got done shaking it for fun!”she
thought, just as she hiccuped another batch of bubbles.
“You’re probably just overwhelmed from drinking too much of it at once,”Akko
said as the crowd began thinning, and she turned into a nearly deserted
hallway. “Trust me, it gets better the second time onwards.”
“What, the vile taste of those pickled plums, or whatever enchantments and
alchemy Fireki’s creators assumed would be ‘Fun?’”Diana said as they stopped
before a humanoid sized closet.
“Both!”Akko replied as she looked side to side, noted the beings around them
and the angles of the security comm-crystals.
“I’m assuming whatever is supposed to stop these damnablebubbles involves this
supply closet and stealing some materials?”Diana asked.
“Half-right!”Akko replied, before she grinned at Diana and swiftly pulled them
into the closet, discretely shutting the door behind them.
Thumph!
What few bottles, jugs, and containers of cleaning supplies were on the shelves
rattled as Akko pushed Diana against the wall, let go of her vest and planted
her claws on the sides of her head, smiling with her eyes flickering with
mischief. “I justreally needed someplace private so I could get rid of those
bubbles AND keep oursecret...
Her expression softened. “By the way, I didn’t push you too hard, did I?”
“Not at all!”Diana replied, smiling back. “And on a related note, I apologize
if this feels more like mouth-punch than a kiss,”she said, before she grabbed
the sides of Akko’s head and pressed her lips against hers.
The spark was back, stronger like you’d smashed two sizable pieces of flint
together. But, there was no raging fire, no explosion of heat, and the sparks
rapidly faded away into nothing, so Diana kept on kissing Akko, gently
caressing her cheek and the back of her hair, relishing the feeling of her
warm, slightly scaly lips against hers, the steady flow of mutual pleasure
pouring in from the Bond.
“Hmm…I guess this is how Bound pairs where neither have the Gift must feel like
when they make-out,”Diana mused as she pulled away for air, the bubbles now
weakened.
“It’s kinda weird,”Akko said as she panted, her breath noticeably warmer, but
not by much. “But kinda good, too. I guess this means we could just spend
hourstongue-spelunkingwithout you having to call it quits, huh?”
Diana grinned. “Indeed.You want to find out how it feels like when we have
sex,though?”
Akko chuckled. “I was just about to ask, actually!”
Diana closed her eyes as Akko leaned in to kiss her, pinned her against the
wall with her weight, just enough space between them for her to slip her claws
into Diana’s vest, pull it up till just above her breasts.
Akko quickly undid the buttons of her shirt, and pulled it open. Diana moaned
as she felt her carefully slip her claws in into the cups of her bra, nails
gently raking and sinking against the soft flesh of her breasts, caressing the
sides before her thumbs idly flicked on her nipples, sending twin sparks of
dragon-fire into her system…
… And just like that, the aphrodisiac activated, like someone had lit a match
in a room that had been flooding with flammable gas.
“MRMHPFF!” Diana cried as the pill’s magic exploded in her bloodstearm, her
Bond tattoos beginning to glow and pulse like crazy, pink, steam-like vapours
pouring out of her mouth and her nose.
Akko stiffened, verycarefully pulled her claws off Diana’s breasts, then held
her up by her shoulders. “Holy shit, Diana, are you alright?!”
“No! Fuck!”Diana yelled, the pink vapours starting to look like cold mist as it
dissolved in her magic, contrasting the incredible heat starting to build up
between her legs. She made a sound halfway between a growl and a whimper. “Damn
it, I knewthere was something suspicious about how badly Amanda wanted you to
drink that soda...”
“But why would she…?” Akko paused, her features falling. “Oh. Sucy and the bet…
you want me to go call her?”
“We’ll deal with her later, Akko, because for now, we have a muchmore urgent
concern,” Diana said, her words getting faster and her breath growing shallower
by the second.
Akko sniffed the air, her eyebrows rising as she knelt down in front of Diana
and lifted up her skirt. “Oh, wow—this is some superpotent stuff Sucy used,
huh?” she asked as she saw just how soakedin arousal Diana’s panties were, the
excess already beginning to drip down her thighs.
“Y-Yes, please help me...”Diana whimpered as her knees buckled, she bent
forward and planted her hands on Akko’s shoulders.
“Was already on it!” Akko said as she hooked her nails into her underwear.
Diana gasped as Akko pulled her panties down, the cool air of the closet
rushing over her sopping wet folds, arousal dripping and raining down onto the
floor below. Akko buried her face between her legs and went to work
immediately, but no matter how good it felt to have that warm, wet tongue and
those sharp, skilled nails on her pussy, the fire inside her kept on raging
painfully, barely affected.
In terms of relief, it was like blowing reallyhard on a raging forest fire, or
more accurately, lighting up a small patch of grass and hoping that control
fire was enough to stop the advancing wall of flaming doom.
“AGH!” Diana cried. “Akko: crumpet, crumpet, crumpet! This isn’t working!”
Akko stopped and pulled away, her lips and cheeks glistening and dripping with
Diana’s need. “You think it might work if try some dirty talk again?”
“Maybe, but I’m not willing to suffer even more if it doesn’t work—what we
needis Amanda and Sucy to come fix their mess...” Diana said as she struggled
to activate her comm-crystal, and called them both. She struggled for a few
moments, before she growled, “You two get to my location right fucking now.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Akko asked as Diana activated her comm-
crystal’s tracker.
Diana chewed her lip, more frosty pink mist pouring out of her mouth, sweat
pouring down her whole body. “Do you think you could try and sap some of the
excess heat off me? Or just hold me, kiss me, and try to distract me? Maybe
both?”
“I’ll try,” Akko said as she got up and wrapped her arms around Diana, cradled
her head in her shoulder, giving her kisses and whispered words as her tattoos
glowed and sapped the heat in Diana.
It barely helped, but with the fire inside her feeling like it was slowly
eating her alive, Diana would take all the relief she could get…
===============================================================================
Amanda rounded a corner and into the hallway where Diana and Akko were,
transforming back into humanoid form mid-stride, expertly landing on the floor
and sliding till she stopped just before the closet door. She looked around,
waited for a few moments to see if her rushing had attracted any unwanted
attention, and when it seemed like the coast was clear, she pinged Diana back
with her comm-crystal.
As smoothly and inconspicuously as she could, she perched against the wall, and
waited.
Ding. A new message popped up on her screen, from Diana. “Whres sucy” (“Where’s
Sucy?”) it read.
“Still not here. You want me to group chat us?”
“Y” (“Yes.”)
“Sucy, the fuck’s taking you so long?” Amanda asked after she did.
“Learning you fucked up a super simple plan, and being forced to abandon an
experiment midway through to ensure nothing explodes or destroys my equipment
while I try and fix your screw up. Researching a solution and talking to you
two with one head while the other tries to keep me from running into things.
Not having legs—really hard to run without those, trust me.”
“Vwf hdi u hd 2 me?!!!” (“What the fuck did you do to me?!!!”) Diana asked.
“I’m assuming from your suddenly terrible grasp of Lyrika that the
aphrodisiac’s already hit your bloodstream, which is weird—it shouldn’t have
activated THAT quickly, even with the overdose. What did you two do?”
“S n rly d tme fro tnhis” (“Is now really the time for this?”)
“Yes. If I know exactly what the accelerant was, I can better figure out how I
can neutralize the effects.”
There was a brief pause. “Drgaihn gilre.” (“Dragon-fire.”)
“I’m assuming you meant ‘dragon-fire?”
“Y” (“Yes.”)
Amanda internally winced. “Shit,did you two get together in the Forest and I
just lost 10 grand?”
“Fuka u ameatonda and fukoa ur fcksniag bet” (“Fuck you, Amanda, and fuck your
fucking bet!”)
“Wow, this aphrodisiac is hitting you really hard, isn’t it?” Amanda asked.
“Could also just be because she’s usually super horny for Akko, and this just
eradicated any sense of self-control and composure she has. You know the aloof,
snobbish, bookish types: always secretly the kinkiest bitches around.”
Ding.A shaky holo of Diana’s middle finger appeared in the chat.
“Jsutaco fuckinta] fix tins” (“Just fucking fix this.”)
“Okay, I only got ‘fix’ out of that, so I guess this means I gotta guard this
door until Sucy comes in with an antidote.” Amanda paused. “You dohave an
antidote for this, don’t you Sucy?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Uroa joknicg” (“You’re joking.”)
“Does it seem like I’d joke about this?”
“Shit, then what do we do?! Just stand here and try not to look suspicious
until it wears off all on its own?”
“FDUK THAT” (“FUCK THAT!”)
“No, Istand here and guard this door, while you, Amanda, go run around and get
me all the ingredients I need for the potion that’s going to solve this. I need
2 gallons of Chilly Billy ‘Choco Mocha Latte’ ice cream, 1 liter of Sgt. Pik-U-
Up ‘Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,’ 500 grams of Cereza Valley Black Coffee beans, a
kilogram of peanut butter, and two bags of ice—brand and flavour doesn’t matter
for the last two, but it does for the rest.”
“Daso a lot aof caffenie sureao itownt kille akkol” (“That’s a lot of caffeine,
sure it won’t kill Akko?”)
“Maybe, maybe not. Are you sure you want to be trapped in a closet while you
wait for your sex drive to calm the fuck down?”
“NO”
“Then tell Akko to get ready to drink up something that isn’t you pretty soon.”
Sucy slithered in shortly after, and Amanda broke for the nearest vending
machines.
“Haaah...” Hannah sighed as she and Barbara stood in front of one such machine,
eyeing the choices on the interface, frowning at all the “Not Available”
notices. “I swear, the work and the loads get heavier each year, but all the
nice stuff keeps getting less and less…”
“At least they’re still good at keeping the staples,” Barbara said as she keyed
in their order, and their credit details.
Hannah nodded as two 500 ml cans of Sgt. Pik-U-Up Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
appeared through a rip in reality. “What would academies everywhere do without
good old Sgt. Pik-U-Up?” she asked as she lifted the sliding lid and claimed
their drinks.
“Who knows?” Barbara replied as Hannah handed her one. “It sure is ‘time for
double-time’ all over again, though.”
Hannah cracked open her can, tipped the rim to Barbara. “Down the hatch,
soldier,” she said, before they both brought it to their lips.
“WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!”Amanda cried as she rushed in, transforming mid-stride.
Barbara and Hannah stopped and put their cans down, crying out and scowling as
Amanda snatched them from their hands.
“Need these for an Akko-related emergency but ran out of money, thanks!” she
said as she prepared to stuff them into her chest.
“Hey!” Barbara cried, thrusting out her hand, concentrated magic balling and
spinning in her palm.
“Shhiiiiiittttt...” Amanda said through gritted teeth as she felt herself
pulled towards her, the Sgt. Pik-U-Up almost getting pulled out of the cans
from the force of her gravity well. She spun around to keep from falling
backwards, Hannah and Barbara took the opportunity to steal their drinks back.
Amanda’s eyes widened. “Mithros, don’t you two personally know how quickly an
Akko-situation get worse? I need those drinks, now!”
“We know, which is why we want to know what it is she’s done wrong thi- time,
and how we can help!” Barbara said as she dispersed her gravity well and
tightened her grip on her can.
“I’ll tell you all about it later, and you can help by giving your drinks back!
Diana’s all caught up in this business as usual, and I need to get these to
her, ASAP!” Amanda said.
Barbara and Hannah looked at Amanda, then at each other. “You better pay us
back for these tomorrow!” Hannah said as they handed the cans over.
“I will, I promise!” Amanda said, stuffing them into the hollowed out portion
of her chest with the rest of the ingredients, before she bolted down the
hallways once more.
“We finding out what the heck’s going on?” Hannah asked.
“Definitely,”Barbara said as she tapped the ground with her foot. A glowing
trail appeared over the ancient stone, showing them exactly where Amanda had
gone, all thanks to the can Barbara had enchanted.
===============================================================================
“Amandoa her the fcuks are you” (“Amanda, where the fuck are you?!”)
Ding!Trackers appeared before Sucy and Diana’s eyes, showing Amanda’s comm-
crystal signal rapidly getting closer and closer.
“Mithros, took you long enough!” Sucy said into the chat. “How hard is it to go
shopping for this stuff during the dinner rush?”
Amanda came back into view, transforming back into humanoid form and cradling
her chest as she padded up to Sucy. “Y-Y-You’d be surprised,” she said, her
teeth chattering as she opened her chest hollow.
Sucy pulled all the contents out and set them aside. “Tail.”
Amanda removed her tail, hollowed it out and widened it into the shape of a
bucket with a funnel at the bottom.
Sucy dumped all of the ingredients in. “Blend.”
Amanda nestled her tail-bucket into the crook of one arm, turned her free
claw’s nails into razor sharp blades, before she dipped it into the mixture and
stirred until it was all an even, smooth slurry. Sucy knocked on the door.
Akko hesitantly stuck her face out, Amanda poised the funnel over her, Sucy
spat into the top of the mixture. “Drink.”
Akko obediently opened her jaws, Amanda stuffed the funnel down her throat,
spinning it round and round and forcing all that catalyzed caffeine to come
pouring straight down into her stomach as quickly as possible.
Amanda pulled it out of her mouth when it was completely empty, then reshaped
and reattached her tail to her hindquarters, Akko coughed and sputtered as she
choked on the mix, Sucy pushed her back into the closet and closed the door.
“Whatoa happenaos now” (“What happens now?”) Diana asked.
“Now, we wait.”Sucy replied.
Not three seconds later, they heard a sound not unlike a combustion engine that
had just been injected with several hundred gallons worth of nitrous oxide,
felt a thump and shaking of the walls, shortly followed by some verytelling
noises emanating from inside.
“Wow,” Amanda said, “sounds like they are REALLY going at it, huh?”
“No hesitation, too, like they’ve already done it plenty of times...” Sucy
said, smiling.
“H-Hey, there’s a chance they didn’t hook up in the Forest, and they’ve been
fucking for a while! Then we both lose.”
“Or maybe you lose, while I win ten grand and a whole lot of pocket change,”
Sucy hummed.
The conversation stopped as they were suddenly aware of Hannah and Barbara
rounding the corner and stalking towards them, an enchanted trail pulsing and
glowing on the floor, right up to one of the empty Sgt. Pik-U-Up cans.
Chapter End Notes
     As you might have suspected by now, Sucy’s swamp dragon biochemistry
     is a vital and especially potent part of any serious alchemist’s list
     of reagents.
     Barbara is an Earth Weaver. She specializes in Channeling magic,
     which allows her to either enchant her own body and grant herself
     magical properties like her own gravitational pull via vastly
     increased and focused mass and energy, or as you've just seen,
     enchant items for various purposes, metals and rocks in particular.
     Also, I couldn't fit the joke in well, but Sucy dubs her new potion
     the "Akko-A-Go-Go."
***** Chapter 9 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Tuesday, Evening
Akko stood with her back to the wall, one leg out and firmly planted on the
ground, Diana straddling her thigh and grinding her clit against the line
between soft human skin and rough dragon scales, her eyes shut tight, sweat
cascading down her skin, pink frost pouring out her mouth with every pained
pant and whimper.
The aphrodisiac kept on raging through Diana’s system, the heat consuming and
overwhelming every part of her except one last patch of sanity, all that kept
her from turning into a weeping, painfully horny mess, protected solely by
Akko’s sheer determination and willpower.
It was fire against fire, like two jets of flame pushing against each other and
ignoring all laws of physics and the arcane arts, and Diana was all too aware
that Akko was slowly, steadily losing this fight.
Knock-knock-knock.
Akko looked at the door.“Should I?”she asked.
“Go,”Diana said as she reluctantly pulled away from Akko’s thigh, put her back
against the wall. “Buthurry...”
Akko nodded, and headed to the door. Diana watched as she was forced to drink
whatever concoction Sucy had whipped up now, frowned as Akko stumbled back onto
her butt, coughing and sputtering it back up.
“Are you okay?”she asked.
“Kinda, I guess,” Akko replied, wiping her mouth on her sleeve before she stood
back up.
Diana hovered a shaking hand over her comm-crystal, typed “What happens now?”
as best as she could.
“Now, we wait.”Sucy replied.
Diana frowned, her lips trembling and her knees quaking as she felt the
aphrodisiac take advantage of Akko’s absence, move in for the kill while she
was defenseless. “Akko…?”she thought frantically. “Do you feel any
different...?!”
Akko turned to look at her, opened her mouth to speak.
WrrrRRRRRMMMMMM…!
Diana’s eyebrows rose, the ravenousheat temporarily forgotten as she heard the
sound of a combustionengine going from zero to farbeyond its max speed in an
instant, saw Akko’s eyes and Bond tattoos explode and glow with bright light,
felt the cool air of the storeroom suddenly grow incredibly warm.
Thumph!
The walls shook and bottles rattled on their shelves as Akko was suddenly back
in front of Diana, her claws on either side of her face, her eyes wide open,
smoke and flame pouring out from her mouth and nostrils, her appearance
distorted as if she werevibrating.
“Diana,” she whispered calmly, “I feel like I could fuck you from now till the
end of time. Do you want me to?”
Diana blinked. “Yes.”
Akko kissed her, her dragon-fire exploding into Diana’s system, the shockwave
blasting back the aphrodisiac, and replacing it with something MUCH more
pleasant and powerful. Diana’s eyes widened, stunned for a moment, before she
was kissing right back, moaning and squealing as she felt Akko’s ripping open
her shirt, her nails roaming all over her skin, rapidly making their way down
her hips, up her skirt, her arousal-coated thighs, getting closer and closer to
her sopping wet panties...
Akko broke the kiss, saliva dripping down their lips, smoke and fire spilling
out with every breath. She put her mouth up to Diana’s ear, so close she could
feel the tongues of flame licking her skin. “Cum hard for me, okay?” Akko
whispered.
And as Akko pressed her nails onto Diana’s pussy, the surge of dragon-fire
finally pushing her over the edge and into an orgasm she so desperatelyneeded,
Diana tilted her head back and screamed.
Outside the door, Amanda and Sucy winced, the latter’s sound-sensitive ear-fins
folding like a fan.
“Wow,” Amanda said, “sounds like they are REALLY going at it, huh?”
“No hesitation, too, like they’ve already done it plenty of times...” Sucy
said, smiling.
“H-Hey, there’s a chance they didn’t hook up in the Forest, and they’ve been
fucking for a while! Then we both lose.”
“Or maybe you lose, while I win ten grand and a whole lot of pocket change,”
Sucy hummed.
The conversation stopped as they were suddenly aware of Hannah and Barbara
rounding the corner and stalking towards them, an enchanted trail pulsing and
glowing on the floor, right up to one of the empty Sgt. Pik-U-Up cans.
Sucy looked up from the can, and glared at Amanda. “And just when I thought you
couldn’t fuck things up even more…” she muttered, just out of Hannah and
Barbara’s hearing. “I’ll take the lead, you follow.”
“Okay,” Amanda whispered back, before the two of them faced Hannah and Barbara,
looking as casual or inconspicuously disinterested as they could.
“What the fuck are you two up to?” Hannah asked.
“And what was that noise? It sounded like Diana screaming!” Barbara added.
“If I answer your questions, will you two go away?” Sucy asked.
Barbra and Hannah turned to each other, cast wary looks at Sucy, before Hannah
replied, “Okay, fine. We’ll leave if you tell us.”
“We drugged Akko and Diana then locked them into this closet,” Sucy said
flatly.
Hannah, Barbara, and Amanda stared at her, silence but for the faint, wet and
heated sounds coming from inside.
“Amanda, block the door.” Sucy said.
While Hannah and Barbara flew into an enraged panic, Amanda jumped onto the
door, spreading her limbs outwards, her nails turning into spikes and burying
themselves into the wooden frame.
Meanwhile, inside the closet, Akko had her nails knuckle-deep inside Diana,
constantly pistoning in and out of her sopping wet folds, arousal spilling all
over the floor and the shredded remains of her panties, even more gushing out
each time she came.
They kissed, tongues sloppily tangling with each other, drool dripping down
their lips and their chins onto their bare chests. They pulled away for breath,
smoke and fire pouring out of their mouths with every shallow, heated pant.
They whispered, whimpered, squealed, and moaned, filthy words or unintelligible
babbling right into the others ear.
“Ah—Akkoooo…!”Diana whined as she came again, arms wrapped tightly around Akko
as her whole body shook, her arousal gushed all over Akko’s claw again.
Akko pulled her nails out, grinned and hummed as she listened to the sound of
all that arousal raining down from Diana’s pussy, onto hot, wet mess on the
floor. “Wow: what orgasm number is this?”she thought.
“Not afucking clue!”Diana replied, panting hard and still shaking. “More,
please.”
“Turn around, then~”Akko hummed.
With a claw holding her hand, Diana carefully stepped about in the puddle of
her own arousal, her boots making soft splashes. “Hey Diana?”Akko asked as
Diana planted her palms on the wall, pressed her butt back against Akko’s hips.
“Yes, Akko?”
“I REALLY like the ‘ripped-up clothes and boots’ look on you.”
“Me too, Akko, me too,” Diana replied, smiling and moaning as she could feel
Akko pressing her breasts against her back, her claws reaching around her
sides, the one from earlier cupping a breast, the other slipping between her
legs and onto her clit.
Outside, Barbara scowled and raised her hand, a new ball of energy spinning and
forming in her palm.
Sucy grabbed her wrist.
“Let go.” Barbara hissed, narrowing her eyes.
“No.” Sucy replied, calm as ever.
“Do you wantto get ripped apart?!”
“Do you want to find out if it’s really Diana that came back from the Forest?”
Barbara stopped, the ball slowing down before rolling back into her wrist and
her body.
“What are you talking about...?” Hannah asked.
Sucy scowled. “As I’ve been TRYING to explain but couldn’t because you two
wouldn’t stop shouting over me, myself and Amanda have been trying to find out
if the Diana and Akko that came back from the Forest were the same ones that
went in.”
“So you’re saying they could be doppelgangers?”
“Or alternate versions of themselves in the wrong reality, thanks to a screw-up
in the teleportation magitech, we don’t know, and we’re trying to find out,”
Sucy said. “Haven’t you noticed that Diana’s been acting REALLY strangely,
lately? Doing things that seem very unlike her? Or at least, the one we know…?”
Hannah and Barbara stared at her in silence, their eyes slowly widening in
realization, the hall now so quiet you could faintly hear the sound of Diana
moaning as she had her breasts and clit toyed with.
She panted and shook as Akko circled her nails around her nipples and her clit,
the sharp tips and the intense heat prickling the sensitive skin, gasping and
stiffening every time she flicked them with her thumbs and sent intense surges
of dragon-fire straight into them, bringing her leaps and bounds closer to
another orgasm.
“You want me to speed up again?”Akko asked.
“No, this pace ismorethan fine, Akko,” Diana replied, thick layers of frost
spreading out from her palms and all over the walls.
“You sure? Whatever it is Sucy gave you looks like it’s PRETTY painful if you
don’t cum soon enough.”
Diana chuckled shakily, smoke, fire, and red-pink fumes leaking out of her
mouth.“Akko, that drug wore off a while back; I’m justenjoying myself now,while
we’ve already got privacy and are in the mood for it. Do you want to stop?”
Akko thought about it for a moment. “Nope!”
“Then let’s keep going~”Diana purred.
“So how long are going to just lock them in there?” Hannah asked.
“For as long as it takes for the potion to finish its job,” Sucy replied.
“Which would about when…?” Barbara asked.
“I don’t know.” Sucy replied.
“What do you mean, ‘you don’t know?’” Hannah snapped.
Sucy sighed. “Look, I’m aware that for combat supports like yourselves, you
think alchemy is always a very precise art where the measurements and
procedures have to be as accurate and faithful to the recipe as possible, but
things get pretty messy, vague, and haphazard when experimenting with new
potions.
“This is especially true when you’re potentially dealing with extradimensional
beings who may not follow the same rules as everyone else in your realm.”
“Okay, we get that, but what the hell is that potion supposed to do so you can
find out if that’s really Diana?” Barbara asked.
As if on cue, Diana let out another sharp, ear-piercing scream, one that had
Sucy’s ear-fins folding once more, and Barbara and Hannah wincing, too.
“Do you really want to know...?” Sucy asked.
Barbara and Hannah frowned uneasily. “If that’s the real Diana, you better not
have fucked her up too badly with whatever it is you gave her!” Hannah snapped.
“You say that as if she hasn’t suffered incredibly terrible things on a near-
daily basis, and came out of them mostly fine,” Sucy replied.
Barbara and Hannah glared at her, before they finally left. Sucy and Amanda
discretely watched them round the corner, and when it seemed like they weren’t
coming back, Amanda pried herself off the door and started stretching her
limbs.
“Mithros,that was close...” Amanda muttered. “Where’d you get the idea to
bullshit them about alternate versions of Akko and Diana, though?”
“It’s a longstory,” Sucy replied, before she pulled up her comm-crystal. “How
long are you two going to be banging in there?” she typed.
After a minute with no response or even a “Read” notice, Sucy groaned. “Amanda,
stay here and guard the door,” she muttered as she started to slither off.
“Wait, where are you going?” Amanda asked.
“To a vending machine for supplies, where else? We’re probably going to be
camping here all night,” Sucy grumbled.
Amanda’s face fell. “… Oh, right…” she said, before she casually leaned against
the door once more, ears open for the sounds of anyone coming into the hallway,
and consequently, the sounds of hot rider-on-dragon action coming from inside
the closet.
She pulled out her comm-crystal. “Can you get me some Crystal Crunchies?”
“Fuck you,you’re getting a bag of Tinnies.”
Amanda sighed, and returned to awkwardly guarding the door, wincing as Diana
loudly let her know she was in the throes of yet another orgasm.
Diana’s legs shook and her hands started to slide down the wall as her pussy
gushed and spilled all over the floor and Akko yet again. She started to fall
forward, limp, before Akko caught her and pulled her back up.
“You okay?”Akko asked, before she kissed Diana on the cheek.
“I feelAMAZING!”Diana replied, her eyes hazy, her tongue hanging out in a pant,
drool and smoke spilling out of her mouth.
“You want to stop now?”
“No. Can we fuck some more, please?”
“Sure~ And I’ve got just the idea, too!” Akko replied, sending Diana a mental
image of what it was exactly.
Diana let out a breathless, excited giggle. “Do it, please~!”
Akko turned Diana around to face her, leaned back against the wall before she
slowly lowered them down to the floor, Diana straddling her chest and leaking
arousal all over her skin and scales. “You ready?”Akko asked as she put her
claws on her hips.
“Ready.”
Akko lifted her up, pulling Diana’s pussy right up to her face, Diana slumped
forward and braced herself against the wall, moaning and shivering as she felt
Akko’s hot breath on her pussy, the incredible heat still radiating from her
body.
Akko pressed her mouth onto Diana’s pussy, her long, serpentine tongue slowly
slithering out from between her teeth and teasingly pressing itself against her
folds, whipping upwards and pumping in another surge of dragon-fire. Diana
stiffened and cried out, moaning and panting as she waited for Akko to
continue…
“… Akko…?” Diana asked.
Akko pulled Diana’s pussy off her face. “Diana: whatever it is Sucy gave you
made you taste like pickled plum Fireki’s.”
Diana blinked. “Is that a good or abad thing..?”
“Let me show you!” Akko replied, before pulled Diana’s pussy back on her face,
hungrily lapping and slurping up every last drop of arousal she leaked,
stopping to suck on and toy with her clit, or letting all that hot, sweet-sour
tasting mess all pour out onto her tongue, into her mouth, down her lips, past
her cheeks, and dribbling all over her chest, bursts of dragon-fire surging
into Diana all the while.
“A-aah! A-Akko...~!”Diana gasped, her breath coming in frantic, shallow pants.
(Outside, Sucy returned with a bag of mushroom chips for her, Tinnies for
Amanda, and water for the both of them.)
Akko intensified her assault, her tongue prodding and pressing against Diana’s
pussy lips before it darted in, swirling all around her soft, silky inner
walls, before it started slipping further and further in, curling back in an
upwards motion, till she found a little rough patch amidst it all.
Diana choked, her eyes shooting wide open, shaking and gasping as Akko licked
it again, and again, and again,surge after surge of intense, concentrated
dragon-fire running up her spine.
(Amanda thanked Sucy for the Tinnies, ripped the package open, and shoved them
into her mouth. Two chews in, she stopped and gagged. “Aww, these Tinniessuck!”
“Deal with it,” Sucy grumbled as she dug into her chips.)
Akko pressed her tongue right up against Diana’s g-spot, pressing it flat and
circling it round and round, stopping long enough to let Diana take a gasp of
breath, before she was having her choking and shaking once more.
“Aah!A-A-Akkoooo…!”Diana whimpered, right before she came.
(Sucy winced yet again, Amanda choked on the water she was drinking. “Ugh, I am
soglad Akko moved out...” Sucy muttered as Amanda coughed and spluttered.)
Diana’s arousal gushed from her pussy, flooding Akko’s mouth, pouring down her
throat, cascading down her cheeks and her chin, soaking her hair, growing the
already massivepuddle on the floor. Akko reeled her tongue back into her mouth
and started gulping down as much of it as she could, thirstily lapping at
Diana’s pussy lips as her orgasm started to weaken.
(Amanda sniffed, and sniffed again. “Is that…is that Fireki’s…?”she whispered.
“Probably a side effect of the pill,” Sucy replied. “There was a LOT of raw
material concentrated in it, and the delay mechanism was based on the ‘bubble-
wrap’ technique.”
Amanda stared at her.
“Alchemy is weird, okay?”)
Diana moaned as she slumped against the wall, completely limp, sweat pouring
down her skin, her hair soaked and sticking to her body, steam and smoke
trickling from her mouth, a verysatisfied look on her face.
Akko kept holding her up to lap up some more of the mess from her thighs and
pussy, before she slowly, carefully lowered Diana till she was comfortably
sprawled out over Akko, her face buried in her shoulder. The two of them locked
eyes, Akko leaned up and kissed Diana on her forehead.
“I love you, Diana,” she said.
Incapable of making coherent words or thoughts, Diana just sent a wholelot of
love, gratitude, and affection her way through their Bond.
They snuggled up together, Akko protectively wrapping her wings around Diana,
Diana smiling as she quickly fell asleep, enjoying the warmth still radiating
from Akko’s body, the mix of soft skin and rough scales on her own skin.
A few minutes later, Sucy banged on the door, and opened it a crack. “Oh my
fucking gods, pleasetell me you two are done fucking each other stupid!” she
hissed.
“We are!” Akko whispered back. “But, uh, Diana’s passed out, I ripped up all of
her clothes, and there’s a HUGE mess we can’t just leave here, so...”
Sucy sucked in a deep breath, and let out a long, heavy sigh. “I’ll help on one
condition: you tell me and Amanda if you and Diana’s first”--she made a
seductive dragon sound--”was in the Forest.”
Akko blushed, hesitated for a moment, before she said, “Ah, yeah… it was in the
Forest.”
“Welp, at least there’s ONE good thing that came out of this…!” Sucy grumbled.
She turned to Amanda and waved her comm-crystal in front of hers. “You’re
paying me back for all this shit you’re going to need to buy next, plusthe ten
grand, got it?”
Amanda’s face fell. “Do you take installments…?”
“Yes, now move,”Sucy growled, before she shut the closet door once more.
Just before the dinner rush ended and students and faculty went back to their
dorms, or their evening classes and exercises, Akko, Amanda, Sucy, and Diana
snuck back to the Celestial Spires, no one the wiser.
Chapter End Notes
     I commissioned fanart of Diana riding Akko. Bond Tattoos not shown as
     they were too difficult for the time/price range.
     http://68.media.tumblr.com/483b40f8c72573c416221c7611901793/
     tumblr_ox5ca5Wn1H1uhpvceo3_1280.jpg
     Art by oletarts.tumblr.com
     P.S. How do you guys like the fact that Akko and Diana constantly
     communicate during (seductive dragon sound)? I’ve always wondered how
     people talk the frequent breaks in action for dialog and check-ins,
     considering that it’s explicitly stated that the Bond could do all
     that without the words.
     I still think it’s a pretty nice gesture to still say or “think” it
     out loud, though. Do you?
***** Chapter 10 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Wednesday, Morning
Diana woke up in her bed, dressed in one of her nightgowns, keenly aware of
Akko on a chair beside her, leaning in and staring at her with wide,
smouldering, nearly unblinking eyes.
“Morning Diana!” Akko said. “How do you feel?”
Diana groaned. “Terrible. My vagina feels like a steak that’s just been
brutally, thoroughly tenderized, then flame roasted to very well-done...”
“I’m assuming that’s a bad thing?”
“VERY bad thing, Akko...”
Akko nodded. “You mind if I ask you if it was worth it?”
Diana paused. “Let’s see… was all that hot, passionate, wild fucking in a
closet worth being secretly drugged, suffering the wrath of that
damnedaphrodisiac for who knows how long, and finally learning the truly
awfultaste of those pickled plums you love so much…?”
She smiled. “Yes. Yes it was.”
Akko beamed right back.
Diana frowned. “Oh, Mithros—Akko, could you help me to the bathroom? And get
some more Lady’s Lifesaver, if you haven’t already.”
“Can do~!” Akko chirped, before she effortlessly lifted Diana up into her arms.
She yelped in pain as her sore body didn’t take kindly to being moved, but the
intense heat radiating from Akko’s claws went a long way into soothing it.
“Goodness, that potion is still going strong in your system, huh?”Diana
thought.
“Mhmm!” Akko responded out loud. “It gave me SO much energy! Even after I
fucked your brains out in the closet, I could still jerk off several dozen
times after we got you back here, andgot so much other shit done, and so fast,
too!”
“… Akko, how many hours of sleep did you get last night?”
“None!”Akko chirped. “I’ve been completely, absolutely awake since I took the
Akko-A-Go-Go, and honestly, it feels fucking amazing.”She chuckled, making a
sound like the rumbles of a volcano just before erupting, her eyes and limbs
twitching and her body radiating more heat in lieu of the ground shaking.
Beat.
“… Akko, where’s Sucy, and is she busy today?”
“She and Amanda crashed in the guest lounge, and no, she’s not!”
“Good. As soon as she’s awake, please ask her to either neutralize the potion,
or get as much of it out of your system as possible.”
“She told me to tell you that she wants to find out how long it’ll take for me
to come off it it naturally.”
“Then please tell her that I’m exercising my authority as your Bonded partner,
and that my concerns over your health override her scientific curiosity.”
“Will do, then!” Akko replied as she stepped into their bathroom.
By the time she was carrying her back out, Sucy and Amanda were up and at their
kitchen, the former making notes and observations on her comm-crystal, the
latter raiding their cupboards. “Oh, hey there Diana, Akko!” Amanda said,
poking her head out of a shelf and sparing a claw for a moment to greet them.
“You guys don’t mind if I mooch some food off you guys, right? I’m kinda broke
andseriously in debt right now...”
Diana sighed as Akko helped her to a chair. “Just so long as you don’t consume
any of the silverware or the crystal goblets,” she said as Akko left for their
fridge. “Those happen to be beloved heirlooms from my family estate, some of
the few things I’ve saved from my aunt’s clutches.”
Amanda stopped, and slowly, sheepishly peered out of their cupboard. “… Ah,
shit, the forks that have what kinda look like a unicorn horn in the middle
wouldn’t happen to be those, would they…?”
Diana’s eyes widened, before they narrowed in a glare.
“… Sorry...” Amanda muttered. “One of them was kinda laying there on the floor,
and I wassuper hungry...”
“My bad, sorry!” Akko said as she rummaged through their fridge.
“Uh, you’re not going to make me try and pay that back, are you?” Amanda asked.
“I mean, I’m not saying I wouldn’t if I could, it’s just right now, I really…
you know…can’t.”
Diana groaned and tilted her head back. “You know what, let’s make a deal: you
don’t eat any more of my family’s ever dwindling valuables, and neither you nor
Sucy speak a word of the events of last night, including whatever revelations
you two had, and I will absolve you of all your wrongdoings and offenses
towards myself and Akko.”
Amanda blinked. “… Uh…?”
“She said if you shut up about last night, and the fact that me and Diana are
fucking now, she’ll let everything you did to us slide,” Akko explained as she
returned with a bowl of cereal for Diana—Cornucopia Clusters.
“Please note this is merely forgiveness, not forgetting,” Diana growled as Akko
poured milk into it from a pitcher.
“Deal,” Amanda said, coming out of the closet with a handful of flint rocks.
“Good,” Diana said as she put her spoon into her bowl. “Sucy?”
Sucy looked up from her work. “Hey, if you want to undercut yourself for my
benefit, who am I to complain? Deal.”
Diana ignored the first part. “Thank you, Sucy, and on a completely different
topic: Akko?” she asked before she took a bite of her cereal.
“Diana wants you to get the Akko-A-Go-Go out of my system,” Akko said.
Sucy’s eyes widened, before she frowned. “Aww, c’mon, Diana! This is valuable
data we could be missing out on! Do you know how useful it is, to have a potion
that can turbo charge Akko when we need it?”
Diana chewed her cereal and swallowed, before she said, “I’d rather she not die
of overtaxing her heart, than have a good contingency plan should we have an
important deadline looming over us and far tool little time.”
Sucy sighed heavily. “Fine… Akko, head to the bathroom, Diana, I need to raid
this place for supplies,” she said as she got off the table and slithered off.
“Take whatever you need, unless looks like some sort of artefact!” Diana called
out. “And before I forget: I betternot have learned that you spread the news
about my and Akko’s relationship so you could collect from everyone else that
threw their lot in with that damnedbet!” she said before she spooned some more
cereal into her mouth.
“You’rereally serious about keeping your and Akko’s being girlfriends now a
secret, huh?” Amanda said as she broke up the flint into pieces, before
throwing them into her mouth like chips.
Diana glared at her as she chewed. "Yes, yes I am,” she said after she
swallowed. "I don't suppose you'd understand my reasons, seeing as you've never
had a family legacy to uphold and live up to."
Crunch. Little sparks flew out of Amanda’s jaws. "Hey: us O'Neill's got our own
rep we live up to, it just isn't as hoity-toity as yours," she said, pointing a
nail at her. "Getting back on topic: I think you’re seriously overestimating
just how much Stratos-at-large is going to feel about you and Akko"-- she made
a seductive dragon sound.
"And what makes you so confident about that?" Diana asked as put her spoon
down.
"'Cause I know a Rider-Dragon couple just like you two, and after a week or two
of blitz coverage and round-the-clock gossip, most everyone stopped caring and
moved onto the next new thing."
"And who would this couple be…?”
"Ah, the dragon's, what's her name...?” Amanda muttered, little bits of ground
up rock falling out of her mouth. “White? Whitney? Ainz?”
"Weiss? Weiss Schnee?" Diana offered.
Amanda snapped her nails. "Yeah, her! You know, now that I really think about
it, it's actually kinda scaryhow similar you two are."
Diana sighed. "I don’t mean to discount her grandparents’ achievements and
contributions to Stratos, but her family legacy is not nearly as long, storied,
and consequential as that of mine," she said as she brought a spoonful of
cereal to her mouth. “However similar we may seem superficially, I’m certain
the commonalities cease the moment you get into the specifics.”
"Pfft, however you 'upper class' rate each other on your pecking order, you and
her are still the same to the rest of us: rich bitches from noteworthy names,
who happened to be Bound to, then started banging their 'commoner' partners.”
Diana’s crunching got a little bit louder. “Why do you suddenly have such a
huge interest in my and Akko’s love-life, Amanda?” she asked after she
swallowed. “You’re already well aware you’ve lost your wager and Sucy has come
to collect, has she not?”
Amanda shrugged. “Eh, I feel bad for what I put you through last night, and
more than that, you two work with my company so much you may as well have been
hired full-time; better to butt heads at base, than break Links on the
battlefield, right?” she smiled.
Diana relaxed and nodded. “Right.”
“And I’m just saying, I really don’t think you and Akko will have anything to
worry about if you go public with you two. Sure, there’ll be a fuss at first,
and you’ll probably hear the sounds of hundreds of thousands of hearts breaking
and hopes being dashed to the ground all at once, but no one’ll make too much
of a stink of it, unless you two do something like fuck in the middle of the
Sorcerer’s Square, get caught making out in the background when a camera pans
over to you two, or start talking to each other in gooey-girlfriend talk allthe
time.
“Akko and you make a good couple—and that’s not just because the”--she made a
seductive dragon sound--”is obviously so incrediblyhot.”
Diana blushed, and resumed eating her cereal with renewed, intense focus.
Amanda just shrugged, and returned to her flint, before she excused herself to
attend to the duties she’d shirked due to last night’s misadventure. Some time
after, Sucy slithered in with a humanoid Akko limply dangling from one of her
mouths. Diana’s eyebrows rose and her mouth fell into a concerned frown as she
saw how dull Akko’s eyes and Bond tattoos were, felt the misery and unwell
vibes skulking in from the Bond.
Diana abandoned her cereal and got up, wincing as pain shot up from between her
legs. “Mithros, what happened?” she asked as she hobbled over with a hand on
the table for support.
“Exactly what you asked: the Akko-A-Go-Go’s gone,” Sucy replied as she set Akko
down into a chair.
“Uggghhh...” Akko groaned as she sank into her seat.
Diana came over and felt Akko’s forehead: cold, clammy, and damp with sweat.
“Oh, Akko, you poor thing...”
“Just saying, if you’d let the potion run its course, she’d have probably slept
right through the worst of the crash,” Sucy said.
Diana glared at her, before she turned back to Akko. “Is there anything I can
do for you? Water? Food?”
“Bed,” Akko mumbled. “Snoozes and snuggles, please.”
“And snoozes and snuggles you will get,” Diana cooed. She turned to Sucy. “Err,
Sucy…?”
Sucy sighed. “Fine, fine… but I’m not tucking either of you in.”
“No need to, Sucy, and thank you.”
Sucy picked them back up and carried them to Diana’s bed, before she slithered
on out of their room. Shivering and whimpering, Akko reached out and clung onto
Diana, burying her face in her chest as her wings wrapped around them both like
a leathery blanket. Diana hugged back and stroked her hair, whispering and
cooing sweet words until Akko fell asleep.
She was restless and shivering for a while, but with a calming pulse from
Diana’s magic, blue energy spreading across her body like a ripple and back,
she was still and breathing easily.
Diana smiled and kissed her on her forehead, before she reached down between
them and activated her comm-crystal. As the holograms formed in front of her
face, she started using the eye-tracking function to do some research.
As Amanda had said, interest in the new relationship between Weiss Schnee
(heiress to the Schnee Rune Company) and her partner, Ruby Rose (a no-name
Autana from some tiny island somewhere in the Expanse, before the Fates brought
and Bound her and Weiss together) caused quite the stir in Amarok.
There was a massive amount of articles and commentary about them, professional
and amateur, especially because of the rather violent reaction of Weiss’ father
and the current CEO of the SRC, Jacques Schnee. (Her bile rising like whenever
she heard of her aunt Daryl’s latest escapades, she quickly threw out the
articles related to him, and told the Fountainhead to stop bringing him up
until further notice.)
It was all their continent could talk about for weeks… but just like a boulder
crashing into a lake, after the initial splash and the waves it made, the
ripples disappeared, the water calmed, and the locals forgot about the rock as
it sank and came to rest at the bottom.
There was news about them still, yes, but their relationship tended to be a
piece of unimportant trivia compared to what they and their associates were up
to over in Beacon. Like Akko and herself, trouble just seemed to be attracted
to them like a magnet, or alternately, they, too, couldn’t help but run or fly
straight into it at every possible opportunity.
She read a few more reports and accounts of their escapades, before she shut
off her comm-crystal.
“Should I really keep on hidingmyrelationship with Akko?” she thought. Putting
aside the Fates being so insistent on exposing them as they seemed to be with
Weiss and Ruby, was there really any good reason to?
The Cavendish name was either in a downward spiral to obscurity, a matter of
the history books, or a marketing tactic used by her aunt when she sold off
even more of the valuables and artefacts they had acquired or been gifted
throughout the years. Even if publicly revealing her relationship with Akko
caused a scandal, well, there really wasn’t much to lose and not too far to
fall, was there...?
And really, she would rather start over all over again with restoring her
family name, if it meant getting others to accept that Akko was the one she
loved, treat her as more than just a teenage dalliance.
She looked down at Akko’s sleeping form, smiling and muttering from time to
time, thin trails of steam pouring out of her nostrils, a little bit of warm
drool trickling from her mouth. Did Diana really want to have all of her
intimate and affectionate moments with Akko exclusivelyin private, pretending
they weren’t together and putting up an act in public, constantly fearful of
being discovered…?
Diana closed her eyes, and started thinking.
===============================================================================
Wednesday, Evening
Amanda, Constanze, Jasminka, Barbara, Hannah, Lotte, and Sucy all sat at the
table in the center of Akko and Diana’s room, the one meant for either formal
dinners or military-style meetings. Casual chatter and theories about what was
going on filled the air, until Diana rose from her seat and gestured for
silence.
All eyes and ears were on her as she began to speak.
“I’d like to thank you all for coming on such short notice,” Diana started. “I
know that it’s asking a lot of you all, especially because of how intentionally
sparse I was on the details about the ‘very important news’ I had for you all.
“And for that reason, I won’t dally any longer and just tell you all outright.”
She turned to Akko, and reached out to her.
Hannah and Barbara’s eyes widened, Lotte gasped, cupped her claws over her
face, and watched with wide eyes, Jasminka slowed down her shoving chips into
her mouth, Constanze eyebrows rose, Amanda smiled, while Sucy looked as mildly
disinterested as ever.
Hand-in-claw, Diana turned back to to the others, and said: “Akko and I are
dating now.”
Lotte screamed, freaking out or annoying the others, save for Hannah and
Barbara who seemed to be in a state of stunned shock. “Sorry!” she said. “And
congratulations, you two!”
“Thanks, Lotte!” Akko said.
“And for the purposes of whoever else of you wagered about when we’d get
together, yes,it was during our time in the Forest.”
Constanze looked at Diana, wordlessly asking, “And…?”
“That’s all we wanted to say, and you girls to know,” Diana said. “If you have
any questions or reactions, we’ll be happy to entertain them; if you don’t,
you’re free to leave, and again, thank you for coming.”
Constanze grumbled, looking annoyed as she stalked off.
“Sorry to say you lost that bet, Amanda,” Lotte said as she pulled out her
comm-crystal, and transferred some funds over to Sucy.
“Eh, it’s fine,” Amanda shrugged, “I already knew since last night.”
Lotte’s eyebrows rose.
“It’s a longstory, ask Diana and Akko,” Sucy said as she pulled out her comm-
crystal, smiling as she fiddled with it. “Hey, speaking of you two, you mind
signing this so I can collect all my winnings?” she said as she projected a
hologram towards Akko and Diana. “I need proof.”
Diana sighed and rolled her eyes, before she and Akko signed it.
Barbara and Hannah finally recovered from the shock. “W-Wait, you and Akko
aretogethernow?” Hannah asked.
“Like, ‘girlfriends’ together?” Barbara added.
“Yes, Barbara, Hannah, like ‘girlfriends’ together,” Diana replied. “If you two
have any issues with my and Akko’s relationship, just name a time and a place
and you can say whatever it is you need to say.”
“N-No, we don’t have a problem with you and Akko being together!” Hannah
sputtered. “I just, I mean, it’s kinda, but--”
“Are you and Akko really our Diana and Akko?” Barbara blurted. “You’re not some
doppelgangers or alternate versions stuck in the wrong reality, are you?”
Hannah looked like she was trying to figure out sputter out an excuse, before
she gave up and looked as intently at Diana as Barbara was.
Diana stared back at them, confused, her mouth slowly falling open. “… No,
I’mquitesure Akko and myself are the correct versions of ourselves for this
particular reality… where in the realmdid you get such an idea?”
“My fault,” Sucy said, “they decided to investigate last night, and I needed to
throw them off the trail.”
Diana turned bright red. “A-Ah… I see.”
Barbara and Hannah frowned, and looked at Sucy. “Then what was really going on
in there…?”
“Gee, what do you think…?” Amanda asked back, smiling.
Diana blushed even harder as realization came over Hannah and Barbara’s faces,
their own cheeks flaming red, too. Voices too low and mumbled to be audible,
they got up and left.
Jasminka reached into her pockets and pulled out a candy-coated wafer. “Do you
two want to split it and share it? It’s a custom back in my homeland!”
“Oooh, don’t mind if we do!” Akko said as she reached out and took it.
“You hold an end, break it together, then feed your piece to the other! Try and
get an even split, that’s extragood luck!”
Diana and Akko did just that, but the wafer was more fragile then they though,
and a good chunk of the middle broke off and fell to the floor, leaving them
both with small, jagged pieces.
“Oh my...” Jasminka said, frowning.
“What’s this mean?” Akko asked.
“Well, it’s not an omen or a curse, exactly, but the legend says you two should
be wary of rough times ahead!” Jasminka explained.
Diana chuckled. “Well, it isn’t as if stormy weather isn’t moving back over our
lives already, right?” she said as she held her piece over to Akko’s mouth.
“Eh, we’ll be fine,” Akko replied as she did the same to Diana, smiling.
“Through storms and strife, peace and prosperity, then, now, and to the end of
our days…?”
Diana smiled back. “Together, we ride.”
They didn’t quite know nor even begin to guess at how much more chaotic and
catastrophic things were going to get from then on out… but for the moment,
there were just a rider and her dragon in love, savouring the sweetness of the
candy they shared, and the freeing feeling of being out with their
relationship—if only to their closest friends, for now.
“Got any plans for how you’re going to go full public with this, Diana?” Akko
asked later that night, as the two of them lay together in Diana’s bed.
“Andrew’s speaking at that big fancy ball in a couple of months, I think we can
ask him for a favour and let you have the mic for a while.”
“In time, Akko, in time,” Diana hummed as she felt leathery wings wrap around
her, two warm claws slip onto her stomach, soothing heat ward away the last of
the aches of last night. “For now, I just want to enjoy a quiet, peaceful night
in with my girlfriend...”
“Okay,” Akko hummed as she nestled her face into Diana’s hair. “Goodnight,
Diana. I love you.”
Diana smiled and closed her eyes. “Goodnight, Akko. I love you, too.”
Chapter End Notes
     The End. Thank you for joining on this wild, insane ride; I hadn't
     known I was going to make a sequel to Burning Desire, but just like
     the Keeper of the Grove, this short project spiraled into something
     much larger and deeper than I could have ever imagined.
     Yes, that was Weiss Schnee and Ruby Rose from RWBY, and at some
     point, I'm going to delve in what's going on in Amarok, how these two
     couples meet up, and antics like Weiss and Diana starting the
     "Stratos Thirsty Bitches Society," and Akko and Ruby discussing their
     shared love of Shiny Chariot, how she played a key role in helping
     them discover their sexuality, and how Akko's Chariot poster has seen
     WAY too much.
     If you're wondering about physical distance, they're in the next
     continent over, about the distance between Finland and South Africa,
     and the one Diana and Akko are in is "Renara."
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