I spent the better part of a week instructing the Flunt-on-the-Rustle girls in the ways of creating potions tailor made for different aspects. We got through all the cures for the different eggs suffering from Divine Aspect Interference. This meant a showering of gifts from the families of the sick eggs, along with a whole bunch of friends and neighbors, and concerned well-wishers. It seemed like the whole town was here presenting me with yummy delicacies, intricately crafted jewelry or traveling gear, and various trinkets.

I received a tiny statuette of Opal Manaflame done in amethyst-like crystal, and painted up at parts to mimic her coloration. She immediately whirled on the other girls and demanded to know who had made it. It was clear the whole deal was incredibly embarrassing for her, but she quieted when I told her it was amazing and I liked it very much. There were bangles and necklaces and rings, and a circlet, along with bushels of herbs, fresh-baked pastries, and an honest-to-goodness casserole made of a vegetable I wasn’t familiar with. I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going to store all this stuff.

There were some cure-alls amidst the long list of specific herbs, flowers, roots, and barks needed for more in-depth and fringe cases. And the list of aspects was long: fire, cold, plant, water, air, electric, earth, psychic, poison, draconic, divine… and more. They didn’t have any dark, divine, or fighting aspects, but I gave them the cure ingredients for both dark and divine, and a couple I felt would work for fighting.

“Snapdragons will probably work for both draconic and fighting,” I told them. “There are sword lilies, woundwort, punch flower, war paint flower, Fighting Temeraire, that’s a type of rose, stinging nettle, gladiolus, that’s named after gladiators, and battle sage.”

I told them all these with a sense of unease and a quiet reluctance; some of these Nakamamon might end up turning into fighting aspects in the coming months. The Smokupine was only fire aspect with beast, and Opal herself was single aspected, Draconic. When we next saw one another she might instead be a Dragladiator or Dragoknight or something.

I spent the remainder of my time taking those girls out on dates and learning more about them… and also screwing their brains out if and when it came to that. Opal and I went out for short flights, and walks around the town arm in arm. She found it odd that I would only transform into a Dragobro when we started from first base. It meant she would dart in for some licks around the ears, which turned into licks around the horns growing out of the back of my head, and the scales around where my ears would be. Afterwards she would cuddle and lick some more, just to keep Adaptability working. And if she eventually got in the mood, it would be twisting and twining and thrusting and growling and scratching and biting.

That was actually how it went with the rest of them too, only with less biting and scratching. It was awkward enough taking a blue ooze girl (Azure) out on a date, but not as awkward as I would have originally thought. We had a fun time with me using Psyspeech and her trying to form into the mental images I put in her mind. She did an excellent impersonation of a pyramid—easy mode—a good alpaca, after which she joined me on the ground laughing like a loon, and a passable pinup girl in a flaring skirt with gigantic boobs. I soon found that she could eat literally anything and everything. I watched things dissolve into her body I didn’t think were possible.

On our second date out, Azure took me on a small stroll back through her neighborhood, and showed me why she didn’t need stairs. She just stuck to the wall and rolled up the ceiling to the second level. In fact, the only reason the ceilings were seven feet instead of several inches as because she liked having company.

One thing led to another, and I was a hospital scrubs green glob of protoplasm, violently mixing with her own protoplasm. After we shared our mutual, weird orgasms, I asked if maybe she’d like to become more human, and spent all my Pheromones on Adaptability. She turned into a blue, semi-transparent ooze girl, similar to before, except she could hold her shape for more than just a few minutes. All I needed to do was get intimate with her every few minutes so she could enjoy the novel experience of walking on two legs.

This time when I made love to her, I watched my cock penetrate her jelly body, spearing up into her. She looked down and poked at her tummy, where I was embedded to around the belly button. And she really enjoyed having her jelly clit rubbed and licked.

She tasted like blueberries. I’m pretty sure Adaptability used my subconscious for that, and I was glad of it.

Fairy Poppins flew off after I kept my promise, shrinking down and then giving her another bout of punishing sex. The agreement needed to be fulfilled, and that meant Poppy needed to get filled all the way up. She was just as aggravating and demanding as before, this time telling me she was going to become my third bond mate along with Shakindria and Vellenia. She was going to renounce her bond with Cinzy, and then we could spend all day and all night every day and every night, me giving her nonstop orgasms and treating her like the queen she was.

I screwed her insensate, going for well over an hour, pulling at her wings until she begged me to slow down. When I was close to orgasm, she told me she wanted it all inside. And when I told her I might get her with child, she just wriggled her little butt, grinned in naughty challenge, and kept backing her ass up into me until she had was overflowing.

I left her in a puddle of our combined juices, having not answered the question of whether or not I would bond her. She didn’t know I had a third bond at the ready, and I wasn’t about to give out that information, especially to her.

I went out of town with the Shrubber-Nee! We traveled out into the wilderness and she showed me a hidden gorge, before I showed her a hidden gorge I could give her. Just like with Azure, I could use Pheromones to transform her anatomy into human-esque. The leaves receded to her hair only, and several tiny leaves covering her mound like a fig leaf out of a painting. She looked like a dryad, with patches of her melting into a supple gray brown skin, and other patches still feeling rough like bark. Her face was mostly unchanged, but she gained a tongue, and desperately wanted to use it.

We kissed for over an hour. She licked every part of my face, sank to her new knees, and used that tongue to get at my stalk. After that, she lashed against the underside while blowing me for some ridiculous amount of time.

She also gained the ability to talk, and boy did she. She was very vocal, shouting encouragement and telling me I was ‘root-deep inside’ her, or she was about to ‘reach the precipice.’ With her hands above her head and clasping against the trunk of the tree at her back, it looked like I had a girl tied up, out in the woods. She looped her legs around me and stared into my face while I penetrated her, root to tip, again and again.

And when the time came for me to give her my sap of life, she didn’t let release me. Instead she wrapped her legs even tighter around me, begged to use her tongue to kiss me, and told me she’d gotten what she wanted when I filled her full.

This was how it went for the other girls from Flunt-on-the-Rustle. We went out on a date, sometimes to a restaurant, sometimes just around the neighborhood, and in a few cases, out of town entirely. The creature who was the spitting image of Larelle grinned and gave me thumbs up as I used Draconic Spirit to fly my date out of town. I splashed in a river with a water aspect, frolicked on a mountain with an earth aspect, and ran around the grassy knolls with Yowl the Prowline.

Some of them were full of laughs, some had moments of introspection, where I would listen to their tales, and some were quiet. The Shrubber-nee! didn't speak until she was begging me to go faster, give it to her harder, but didn’t seem to mind traveling the forest in silence. I couldn’t say it bothered me either. As someone who used to have a cell phone, I can’t tell you how weird it is to admire a fallen tree for a minute or three with your partner, to inspect some mushrooms, to look at sunshine slanting in through the canopy, or to fall on your butt when a rodent Nakamamon streaks out of the undergrowth like a bolt of lightning. There are no apps, there is no social media, and there’s no way to record it to a video. There’s just the present moment: smell of flowers and pollen and trees, crunch of dead leaves underfoot, or the utter silence of walking on dropped pine needles.

The water aspect was astounded to find I could breathe underwater, and that led to us grappling, locking lips, and enjoying a quickie at the river bed. She swam with me locked between her legs and filling her up, twisting and doing rolls as we soared past strange Nakamamon fish. She kissed me and held me down, humping down on me while above us, the waterfall roared its water into this pool. We spooked another of her kind, who huffed and shot away through the water. My partner just giggled and cooed as she sank down onto me yet again.

When the time came, I couldn’t ask and she didn’t know. I went to pull her up and off me, but she ground down onto me and I unloaded up into her.

Then I  went on a date with a very kind porcupine that leaked smoke from her many, many spines, (Kemuri) and when she told me shyly that she’d like to take me back to her place, I smiled and agreed. I then went down on her until she filled the entire room with choking smoke. It didn’t bother me, of course, not with Adaptability active. After that I made very sweet, very sensitive love to her, told her she was beautiful and desirable, and when she told me she wanted me to finish inside her, the sex drunk Fletcher complied.

Of the twelve I’d had sex with originally, I was able to take all twelve out on various dates, two a day, and over half of these wanted me inside them. Of those, every single one asked, begged, or demanded I deposit my swimmers inside them.

Tara too. I managed to find some time with her early into the celebrations, and gifted her one of the gold bangles in secret. She was thrilled with it, and more importantly, thrilled with how her pregnancy was progressing. She put my hands all over her belly, and I got to feel the baby moving. I could even, once I used Mana Affinity, see a vague set of chakras developing inside her.

And then it was time for a rousing game of ‘rip off Fletcher’s clothes and stuff little Fletcher in Tara.’ She wasn’t able to get into the same positions as before, but that didn’t matter; she was still flexible and had excellent stamina. She still held the backs of her legs and stared at me through hooded eyes as I charged her body full of pleasure and pushed her over the edge again and again.

In a strange turn, we still hadn’t located Ivy and Isabelle. Flying residents of the town weren’t able to find them, the forest-goers like the Shrubber-Nee! couldn’t locate them in the forest, and the swimmers couldn’t find them in the water. Honestly that one was kind of a relief.

We could only guess that they’d been taken by the exiled expedition. It was a dark blot on an otherwise sparkling time to be Fletcher. However, the Agency did not send another expedition after us, and it looked like the guy had lied about my mom being captured.

When Poppy returned, it was with good news: my mother had successfully cured the God of Utensils, all members of that expedition were safe and accounted for. We still had four bond mates who weren’t with their humans, but two of them were reunited with me after four days of travel.

Chrysta, Larelle, Shakindria, Vellenia, and Regina were all excited to see me, as were Tweedle Dee and Muppin. Airaconda was delighted to be back with Tara, and kept booping her stomach with its airy nose.

I grinned at my mom and began rushing towards her open arms when it happened.

Everyone froze mid cheer.

This time, the presence was something familiar, something I could feel.

“Welcome back,” I said.

The black void that hung in the air chuckled. “Miss me?”

“I was wondering if you were done visiting me or not.”

“I was surprised to see you pick up the god in your arms and take them to their partner.”

“I was surprised they didn’t start getting it on right away,” I replied. Finally, she came into view, looking something like a human, something like a kangaroo, and something like neither. Shrouded in darkness as she was, it was impossible to tell what she looked like. On the other hand, I felt like I hadn’t seen those powerful, long legs before, or that expansive bust. I definitely hadn’t noticed the tail before, long and curving. She had to be a psychic aspect. She was probably also dark, or some aspect I’d never encountered before that could stop time. Divine aspect would make sense.

“Now that I’ve been watching you full time,” the creature said, “I have to say I am impressed with your ability to mate with all these varied and inhuman creatures.”

“I aim to please,” I said.

“You seem to give out quite a lot of pleasure indeed,” she said, and her words were laced with some dark amusement, and also some arousal. It must have turned her on to watch me go at it with a dragon girl, a slime girl, a smoke porcupine, a tangle of vines, a poison tentacle girl, and all the others.

“That’s something I can supply,” I told her, “if the fancy strikes you.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly.”

“If you tell me who your bond is, I can arrange for it.” The truth was though, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to break away from either of my quests in order to convince Jocinda to stop her Nakamamon from wrecking havoc all over the continent, breaking gods… if she really was responsible for that after all.

“Like I said,” she purred, “I couldn’t possibly.”

“Your bond mate must have you on a short leash,” I said. “What a shame.”

“You know nothing of any such arrangement, especially one you’ve only postulated to exist.”

This is Christopher striking a nerve.

“A being of such power, with such restrictions,” I breathed. “Does your master let you have any fun whatsoever? Or is it just running around and breaking gods left and right?”

She regarded me in silence.

“I’d like to reunite with my mother, again, if you please. What’s your purpose in coming?” I asked, not willing to further taunt and get on the bad side of a creature that could stop time.

There was a mental clearing of her throat. I can’t explain more than that, except that it sounded and felt like she was getting something out of there, and it happened in my mind.

“I have a proposal for you,” she said smoothly. Her arrogance and self-satisfaction were back.

“Go on,” I told her.

“The Agency won’t track you, or try to capture you, any longer, so long as you stay out of their way. No more attempting to bring earthlings back through the portal for healing. Your mother lives here now, and so do you.”

That wasn’t going to work. My mother and father needed to be together. Not only was I going to have to get her back through the portal to earth, I’d have to help her bypass the Agency to reunite with my dad. The only other option was to bring him, and possibly Sarah, Brayden, and the new baby through to live out their lives here.

“And what do you get in return?” I asked.

“Instead of battling the Agency, a battle you will lose, you should simply… continue healing gods. As I have told you, there are several sick gods.”

A map opened in my UI, unbidden. I’d never seen a map of this world before… and I still wasn’t seeing one. This was a map maybe the size of California, maybe the size of the continental United States. It was tough to say, but it definitely wasn’t a globe.

Red reticles appeared, circling around several more locations like snipers sighting targets in. Beside them, the names of the villages, towns, and gods also appeared: Saxwhacket was directly north of here, followed by another further north, and another even further north. After the fourth slowly spinning dot, I found an enormous blank spot on the map labeled DEEP WILDS. It spread out east and west, and even dipped south as it reached a far western area.

Ingenuity didn’t have to turn a lightbulb on over my head.

This is Christopher being sent on a mission to meet Jocinda.

This is the end of Divinity Rescue Corps: The Fourth Chapter