Chapter 2:
Respite
Far away from the wilds and all of the dangers therein, a Minotaur, a Katje and a diminutive human male were shopping in the city of Garland.
They were in a store the likes of which the young man had never entered in his life, but unlike the usual places the girls brought him to that fit that description, especially Erica, he felt no discomfort as the six foot six Minotaur picked something out for herself.
With the help of the store clerk, who cut a pair of holes in the rich brown hat to accommodate her horns, Milly was soon admiring herself in one of the shop’s many mirrors.
“What do you think?” She asked Nameless coquettishly.
“You look good.”
She really did, and a warm smile stole across his face as he looked her over.
“I know, but how does the hat look?” She giggled cheekily.
Erica the Katje had been examining some boots with a skeptical smile, her own cat-like feet unsuited to them. At the sound of Milly’s voice she looked over to them and couldn’t keep from letting out a snicker when she saw her bond-sister’s new headwear.
“Haha, you look like a cowgirl!”
Milly blinked.
“What do you mean? I am a cow-girl.”
Erica shook her head of rich purple hair quickly, one of her cat-like ears flicking in agitation.
“No! Not a cow-GIRL cow-girl, a cowBOY cowgirl.”
The Minotaur adjusted the hat on her head of chocolate brown hair self-consciously, her lips pursed in puzzlement as her own floppy ears twisted about beneath the unfamiliar feel of the hat’s wide brim, adjusting to the new headwear.
“What’s a cowboy?”
After a few seconds of trying to find the words to explain, Erica threw up her hands in disgust and twirled in place to walk out of the store, her purple hair flying behind her as she spun.
“What did I say?” Milly pouted as she watched her bond-sister’s overly dramatic exit.
Nameless rubbed her lower back reassuringly, taking a moment to stroke the tail poking out of the back of her shorts.
“I think she’s just jealous of your new hat.”
With one hand she absently adjusted her ears beneath the brim and mooed at his attentions before resuming her posing in front of the shop mirror.
“It is pretty nifty isn’t it?”
Again, he was quick to agree with her as he released her tail and gave her posterior a quick squeeze of appreciation.
“I love it. It makes you look like, I don’t know, someone who knows how the world works I guess?” He shrugged helplessly as he tried to articulate how the new accessory pulled her outfit together.
Dressed in a simple light blue button-up shirt, with a red polka-dot hanky trailing out of the back pocket of her jean shorts, she was a lovely sight that always made him smile, no matter his mood.
“Do you think that Paul would like it?” She swayed back and forth slightly, unashamedly fishing for more praise.
The polka-dot hanky had been a gift from Paul Fletcher, an elderly farmer back home in Kettering that had taken the couple under his wing when Milly and Nameless had first bonded.
It was Paul that had taught Nameless the importance of complimenting the sensitive cow.
He searched for more words of praise while running his hand over his hair.
Just as Volka had once suggested he kept it longer now: tied in a short ponytail at the back of his head, with the Valkyrie’s feather dangling down the right side of his face in a tight braid.
“I’m sure that he would tell you how well the hat compliments your pretty horns.”
As Milly beamed at him, her bond-mate reflected back on the dear old man.
Shortly after Nameless recited the Aegis Covenant and committed himself to the protection of monster girls everywhere, Paul had taken him aside and given him a gruff hug, then held him by either shoulder at arms’ length and looked him square in the eyes.
I’m as proud of you as if you were my own son.
Nameless doubted he would ever forget the words, and they never failed to put a smile on his face and a fire in his belly whenever he thought back on them.
His smile faltered somewhat though when Milly stepped over to take up the pitch-black spear that was leaning against the wall next to the mirror. Unpleasant memories of the terrible violence she had so recently faced flitting across his mind and made his blood run cold for a moment.
Shaking off the feeling of dread that seeing her so armed brought out in him, he quickly recovered his cheer.
“Come on baby, we still need to get to the Bastion to pick up my uniforms.”
He paid the store clerk and shortly afterwards they caught up to Erica and Nina in the street, the four of them heading to Divinity Square and the towering old world structure.
In less than an hour Nameless stood with all of his bond-mates in the spacious supply room where the Aegis quartermasters operated.
He stepped out of the fitting room, clad for the first time in his cadet uniform as he turned to face his bond-mates, his arms held slightly away from his hips.
“So, uh, how do I look?”
With the girl’s eyes on him he was a bit self-conscious, but for the most part their reactions were fairly predictable.
Milly beamed at him and Erica’s eyes hooded while she bit the tip of her pinky finger as she admired his physique. Ophelia’s eyes welled with pride as the woman that raised him dabbed a lacy hanky at her cheek, while Volka, his warrior angel, made a quick joke to the misty eyed Flutterby that he didn’t catch.
Meanwhile the tiny red-skinned Nina stomped forwards, set her enormous black hammer down next to him, and looked him over, her eyes pausing on his surname stitched into the breast of the uniform.
The three-foot tall powerhouse clearly liked what she saw.
“‘Armstrong’. Sounds badass.”
It was a bittersweet moment for Nameless as he considered that the last man to bear the name, his father, was indeed badass enough to fight a Chimera.
He was pulled out of the poignant thought though as his Gigas started unbuttoning his new pants.
“N-Nina?!”
“Shut up. We’re fucking.”
“Not here we aren’t.” Ophelia scolded as she fluttered forwards on her violet wings, shooing the tiny red giant’s hands away from his groin with her hanky; “Today and tomorrow are the only days off we’ll have for a while, and we have much to do. So you’ll have to control yourself until we get back to the dormitories.”
Nameless quickly sorted out the pants of his crisp new uniform while the Gigas sulked and one of the nearby quartermasters heaved a sigh of relief that he wasn’t going to have to try to interfere with the powerful monster’s amorous ambitions.
Having passed the initial hellish three weeks of his training, Nameless was now considered an Aegis cadet, and was therefore required to wear a uniform in the same cut and style as that of the full operatives, though his was a dull white rather than grey.
This had proved a slight problem for the quartermasters as they had never fitted someone his size before, Aegis operatives typically being more... just, more.
He and the other cadets in his class had been given two days off to procure their uniforms and recharge before they began the next phase of their training.
“Yeah, I have something to pick up still in the market quarter.” Erica remarked as she shook her head slightly to clear away her own ardent thoughts.
Ophelia frowned as she looked at the cat-girl.
“Dearheart, you three just came from the market quarter!”
The Katje rolled her eyes.
“I poked my head in while Milly was getting her new headwear. They said it wasn’t quite ready yet, and everyone was in such a rush to see our hubby in his new getup I didn’t wait! I won’t be long. You’ll see: it’ll totally be worth it.” She finished with a seductive purr.
Nameless took up the package containing his spare uniforms and gave the Katje a suspicious look.
“What are you up to kitty?”
She sashayed up to him and leaned over the paper wrapped bundle in his arms to lick him on the tip of his nose with a dry rasp of her rough tongue.
“It’s a secret, you’ll find out. But not until we get back to the dormitories and Nina has a chance to blow off some steam, or blow you, whichever one she’s after.”
The giant in question slipped one hand under Erica’s long hemmed shirt and gave her ass a healthy squeeze of appreciation.
“I like where your head is at. But now I’m curious.”
“Whatever surprise she has in store will have to wait.” Ophelia said with authority; “I still want to visit with my friend Madeleine at the boarding school so it looks like we’re going to split up again. Really Erica, I wish you had said something sooner!”
The Katje shrugged at the slight rebuke.
“Planning is for planners. I’m a doer, and Imma do you later, hot stuff.” She put her fingers in a V before her lips and waggled her tongue between them with a saucy wink.
Ophelia turned a bit pink at the incorrigible cat’s meaning and couldn’t supress her smile, or the erotic shudder that went through her at the idea of Erica acting out what her crude gesture implied.
The Katje, like most of her kind, was a phenomenally talented lover.
“I suppose that leaves the two of us to keep each other company tonight, eh Milly?” Volka said with a teasing look at the Minotaur.
It was Milly’s turn to go pink; she and the angel hadn’t been intimate as of yet, though they were both intrigued with the prospect.
“I-I suppose.” She said breathlessly.
Their Flutterby bond-sister shook off her arousal as she once again tried to get them back on task.
“That all sounds lovely. But we can’t do any of it until we finish in the city!”
She all but shooed them out of the quartermaster’s offices, again much to the relief of the staff there.
Their conversation, while intimate, was hardly private.
As they left and walked back out into the city, Nameless noticed an immediate difference in the way people looked at him.
Though he was slight of frame, the uniform he wore was widely respected, the Aegis having high standards for the people they let into, and keep within, their ranks.
Indeed, the first week of training had been a nightmare for the young man; he did more push-ups in those seven days than in his entire life, it always seemed like everything he did was wrong and the instructors weren’t shy about telling him so, loudly and frequently.
He had taken some comfort in that he wasn’t the only one struggling or being yelled at, there were twenty-five other recruits in his class that started their training when he had, not including their own monster girls, and with few exceptions they seemed to fare just as well as him.
They were now down to fourteen.
Without his bond-mates, he doubted he would have been able to go on.
Whenever they felt his resolve wavering, or felt the sensitive young man’s emotions getting the best of him, they would flood his mind with their own determination, usually accompanied with thoughts of recent love-making.
With that intense portion of their training behind them, not to mention having finally figured out how to properly stand at attention so as not to get yelled at, the real work for the cadets was about to begin.
The white uniform Nameless now wore was therefore an impressive achievement, and people knew it.
Many in the street who would otherwise not give him a second glance were openly smiling at him, some even nodding their heads in respect.
And that was aside from the company he kept, because as impressive as his new uniform was, the residents of the city of Garland were in complete awe of Volka Gundrsdotter.
Word had long since spread of her battle with Evadne in Divinity Square, though details were a bit sketchy as to who and what the reclusive Chimera was.
Most knew that the Valkyrie and a small group of Amazons had fought... something, and that Xalanth had interceded, breaking most every window in the city when the Dragon breathed on Jonathan and the dark monster.
Any complaints that might have been aired about the catastrophic loss of glass faded to nothing when people saw the state of their beloved city center.
Evadne’s magic had left a multitude of deep circular holes all around the cobblestones square, while Xalanth’s destructive contribution was a blackened swath of rippled and glassy-smooth stone near the statue of the Aegis and the last Valkyrie.
Meanwhile vibrant moss, roots and vines had sprung up all over the corner nearest the Bastion where the Dryad groves had tended to the wounded, including Nameless.
So needless to say when people saw the Valkyrie in the street they took notice, even Nina drew less attention, despite how rare Gigas were on this side of the Sansee.
With little understanding of where she had been or why, the local monster girls would stop whatever they were doing to take a moment to welcome the angel back, tearful hugs abounded the first few times that she went into the city.
Initially the humans were more reserved, nervous in the face of the angelic warrior, but that tapered off once they got a taste of her easy laughter and the warmth of her spirit.
Not to mention her sense of humour; word soon spread about her proclivity for silly pranks.
It was like she had been set loose on an unsuspecting population; no one was safe, even Margaret Bloom, the scar-faced councilwoman in charge of overseeing the entire academy, woke up one morning to discover that her entire bed had been moved right next to one of the Undine training pools, with her still in it.
No one knows how the angel pulled that one off. Though they would all remember the sight of the furious woman in her drenched nightgown as she stormed back to her chambers.
None of Volka’s activities could ever be traced back to the mischievous angel, though Nameless would often contend that he got more push-ups than anyone else due to her games.
Today was no exception in terms of the attention that the Valkyrie drew, but walking beside her with his crisp new uniform, Nameless no longer went unnoticed.