Chapter 9.... Welcome

Hey, this one is on time. Nobody is more surprised about that than I am. But with things starting to settle down a bit, I think I have managed to find my rhythm again. This chapter, once again, picks up immediately where the last chapter left off. With our hapless hero frantically trying to work out how to hide the truth from his mentor, before his date with the girl who has vexed him for more than a year.

Thank you, once again, for all of your continued support for this series, both on here and on the discord channel. With the publication of "The Island" - my new concurrently running series - I hope to be seeing a lot more of all of you. The response I have received for all of my work has been beyond my ability to articulate.. Each of you has my thanks.

Another shout out to my editors, without whom these stories would be... well, unreadable.

As the first line suggests, this is the 9th chapter in an ongoing series. It is strongly recommended that you start from the beginning if you want any of the story to make the slightest amount of sense. As always, the characters and events in this story are purely the work of fiction, any real person or events is purely coincidental and - frankly - hilarious.

I hope you enjoy

Nova.

*********

Jeeves' idea to lie was a masterstroke of subtlety. Well, to be more accurate, the way he correctly read Marco, and used that to hide the truth was nothing short of genius. Considering that Jeeves was me, I was more than happy to take that compliment.

There was no way around Marco finding out my city had been unlocked; the question was simply one of hiding Charlotte's involvement in it. In the seconds that it took Marco to cross the room, sit at the kitchen island and reach his hand out for mine; the butler-like representation of my own conscious had devised the perfect plan, although admittedly, most of the corresponding dilated time in my bunker had been spent with him calmly explaining it to me.

Jeeves had reminded me of Marcos's initial reaction to my awakening. The rush of power that had almost scared my 'mentor,' or at least taken him back a fair bit. His idea was simply to prompt something of a similar reaction again. Letting him see the vastness of scale of my city, especially when compared to his own, we hoped, would distract him from asking too many probing questions.

Those frantic, panicked few minutes had all led up to this. Marco staring wide-eyed up at my wall, his mouth opening and closing like a very surprised-looking landed carp. His eyes kept flicking back to me, in a mix of astonished disbelief and almost reverent awe. His expression reminded me of a rabbit on a late-night, pitch-black country road; who thought the best way of dealing with a set of oncoming headlights, was to just stare at them until one of them gave up and stopped.

We had appeared in the meadow between our cities on what felt to me, like a gorgeous summer day. We had been orientated so that Marco had appeared with his back to my city, and my back to his. Meaning there were a few brief moments, before he turned around and saw the solid marble-esque walls jutting up into the heavens. He hadn't said more than a few muttered syllables since then.

I didn't need my powers to see that what he was looking at was on a scale so much larger than he had expected that it had robbed him of words. Leaving his thought processes reeling in a futile attempt to comprehend, let alone articulate, what was in front of him. For my part, I was just enjoying the feeling of the sun on my face. It was almost October, we were in the UK; we hadn't seen the sun in weeks!

The new story was simple, and a lot of it was based largely on what Charlotte had explained to me. on that first trip to my Tron-like city all those weeks ago. My maturity and my education meant - so the story went - that I had a fairly decent idea of how the brain worked. Especially in relation to its control over bodily functions. When I couldn't find anything in my bunker related to breathing or heartbeat, or any other primary bodily function for that matter, I realized that the office itself was, as Charlotte had called it, simply a manifestation of my control over myself, and wasn't actually anything to do with my actual brain at all. Therefore, there had to be more. The door in my bunker that led out onto the balcony over my city had suddenly appeared, and there was my city. A few months - in mindscape time, at least - of wandering around it had given me a pretty good idea. of what everything was and how it worked. I had called the cities a lesson in metaphors when Charlotte had shown me around hers. It was a phrase I had repeated to Marco, with the slight caveat that my mental maturity and basic understanding of how the body worked; meant that they were not lost on me. I would just have to remember to act surprised that his city was so different from mine, when the time came.

Amazingly, Marco had bought it.

What he was struggling with was more than simply the scale of things. Take the walls, for example. Marco's city was pretty similar in size, layout, technology, and - for lack of a better word- strength to Charlotte's. His walls were more or less the same height. But a wall was more than just a measurement of how tall it was. A tall wall was good for not allowing people to climb over it, or see past it. But the thickness of the wall determined how strong it was, and its resistance to someone trying to go straight through it. The thicker it was, the harder it was to break down.

What it came down to was a compromise. An Evo only had a certain amount of mental power dedicated to the security of their city, and that was split between the height and strength of their walls. The split was not always even. I could see, for example, although I couldn't even begin to know how, that Marco's wall, although roughly the same height as Charlotte's, was significantly thicker. From that, I could deduce that my Mentor was more powerful than my strawberry-blonde friend, albeit not by much.

The issue of scale that Marco was gawking at, was more than just the fact that my walls were several orders of magnitude higher and thicker than his. Just like I could, he was able to sense that the actual strength of my defenses was even greater than what he was looking at, thanks to the crisscrossing network of inner walls that he could feel, even if he couldn't actually see them. In terms of strength, I imagine it would be what the sailors in a single ancient Viking longboat would feel, if they were confronted by a full US carrier battle group.

It was simply beyond his ability to comprehend.

And yes, I was feeling more than a little smug about it.

"I... Um... That's... That's pretty impressive." He finally managed to say after more pensive silence than either of us was comfortable with.

"Wait til you see the view from the top" I smiled back.

"Oh, no, that won't be nec... Porca Puttana!!" A comical-sounding yelp fell from his lips as I clapped him on the shoulder and, as I had with Charlotte a few weeks earlier, simply willed us to the top of the walls. Marco's panicked expletive in his native Italian tongue was a lot more satisfying than I am willing to admit.

I couldn't tell you why, but I loved being on top of my walls. The view wasn't quite as breathtaking as it was from the balcony in my bunker. There were far higher points around the city, all of which were accessible. But to me, the top of the walls seemed to have that perfect balance of height and distance.; High enough to get the view, and far enough away from what I would call the center of my city, to be able to take in the full-scale of the metropolis, without having to move my head too much from side to side. The balcony, by contrast, was much higher, but you had to physically circle the monolithic building it was wrapped around to see all of the city. It lacked the panoramic perspective that I had, so far, only found on my walls. I had grown up on movies that always had that same scenic overlook of Los Angeles, taken from high up on Griffin Park, it was a view that reminded me of the one that was before me now.

I arched my back a little, sucking in a deep, refreshing lung full of air, frowning momentarily as a soft breeze whispered around the skin of my face. Of all the time I had spent in my city, I could never remember there ever having been wind before. I shrugged it off as something to think about later as I turned my attention back to Marco, who, I suddenly realized, didn't share my comfort at being this high up. He was clinging to one of the crenellations as if his life depended on it.

"Not.. err... Overly comfortable with heights?" I asked, with an arched eyebrow and a barely hidden smirk.

"I don't have much of a fear of heights," he coughed, as he made a valiant display of standing upright. "I do, however, have a pretty profound fear of the sky... and potentially falling out of it."

"Ah." I chuckled. "It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop when you hit the ground."

"Precisely" He nodded with a visible gulp. "Talking of being on the ground, would you mind?"

I chuckled and nodded, putting my hand back on his shoulder, and, with a single thought, we were suddenly a few miles away in one of the plazas. The markedly more relaxed Marco, with his feet now on solid ground, immediately started taking in his surroundings. Wandering aimlessly... and silently... around the plaza first, and then into the streets and tree-lined avenues that branched away from it. I followed behind quietly.

It was a very different experience from the one I had shared with Charlotte. A small smile crept onto my lips as I felt the ghost-like echo of her hand in mine as her eyes, as Marco's were doing now, followed the motes of light as they flashed by overhead. Zipping off to wherever motes of light zipped off to, to do whatever motes of lights did when they got there. He marveled at the statues of my major life events in the plazas - I silently reminded myself to keep him well-the-fuck away from the likeness of Charlotte on the other side of the city..He stopped, awe-struck and scratching his thick main of jet black hair, as he craned his neck to stare up at the enormous buildings that loomed over the street. As with any tall building, you have to be pretty far away from them to be able to appreciate the full size of them. But Marco didn't seem to let that stop him. Standing and staring for many long minutes as if trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

The main difference between Marco and Charlotte, however, was that of experience. If I understood Marco's role within the Conclave correctly, it was his job to awaken new members and then, eventually, help them to unlock their cities. That meant he had actually been inside a hell of a lot of them. Whereas Charlotte seemed awe-struck by the size and splendor of my metropolis, Marco just seemed oddly curious. As if nothing he was seeing was new, just a bit different... and a lot bigger. Charlotte had, for example, been utterly fascinated by the motes of light, going as far as trying to chase one to see where it went. Finally giving up after a few city blocks, before jokingly declaring that she didn't trust anything that could move that fast without an engine. Marco had watched them for a while, maybe even shown a little interest in them, and then went on about his business as if they weren't there. He had been infinitely more interested in the residential buildings and the statues in the plazas. He had even paid more attention to the trees lining the avenues, than he had to the things I would have thought he would have found more impressive. But either way, I let him wander in relative quiet.

Throughout the day, however, I started noticing a few oddities that I had never experienced with Charlotte. First, there was the wind. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that there simply hadn't been any on my previous visits. It's not like we were actually outside; we were literally in my head. Whereas my equivalent of the sun had the obvious function of providing light and warmth, the wind seemed disturbingly out of place. But what was more disconcerting was that the ghosts in my city, the spectral forms of various people who had made an impact on my life. Those who had helped shape my personality, would stop and watch Marco for a little while; a frown on their darkening faces, before begrudgingly being sent on their way by whatever forces governed their movements.

They had barely acknowledged Charlotte at all, and they rarely, if ever, seemed to pay any attention to me. They didn't seem hostile towards him, but it was more than simple curiosity. It was like they were... keeping an eye on him, for lack of a better term.It would have been impossible to bring it up to Marco without cluing him in to the fact that he wasn't the first person, other than me, to have wandered my city. I would normally have asked Jeeves, but that was another secret I wasn't quite willing to share yet either. For all I was supposed to know, that is how they would react to anyone. Flashes of the violently attacking crowds from the movie Inception kept popping into my mind, but for the time being, the ghosts seemed satisfied with just watching him, albeit suspiciously so.

I had let my mind wander as I followed behind Marco, letting him examine and wander as he needed. The dilation of time between my mind, and the real world, was something that I had started to grow accustomed to. Even going as far as being able to roughly estimate the amount of time I had spent in the mindscape. At a rate of one minute of real-world time translating to about forty-five minutes in my city and my bunker, I knew I had time to spare before having to get ready for my date with Olivia. Even so, I was beyond bored as the five real-world minute mark came and went, before Marco finally dropped himself onto a bench in a plaza, a few miles away from the one we had started in.

I glanced over at the statue, smiling to myself at the visage of myself in a hospital bed and Becky riding me frantically. Her face forever twisted in orgasmic pleasure, as my hands mauled her heavy breasts, her hair in the process of bouncing wildly around her shoulders, with her head tilted back to stare endlessly into the clear blue skies.

God, even her statue was beautiful.

"Your city is quite remarkable," Marco finally said after hours of silence. "In all my years of doing this, I have never seen anything quite like it."

"Really?" I replied, impressing even myself with the performance of faux surprise. "How so?"

"Well, for a starter, the size of it is much bigger than anything I have seen before, enormously so." His eyes continued to wander over the skyline in the distance. "And not just your defensive walls or the actual size of the city, but the individual buildings as well. You see," he went on when I simply frowned at him, gesturing for him to continue, "you have obviously worked out that each building has a function. The hospital for health, the library for the storage of knowledge, and so on. What you may not have realized, with no real point of comparison, is that those buildings are not usually located centrally in a normal person's city. Their distance from the city center, along with their size is dictated by their importance to that person's life. Yours are dotted around all over the place with no real pattern, and they are all sized as if they are the most important aspect of your character. In an unusual sort of way, that sort of makes sense for an adult. Having been fully developed and possessing a complete understanding of the relevant parts of yourself, would negate any function of their placement."

He paused for a moment, then continued,

"Children may not value a good work ethic, for example, so their foundries would grow over time. But by the time our kind reaches maturity, our cities are more or less the same as they will be for the rest of our lives. Barring something like, say, an accident or illness that would make the hospital more important, or a new profession that would require a lot more learning. Incidentally, this rigidity in our city structure is also why things like languages are a lot easier to learn when you are young."

"O..kay..." I said after a suitably long pause from him. "So, your city does not look like this?"

Marco laughed, "Not even close. Your city is much more... modern looking than mine. It's a difficult concept to explain, the way our cities look doesn't really have much of a function. A hospital that looks like it belongs in the middle ages, is no more or less effective than one that looks like yours. It's more to do with how you identify with the world around you."

I'm not going to pretend I was following, either. A position made perfectly clear by the look on my face.

Marco paused for a moment, trying to think of a way to put this into words. "Okay, firstly, do you remember when we were in the bunkers, I said that I couldn't see yours, that I could only see mine? Well cities are not like that, obviously, what you see is what i see. But the variations between cities are massive. I have seen people with cities that look like ancient Rome, Medieval London, Renaissance Milan, and Industrial New York. I have seen ones that look no different than the towns or villages that a person grew up in. One young lady, many years ago, had a city that looked like it was an Elven village sucked right out of Lord of the Rings."

"At first," He continued, "I thought that it was something to do with power levels. And although the size of a city and its buildings most certainly are illustrations of power. But what they physically look like is more a process of how your mind relates to the world. The era you were raised in has a big part to play in it, but even then, that's not all there is. So your city, for example, is not just modern; it is futuristic. I would imagine that is based largely on your work with computers. Always looking forward to the next thing you can design, or build, in the hopes of pushing progress forward. Your city's appearance is... and I know this isn't going to make much sense... is almost like your own subconscious's idea of how you would want a city to look like., But still heavily based on the realities that you cannot imagine being different. For example, I have noticed there doesn't seem to be any water here. I was born in the mountains; I didn't see the sea until I was an adult. So water, the ocean, always held a deep, almost reverent appeal for me, so there are canals and a lake in my city. I was brought up when the technology we take for granted today was nothing short of a miracle. To you, it would look almost archaic, but that is how I wanted a city to look when I was a child. You, being an adult, and having a better idea of where the world is going than I had when my city was formed.... Came up with this." he swept his arm around the plaza with a smile.

"So no big surprises then" I smiled, somewhat disappointed that he hadn't shared the same reaction as Charlotte.

"Oh God, plenty! Your walls are... shit, they are colossal! I have never seen anything even close to that before, nor have I seen internal defenses quite so elaborate. Your buildings are enormous, and although, in a few instances, I have seen one or two in an individual city that have come close. In terms of size, I have never seen a city where all of them are. And the ones that were large in others' cities, were often a result of some pretty serious childhood trauma. But what has surprised me most are those." He gestured behind me to one of the residential structures that line the street.

"Errr yes, it's an apartment building. I'm not following." That part was true. Not even Charlotte had known their function.

"Are you sure?" He smiled as if relishing the moment of finally getting to teach me something. "Then who lives there?"

I squinted for a moment, looking back at the building. As obvious as it suddenly seemed, that question had never even occurred to me.

"They are not apartment buildings," He grinned after I didn't answer. "I have only seen them a few times before, never that big and certainly not this many of them but They are what we call 'placeholders'... They represent your mind's ability to adapt, grow, and change." Both of us were staring at one of the non-descript buildings that, now that I thought about it, were everywhere in my city. They took up the vast majority of space within the sprawling metropolis. "It's an evolutionary trait that most of our species has lost over the eons, but the ability to adapt is one of the hallmarks of what our people call "The Sovereign Caste." he finished.

I blinked a few times, as much for my own benefit as for his. "You are going to have to run that by me again."

Over the course of the next hour or so, Marco told me about the Conclave. Things I mostly already knew after my time with Charlotte. Having heard about their organization from a member of a group opposed to them. It surprised me to find that Marco's account of the Conclave's history matched, pretty much exactly, with Charlotte's. My strawberry-blonde friend had neither embellished nor underplayed anything. There were a few details that, given the Sect's split from the Conclave, she probably wasn't aware of. But for the most part, their stories matched. What was equally surprising, was that Marco seemed to be completely honest about the Sect too. The impression he gave off when talking about them, was not one of hostility or mistrust, but something akin to regret. The split had happened before his time, despite his immense age, but it was like he was carrying around the collective grief at the loss of their members from the rest of the Conclave.

I honestly expected, as I had seen countless times during my 'human' life, for one side to blame or villainize the other. But it was as if neither of them even bothered with trying. They gave the facts of what happened without seeming to have any sort of prejudice or bias... It wasn't only surprising, it was oddly refreshing.

What he told me, that Charlotte apparently wasn't aware of, was the changes in the Conclave's political structure that came about as a result of the Schism. The Archon, the leader of the Conclave, was redefined as a position that would be served for life. The constant changing of this post when someone more powerful was brought in - along with the corresponding shifts in political focus - had been blamed for a lot of the inner-political turmoil that was ultimately held liable for the schism. A new Archon was anonymously voted in by the members of the next three ranks below it. This was done after the rules had been changed, ruling out the possibility that this law had been altered for the gain of one person. The Sovereign Caste, as he had called it, was the name given to the Newly established rank immediately below the Archon. All of whom were actually more powerful than the man himself, and would have replaced him under the old rules.

The Archon, a man simply known as Thomas, had made his share of political enemies in the early days of his reign, by insisting on a policy of peaceful co-existence with the Sect. A few of the lower-ranked members, feeling a deep sense of betrayal, had simply chosen to ignore him. A rogue faction within the Conclave, including the former Archon, had taken it upon themselves to go to war with the Sect, and had hunted them down with ruthless and merciless zeal.

This part, although from a significantly different perspective, tied into what Charlotte had told me about the Conclave viciously attacking the Sect in the years after the Schism. She and her people had assumed that the end of that war had come about due to Inquisitor attacks on the Conclave. Although this was partially true, the reality; at least according to Marco, was that this rogue faction was stamped out with a measure of overwhelmingly violent force, a force that the organization had never used against its own members. Killing one of their own was against the highest of all laws, and despite the members of the Sect having left the Conclave, they were still members of the same species. This faction, in the eyes of the rest of the Conclave, were serial murderers, and an imminent threat to the survival of the species. They were treated as such.

In a time when the death penalty was still used in almost every country on earth. Each and every single member of this rogue faction was ruthlessly hunted down, captured, drained of their powers, and then executed.

Marco spoke about the Sect in the same way someone would talk about a family member you had argued with; you may be hurt, you may be disappointed, you may feel let down, but they were still family. Even though he hadn't even been born at the time of the schism, it was as if he held the collective sorrow and regret for the loss of former brothers and sisters within him. Which, in a manner of speaking, was exactly the case.

"But anyway..." He finished with what looked to be a genuinely sorrowful smile. "The political realities are what they are, as much as many of my brethren would like to change that. As for you, I can guarantee that your acceptance into the Conclave, given the power of your abilities, is pretty much a no-brainer if you wish to join us."

"Wait... If? I got the impression that after your help in awakening me that it was expected I would join, that you were doing this as a means to recruit me," I replied with a confused frown.

"Yes, back in the old days, before the new rules, you would have been right." He smiled, "but the awakening and your training have nothing to do with recruitment. Of course, we would be more than happy to have you join."

"So... why then?"

"Why have we helped you?" He asked, waiting for me to nod before answering. "That goes back to the threats I warned you about before. Normally we don't talk about things like self-defense for a few more meetings, due to a child's age and the stress that these processes can inflict on a young mind. But again, we can speed that part up and deal with that during your next lesson. But to answer your question, we aren't able to reach and awaken as many of our kind as we would like. Those who are not reached, or those who choose not to join us, are more or less defenseless if they are attacked. After suffering too many losses over the years, it was decided that we would give as many of our people a fighting chance as possible."

"I see," I said slowly, pondering his answer. I had to admit, this was not the Conclave I had come to expect after talking to Charlotte. I was more than a little intrigued. "So, what now?"

"Well, that's simple. I will step up your training. I will come back in a few weeks to talk you through things like intraspecies communication...." I frowned at that, prompting him to clarify. "How we exchange knowledge and memories with each other without violating things like privacy."

"Ah, okay... Go on."

"After that, maybe during the same session, we will start talking about self-defense and combat. That will last a while, though, even with your age, that is a skill that our members spend decades of their lives honing. Then, depending on if you have joined the Conclave, your training will revolve largely around your position."

"I feel like you are beating around a very large bush here, Marco," I said with an arched eyebrow after he had finished.

He laughed to himself, that infectious, beaming, disarming smile was as bright in my city as it had been in the hospital all that time ago. "Fair point. You want to know if I am going to offer you a place in the Conclave. I am not sure you are in much of a position to make that decision yet, though. Most of us are awakened and start our training before we are teenagers, then are offered positions in the Conclave when we become adults. Obviously, you're already an adult..."

"So I'm told," I interjected with a smile.

Another laugh spilled from his chest. "That clearly changes a lot, but..." He paused and thought for a moment, his eyes wandering back over the skyline of my city, before finally coming to some kind of a decision. "I'll tell you what," He offered. "Most recruits, by the time it comes to make their decision, have grown up around, or at least with a fair amount of involvement with, the Conclave. They know quite a few people there, it helps inform their decision for good or for ill. In many cases, including mine, those people form something of a second family, but that is something that may be lost with your accelerated timeline."

"I feel the overwhelming urge to wait for a 'but'"

"But... We do have one of our quarterly gatherings not too far from here in a week's time. All the members and older recruits in this part of the country come for a little get-together. Nothing formal, just an excuse to socialize and catch up with friends outside the more rigid inner structure of the Conclave. Why don't you come along, meet a few of the locals, and see how you feel then?"

"Yeah," I said after a few moment's thought. "That sounds like something I would be interested in. Send me the details, and I will make a point to come."

"Excellent." He beamed, clapping his hands together excitedly. "For now, though, I think our time is up...." He took one last long look around the city. "Truly remarkable," he smiled to himself. Before existence faded away around us, and I found myself staring at him across the kitchen counter, before he said his goodbyes and promptly left, a beaming smile on his face.

The five or so hours in the mindscape had taken less than ten minutes in the real world.

I chuckled to myself and got on with some chores, while I waited for an appropriate time to start getting ready.

************

It had been arranged, earlier in the week, that my date with Olivia wouldn't exactly be a one-on-one situation. Knowing that neither Jimmy, nor any of her friends - who had apparently known about her crush on me before even Jimmy had noticed - would ever let us go alone. So we were going to make it a group thing. She would arrive with her friends, and I would arrive with mine, and at some point in the night, they would leave us alone to talk without making things too awkward. Not only did that take into account my pre-accident shyness, which she had no real way of knowing was a thing of the past. But it also accounted for the fact that our friends were going to, 'accidentally' and conveniently, show up whether we wanted them to or not. So we decided to just invite them along and see what happened. With my apartment upstairs, and hers just down the road, plus the fact that she had a car, there were places for us to go if we wanted somewhere quieter.

What I didn't know, or had somehow overlooked, was that tonight was themed karaoke night in the Queen's head.

I should mention here that my musical tastes are about as eclectic as they come. Although music would never be as important to me as it would be to, say, someone who worked in the music industry, it had over the years grown into one of the few constants in my life. Music was almost always on in the background in my apartment. There was often something playing in my bunker, and the moments of silence when music wasn't being played just felt... Odd. I also liked more or less all of it, all genres that weren't named after a building anyway, House, Garage, Kitchen, whatever... that isn't music. It is noise to a beat. Heavy Metal I could take or leave, I didn't mind it, if it was on, but never enjoyed it enough to go out of my way to put it on. Everything else was fair game, from country to pop, from Rock to Rap, from RnB to Classical, I would listen to it all. In fact, my knowledge of music was second only to my knowledge of computers.

Themed Karaoke night in the Head was always a popular night. Normal Karaoke nights were every week, but once a month, the management added a theme... and the themes were as random as the management could make them. They'd had gender-bender nights, where you were only allowed to sing songs released by artists of the opposite sex to your own. They had had 60s nights, fancy dress nights (where your drinks were free if you dressed as an artist and sang one of their songs), they'd had group nights, rock nights and guilty pleasure nights, and that was only to name a few. Regardless of the theme, the crowds came out in their droves. The Queen's head was usually filled to capacity long before the performances started. And could easily stay open much later than they did if their license allowed it. But from 8:00 in the evening until 2:00 in the morning, it was the best night out for miles.

Of course, Jimmy was running late.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. I had arranged to meet Olivia at 8:00, so when I knocked on Jimmy's door at 7:30, I had been met by the sounds of some pretty frantic, breathless, and heated amorous moans coming from the other side... plus the unmistakable sound of the sofa springs creaking...

Note to self, don't sit there again.

Knocking a little harder on the door had been answered by the increasingly high-pitched squeals from Lori, shouting more and more urgently, "We're coming, oh fuck, we're coming!!"

I didn't hold out much hope that she meant it the way I would have liked. That was confirmed a few moments later when the panting and groaning started back up again. I retreated back into my apartment to wait for them.

It was 8:15 before we actually made it into the bar.

I have never been particularly fashion-conscious. I couldn't tell the difference between one designer label and another if they were laid out in front of me. My ethos when it came to getting dressed in the morning was that my clothes were clean, they fit, and they didn't make me look like an idiot, so they'd do. As much as I liked computer games and music, I had never in my life been tempted to buy the merch. Having something plastered across my chest announcing that I was a fan of one game or another, or a certain band, was a concept that just didn't resonate with me.

Jimmy, for example, had dozens of them; even now, as we walked into the bar, he was wearing a black t-shirt with Metallica scrawled across the front of it. Although I considered their music a modern form of poetry, following his lead was just something that I didn't do. It wasn't through some pretentious moral stance about consumerism, or anything as noble as that. It had always simply been about money. Those things were expensive, and I could buy 5 or 6 plain or non-branded shirts for the same price.

However, in an enormous break with tradition, I was not the one who was massively mis-dressed for the occasion. Apparently, nobody had told Jimmy that the theme for this Karaoke night was country music. I, on the other hand, was dressed in faded blue jeans I'd had for years and a plain white button-down shirt. Hardly what could be considered Country to the world of fancy dress, but for once, I was doing better than my sheepish-looking friend.

Whereas most of the guys were dressed in a checkered-shirted version of my outfit. Every girl was dressed as some form of cowgirl, ranging from pink and sparkly to downright slutty. There was a sea of fluffy and frilly cowboy hats, tied-up shirts, and crop tops. In the interest of being honest, I can say that my eyes had happily wandered around the plethora of denim booty shorts, knee-high leather boots, and otherwise bare legs long before I started scanning the crowds for Olivia.

Bob, Jimmy's uncle, the owner of the bar who had gifted us the loft apartments at a fraction of their normal rent, and mastermind of the themed karaoke night concept, looked over his navel-high mahogany bar, grinned at me and plopped a brown leather stetson onto my head.

I flicked the rim with a chuckle "Much obliged, partn'r. Three of the usual, please." I looked over to Lori, watching her scrunching her eyes up, clearly not knowing what a 'usual' was. Jimmy looked uncharacteristically self-consciously around the room, tugging uneasily at the hem of his shirt. Jimmy was significantly more fashion-conscious than I was. Luckily, he was distracted by the arrival of his Uncle and our drinks.

"Three large vodkas with just enough coke in them to not make you look like alcoholics," Bob announced with a grin. He batted away the payment I tried to make. The man had never accepted payment for a drink from either Jimmy or me in the entire time I'd known him. "Now, go find a seat while you still have a chance, and Jimmy?" He looked over at his nephew. "It's country night. You look like a twat"

"Cheers Unc!" Jimmy snorted. "I feel better already."

Laughing, we headed over and nabbed one of the last remaining tables with a decent view of the stage. Say what you will about karaoke nights, love them or hate them, there is no denying that they are a spectator sport. Tara, the large woman in her late 40s, was already expertly stirring the crowd up in her role as DJ. She had been running the Karaoke nights at the Head for years. Once something of a local celebrity, she had hung up her microphone and started her little DJ side business, which over the years had evolved into karaoke. She was a big lady with a big personality and a big heart. Easily one of the nicest people I knew, but what was truly extraordinary about her was her big voice. At any time the sacrifices to the karaoke gods were a little thin, she would wow the crowds by singing herself.

There is always an element of luck in becoming a signed musician, and she had never found hers. But with a voice that could easily match the likes of Aretha Franklin and Mariah Carey, if not outdo them; the only imaginable reason I could think of to explain why she had never 'made it big' was that she had simply never been spotted. But dear God! As she started blasting out the first verse of Elkie Brooks' Pearl's a Singer, the hairs on my arms stood on end, and the crowd started cheering wildly.

I still hadn't spotted Olivia. My focus was no longer on the plethora of barely concealed derrieres in the room, but was instead, actively looking for her. The size of the crowd, the vast majority of which were standing, was not helping. I could safely say she was not one of the patrons on their feet, but well over half of the tables were hidden behind the party-goers who were. I was about to take a convenient trip to the bathroom, an excuse to have a look at some of the hidden tables to see if she was at any of them. But with Tara reaching the climax towards the end of her song, the crowds around me started jumping to their feet to cheer on the woman on stage. One face in the sea of jumping bodies immediately caught my eye.

I didn't know her name, and it took my perfect recall a few moments to place where I knew her from, but I suddenly recognized the bouncing blonde on the far side of the room as one of Olivia's friends, who had been with her in this very bar the last time I had seen her. If she was there, so was Olivia. I stood and started to make my way over toward them.

Something made me stop, I froze, watching as the blonde spoke to another friend, laughed a little, and made her way through the crowds and up to Tara, handing her a small slip of paper.

I am not even going to pretend to know what made me stop and watch. Even now, I couldn't begin to understand the process in my head that told me it was a good idea to just sit down and wait. But that is what I did. Taking a long sip of my glass and unequivocally ignoring Jimmy and Lori fawning over each other, I sat back and watched the show.

"And next up, we have Spenser!!" Tara announced through the mic to the cheering, applauding crowds. A minute or so later, a tall guy in a blue checkered shirt hopped up onto the stage to the cheers of a table somewhere to my right. Taking the mic from Tara, he started bouncing on the spot as the first few bars to Luke Combs' Beer never broke my heart. To the guy's credit, he was pretty good. A decent amount of alcohol in his system had robbed him of the stage fright that seemed to hamper so many of the performances. By the time he had reached the end of the song, the crowd was supportively clapping and singing along... Thanks to the overhead projector that was displaying the karaoke screen onto a hanging projection screen behind the stage. His voice, although not able to match the power and smoothness of the song's original artist, did a pretty decent job of hitting all the right notes, and he didn't seem like he needed to use the screen for most of the lyrics either. The man was obviously a genuine fan. He finished with a comical, flourishing bow and then hopped off the stage, heading back over to his rapturously cheering table through a sea of slapped backs and shouted congratulations.

"Alright! Give it up for Spenser!!" Tara yelled into the Mic, eliciting another round of applause from the crowd. "I think that one deserves a free drink. Whadya think, Bob?" she grinned across the room as every eye in the place turned to face Bob. Bob flipped her the bird with a smirk, causing a wave of laughter to erupt from his patrons. "There we are, Spence," Tara laughed, "I tried. Now, trying to follow that amazing performance, we have..." she looked down at the slip of paper. "...Olivia!!"

The crowd went wild again, especially the screaming cheers of her friends who were on their feet applauding encouragingly, as the object of my desires headed to the stage from her seat. My eyes immediately locked on her. She was just as exquisite as I remembered.

Those dark brown locks with caramel highlights streaked through those loose waves, reflecting the colored lights flashing around the stage. Olivia with a radiant smile on her face took Tara's hand and was helped to step up to the stage. Her jeans, just like the last time I saw her, looked like they had been painted on. The only other way they could have possibly been put on was to melt her and pour her into them. Above that was a red and black lumberjack shirt, unbuttoned and open around her generous cleavage, provocatively tied across her belly button, with just the slightest hints of a black bra beneath it. A white, fur-lined plastic-looking cowboy hat hung off her back with the cord around her neck.

Both Jimmy and Lori looked over to me, Jimmy smiling widely and Lori mouthing the word "wow" to me, before I turned my attention back to the stage.

If, as I suspected, she still thought I was the shy, unassuming guy she had teased in this very bar only a few months earlier. Then this outfit was chosen, knowing exactly what it would have done to the old me.

The music started playing, the first few bars of the intro sparking a recognition in my mind as I realized what song she was going to be singing: Jo Dee Messina's Heads Carolina, Tails California, a slow smile stretched across my face, as an idea formed in my head.

It was time to introduce Olivia to the new me.

By the time Olivia brought the Mic up to her lips, she had the attention of almost everyone in the room, as her hips swung in time with the rhythm and she did a hair flick worthy of Rita Hayworth. By the time she had made it to the first chorus, her table of friends had emptied themselves onto the dance floor which separated the stage from the crowds and tables. For most of the time up until now, her attention had been on her girlfriends, bouncing and dancing in front of her. But as she settled into her groove, finding her confidence, her eyes started to wander over the crowds... looking for me. A simple thought made sure she wouldn't spot us. I had a surprise waiting for her. Although I felt that momentary pang of sadness in her stomach at not finding me watching, I knew it would be worth it.

I don't know why it surprised me so much, but she was good.

She was very, very good.

Heads Carolina, Tails California

Somewhere greener, Somewhere warmer

Up in the mountains, down by the ocean

Where? It don't matter

'Long as we're going

Somewhere together,

I've got a quarter

Heads Carolina, Tails California

With her hips, and now her shoulders, both still swaying in time with the rhythm guitar in the background, she had the undivided attention of the entire bar. Even Bob had taken a pause in pouring drinks to watch. The vast majority of the crowd was clapping along to the beat, as she effortlessly navigated the second verse.

A few hopeful guys had pulled themselves onto the floor with her friends. Doing their best to dance along with the group of girls who, under normal circumstances, were already a reason to get up and make a fool of themselves. But they weren't there to flirt or pick up guys, although that may happen later. Right now they were cheering on their friend, whose singing had captivated the audience, and whose hair was doing that same thing with the flashing neon lights that had enthralled me the last time I had seen her.

The second verse came and went. Olivia was halfway through the bridge when a simple mental command pulled Tara's eyes to mine. She hadn't seen me since the accident either, and her eyes wrinkled with a genuine smile as she waved. After smiling and waving back, I pointed to my own chest and then to the stage.

Taras's eyes widened. She had been teasing me to get on stage to sing for as long as I had known her, but even when blind drunk, she had never been successful. She held her hand in a fist to her face, miming holding a mic, and mouthed the word "you?" across the room to me. I nodded and flashed my eyebrows with another smile. Tara pursed her lips into a mouthed "oooh" and rubbed her hands together excitedly. She flashed a look down at the slips of paper before coming back to me, drawing a lowercase N in the air with a finger and raising her eyebrows at me, asking if I wanted to go next.

I shook my head, lifting up one finger, and then mimicking her N back to her, replying through sign that I wanted her to put me in after the next singer had finished. She grinned excitedly and nodded before turning her attention back to Olivia, as the last chorus came to an end, and the song approached those long held notes at its climax. I turned to look at Jimmy and Lori, who had stopped their fawning to watch Olivia, only to see the entire exchange between Tara and me. Jimmy's jaw was practically resting on the table, Lori was grinning maniacally. At least one of them approved of my plan. I smiled at Jimmy and winked. "Go big, or go home!"

"I've created a monster!" He shouted back over the music to the giggles of his paramour.

We were interrupted by the end of Olivia's song as the entire bar exploded into almost riotous applause. If that Spenser guy before her had thought he had received a good response to his performance; he was quickly corrected when he was shown how the Queen's Head properly applauded an act that had impressed them. Almost every table was on their feet, and with no chance of her spotting us now, even without my mental commands, our table did the same. Whereas Spenser had bowed and relished in the attention of the room, Olivia covered her mouth with her hand, giggling from the adrenaline coursing through her. She gave a shy - and adorable - little wave to the crowd, before stepping off the stage into the waiting arms of her friends. All of whom wrapped her up in a celebratory hug, unceremoniously ignoring the guys who had joined them, and dragged her back to their table.

Tara gave me a look, wiggling her eyebrows. I just shook my head with another smile before she picked up the mic. "Well Fuck me, Olivia, with a performance like that, you should be here every week! Ladies and Gentlemen... and Bob... Give it up for Olivia!" The Crowd went wild again. Another resounding cheer and another thunderous round of applause echoed around the room. Olivia herself had been swallowed up by the sea of people, so I couldn't see her reaction as Tara picked up another slip of paper. "Okay, Matthew, Bon Jovi is not a country singer. Better luck next time. That means next up is..." she paused as she rifled through the offerings. "...Gavin!!"

Gavin, a wispy-haired guy who looked to be the cruel recipient of some early-age male pattern baldness, seemed to benefit from the crowds' euphoria over Olivia with his welcome to the stage. Kenny Rogers' The Gambler warbled out of the speakers as Tara glanced excitedly back across the room to me. I held a finger to my lips, telling her not to announce me as she had just done to Gavin. I wanted this to be a surprise, and she got the message, flashing a wink back to me and nodding.

Gavin was, well, he wasn't bad. He just lacked the confidence to really carry the song. The irony of my thinking that way, considering he had the balls to get up there at all; something that I would never have done in a thousand years, until recently, was not lost on me. It took the rest of the crowd coming to his aid, singing along with the chorus, for him to find his groove.

It had always sort of surprised me how supportive the crowd could be. I assumed it was due to them taking the same stance on singers as I had. It took guts to get up there, singing was not easy, and singing to a crowd was even harder. Despite the actual people in the crowd changing from one week to another, they were never anything less than appreciative of anyone who chose to sacrifice themselves to the karaoke gods. As far as I was aware, only one person had ever been booed. A drunken jock frat boy type, who had changed the words of Good Charlotte's The Anthem, into a song sung by soccer fans. The new words were wildly offensive at best, downright racist and misogynistic at worst. The crowd had not seen the funny side.

The guy in question had been back a few times since then, and had put his name down to sing again each time. But Tara flatly refused to call him up. When he had complained about it, Tara, a woman more than capable of looking after herself, had called him an immature little prick; and told him that if he didn't like it, he could call the DILLIGAF hotline. He had made something of a scene before Bob, far from what you would call a small man, had very un-gently tossed the guy out by the scruff of his neck. I had pulled her aside later and asked what that meant.

"Dilligaf," she had said with a smirk. "D.I.L.L.I.G.A.F... Does it look like I give a fuck"

I promptly bought that woman a drink.

Finally, Gavin finished his song, stepping off the stage to a round of applause that only seemed muted because of the appreciation shown to the act before him. Nonetheless, he received the customary slaps on the back and handshakes as he wandered back to his table. A girl hopped up from it and gave him a searing kiss, which probably made him forget where he was, let alone forget the lack of confidence in his performance.

"Alright, Gavin!!" Tara yelled into the mic to another round of applause. "It's never easy getting up, especially for your first time, and you did great. You are welcome on my stage anytime you like, my good man!" The crowd applauded again as Gavin sheepishly raised his bottle to her from his seat. "Okay, now this next performer is someone I have been trying to drag on stage for aaaaages." She grinned, her eyes fixed on me. "C'mon up, handsome!"

I flicked a glance at my two friends, Jimmy still grinning like an idiot as Lori winked. "Knock 'em dead, stud." She slapped my ass as I stood to the chuckles of the people around us who had realized Tara was talking about me. In the few seconds it had taken me to walk from our table to the stage, I had made the startling realization that I couldn't actually sing. Of course, a quick trip into my bunker changed that and by the time I hoisted myself up the knee-high step and whispered my song choice into Tara's ear, I could not only hold a tune but had the silky smooth singing voice, the power and vocal range to pull this off. I even added a little gravel to my voice, just something to have a little more effect on the panties of every girl watching. I had almost forgotten about the effect my powers were having on the female portion of the room, until a distinctly feminine wolf-whistle sounded from somewhere towards the back.

I cast a quick look over toward Olivia's table. Her back was to me, and she was in the middle of a conversation with one of her friends, meaning she hadn't actually seen me yet... Perfect... One of her other friends had though, and unexpectedly - to my mind, at least - recognized me. She was about to tap Olivia on the shoulder when I brought my finger to my lips again and winked at her. She grinned wickedly, nodding and dropping her hand, immediately starting to fidget excitedly in her seat as she watched. This whole setup couldn't have gone any better if I had scripted it.

Being a tribute to the song that Olivia had performed, Cole Swindell's She had me at heads Carolina seemed fated for this moment. Not only did the lyrics almost exactly match what had happened so far tonight. But the opening few bars of the song were pretty much identical to Jo Dee Messina's version. So much so, that a smile was forced onto my lips as Oliva frowned, hearing the song and thinking, briefly, that someone else was performing the same song she had, before turning round. Her eyes widened in surprise as she finally saw me on stage.... Looking straight at her.

"I was out with the boys, catchin' up in a neon light

Didn't know 'til we walked in, that it was karaoke night"

Her face lit up as she realized what was happening. A smile more radiant than anything that I had seen from her before that moment lit her face as her friends started cheering and clapping, a few of them giving her excited little nudges. As my smooth yet slightly gravelly voice flowed out of the speakers in near perfect tune, thanks entirely to the internal editing station of my bunker, she turned herself around to face me properly... her entire, undivided attention on me. That thought alone was enough to have me scurrying back into my shell a few months earlier... Not anymore

"She was in a circle of girls, chasing a shot with a lime

She was laughing, they were daring her to get on the mic

One of them walked up and turned in her name

The next thing I knew, she was up on the stage

By the time the first few lines of the chorus had arrived, almost everyone in the bar knew what was happening. Olivia's friends dragged her out of her seat and towards the dance floor. Lori had done the same to Jimmy. In the space of a few short lines, a small but quickly growing crowd had formed on the dance floor. Front and center, that stunning, shocked smile still on her face, was Olivia.

Singing "Heads Carolina, tails California"

Maybe she'd fall for a boy from South Georgia

She's got the bar in the palm of her hand

Cause she's a '90s country fan, like I am

Tara, beaming like a giddy schoolgirl, had caught on before anyone else, knowing from the moment I whispered the song's title into her ear. With just as much control over the lights flashing from the gantry above, as she had over the music blasting from the speakers, her time was impeccable. The lights exploded into an energetic, flashing pattern, perfectly in time with the crescendo of the chorus.

Hey, I got a Chevy, she can flip a quarter

I'd drive her anywhere from here to California

When this song is over, I gotta find her

'Cause she had me at "Heads Carolina"

The flashing lights seemed to snap Olivia out of her daze as the crowd behind and around her erupted into cheers. The throng of people on the hardwood floor started to bounce along with the music as I, quite literally, sang to her. What was most surprising was that my mental abilities had nothing to do with any of that. All I had changed was my voice. One of Olivia's friends grabbed her, spinning her around and twirling her into another of her friends, both of them swaying and swinging their hips with the beat as her smile erupted into excited, exhilarated laughter, and she joined in with her friends, dancing, bouncing and swaying her body around the dance floor. But not once, not for a single moment, did she stop looking up at me.

She was pretty sure she had just fallen a little bit in love.

By the time the second verse was over, and the next chorus exploded through the speakers, the entire bar was on its feet. Olivia and her friends, along with Jimmy, Lori, and a whole crowd of strangers, were going wild on the dance floor. The rest of Head's patrons were cheering as loudly and as rapturously as any act had ever received in the long years that this night had been running. Even Bob was leaning against the back bar, watching the show with one of his trademark smiles on his face, letting his staff deal with the few customers who were ordering drinks. Even those people were only partially paying attention to the transaction with the show going on behind them.

The instrumental led into the bridge, which finally led into the last chorus. With perfect timing - and possibly with the smallest of mental nudges - one of her friends pushed Olivia toward the stage, just in time for me to reach out my hand and pull her up with me. I pulled her in tight, my free hand on the small of her back, her chest, her hips, and her thighs pressed back into me as her arms wrapped around my neck. Our eyes fixed on each other as I sang the last part of the last chorus to her.

When this song is over, I gotta find her

'Cause she had me at "Heads Carolina"

And with that, and the final instrumental resounding around the room from the speakers, I closed the last remaining distance between us and kissed her. It was deep, it was passionate, it was everything that either of us had ever imagined...and more. The crowd went wild, cheering and applauding, whooping and whistling, seemingly celebrating the moment with us. With the kiss broken, the beauty in my arms threw her head back, laughing giddily, one hand covering her mouth, before I spun us both to face the room... and we bowed.

We were most of the way back to the table that Jimmy and one of Olivia's friends had managed to make out of pushing two other ones together when Tara got back on the mic. "Well, shit... I'd hate to be the act following that!" She laughed with the crowd. "Not that I have to say it, but give it up for Pete!! And no, handsome, there is no fucking way that you are not getting that cute ass up here every damned week!!... Now..." she grinned wickedly. "Matthew, for trying to choose Bon Jovi on Country night, you're up next, and if you don't have a new idea, you, my boy, are singing Patsy Cline!"

The ripples of laughter were just starting to die down when the hulking figure of Uncle Bob loomed over the table. Placing a tray with enough "usuals" to go around on the table before clapping me on the back with a nod. One that could almost be called proud. He then picked the stetson off my head, dropped it onto Olivia's and, without saying a word, headed back to the bar.

Strictly speaking, a "usual" wasn't something that could be called legal. In simple terms, it was vodka and coke, with no ice - I never trusted ice, I had heard about what it had done to the Titanic. However, in the UK, the amount of vodka that could be put into a single glass was actually codified into law. It was, and is still, called the 'weights and measures act.' That law dictates that a single shot is 25ml, and a double is 50ml. Although a 75ml shot was not technically against the act, anything more than that certainly was.

There was significantly more than 75ml in these drinks.

The coke was barely more than coloring and flavoring. It was not an easy beverage to drink, there was a significant amount of burn, and that cringe on the faces of everyone around the table as we all took a sip at the same time wouldn't have looked out of place in a comedy sketch. It would surprise nobody to learn that this particular concoction was one of Jimmy's inventions.

Olivia was leaning very obviously against my side, immediately and undisputedly claiming the seat next to me after we had returned from the stage. Her hand was holding mine, which was, in turn, resting on the skin-tight denim covering her leg. Her thumb was stroking affectionately over the back of my hand. while my fingers were gently and affectionately stroking her thigh. There was a fair amount of affectionate stroking going on

The table, and the group around it, were still buzzing over what had happened. The 'usuals' added significantly to the speed at which that buzz was growing. Olivia's friends oohing and aahing about how romantic the gesture was, how well we both sang, and the downright poetry of the whole evening. Olivia was making no attempt to be subtle in her agreement. Lori was nodding along with them, seeming to find a new friend in the blonde girl who had submitted Olivia's name to Tara. Jimmy was grinning from ear to ear, muttering something about the student surpassing the master. I was enjoying my drink.

Well, as much as you could enjoy a drink that tasted like mildly flavored paint thinner.

"So..." Jimmy grinned, "He sings."

"And he's pretty good, too," Lori added.

"Not bad looking either." One of Olivia's friends chimed in.

"Nah, he's always looked like that." A different friend added. "Livy and I agreed he was cute way back last year."

"Then why didn't you make a move?" Jimmy asked, smirking as if he already knew the answer

"Cause I called dibs," Olivia, Livy, answered smugly, her hand squeezing onto mine. "Just had to break him out of his shell a little first."

"That was a pretty thick shell." Jimmy nodded, his face looking like it would crack open with that smile. "And all it took was a car, a tree, a near-death experience, and a miraculous recovery. You'd better make sure the wait was worth it, dude." He finished with a laugh

Olivia pressed herself even tighter to my arm, so tight I could feel the swell of her breasts pressing into my bicep. "Oh, he's going to be dragged upstairs and will be showing me soon enough." She almost purred into my ear. "That must have been the most spectacular shell breaking in history"

"And sooooooo romantic," Lori added, leaning against Jimmy.

"Lucky bitch," her second friend teased as she sipped from her glass, pulling a fit of giggles from all the other girls at the table.

"It's okay," Livvy purred a little louder into my ear as if I was the only one she was talking to, even though she was definitely speaking loud enough for her friend to hear. "I don't mind sharing. You only go to college once."

I couldn't tell if this was another attempt at teasing me into my shyness again or not, but I decided I was not going to back down now. "Well, I told you I was getting back into the saddle."

"Or be the saddle." The first friend replied. "Livvy here likes to be the one riding."

"We shall see." I smirked, "You know the saying: Save a horse, ride a cowboy." I added a squeeze of my own to Olivia's thigh, letting her know that this was all a lot more than talk. She shivered in response, taking a long draw of her drink, a blush spreading over her cheeks as her friends giggled even louder.

"Holy shit, you two are going to fuck each other to death!" Lori grinned

"Lucky Bitch." The second friend added again.

Another round of giggles erupted from the table as Livvy shrugged, putting her drink down. "Well, there are definitely worse ways to go. Now, Pete and I are going to go get that alone time that you all promised." She stood up, still holding my hand and giving it a tug to pull me to my feet.

"If I don't see you in the morning, I'm sending a search party." Jimmy laughed as I slipped my arm around Olivia and turned her towards the bar and the stairs to the lofts.

"No, you won't. I have put locks on the doors." I grinned back over my shoulder as I led Olivia away to the cheers of the table.

"Don't forget we have class tomorrow," He called after us.

"I have a feeling he is going to be calling in sick," Olivia shouted back. "I doubt he will be able to even get out of bed before midday."

The whole group turned and looked at the second friend, who was giggling into her glass. "What? I'm not going to say it again. I'll look crazy!"

************

By the time we made it upstairs, I was aching. I had been slapped on my back, had my hand shaken almost violently, and turned down more offers for drinks in that single walk through the bar than during every other night of my life combined. More than a few girls looked enviously at Olivia as we headed to the stairs and left the bar.

I slipped my key into the door and twisted it, giving the door a shove before leading Olivia inside. She was still clinging onto me, hanging off me as if letting me go risked making the whole night evaporate into a dream. Her face, however, was beaming. I spun her around to face me as I kicked the door closed. Her mind was singing, a whirlwind of emotions and a kaleidoscope of bright anticipation, that made her whole body almost vibrate with excitement. Her lips were on mine before I had even clicked the lock. The kiss was deep and fierce, hungry and urgent; there was intent behind it that not even I would have been able to miss back before my abilities.

Every part of her pressed against me; her lips, her cheeks, her heaving breasts, her thighs, and her denim-covered mound ground needily into the tenting bulge of my cock. Soft yet urgent mewls escaped her lips, and the sounds of our heavy, wanton breaths filled the gaps between the wet smacks of our lips. Our arms were wrapped around each other tightly; hers hanging off my shoulders and draped around my neck, tangled in my hair, mine dangerously low on the small of her back, resting on the curve of the top of her ass, as she pressed it hungrily forwards to grind herself against me.

As one, we broke the kiss. Our eyes gazed into each other with an unspoken yet perfectly understood look of mutual desire. No words were needed, nothing in the mortal languages could come close to articulating the inevitability of us being here, nor the burning, shameless yearning we were feeling for each other. There was a pregnant, intent-filled pause, our eyes locked together, both of us knowing exactly what the other wanted, as our hands began to move.

I had made a point, until now, of staying out of Olivia's mind. I wanted this to be as natural as possible. I wanted to see how much of the real me she wanted, but my resolve crumbled as I held those gorgeous eyes. I delved into her mind. I had already made sure that she wasn't affected by the panty-wetting attraction I had applied to everyone else. She didn't swoon just by looking at me - at least, she didn't swoon any more than she would have done before my powers. But for reasons that were completely incomprehensible to me, Livvy was genuinely chomping at the bit to get her hands on me.

Mine was not the best-looking face she had ever laid eyes on, but it was far from the worst. My body was toned and sculpted. Probably - she thought - as a result of long hours of physical therapy after that accident which came painfully close to robbing her of me. Yet the body pressed against hers was not the muscle-bound behemoth of a man who spent more time in a gym than was healthy. But it was my mind, my personality, that had drawn her to me all those months ago. I had been fairly drunk on that first night, the shyness that seemed to endear her to me even more, had slipped, and I had made her laugh more than any three people ever had. A mix of wit, intelligence, and self-deprecation, had shown her the character of a man who was the perfect mix between charm, intensity, and someone who didn't take themselves too seriously.

I had been in the minds of dozens of human women over the months, maybe hundreds of them. But there was something different about Olivia. The countless other girls had all just stood there in the mindscape, staring mutely ahead as if my presence hadn't even been noticed. It wasn't until I whispered something into their ears that they would react. Olivia, however, was different; her dilated eyes were locked onto mine as soon as her avatar materialized. Her lips parted in hungry, anticipatory desire, and the flush of her cheeks quickly spread down her throat and onto the top of her heavily rising and falling chest. It was a literal representation of a very simple reality, at least to her; her entire being was focused on me. Her milk smooth skin was glowing. It was beyond beautiful, Olivia was transcendent. There was a small, brief spark of inquiring thought, wondering why her mind was so different. That was a question to be filed away for another day.

Oliva, for her part, didn't need to analyze it. She was not one of those girls who wondered why she was drawn to me as much as she was. She didn't need to wonder if there was a future with me. She was perfectly happy to enjoy the warmth of her desire, and the look in my eyes when they held hers, and didn't need to question the logic of it. She wanted to live in the moment, and - as her hands moved up my chest to deftly undo the top two buttons on my shirt - she was taking full advantage of the here and now.

The loosening of my shirt seemed to snap my attention back to the present. My own hands coming up to work loose the knot that kept her checkered shirt tied around her navel, as my tongue darted out to wet my dry, hungry lips. There was not even a fraction of a second, not half a heartbeat, where our eyes left each other. Not until the last of my buttons were undone, and she pushed her hands beneath the material to press them against my chest. A soft, guttural groan fell from my lips as her hands wandered up my broad, hard chest, brushing the shirt off my arms as she did. For my part, I had loosened her shirt and had helped her shrug it off, her mountainous chest rising and falling beneath the delicate, black lace bra. Another deep, intent-filled groan escaped from my throat as I pulled her against me, spun her around, and pressed her back against the apartment door.

Things became a little more heated for a short while, both of us working on getting the buttons of our jeans undone and the garments off each other. Both of them were easy enough to unsnap, but whereas my jeans, with the slightest of nudges, pooled around my ankles; her painted-on denim needed to be peeled off her like the skin of an overripe fruit. The material clung to every single inch of her long smooth legs until both of us were frantically trying to get them off.

"Holy fucking shit, I am going to burn these fucking things!" She whispered desperately into my lips, Our kiss never breaking as I pressed my foot into the crotch of her jeans and held them down, as she yanked one leg after the other out of them. She then kicked them frustratedly across the room before attacking my boxers as if she were making up for the lost time.

Her panties were much easier. I had to fight the urge to grab them in my powerful grip and rip them from her body, instead pulling the tiny, soaked, black lace thong over her curved hips and letting gravity do the rest. I took a step back, breaking off all contact with her, I needed to see her.... There was no other way to describe it, I needed to see her. For a few eternally long seconds, my eyes just wandered over her nakedness, my jaw slacked and my breathing heavy... She leaned back against the door, her fists balling against the wooden veneer, as her eyes gave me the same treatment as mine was giving her.

She was exquisite. Her body had that perfect ratio of curves and proportions. Her C cup breasts, tinted with the flush of her desire, defied gravity on her heavily rising and falling chest. Her waist curved inward, before flaring invitingly into her extraordinarily feminine hips. Her mound was completely shaved, and freshly so, by the looks of it. Yet another indicator of where she thought this night would end up. Her eyes wandered over me just as hungrily, roaming over the broad strong chest and my powerful arms, widening a little at the hardness and size of my manhood as it jutted out towards her... Her tongue darted out to lick her lips just as mine did the same.

We were barely even people at this point, we were just two creatures of wanton desire and unbridled lust. And we were both going to feed the urges that were clawing inside us until we were sated and full.

Finally, our eyes met, another hungry lick of my lips from me and one of those trademark teasing smiles from her. For a few loaded heartbeats we did nothing, then fell together.

She pressed off the door, taking a single step forward, just far enough for me to meet her on my own lunge towards her. Her arms flew back around my neck, one of her perfectly sculpted thighs hooking over my hips, as I grasped her ass in my strong hands and lifted her into the door with a thud. A rush of air was forced from her lung as I kissed her with a fevered passion that neither of us had experienced before. This was more than simple desire or passion, this was a fire of uncontrolled and uncontrollable burning lust. This was the end result of long months of torturous teasing... this was what inevitability felt like in its most pure, carnal, primal form.

I only felt the molten wet heat of her core for the briefest of moments as it ran over the head of my tumescence before I impaled her onto me. The first thrust was nothing near as hard or as deep or as dominant, as what either Becky or Philippa had been subjected to. But it was still hard enough to rock her entire body a few inches up the door, her load-bearing foot being lifted from the floor for a second as a throaty, satisfied, moan of abject pleasure purred from her lips.

Her other foot didn't stay on the ground for long. I grasped her ass a little harder as her lips mashed into mine, her tongue delving in to find its opposite number, mewling, moaning, and purring into my mouth as I ground into her. With my grip secure, I lifted, hoisting her onto my hips and letting her legs wrap possessively and determinedly around me, locking me in place and encouraging me to stroke in deeper.

I gave her what she wanted. Slow and steady, deep and filling, sensual and passionate, each thrust seemed like it was exploring her velvet tunnel and looking for the pleasure spots that neither of us knew were there. Far from throwing herself back onto me, fucking herself against me with wreckless abandon, she just ground herself back on me, dragging her clit over my pubis and groaning louder and deeper into my lip,s before finally breaking the breath-stealing kiss.

"Oh God, Pete... Fuck... More. Take me!" She moaned as I drove into her, spearing her deeper and harder, but still refusing to go any faster. I wanted her to feel everything, I wanted her to still be feeling it the next day. I wanted her friends - when they inevitably asked her how this had been - to only be answered by a blushed giggle and inarticulation. I wanted this to be the benchmark by which she measured every man in the future.

She had angled her hips perfectly, rolling her ass backwards to press it against the door and thrusting her dripping, soaked pussy down towards my cock. Every thrust stretched her a little more, dragging over her walls and every single nerve ending in them, my shaft crushed her g spot against the ridge of my head and my crown nudged softly against her cervix.

"Oh, Fuck! I have never been this full... Jesus, I knew you would be amazing, I knew it from day one. You are amazing, you are amazing, oh God, don't stop, don't you dare stop. Fuck me, Pete!"

There was something about the panting, breathless, hitched pitch of her voice as her legs loosened from around me and started to raise into the air, her thighs clamped against my hips but her feet bouncing loosely with every thrust. Her head arched upwards, her unfocused eyes cast up toward the ceiling as I leaned forward and started kissing and sucking on her exposed throat.

"Oh my GOD! You are going to make me cumm... Ive wanted you since the first night we met. God you were worth the wait! Oh shit, I'm cumming! I'm cumming! Arrrrrggghhh!!!"

I didn't stop, I didn't even slow down as her entire body seemed to clamp up, and a screaming shriek of rapture was expelled from her lips. Her nails dug into my shoulders almost hard enough to draw blood. Her pussy clamped down onto my pistoning cock as if it couldn't decide if it wanted to expel the intruder or suck it in deeper, but the feeling of her clenched muscles, rhythmically rolling up and down my shaft would have been too much for a mortal man to resist.

Luckily for both of us, I wasn't technically human.

Her eyes widened as I kept going. Her body never really got the chance to come down from her last climax, as I immediately started working her towards the next. Her eyes on me held a look that was somewhere between abject pleasure and reverent awe, her mind was singing. Despite trying not to look into her mind, the thoughts being directed towards me were impossible to filter out.

Oh god, so close, just angle a little more that way... yes, there, don't stop... a little faster, a little deeper... deeper.. Don't stop, oh fuck don't stop, holy fucking shit he is going to make me cum again... how the fuck is he doing this... Oh God, I am cumminggggg!!!

Another scream poured from her lips, her body thrashing and convulsing violently in my arms. The effect, far from breaking my rhythm, seemed to grind and thrust her back onto me even harder, crashing my cock into her most sensitive of spots and driving me in deeper. Her legs flopped loose, only my hands and my rigid cock holding her weight up as she was fucked into the wall.

Suddenly, her vision cleared and her eyes locked onto me with an intensity that took my breath away. There was a clarity to them, totally at odds with the tempestuous storm of overwhelming pleasure that was crashing through her body. "I want you to cum in me. I am on the pill, I need it, don't you dare pull out. I have never had a guy cum in me bareback before and I want you to be the first... do it... fill me... flood me... Give it all to me... Cum inside me!!!"

It was like she was possessed and those last three words banished the ghost of clarity from her mind before her focus immediately shifted back to the breath-taking power of her climax. Her juices were dripping off my balls, I could feel them splashing against the hardwood floor beneath my feet. Her cunt was rippling up and down my cock in a continuously reinforced orgasm of biblical scale. She pulled my head from her throat with a hand in my hair and crushed her lips back to mine, whispering between every smack of our kiss for me to drain my balls into her.

I couldn't hold it, and even if I could, I didn't want to. I slackened my arms holding her up and dropped more of her body weight onto my driving cock, groaned loudly into her lips and exploded inside her. Her eyes snapped open as the power of my spurts splashing into her cervix sent her tumbling into another mind-melting climax. "Oh fuccckkk.. I feel ittt.. Yesssss fuck yesss... fill meee, keep cumming... you're making me cum harder, oh Jesus-fucking CHIRST... BREED mee!!!"

My mind froze for a fraction of a heartbeat before her request was swallowed by the power and pleasure of my release. Hell, I would fuck a baby into her tonight and not have a single regret about it. if how I was feeling now was anything to go by. I knew my powers made impregnating her an impossibility, and by the time the thought had passed, I had already decided that it was one of the hottest things anyone had ever said to me... and all of this was without my influence. That thought alone seemed to intensify the pleasure I was shooting into her, and we both groaned loudly into each other's lips.

For countless moments I just held her. Pressed against the door which had heroically refrained from being smashed through its frame. The only sounds in the room were my heavy breathing and her coos and mewls of raptured pleasure, interrupted occasionally by the soft sounds of our lips meeting. Eventually she pressed her head into the door, grinned widely and whispered. "That was so worth the wait."

*********

It was strange. I had been living in the loft apartment for a few weeks now, but the only time I ever really spent here was either sleeping, or glued to my computer and working on my project. There was the occasional bathroom break, and time given to eating. But it took Olivia being with me, for me to truly appreciate why these apartments were coveted so deeply within the student community.

Along one side of the main living area was an enormous, floor-to-ceiling window that, when sat on the large sofa, gave a spectacular view over our moderately sized town. This area of the country was very mountainous, and although that boded ill for students resistant to cardiovascular exercise, having to walk up the damn things to get home, it provided some stunning views for houses - or pub-capping apartments - near their peak.

Right now, the sprawling valley that covered the span between this mountain and the one opposite, was bathed in the soft glow of the streetlights. The crescent moon peeked from behind silver-bathed clouds, and aside from a few wandering headlights in the distance, the whole scene just gave off an air of abject stillness. Even the reflection of the pale moonlight on the river in the heart of the valley, seemed to be part of a picture postcard moment, rather than of the real world beyond the window.

Yet all of it shrank in beauty when compared to the siren nestled into my side.

Our sex had been the most intimate of my life, the most intense, and, to me at least, the most profound. Becky was a sub, Philippa a guest, Evie was an experiment, and Samantha had almost been a game. The multitudes of anonymous, meaningless girls between them had just been distractions. Olivia was different; she was an equal. With both of us still naked, I was content to just hold her as we sat on the sofa, and quietly looked out over the darkened landscape that we both called home.

Livy was cuddled into me, her head resting on my shoulder. The only movement either of us made, was her turning to press soft, affectionate kisses against my chest, or me turning mine to kiss her head through her mane of strawberry-blonde hair. My fingers stroked slowly up and down the warm ridges of her spine, as hers curled through the fine hairs on my chest. It was October, a little too cool to bask in our mutual nakedness, but still warm enough not to need anything more than a thin sheet over us. We sat in silence for the longest time before she finally spoke.

"It was bad, wasn't it?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "The accident, I mean."

I took a deep breath and nodded slowly.

"It's okay if you don't want to talk about it." She added. "You just seem so... different."

It occurred to me, briefly, that Olivia may have been the first person to notice the contrast between how I was before, and how I was now. In keeping with my test to see how much my abilities influence a woman's feelings for me, I had reduced the effect I had on Olivia to almost nothing.

"The first night after I woke," I started after a pause, "after Jimmy had been sent home, I was so tired. I was up to my eyeballs on painkillers, but I just laid there... thinking. I had died, actually died, more than once, and I was dealing with the possibility of never being able to walk again. I had been bombarded with all this information about the possible effects the damage to my brain could have. How my life had changed completely, and I would probably never have a normal life again... That Moe had been killed, and I was still here."

Her finger flexed a little on my chest, a soft, reassuring squeeze as she listened.

"I kept coming back to the same thought, over and over... That I had wasted my life. I don't know how much you know about my parents, but they are not nice people. I'm sure there are shrinks out there who could make a fortune off the therapy I would probably need to deal with my childhood. But even that just seemed so... irrelevant now. It was like I had taken that trauma, and used it as an excuse to hide from living my life. If my own parents could do that to me, then there was no way I was going to let anyone else get close enough to do it too. I had no control over my childhood, but I did now, and I was never going to put myself through that again. That was my logic anyway. I cut myself off from everything, everyone, it was safer to be alone. Over the years, that had manifested from simply not trusting anyone enough to let them get close, to not knowing how to let people in at all, even if I wanted to. I had put myself into a box and lost the key."

"Your shell." She whispered, nodding softly,

"I'm not going to even try to understand how I healed as fast and as completely as I did, I don't think I'm mentally equipped to comprehend that. But when I realized that I might get my life back again, I promised myself I would actually live it. I would flirt, I would risk rejection because the worst that could happen was that you said "no," and that was still nothing compared with what had just happened to me. Everything was placed in contrast to what had just happened to me... and none of it seemed so daunting anymore. I suppose I just understood what real fear was, and things like this..." I gave her another soft kiss, "did not even come close to qualifying as fear."

"And now?" she asked, tilting her head up to look into my eyes.

"Before, I just couldn't understand how someone like you could be interested in someone like me, if I couldn't understand it, then it couldn't be real. If it wasn't real, then it was a game, or a ploy, or a cruel joke at my expense...."

"Nobody is that cruel, babe." She said

"Oh, they are. I seem to have had more than my fair share of them in my life, but there are plenty of them out there. But now... Now I don't worry about it. It is not up to me to understand why you like me, only to accept that you do. It's not much of a change to the thought process, but..."

"No," she interrupted, pressing her lips to mine. "It's huge, and I am so happy that you have, cause I really do like you." She smiled beautifully before rejoining the kiss, deepening it as she pushed the thin white cotton sheet onto the floor and climbed onto my lap. Straddling me, she slowly, gently, and sensually pushed herself back down onto my solid manhood. She gasped into my lips as I entered her, moaned as I filled her, mewled happily as she started to ride me... and, after long minutes that turned into long, tender hours, she screamed her orgasmic song out into the night.

Over and over again.

Neither of us even pretended to have an interest in sleeping. I could go without it for days anyway, thanks to being able to get a power nap in my bunker in the few minutes it took her to use the bathroom - the equivalent of several real-world hours. We had stayed on that sofa, fucking in every conceivable position, at every possible pace, for hours. But even as the sun started to peek over the eastern horizon, Livvy showed no signs of letting up.

After the last of countless bouts of furious sex, she finally collapsed to the side, flopping down from where I had been taking her from behind, and giggling out the remnants of what must have been her dozenth colossal orgasm. Her entire body was slick with a sheen of sweat and the seed from my fourth or fifth load was leaking out of her as she sprawled out on the sofa. Her hair was a tangled mess, most of it soaked in sweat and clinging to the rest of her body. I had fucked her in every position imaginable. Along with a few new ones I had made up on the spot. Not once had I been in her mouth, nor her in mine. She had wordlessly made it clear that she wanted as much of me inside her as she could get... so I had given her all of me. Despite the mess I had made of her, she was even more beautiful to my eye, than she had been when I first saw her climb onstage.

Her giddy laugh, her radiant smile and her comfortable and totally at-ease languishing on my sofa just radiated her happiness... There was nowhere on earth she would rather be, and nobody she would rather be with. It is hard for me to put into words how profound that was to me. Every other girl in my life, even Becky, had been the recipient of some level of mental manipulation, even if only made to find me more attractive. Olivia had had none. She had been the beneficiary of my new confidence, and I had kept a small but interested watch on her thoughts, but that was about it. This was a girl who genuinely wanted me for me. Not the me that I had created, not the me that I made everyone else see, she had wanted me since long before the crash, long before the change. She had wanted me without having seen the change.

Her eyes met mine, her head tilting a little as she caught the look of deep thought on my face. "Penny for your thoughts." She smiled, albeit a little uneasily.

I smiled back, "I wouldn't want you to overpay."

She giggled a little and pulled herself up, snuggling contently into my side while still holding her eyes to mine. "Men looking all thoughtful after sex is never a good thing" She grinned teasingly, although there was a little concern behind her eyes. In her experience, this was the point where the guy had made his excuses, left, and had never been heard from again.

"Oh, I'm just wondering what the hell took me so long," I leaned down and kissed her softly, she practically melted in my arms. I made to speak but she quickly pressed a finger to my lips.

"I'm going to say this now, before I lose my nerve," she said before taking a deep breath. "I like you, Pete. I have for more than a year. Last night was..." She paused, sighing contently as her mind searched for the right words. "Last night was the sort of thing that happens in the movies, not to girls like me. Nothing like that has happened to me... Ever."

I cast a look over my shoulder and smirked at the door.

"Not that." she slapped my chest playfully with a smirk. "Well, yes that too, but last night was more than I could have imagined. It was more effort than anybody has ever shown me. It was... it was perfect."

"I liked you t..." I started before she clamped her finger over my lips a little harder. Apparently she hadn't finished.

"I would rather this not be a one night thing, but if that is what you want, that's fine. I will be disappointed, but I am a big girl and I can handle it. But please don't tell me you want to see me again and then ghost me. I'm not asking you for a relationship, we are both in our final years, Jimmy has told me about your project. and how you are going places with it. And I am thinking of med school after I graduate. So neither of us know where we are going to be in a year... But if, after all that stuff settles down, and if you are still interested, I would like to try for... more." Her eyes flicked back up to mine nervously. "Just putting that out there."

She almost held her breath as she waited for my answer. I arched an eyebrow at her. "Oh, yes, you can speak now."

"You had me at Breed Me." I smirked.

"Oh Jesus, I can't believe that came out!" She buried her head into my shoulder as we both laughed. "So... dating? Sort of... non-exclusively but with the idea of more?" She asked eventually.

"Sounds perfect."

She beamed. It was a smile that, in that moment, would have put even Charlotte to shame. Her mind just radiated happiness. "So, just so you know," she started as she nuzzled back down against my chest and my fingers went back to stoking through her hair. "Oh, god, I could so get used to you doing that... Anyway, just so you know, the next few weeks are a little hectic for me, so I don't know when I can see you again, but... I should still be able to call and text and so on."

"That's great. As long as you don't forget me."

"I lost count of how many times you made me cum after I hit double figures, I will remember you when I'm in the nursing home!" She giggled.

"Plenty more where that came from." I smirked

"Oh Fuck I can't... You are going to break me. I have to walk to class soon."

"Hey, what happened to calling in sick?"

"Well yes, that was just to wipe the smirk off Jimmy's face. I didn't actually expect you to hold me to it." She laughed. "Can't have him thinking he is the only cock of the walk."

"It's one of the few things that boy truly excels at." I laughed back. "He's been trying to get me to talk to you for ages."

"Well I will have to make sure to thank him." She smiled contentedly.

And with that, silence fell on the room. We just sat and cuddled on the sofa, watching the sun creep up over the mountains and slowly bath the room in its crisp autumnal light. After about another hour, Olivia climbed out of my arms with a kiss, telling me she needed to head home to get ready for class, and that she would message me later.

I sat, still naked, and still watching the sun for a little while longer after the searing kiss, full of promise, that we had shared at the door. For the first time since I had moved in here, the apartment felt empty. It was like her presence had added something to the loft that I hadn't realized was missing.

********

I didn't have time to dwell in this new feeling for long though, before a smile was brought to my face by a presence approaching the door.

Charlotte walked in with as much grace and as much of a beaming smile as I had come to expect. She didn't even bother knocking, just opening the door with her powers, walking in and dropping onto the sofa next to me. I had just about enough time to throw a pair of shorts on before she arrived.

"Well, she seemed like a VERY happy camper." She grinned at me, casting a nod back towards the door.

"I aim to please," I smirked back. "So... I have a bit of a surprise for you."

She flicked her eyes down to my shorts, a teasing grin on her face. "Shower first, then I'll think about it."

I narrowed my eyes at her, the grin pulling at my lips before standing and heading to the bathroom. "Marco turned up yesterday, I was going to tell you all about it, but if you'd rather wait."

"What!?!? Really??" She almost jumped out of her seat as I dragged down my shorts and threw them at her around the closing door to the bathroom as she was frantically trying to climb over the sofa to chase me. "Noooo, you have to tell me everything!" She shouted through the closed door.

"I'm trying to shower here! Can't a guy get a little peace??" I shouted back, trying to keep the grin out of my voice.

"Mother Fucker, you are lucky I am not kicking this door down! You being naked wouldn't even slow me down!"

"I bet you say that to all the boys"

"Hurry the fuck up.. I want to know everything!"

"I think a nice LONG relaxing shower is juuusttt what I need." I sang back at her.

I smiled to myself, tracking her mind as she paced impatiently back and forth on the other side of the door. Of course I would tell her everything, more than that, she would take my hand and, as we had done a few times already, I would share my memories of the entire thing with her, but for now I was happy to let her stew. My grin widened a little more. I had friends, real friends! That thought alone was more than I could have hoped for as I was growing up, and a concept that I could barely get my head around, when it had been me and Jimmy.

I guess one of those friends would be getting more than she bargained for though.. I had tossed my shorts at her without bringing a replacement set into the bathroom.

Oh well... There were certainly worse problems to have.

*********

And there you have it, Chapter 9.

The next chapter will be the last in what can be considered the first 'book' of the NewU series. A lot of it has already been written, although I haven't decided if I am going to release it as a single large chapter, or if I am going to split it into two. I will keep you posted on that. But either way, it should only be a few weeks until that one is ready to go. In the meantime, I am hoping to get the second chapter of 'The Island' finished and published before that.

As predicted, the response from my readers in regards to the epic delay of chapter 8 was nothing short of inspiring. Messages of support and encouragement are still coming through, each and every one of them is not only read, but deeply appreciated, even if I can't respond to all of them. The feedback and enthusiasm from our readers are what keep writers going... we live for it. So please, feel free to leave your comments on the story.

I will see you all again very soon. Keep being awesome

Nova.