It stands half again as tall as a man, and as wide as one too. Burning eyes peer upwards as whatever confusion as to how its prey got up there is replaced by wondering how its going to get to her now. It would seem that it can simply wait for her to come to it. The monster takes advantage of the ample warning and steps aside, and readies a swing with the greathammer clutched between its claws. It's perfectly timed.

When the swing is loosed the weapon hits only rain.

Her teleport sends her back above her target, and crucially, she stops screaming. The monster only has a second to look around confused before her sword hits the back of its skull at terminal velocity, plunging all the way down to the hilt. "Ha ha!" She cries triumphant. The magical girl rides the beast as it collapses, using the sword as a handhold.

"Time for your pre-frontal lobotomy, bitch!" She punctuates the statement by pulling out her sword.

Tries to remove the sword. Her hand comes back empty. She looks confused for a second before she sees that its still in there. Wait, pre-frontal is the front, what would the back be? Strawberry grabs the sword and tugs at it, its stuck in there good. "Time for your... post...? Back... lobotomy?" Ugh, what was the back part of the brain called? 

She puts a foot on the skull and pulls. "C'mon!" Superhuman strength fights against suction for agonizing seconds. "Gahhhh!" The sword emerges with a wet pop as the girl is sent sprawling backwards.

She spends long seconds getting rained on. A sigh. "I have pulled the sword from the bastard, I am now the queen of Crucible." She deadpans.

She puts her feet beneath her and approaches the corpse. "Alrighty, come to mommy." the purple warmth of Azoth crawls up her arm and into her chest as she sets a hand on the body. It feels like a good amount. "Good, good. But that's not all I need." She eyes one of its horns. That looks like one of the things I need for my flask. Or its ashes, at least.

Whatever the clean and efficient way of removing a horn from a monster was, Strawberry did not know it. She was left kicking the damn thing for minutes, then wrenching at it for many more. Her colorful string of curses did nothing to loosen the accursed anatomy, but she liked to believe that it was helping.

Eva stares at Journeys of A Conduit, leafing through pages. The train-ship's in station off a siding. "So we think the bad luck is a living bridge effect from this, uh, academy place, right? I think in order to figure out how to control it we're going to have to go there. I can't justly keep inflicting our random misfortunes on our poor parkour instructor." 

Sable laughs and shakes her head. "They've put up with so much. We should get them something when we come back, maybe, as a thank-you for putting up with it." She stretches and hops into the pilot's seat.

"Well. I think you're right, heading there next is the best plan. Can you give me a bearing on the nearest Academy bridge, sweetie?"

Her fingers dance across the controls as she boots the trainship up and gets it ready to roll.

Eva focuses, then points. "North-northwest, through the city. I think it's near the docks?"

She nods and throttles up. Once the trainship's in motion, she starts flicking through the routing system until she finds an entry for the docks in that general area, then locks it in.

Off they go.

It's not until she has the horn and is strolling through one of the Academy's many, many idyllic beaches that she realizes that she doesn't actually know how she's going to cleanly combust that horn. The most obvious place to start would be a bonfire, but she'd need something to catch the ashes. Can I do it in an oven? That... might work? Do they get hot enough? Maybe she can just... hold a light to it? "Bone doesn't burn well, right? Maybe I can ask the next time I'm at-"

She feels the Academy. A bridge to the Academy. And Earth, and Bevin, and Rorch.

"Conduit."

"Okay, so the whole place is one big huge college campus -"

She blinks, pauses. "Wait, is that another Conduit? I feel - a feeling of safety and boredom, coming from somewhere out among these buildings..." 

Sable looks up as well. "Huh. Yeah, think so. Distinct Bevin vibes, and maybe some other stuff too."

She links arms with Eva and starts walking toward the unknown Conduit. "Hopefully a new friend?"

"I really hope so. Let's investigate, though. We've got the train, we've got your electricity, if we have to we'll be able to fight." 

The Pirates smirk, Hailey slipping into front for just a moment as a little bit of electricity crackles between the fingers of her free hand. "Damned right we will."

"Hope it doesn't come to that, though."

They're flying. Flying in a... "What the fuck is that?"

If she didn't know any better, she would say it was a-

Her fancy new wingsuit appears in her hands. She frantically starts putting in on. She doesn't know if the conduit on that train is friendly or not, but she is going to say hello.

As it approaches she transforms and finds that the wingsuit has morphed to fit her dress's aesthetic. No time to gush! I gotta catch that train! She jumps horizontally in the direction that the flying train is travelling to build up momentum, then teleports vaguely above it.

"Whoa, they suddenly got a lot closer - I can feel more worlds now, ones I don't recognize -" 

Eva flusters a little and rubs a hand through her hair. "How do we hail them? I don't know how all the controls work on this thing!" 

As she skydives recklessly towards the flying train, it occurs to her that other conduits can probably sense her from far away and that they were probably headed towards her anyway and that this method of approach could be seen as hostile. The rest of her brain was more fixated on the fact that skydiving onto a moving train housing an unknown, potentially hostile conduit is fucking cool so her brain could just shut up now.

She lands onto the train with a thump and a squeal as her fingers find friction. "Ok!"

"That... sounded like an excited teenage girl," Sable remarks in surprise as she brings the trainship to a smooth stop. "Still don't know our guest's not a threat, though. Dark magical girls are a thing."

The thump sounded directly overhead, so she heads to the door. "Stay in here at first, since we're better armed than you."

She opens the window and leans out, bracing the small of her back against the frame as she peers over the roof, right hand pointed cautiously toward the new arrival but not sparking.

"Hi. Quite the landing."

Wow, this is awkward. "Hi!" She shouts over the howling wind. "Deep in my soul I want to say that I can't explain this. But I think I actually can."

Hailey slips into front, arches an eyebrow, and grins. "Oh? That sounds like it's gonna be one hell of an explanation. Does it include anything about who you're friendly to and when?"

"What? No I was gonna say that some things you can only do once."

"Cute," she replies with a snicker. "Well, if you promise not to attack us, you can come inside to chat. I'd make a threat about kicking you out to fall if you tried anything, but," she gestures at the wingsuit, "I doubt it'd do shit if I did."

"I'm immortal!" She says, excitedly. "But I won't bite," first "promise!"

"I mean, in the right sorta context, bites are great. But the first time meeting a new friend we haven't even flirted with yet probably isn't that context."

She leans back in the window and then swings the door open wide. "Can you make it in on your own, or do you need a hand getting off the roof?"

She also steps close to Eva and murmurs, "Seems friendly enough."

"We're bound to get unlucky eventually," Eva murmurs back. "But for now it's okay."

"Uh, one second." She aims downwards, then teleports, faceplanting on the floor of the train cabin. "I'm ok."

"You can teleport!", Sable exclaims excitedly, reclaiming front from Hailey. "That's so cool."

She gestures around at the cabin of the locomotive, then at her girlfriend. "Welcome aboard my trainship. I'm Sable, and this is Eva."

"Nice to meet you." Eva offers a hand up to Strawberry.

"Hah, thanks." She allows herself to be helped up. "My name is Strawberry." Nope, still weird. "What brings you here on a flying fucking train oh my god this thing is so cool." She gawks at the cockpit interior.

She bounces in place excitedly. "I know, right? It's awesome! Can fold in new train cars, too, if we find something we want to add. As for why we're here, a mix of exploring and," she trails off and looks over at Eva. Is the leaky bridge aura problem private information? She doesn't really know.

She peers at Eva questioningly.

Eva simply nods. "I have a bridge to this plane that's a bit too strong, and bad luck's been bleeding through. We're here to try and fix that with practice."

"You have a bridge? Do you mean, like, how conduits feel like bridges?"

"Sorta yeah, the — idea is that conduits are sort of the same thing as bridges, in a way? Something that spans the worlds. So you can get some of the effects of bridges near conduits who are attuned to worlds particularly strongly. The Academy leaks corruption, so bad luck can happen near its bridges, which is what's happening to me. Basically my connection to this world is leaky and I need to figure out how to isolate it."

"Corruption, right." Like that stuff that transformed the Mu creatures. "I've seen that before. But, uh, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm a conduit, and I can tell that the two of you are conduits, so maybe we can compare notes. I've only been doing this conduit thing for a little over a month, I'm big into exploring too."

"Yeah, we just started a few weeks ago ourselves. I almost died, I can tell you the story later, and while I have an immortality it kind of sucks so I'm trying pretty hard not to get killed. We've been logging kelp for cash, and once we figure out how to stop the random strokes of bad luck we're probably going to go hang out on Rorch and learn parkour."

"We have a few books from some older conduits and have been cribbing from them a bit. Trying our best out there, you know how it is."

"Eva's the reason we have access to the books, honestly. Most of what I bring to the table is just the trainship," Sable replies with a shrug and a smile.

"Ah, yeah, I have a friend with a library in their Bevin, there's some scattered stuff in there about the other worlds. I know about four other conduits besides you two."

"You're the second we've met, not counting each other."

"Was this conduit a brass butterfly by any chance?"

Huh. "Nnno. A black-haired dude who made stuff from glass." Sable shakes her head. "A brass butterfly, huh? I suppose we'll find all kinds out here."

"So that makes eight of us so far." Well if nothing else I should tell Fib, Cean and Groundskeeper about these two. "Hey, can this thing go to space?"

"Yep. She's rated for all environments, from the depths of the ocean to the empty black."

"It's amphibious too?"

Sable grins wide and nods. "I love my trainship."

"Ok, well, there's a bridge high up that I wanted to check out. Have you been to Kuiper? A vacuum with lots of empty space?"

"Connected, haven't visited. Wanna go see?"

Go to space with two conduits that are basically strangers and can't actually trust yet. "Absolutely."

She points somewhere above. "I think its that way."

Yeah, sure, she'll go along with that. 

"Just to be clear, I can't breathe in space, so I'm going to be relying on the trainship here."

"Honestly neither can I. Trainship for the win."

She feels out into the sky for a Kuiper bridge... there. Yeah, pretty close to where Strawberry pointed, and very high up. Well, no time like the present. 

She sits down and buckles up in the pilot's seat while she gets the trainship ready, fingers flipping switches swiftly. "Strap in, girls. We're going all the way up."

"Yeah, I can go up there, but, like, a vacuum will still fuck me up." The urge to explain the many little caveats in that statement in excruciating detail is potent, but there was mention of opsec, so maybe she should wait before she gives them an exact rundown of what she can and cannot do. She takes a seat and straps herself in. "Spaaaaaaaaaaace." She mutters instead.

"Space. Space. Gotta go space." Eva grins.

Sable laughs, grins, and starts throttling up. The trainship picks up speed, and she tilts the pseudotrack attitude control back to roll skyward.

The ship thunders into the sky.

"Woah." Strawberry glues herself to a window as they rise. The sparse clouds and sky blue sky give way to the darkness of a thinner atmosphere. She has been on planes before, and she has teleported as high as she could one time, so she has this sense that they are going through the layers of the world a little too fast. She's not actually sure how to phrase the question she has. "Is the atmosphere... a little small or is it just me?"

Mental math flits through her mind for a moment: velocity, time, distance, size, all in a blur. "You... have a very good point. How small is this place?"

"I... I don't know. But, like, the gravity would be different, right?" She shouldn't be too surprised, this isn't Earth, but she expected...

What did she expect?

For things to be like Earth, unless otherwise specified.

"I mean... unless something about the planetary composition was different enough to compensate? Or weird magical fiat? Or something?"

"I don't know why I expected any of these magical worlds to behave like Earth. They could be flat, or cake-shaped, or bowl-shaped."

"For all we know it could even be a person."

"Spooky thought." They approach the bridge. "So how does this work?"

She grins wider, rolling down the non-existent track directly at the bridge. "I mentally grab the whole ship as we approach the bridge, and everyone aboard is jumped together at once, all under my power. Pretty sure it would work even jumping a non-Conduit."

They get closer.

"Thirty seconds to jump."

She braces herself. "Well, here goes nothing."

"Everybody hold on to your nonexistent hats!"

Sable grins, holds steady, and then a few moments later the wold falls away, replaced by somewhere else. Outside the window, brilliant stars twinkle in the distance, and slightly less distant drift enormous clouds of gas, occasional lightning sparking between them.

"Welcome," she says, gesturing expansively out the windows, "to Kuiper."

"Woah." She breathes, in pure awe. There is a moment of disappointment at the lack of zero g before realizing that the trainship must have artificial gravity. "What a time to be alive."

"I know, right!? We're in space! In my trainship! So, optional things to do: fly around and check out some pretty clouds, see if there's anything else to see, maybe spend some time bouncing around the cargo hold if I turn off the gravity..."

She grins curiously at the other girls. "Any other ideas?"

The many lights of the city she used to live in was both a sign of life and a shroud that drowned out the night sky.

Stars and swirling nebulae, delicate and nude before her, no atmosphere between her and it.

She is unworthy of it. How many people wished for this? To be free, to see the stars, to go where they please? To bear witness to the firmament?

Her eyes burn up.

"Huh?" She says, voice slightly shaky. "Oh, uhm, let's look around."

Sable looks up at the hint of shakiness in Strawberry's voice, and her smile softens to something small and gentle. She reaches out a hand to each girl, a bit shyly in Strawberry's case.

"We can take some time to just admire the view first, though. There's no need to rush off immediately, what with this being all our first time in deep space."

She blinks at the hand offered from the girl she barely knows. Every concern she might've had in this exact scenario seems so small right now. And yet as her hand inches towards theirs, as her fingers curl around a soft hand, her heart hammers in her chest.

She doesn't trust herself to speak, turning slightly to gaze out the window.

Eva's just been staring starry-eyed at the view; when Sable extends a hand to her as well, she takes it too, a slight tremble in her own hand.

"For all the strange places we've been to together, I think this is the first time I've really been awed. I dreamed of going to space someday, back on Earth. Never thought I'd get the chance."

Sable's smile widens a bit, and she gives each hand a gentle squeeze as she gazes out the window with her girlfriend and hopefully a new friend.

"I'm glad we can see it together. Girlfriends, new friends, sharing in the wonder."

She squeezes back. "Yeah." Strawberry whispers.

The inconceivable vastness housing an emptiness rich in color, light and detail. In its observing it becomes something more, transcending mere light and matter to become a memory, a pattern of thought in a conscious being. Something that might catalyze a change within its observers. More of an effect on the universe than any of the image's constituent photons could achieve on their own.

Patterns of light transmogrified through the engines of change that are human beings into something greater.

Eva closes her eyes after a moment, commiting the image to memory, then looks back out at the starscape. 

"We are a way for the stars to know themselves."

The words are barely a murmur, but a small smile lingers on Eva's lips afterwards. 

"Strange to find something so alien and yet so familiar out here."

The Pirates relax into a blur, burning the moment into their hearts with a tender sigh: girlfriend on one side, new friend on the other, stardust all, gazing upon radiant stardust. Truly a beautiful experience to share.

"Nothing so beautiful as animate stardust, sharing wonder with each other."

They squeeze the hands they're holding again. "Hello, stardust," they whisper.

"Hello Stardust." She whispers.

"Hello, Stardust. Glad to see you're here to meet us."

Eva smiles. 

"So what are we waiting for? Let's go explore."

"Yeah," She takes a steadying breath. "yeah, let's go."

She squeezes both girls' hands, leans over to kiss Eva's cheek, smiles gently at Strawberry, and steps over to the pilot seat.

"Any requests, girls, or better ideas than 'aim at a pretty cloud'?"

"Nah, a pretty cloud sounds wonderful."

"Yeah, a pretty cloud sounds..." She spots a distant pinprick moving in front of the bright backdrop of nebulae. "Hey, do you see that?"

Eva's eyebrows rise. "What is that?"

Scale is not something that comes easily in the void, especially to fallible human minds with no points of reference. As they approach it slowly becomes apparent that it is big. Very big.

Its front is like a flower, with massive petal-like fins bulging like sails, reflective from the back. It trails behind a long, thin, grey body, like an eel.

Just saying that it is many times larger than the trainship doesn't do it justice, it's body could be better described as a landscape, it's length measured in kilometers.

It doesn't seem to react as they approach. Strawberry's mouth hangs open.

"Holy fuck that's a huge creature. What the fuck. Unreasonably large. Okay, let's try aiming to go around it and see if it diverts to intercept or not, that way I can figure out whether I need to flee at hard burn."

She puts word to deed, adjusting the pseudo-track attitude orb to starboard to pass on the enormous entity's port side. It slowly grows larger-still in their view as they approach.

"Woah." Strawberry breathes. The being doesn't seem to react at all to their presence. The front of the petal fins aren't reflective like the backs are, instead they have a grayish-orange color to them. Nothing obviously looks like an eye, though the center point where all the petals meet could be a mouth.

"How does it... exist? Move? Eat? Metabolize?"

"Good question. Maybe gravitics or something? Maybe it eats nebulae?"

She... would not say no to some reassuring togetherness-ish physical contact while they marvel at this enormous beastie, actually, but isn't really up for asking.

Mostly she just marvels at it and keeps flying.

"Whoa..." Eva smiles and watches the creature, floating soundlessly in the hard vacuum. "That's amazing..."

"I sure hope it's friendly, or else slower than our ship."

"We don't have a top speed, just a top 'thrust' force of three gees, so unless it's got a frankly ridiculous way of moving, we can accel much faster, given our relative size."

She sighs warmly and smiles.

A nervous laughter escapes her and a brilliant smile cuts across her face.

She stares at its fins long enough to recognize what she is looking at and gasps. "Solar sails!" She bounces in place and points. "It's fins are solar sails!"

Sable bops her forehead with the heel of her palm, then shakes her head. "Of course! Ugh, w—I feel like a ditz for not thinking of that. That's so fucking cool."

She glances at the two of them. "Second best day of my life, easily." She whispers.

"Glad you've had a better day than this one, because this is far out." Eve smiles and stretches, looking out at the whole scene; the starfield, the nebula, and the filter-feeder (?) floating through it.

It's hard to beat... becoming a... Even in her own mind she has trouble saying the words. She sighs.

As they brave getting closer to the beast, they spot a crab on its skin.

"That's a crab." She lies, knowing full well that she must have told a falsehood.

"But why would there be crabs in space -" 

The crab bunches its many legs on the surface of the beast, and leaps towards the ship. 

"It's coming this way!"

"CRAAAAAB!"

"Shit!" She cranks the attitude orb hard, pitching up and yawing right, aiming perpendicular to their previous course and also angled firmly away. She pushes the throttle all the way to the maximum, aiming to get as much distance as possible and dodge it. "Shit shit shit shit shit."

It's getting closer, gliding silently across the void toward them. She's trying to dodge it as best she can, but it has a little gas bladder it can use to course correct.

"Everybody brace!"

She grips her seat as best she can, it's a little awkward since she's still in her wing suit. A noise reverberates throughout the cabin as the ship rocks with the impact.

"Are we ok? Are we damaged?"

She looks over a few readouts. "We're not leaking anywhere, so the hull's holding at least. Gouged the plating pretty hard, though." She shakes her head.

"We need firepower on this thing. Either we need to find someone in Rorch's black market, or we need to look elsewhere, but we need a pair of turret cars."

"Turret cars sound awesome." She briefly tries to imagine how many sick jumps she would have to make to afford such a thing and gives up. "How do you even afford such a thing? I've only ever made pocket change through parkour."

"We can sell things from one world in Rorch, found a popular commodity, but also train cars are basically free for the taking if you have a locomotive. The problem is that turret cars are essentially a black or grey market product. Getting a new one made is expensive, and any abandoned ones are scooped up quick."

"Huh, y'know... I actually know some people who might be able to set you up with something. And are in the market for the services of a trainship." They're gonna love this.

"Oh really." Sable grins sharply. "Get the armament I crave in return for ferrying some friends of yours around? I think your deal sounds very interesting, Miss Strawberry."

I suppose it's technically Miss Shortcake now, huh? "Hah... yeah, I should give them a call, there's worry about opsec, since there might be dangerous people to us in one of the Earths, but they could really use you." She remembers the Orichalcum train that Fib was making. "And potentially provide amazing armor."

"We'd need details, and I need to talk with my girlfriend before agreeing to anything, but that sounds very tempting."

"Let's head back to the Academy for now?" 

"Works for me, I still need to figure out what the hell's going on there."

"It's mostly colorful pseudo-Japanese lesbians in colleges as far as the eye can see. Alongside weirdly indistinct ghosts and one monster that I've seen."

"Huh. That's certainly a way for a place to be..."

"Fascinating," she remarks as she steers the ship through an immelman back toward the bridge. "I have a sudden urge to spend time doing things about monster problems. I also have an urge to snuggle pretty girls, but that's a problem I can solve right here aboard my trainship." That last bit is a bit mumbled, but potentially still audible.

Eva giggles and kisses Sable's cheek. "Sure, we can try some monster hunting."

"Heck yeah! Snuggling pretty girls and monster hunting! We're living the dream!" She throws her hands in air. She realizes that she never took off her wing suit. "I should probably change."

"Probably, yeah." Eva smiles, and before she realizes what she's doing she's reached out and patted Strawberry on the head. "You're super cute, you know that?"

"You really are," Sable agrees. "Oh, you can duck back to the rest of the ship if you want privacy, by the way."

"I am! Isn't it great?" She gets up, drops her magical girl transformation, reverting the wing suit back to its original yellow with Rorchian labeling.

"So great," she replies as she speeds toward the bridge back to the Academy. "At a glance, you seem very snugglable. We shan't know for sure until we apply science to the question, though."

"Shall I volunteer? For science?"

"Well I do like me some science." She grins. "Ok cuties, I'll be right back, let me take off this wing suit first."

The door to the cockpit clattered shut behind her. Two planeswalking lesbians- She doesn't actually know that for sure -girl-liking girls who are probably in a relationship with one another are flirting with her on their magic flying amphibious space-train.

"That can't be allowed, right? Can that happen?" She blinks, has a sudden realization, then teleports a foot in front of her, without her wing suit. It falls in a pile in the ground. She pats down her scrunched up skirt.

She looks back at the door. She barely knows them, as far as she knows there's something that down the line will push them apart: A bad habit, an incompatible personality, some strange belief... Strawberry spent a lot of her life aware of the ways in which relationships could fail, but even beyond that, right now, doing this? It filled her with a nameless dread she would probably spend the rest of her immortal life trying to articulate.

"Fuck it."

She opens the door. "I am ready to donate my delicate body to science, so that together we may advance this noble cause."

Eva laughs. "Alright! Where shall we snuggle? There are bunks in the back, or you could just sit in my lap, or...?" 

Eep. "Well, we're here to do science, let's see how lap-sitting works and we'll see where we end up from there!"

Unfortunately, this leaves her with the task of climbing onto a cute girl's lap.

You are god's gift to women (who are into girls) you are a monster slaying magical girl of lightning and teleportation and you can do this.

The temptation to try to teleport onto Eva's lap is strong, but she doesn't actually trust herself to do that correctly, so she settles for just... walking up to her seat and sitting on her lap. "Hey gorgeous." She whispers.

Sable grins delightedly as she keeps piloting. 

Eva stiffens a little, then very gently settles her arms around Strawberry. "Hey," she says. "Glad to have you join me."

"Yeah." She gulps, adjusts herself a little. "Is this ok?"

Eva exhales and smiles. "Yeah," she says. "I'm getting used to having cute girls in my lap still too. Sable is really helpful, but before I became a conduit it wasn't exactly an everyday occurrence for me." 

"Hah, tell me about it." She leans into Eva a little, gently. "I wasn't exactly super popular back on Earth."

Eva slowly relaxes as she gets used to having Strawberry in her lap, and after a few moments hugs her a little tighter. 

"Nor I," she says. "Nor I."

She hugs her back, maybe a touch too hyper aware of both of their breasts for her own good. She relaxes into her shoulder, letting their warmths intermingle.

Eva gently squeezes Strawberry, and smiles. 

"There," she says. "Nothing exploded." 

"Give it time, I haven't died in an explosion yet, but it's probably just a matter of time for me." She nuzzles Eva. "I live dangerously."

"You've died and come back? I don't have very good immortality, so if there's another option maybe we should spend some time looking into it...?"

"I mean, uh, snug!" She squeezes Strawberry. "Sorry, that was probably not a fun time for you!" 

"It was more embarrassing than anything." She runs her fingers through Eva's scalp. "Have you heard of Crucible? It has these purple bonfires, I respawn at the last one I rested at."

"Oh, yeah, those. I've heard they take a little every time, though... So it's not one that you want to use continuously for a long time." She touches her chin with her knuckles. "I wonder what else is out there..."

Also, she is enjoying being petted.

"The Rim has these ancient techno fortresses that, among other things, have clone tubes that take a year in Rim time to grow a backup body. If you aren't connected to the Rim it will only work while you are on the Rim, otherwise it works everywhere." Her fingers run gingerly down from her scalp to her neck, and then to the back of her ear.

"And they retain your memories and everything? I've got a save point in my Bevin that respawns me when I die, but it only "loads the last save I made", so I need to keep it updated and also if I die I lose memories, so in a real sense I actually do die if I die. It's not a very good immortality, as I said."

"Huh, so that's how Bevin does it? With Rim clones you retain your memories, I'm pretty sure. In Arbor, a forest world, you can be regrown over a period of months if you die, but I don't think it has any other downsides." From the ear back to the scalp.

Eva shivers softly at the gentle pets and lets out a little pleased noise, shifting in her seat to get a little more snuggly with Strawberry. "Rim clones would be better, then, I think..." 

She smiles. "I also think you're good at petting."

"They do sound better," Sable agrees over her shoulder as she continues piloting, "but if I remember correctly, Rim affinity accumulates in normal time, despite time in Rim being accelerated. We'd definitely want to bring a lot of projects and books and the like, to make it easier to fill the time, if we were trying for a connection."

"Mmmm." Her ability to hold a conversation is degrading. "You're soft." She breathes. She keeps stroking her, trying to elicit more good noises out of the girl.

Eva sighs softly, nuzzling into the petting. "Yeah..."

Then she blinks and giggles. "Fuck, I'm doing the cat proximity thing aren't I."

Sable laughs sharply at that. "Hah! You are."

She just holds her, drunk on physical contact. "Mm? Cat proximity?"

"As nearness to a cute object nears zero, inanity of statements approaches infinity."

She thinks for a second. "Girl cat cute. Eva is cat. Cute softie kitten girl blonde soft."

She hugs tight, nestles her face in her neck. "Safe."

Sable lets out a quietly fond sigh as she drives onward, smiling.

"Safe..." Eva cuddles Strawberry closer and smiiiiles.

"Mmmmm." She was perhaps, actually a little fuzzy in the head. Whatever tension had found its way into her mind and body had melted away. If she wasn't being held she'd be in danger of just flopping down onto the cabin floor. Her hair was in her face, only a little light filtered in between strands of blonde hair. She drank it in. "You are good to sit on."

"You are good to hold. Like a big fuzzy shark." 

A chuckle escapes her even as a tear rolls down her eye. "Rawr."

"Rawr..." 

Eva snuggles her close and lets out a shaky breath.

"... fuck it's good to hug someone else from Earth."

"Hm?" She's not exactly sure what she wants to ask. And she is absolutely not in the right frame of mind to think hard about it. "Are Strawberries in short supply?"

"People I care about are in short supply, and it's damn good to have that number go up by one." 

Sable just grins at that, locking in the transit and holding the throttle steady. "Seconded. Jumping in three, two, one, jump."

And as she speaks, there's a silent but deeply visceral sensation all three conduits feel as they pass between worlds in the space between moments.

"Welcome back to the Academy."

It feels different, when she's pulled through a bridge by Sable, than when Fib does it. Though she supposed that's normal, given that it's a small disaster every time Fib jumps. So far it seems like ever conduit she's met jumps differently, including herself. The barriers between worlds offer no resistance to her.

The act of multiversal travel has failed to become a mundane occurrence over the last couple of months, nevertheless she finds herself distracted from it as she tightens her hug around Eva.

"Whoof. This place still gives me the willies."

"Y'know, I want to compare it to other, worse worlds, but I guess that Crucible is actually a lot more honest with its intentions than the Academy, huh?" 

"It would certainly seem so, yes. All the not-people people here..."

"Yeah, you've got a point there," Sable agrees from the controls as she pulls the trainship in for a landing on an out of the way street.

She nuzzles Eva on the descent. "You know? I think I stopped being afraid of the dark when it disappointed me. That there would be nothing there, no monster, no phantasm, no nightmare from beyond the veil. And I think... This is going to sound crazy, but I think I'm glad to live in a world where something strange and inexplicable could be hiding in the shadows with me. I like having something immediate to be scared of that isn't just the slow and inevitable decay of society and its people."

"Honestly, it's completely the opposite for me. I don't do well with jumpscares. But I do like new experiences, even if they're kind of shitty in the moment. So I guess I have sort of a love hate relationship with places like this. Wonderful to visit, wouldn't want to live there." 

She nuzzles the crook of her neck, and squeezes her. "Reasonable."

Sable parks the trainship properly, then gets up from her control seat and walks over to the girls. She shyly hugs them both, burying her face in Eva's hair.

She happily wraps an arm around Sable. "Hey cutie." She gives them a squeeze. She wiggles, it's a little crowded on the seat. "Is there a bed on this train we can cuddle on?" Her heart flutters. Be confident! She urges herself.

"I'm pretty sure Sable's had a sleeper car the whole time I've known her," Eva says. "There should be space to cuddle."

"Ooh, I wanna see! These seats aren't rated for threesomes anyway."

Oh that just tumbled out of her mouth.

That startles a laugh out of Eva, followed by a flushed grin. 

"Getting a little ahead of ourselves, are we?~"

She giggles and leans in and kisses Strawberry's forehead.

She giggles nervously. "Hah, uh, yeah, I've known you for less than an hour." 

"Ah, but what an hour. We'll see where things go. For now, let's head up to the sleeper car."

Sable steps back and offers a hand each to the other two girls.

She gets up from Eva's lap and takes Sable's hand.

"I am generally in favor of the fun kind of stranger getting access to my body relatively quickly." 

Okay that was just a really slutty line but she's going to own it.

She snorts and giggles, a little more at ease.

And Sable starts leading them back.

"As much as I'm not totally a fan of my body yet, I'm certainly not against using it to give pleasure to lovely new friends."

There's a junction area at the back of the locomotive, with a passage to the cargo hold, or stairs up to the upper three cars. She leads them toward the starboard car, which turns out to be a fairly spacious sleeper car, with some closet space, some plush seating, and a very large bed.

Eva sits down on the bed, visibly considers for a moment, then slips off her shirt.

She's not wearing a bra underneath.

"This is more cozy."

Her mind snags on what Sable said, but whatever higher thought she had is obliterated as she sucks a breath through her teeth when she sees Eva. "Ah." She squeaks. Well that was fast. She thinks.

She takes off her pink cardigan, then her white t-shirt, then moves to unhook her bra.

"Oh, uh, you don't have to hurry along if you don't want to! I'm just - kind of expecting you want to given the comment you just made." 

Eva ducks her head and blushes. "I'm not actually good at this kind of thing in person, most of my experience is over the internet."

"That sounds like more than zero!" She unhooks her bra, holding the cups against her chest, then slipping her arms out of the straps. She walks to where both of them can see her and gives them a shy, blushing look before letting it drop to the floor.

Sable blushes, pulling off her crop top and setting it aside, then unhooking her bra as well, revealing perky little HRTitties. "And before Eva, my last experience was back before I knew I was a girl, so. There's something new for all of us."

She reaches up and cups Strawberry's cheek. "You're gorgeous."

She screams internally. Her blush has progressed to a point where she feels feverish. She should tell them, right? Strawberry lucked out so hard, why are her own tits so big? She lets out a breath. "So are you."

"Okay, okay, I want to actually cuddle at least a little before we, uh, try more."

She flops back onto the bed, skirt still on, and beckons to Strawberry and Sable.

"No, yeah! Uh..." She got on the bed, unsure of how exactly to approach. She was supposed to touch the topless girl with her own topless girl body. And then cuddling would happen. She looked down at Eva shyly.

Okay okay okay her heart is suddenly going a million miles an hour but she's got this. She's on top of this. She... has a plan... 

She pats next to herself, her gaze darting away. 

"Just, um, lie down, and I'll... do the hard part?" 

Sable, blushing, drapes herself on Eva's other side, nestled against her, and holds out a welcoming arm toward Strawberry.

She nods, lying down next to her. Her hand brushes against her side. "You're warm."

Eva gently wraps her arms around Strawberry, and pulls her in close. 

It feels... good.

Sable helps Eva pull Strawberry in closer, nestling her against both of them.

Eva closes her eyes and gently kisses the top of Strawberry's head. 

And Sable gently strokes her fingers down Strawberry's back, breathing slowly, savoring the closeness.

A shuddering breath leaves her. She shudders at Sable's touch, everything is so much and hers and Eva's breasts are squishing together now, and she had wanted that so badly and and and—.

She whines softly, and shudders again. Her eyes burn.

She hides it in the crook of Eva's neck, as she wrapped her arms around Eva and squeezed. She really was warm, her toes curled at the touch. She kissed the girl's neck with a hot shuddering breath.

Eva presses in, and kisses Strawberry back, meeting her lips with her own. 

She flushes. 

"... You're only the second person I've physically kissed," she says quietly. "Lucky you."

That was my first. She tries to say but fails.

You're my first. She gapes like a fish.

Abandoning attempts at language, she wraps a hand around the back of Eva's head and leads her gently for another kiss.

Oh, she's cute.

She kisses back. She's not sure what to do with her lips either but she's very much enjoying this.

Sable kisses along Strawberry's shoulder and the crook of her neck, and waits for a gap in her and Eva kissing to gently pull Strawberry's face towards her and give her a kiss of her own.

Her heart helpfully hammers in her chest like her life depends on it, supplying her body and mind with all of the adrenaline necessary to escape the predator she is probably being pursued by given the intensity of her feelings. She takes Sable's face in her hands and kisses her.

She sighs warmly against Strawberry's lips, combing her fingers through her hair, then kisses out along her cheek and down her neck.

Meanwhile, Eva is gently kissing down the back of her neck, nudging her hair out of the way.

Their touch is electric, she wrenches her eyes shut. She can't look at them. She can't breathe. Her toes curl, her fingers grasp the air, and her heart pounds.

I'm a girl sandwich. A manic giggle bubbles up unbidden as tears stain her cheeks.

Eva can't see the tears, so she just keeps gently kissing and pressing against Strawberry from behind.

Sable notices, though, and pulls back. "You okay, cutie?" she asks, right thumb softly brushing Strawberry's orbital bone.

"I'm the filling in a girl sandwich."

She giggles.

Sable giggles and nods. "You are. It's cute. I noticed some tears, though, just figured I'd check in."

She presses a kiss to Strawberry's forehead.

"Awwwwww..."

Eva blinks and swallows hard for a second herself, feeling the kick of that vulnerability a little.

"You're so good. You deserve to be the girl in a girl sandwich."

Sable smiles tenderly and squeezes both girls close.

She should probably say something and not just hide her blushing face in the crook of Sable's neck.

Sable turns and kisses her temple. "Good overwhelm or bad overwhelm, cutie? Good tears or bad?"

Words! Produce words with your noise orifice this instant!

Some sort of piteous whine leaves her. The absurdity of the state of her language capabilities leaves her giggling.

Eva takes Strawberry's hand and squeezes it softly.

"One squeeze yes two squeezes no. Do you want to keep going?" 

She screams internally. Then attempts to take a deep breath and just breaks out laughing. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I can't words!"

She tries to steady her breathing, and is clearly failing.

Sable looks over at Eva. "Calm, stationary cuddles until her brain resets."

She holds Strawberry steadily.

She takes steadying breaths, and can't stop herself from breaking out in giggles. She can't figure out for the life of her what's so fucking funny, but that in itself is usually pretty funny.

It is long minutes before she is ready to talk. "Ok. Ok. I think I am good."

Eventually Strawberry's laughter gets so infectious that Eva laughs along as well, but she shuts up when Strawberry sorts herself out for fear of causing a chain reaction. Her lips are still jumping up though.

Sable smiles tenderly and presses a kiss to Eva's lips, and then one to Strawberry's. "Good girls, both."

Eva blushes at that and hugs Strawberry a little closer.

She hugs her back.

I need to be an adult about this. "I like you two and am having a good time."

"I'm just.—" Fuck.

She blushes. "I'm having trouble expressing preferences. But I like you two."

"I like you too, sweetie," Sable replies, caressing her cheek. "Thank you for mustering your words."

She kisses Strawberry a bit deeper, and her hand strokes down her side.

"Yeah, it can be hard like that." 

She kisses Strawberry's shoulder.

"I don't want to force you into anything, but... Maybe it'd help if I did something like..." 

Eva gently moves Strawberry's hand she's holding onto her own breast, and rests it there. 

"Oh." She gives it a little squeeze. "Boobies."

She gently pokes Eva's nipple.

Eva giggles. "Yes! You have correctly identified this object!" 

"Hee hee." She pulls her close, pressing their chests together again. She tries to rub their nipples together.

This works! Eva is blushing a little deeper now.

"Gosh, I feel so lucky to be be-tittied."

"Same." Gosh, what do I even do with myself?

She looks at Sable. She looks at their boobs. "Oh wait." She crawls over to Sable. "Eva, come here." She points to the other side of the girl.

This is going to be interesting, she thinks.

"Alright!" 

Eva will happily be put where Strawberry wants her.

"Ok just..." She stands up a little, pressing Sable's head between her tits. She gestures for Eva to do the same.

Yes. Good plan. 

Operation boob smush is go.

Sable blushes vividly, making warm noises and nuzzling in. "Mmmmmmhhhhhh~"

Sable's head vanishes between boobs. "Sable, I don't mean to alarm you, but you might be the protagonist of an ecchi yuri anime.

"A genderbending ecchi yuri anime." Squish squish.

She freezes. "Heh, heh, genderbending?"

She nuzzles more and siiiiighs happily. Muffled words slip out from between tiddy. "Pretty good thing to be. I'd like a bit more of the genderbending juice though, please?"

"I'm working on it. We'll get you sorted, don't worry."

"Um, oh yeah. I got shapeshifted by my powers, I was a boy - well, a trans girl - before this. Seems like a straight upgrade to me. I think Sable is in a similar position but didn't get as lucky."

Still muffled and nuzzling into the girls breasts, Sable confirms, "Yeah, still stuck with what HRT gave me, want more of an upgrade than this."

Oh. They're both trans. Right. That makes sense. Just like—

Her brain lurches. "Yeah, I think enough powers from Academy will just feminize you, I don't think it's any power in particular." I know this from experience. She fails to say aloud.

Fuck.

Enough lurches and freezes can get through to Sable, even while smothering her brain under tiddy. She worms her arms free and hugs Strawberry hard.

"Uh, hey." She says, misunderstanding. "It'll be ok." She runs her fingers through Sable's hair.

Sable giggles and shakes her head, squeezing and pressing a kiss right between Strawberry's boobs. "You'll be okay, Strawberry Stardust, even if I have to make sure of it myself."

Eva backs off a little and ducks her head. 

"Sorry," she says, "I probably should have said that before I started taking my clothes off." 

"Why are you sorry? And Stardust?"

Sable shrugs. "Dunno, just a nickname from our trip to space."

"Um, because... I guess... I feel like you should know I used to be a guy before you do anything sexual with me for..." She trails off. 

"Probably actually pretty dumb reasons now that I think about it. It's not necessarily any of your business what my body looked like a few years ago, even if you might have an opinion about it... I guess it just feels like a nice thing to do, to make sure you know who you're getting involved with? And, well. I'd be scared, on Earth, of someone... reacting badly, if they found out and I hadn't told them ahead of time..."

And now Sable's squeezing Eva too.

She squeezes back. It helps.

"I feel like if somebody reacts badly then... I dunno, that's just... a kind of shitty thing to do? I feel like a nice person who didn't understand would be more bewildered than upset? And then they could ask a lot of questions and understand? If somebody reacts badly then you don't need them in your life, I feel."

She shrugs. "Not that it matters in this case since I'm—"

"—also—"

"—trans."

"So, y'know. It's fine."

Sable nods and squeezes both girls firmly. "Brave girl, telling us," she praises Strawberry.

"Awwwww!" 

Eva hugs Strawberry as well, and softly squeezes her.

She looks away, smiling sheepishly. "Yeah I kinda thought I wasn't going to tell anyone, y'know? Like, its none of their business anyway. But like... I dunno, If I'm going to be involved with somebody then these things matter, right? If they're a part of who you are?"

"It's a part of your story. It's worth telling someone to give them more of an understanding of how you got here, how your story marked you, if they're someone you deeply value and want to keep around, but you don't owe it to anyone. Ever."

She lets out a breath. "Yeah." She hugs them. "Y'know, you two are the only people I've told."

"Yeah," Eva says softly. "I think Sable's right."

She looks Strawberry in the eye, pauses for a moment, then gently leans in and kisses her. 

"... Strawberry Stardust..." 

A half-dozen questions war on the tip of her tongue, but what comes out is: 

"I'm so glad to get to see the real you." 

"Well, you know..."

She kisses Eva.

"...somebody had to."

"And we're honored," Sable replies, capturing Strawberry's lips in a kiss of her own, "that it's us."

"Yeah," Eva says. "Absolutely."

"So that means..." 

Gears visibly turn in Eva's head as she considers the possibilities.

"... we'd be taking each other's virginities as girls??"

"I mean, I kind of already knew that, but I didn't know that it would mean it in the kind of way that I mean it means that, if that makes any sense the way I said it?"

Sable giggles and smiles and nods.

She chuckles. "Are we actually doing that right now? We just met!"

"Fair comment, I just.." Eva looks away. "... I guess I'm trying to make up for lost time, after the life I had before I got this body."

"Yeah, that makes sense. I am maybe a little nervous and..." I still barely know these two.

She shrugs. "I mean, I'm down for this, I just." She pauses. "Well I don't know what I'm doing, y'know?"

Sable rubs the back of her head sheepishly. "I guess I'm the experienced one. I feel like that should mean we're doomed, but really we'll be fine. I know what I'm doing, and people have been reinventing pleasure from first principles for millennia."

"Well then, Miss Sable, what precisely should we be doing to each other?" 

She should have expected this, she set herself up for it, but being treated as the teacher here still catches her off guard. She blushes brightly.

"Um. We should start with foreplay, getting each other so hot and bothered we're desperate for it. Lots of kissing and touching and such, enjoying each other and trying to make each other feel good. Gradual progression, don't go right for the most intense parts first."

"Very well." She nods seriously. "My soft nubile form is in your hands.

"As is, um, mine?" She blushes, suddenly shy now that it could actually happen.

"Eheh, Okay. Start with kissing, add caressing each other's sides, maybe groping asses a bit, and then when you're both feeling a bit bothered start caressing each other's breasts. Pay attention to each other's noises."

She'll demonstrate, capturing first Eva, then Strawberry, in a deep kiss and running her hands down their bare backs.

Okay. She can do this. She can totally do this. 

She shimmies forward on the bed and starts to gently pet Strawberry as Sable directed her to.

Sure, I will graciously accept the foreplay tutorial. She sidles up to Eva and lets herself be pet.

Eva keeps petting very softly, letting Strawberry take her own time to reach out and touch her.

She moves behind Eva, runs her hands up and down her front. She pushes aside her hair to get easy access to her neck. She moves close, letting her breath crawl on her neck for just a second before she gently runs her teeth over it.

"ah... that's... nice..." 

Eva shivers and presses back into Strawberry, her body starting to flush from the gentle touches and caresses.

Sable grins and wraps around both girls from their right, her breasts pressing against their arms as she kisses and nibbles Strawberry's neck, and pulls one of her hands up to rest it on Eva's breast.

Eva carefully mirrors Sable's gesture on Sable's own body, gently squishing the closer of her perky little hrtitties.

Boob.

She's not sure if wireheading is a thing, but if somebody were to gently nibble her neck they might be able to keep her in place until she was weak from lack of food.

Her eyes flutter half shut as her toes curl.

Sable flushes and arches into Eva's touch, but keeps nibbling Lexi's neck. "Hhhhnnnnh," she moans, adding a hand to caress Eva's inner thigh as well.

"Oh.. ah..." Eva shivers a little and leans into Sable a little more, the kisses and touches getting to her a bit. Gently, she pinches Sable's nipple.

"Aaahnnn~!" Sable yelps, arching into it despite herself. She bites down a bit harder on Strawberry's neck, and strokes a bit higher up Eva's thigh.

Oh. Oh that touch is getting dangerously close to. Places. 

Eva bites her lips and leans back into Strawberry, her blush getting brighter.

"Ah, ah!" She flinches as Sable bites her. She reaches over to hold Sable's head, stroking Eva with the other.

Sable sighs into Strawberry's neck and keeps nibbling, then teases her fingers away from Eva's pussy and up her hip to cup and squeeze her breast.

"I'm being nibbled like a strawberry." She giggles.

She reaches and strokes the girls, maybe she should figure out whatever conduit power can give her tentacles or extra arms, surely they exist!

Eva sighs as Sable's hand drifts away, but the flush on her face remains. That was almost... that could have been...

Her mind whirling with possibilities, she settles in to enjoy the heavy petting with a warm smile. This is funnnnnnn.

She wraps her legs around Eva. Running her fingers down her navel, close to her nethers. She slips her fingertip between the fabric of her panties and her skin.

Ohhhhhhh fuck she's in trouble now. She's so in trouble now. 

She giggles softly, her breath hitching, and stills, tense with the anticipation. 

Her hand intrudes softly. The flesh is warm and her fingers are soft. They brush against her folds. "Eva." She whispers into her ear.

"Strawberry..." 

She's slick down there, and her heart hammers in her chest as she presses back against Strawberry, the hairs on the back of her neck rising in shivery waves of erotic tension. "Fuck..." 

Sable nibbles first Eva's earlobe, then Strawberry's, squeezing Strawberry's breast and pinching her nipple. "Good girls," she purrs in their ears.

Eva sees stars for a moment as Sable nibbles her ear and lets out a shivery tense breath, too overwhelmed by the sensation to even make a noise.

She giggles at the sensation of Sable nibbling her.

"Correct." She feels the wetness. "We are good girls."

Ok, ok, ok, just do it, you know what you are doing, roughly. She inserts a finger. "Right Eva?"

Eva lets out a little gasp as the finger slips into her, and clenches gently around it. 

"Yeah, we, ah, are. That goes for you too." 

She leans her neck away from Strawberry, exposing more of her neck to nibble. 

Sable nips Strawberry's neck and slips a hand down to caress her thigh, while her other hand squeezes Eva's breast.

She happily drags her teeth along Eva's neck, moving her finger in and out. It's different, when it is someone else. Her other hand goes over Sable's own and squeezes it.

Eva instinctively grinds in a little, pressing up against Strawberry's hand, her body rocking slowly into the motion. 

"Ahhhhh..." She closes her eyes and basks in the sensations, floating happily on a cloud of warmth and bliss. 

Sable teases her fingers higher up Strawberry's thigh, brushing against her folds lightly through her panties, nibbling more along her neck.

She gasps at the touch. Oh god, oh god. She attempts to maintain a steady rhythm while escalating slowly.

Her technique's a little sloppy, but Eva is Not Complaining. She's literally never even masturbated in this body yet (too small a space with Sable on the train) and she's absolutely burning up with euphoria over her new parts and the need to be filled even deeper. 

"Fuck yes, Strawberry, don't stop —"

A manic giggle bubbles up again. She inserts a second finger and keeps it up. "Oh I won't! Don't worry."

She gasps as a finger enters her.

Eva giggles back and keeps moving against Strawberry's fingers, accepting each stroke with a smile. 

She maintains a rhythm, she only vaguely knows what she is doing, but she does it with enthusiasm. Her other hand runs up and down Eva's body. She rocks her hips at Sable's touch.

Eva slowly starts to come apart against Strawberry, her breath rushing and dragging, her cheeks turning redder as the flush of pleasure hits her. 

This is... really, really nice... 

Oh. It's happening.

The girl tries not to panic as she maintains her course. The nameless fear makes her look away, it makes the touch feel distant, her vision blurs, she feels feverish again. She desperately wants to escape, to teleport somewhere and scream but she can't just stop she just can't, not now. She is fingerfucking a girl and being fingerfucked herself. and she is elated and why is this so hard?

I'm fine! I'm fine!

She shows little on her face as she maintains her rhythm, she just needs a break point, that's all.

Eva, blissfully unaware of how much Strawberry is panicking right now, instead comes to a shivery, shuddery orgasm on her fingers, her breath coming out in a gasp as she tumbles over the edge. 

Her hands shake as she tries to maintain her rhythm in the face of what the foreign hand is doing to her nethers. It is very different when its someone else. She bucks her hips through ragged breaths against the hand. She shudders as she tips over the edge.

Success.

She breathes a shaky breath. She leans in and kisses Eva on the cheek.

Eva slumps a little against Strawberry, her breath slowing and her body becoming a little heavier.

"Oh wow," she says, a huge grin on her face.

She swallows, hugging her one handed. Her heart hammers in her chest. She tries to steady her breathing. She withdraws a warm, slick hand from Eva, unsure what to do with it. She awkwardly holds it out to the side. She agonizes about what to say. I need a minute. Is probably her easiest option, but she dreads being asked to elaborate. How do you tell a person that you need some space away from them after you just fingerfucked them without hurting their feelings? She waits for a bit.

She kisses her in the cheek again, just to make sure she's sending the right message. "I think I need a minute." She manages.

Sable kisses Strawberry's cheek softly and squeezes her gently against Eva. "That's fine. It's okay to be overwhelmed."

"Yeah sorry I kind of got way too into that didn't I..."

Eva flushes and gently extricates herself from Strawberry.

"If you need space that's okay, I... frankly I think I also need some time to come down from. That."

"Haha! No no, I'm good! I just need a minute, uh, I'll be right back! Don't have too much fun without me, heh." She breaks away and teleports back to her Bevin.

Sable shrugs a little. "Valid of her," she comments, and starts gently petting Eva some more.

Quiet and dim, as always.

Strawberry throws herself onto the bed with a loud, extended whining sound that slowly morphs into nervous laughter.

"I'm fine!" She says, a little too loudly. "I'm fine! We're good! Everything's good!" She's still holding out her wet hand, avoiding contact with the sheets. In mere seconds she has changed to a fresh, cute outfit. Completely clean, warm, but no longer slick with sweat. "No, wait, I'm supposed to be naked." She takes it off. 

"No, wait, half-naked." She puts her skirt and panties back on. "Right. Ok" Her arm moves under her tits to support them. Her heart slowly calms down. "Ok so maybe I go back and we get Sable off and then... cuddle and explore the Academy?"