OOCS

Chapter 36: Change of tides / New neighbors, new Landlord

As war never changes, in that it always changes, it might as well change back to what you knew beforehand but slightly different.

So, Karl was cursing his harem right now, not very audible or in complete sentences as he was mumbling away his frustration of the first 3 now 4, Scavera joined in in her glorious invisible nudeness and just let them know that with an unexpected kiss stolen from Karl on the way to the dig site.

The plan was first to side upgrade the barracks or maybe make use of the still barely used second lower floor of the complex, but quicker smarter thinking provided him with a very quickly sketched idea of how to maximize harem security, whilst half intending sardine in tin can feeling for the newcomers.

Karl-Heinz didn´t ask the logic behind that quick “order” delivered as a suggestion by the sneaky Cloaken now full wife, who was very eager to consolidate the marriage as soon as biologically possible. The note was signed by Sarsa in her signature way of barely readable but hard to fake as it was her special way of barely readable that Karl forced himself to be able to distinguish.

So now he was cursing at over eager or slightly concerned about entombment new wife, a barracks to build up to speck for their own good and most likely manipulation mind games and a twitchy stressed and one-time breached guard detail that would jump him to the safety of too much breast flesh at the drop of a too loud pin hitting the stone floor.

So, life was an upgraded version of when he just fucked around building the bunker way back when, all the days of maybe a month ago.

He could use a vacation of isolation right about now. But Karl was sure he would be rescued within the hour of Laka not being able to smell his farts anymore and that included through stone walls of any thickness. They had traded for bombs in the peaceful time and Karl had rambled on about all the fun things that could be done with enough or correct usage of boom.

As consequence he even was tasked to craft some special bombs, which he wanted to do, but didn´t manage to get around to do. Instead, he had tried to focus on the assembly machine which still didn´t work yet, parts of it did, but he was far off from a factory line were all the questionable loyal wage slaves could assemble precision crafted or even cheat “crafted” laser rifles.

No one dared cut down on his free time for bomb play, except of course Tris who smelled another toy to have, out of fear of him hurting himself and out of the bigger fear of not being able to ride the best seat of the bunker as often as practically possible.

Anyway, the Barrack stone holes were a quick job. They were connected to the mess hall of the bunker, but one first would need to fall down a set of stairs and past two small ish lines of defenses to get into the place. They did have several square rooms and enough holes in the wall cemetery crypt stile to sleep in. But no furniture or doors or anything beyond what they would carry down there with them.

He managed to finish it with a fancy looking door in under 15 minutes, or at least that is what his head clock lied to him in its ever-shifting reliability.

He himself was secured away from the passing refuge crowd back into his fuck room.

Being effectively in quarantine from all the potential bad seductress whores, “whores” who most likely already are bribing over bigger amounts of the not essential supplies if not the essential supplies plus back stabbing to be integrated into the marriage for safety and sex, Karl tries to figure out how to make is crippled arm useful again.

Attempt one, while no one was looking as he usually can be left unobserved as long as Tris doesn´t whisper weapon ideas in his ears. He takes a block of metal, crafts it into medial plate armor shoulder plate.

The attempt gets aborted as he struggles to evenly “craft” his arm into positions and bites back curses where he bruises himself in the attempt.

Attempt two, he creates a near future exoskeleton thingy shaped out of rods holding the arm in place whilst being secured to metal rings on his arm and an upper torso anker plate.

It works much better than before as he doesn´t self-injure himself and only reshapes the connecting rods instead of the whole thing. But this set up is also trashed as Laka spots it, screams “Danger!” and tries to rip the clearly attacking metal rods of off husbands’ arm to free him from this alien parasite,

Karl luckily was sitting on the bed and thus was ground tackled into something softer than solid floor hardness. The iron held strong until Laka in her skill pinned Karl to the bed and sideways first bend and then ripped the first of 3 rods to snap.

The others took up their weapons and half pointed them in Karl's direction whilst the other half pointed them out the door to secure the region.

Karl protested or rather begged Laka to cool down. “Stop, stop! It is just iron! Just iron! No intruder!” Which did manage to get the Lopen to slow down enough to look him and his now very badly positioned arm over.

Reinforcements arrive and the room is now packed with half the bunker worth of wives, some of the refugees managing to sneak in being helpful for brown noser points. The only free space in the room is a small spot around Karl-Heinz with the only invader into that spot being Laka and all the stares at his newest slightly bend artistic statement of engineering.

Shortly after the awkward pause could get big enough for the shame of Laka to even breach Karl´s limited social perception. So, he booped her snoot as her ears were trying to be reabsorbed into her head, together with her posture shrinking at a rate of 10% per second of stares.

This wall of indecision gets broken by the fearless overworked Sarsa breaching the crowd by simply including them into her slithering pathway. “Looks like a false alarm, get back to your posts! And you new lot, get back to your own quarters. Now shoo!”

The room clears out rather fast after this, back to the more manageable level of only Karl, the current 4 protectors and Sarsa. Still in command the snake lady first goes to Karl-Heinz, who managed to disengage the metal from his body back into an ingot. “You should let us know what you are about to do, not by much, just a few words that we don´t have to be scared about you being hurt or hurting yourself.”

The Nagasha gave him a gentle quick kiss on his disheveled head, his hair was getting messy long and his beard was growing unsightly patchy. “We need to clean up your looks a bit too, soon.” She said in loving care before doing an expression turn around as if someone just killed her dog in front of her.

Facing Laka, Sarsa then growled. “Good job soldier, but use a little more brain. You aren´t the only one on watch close by currently. So, calm a bit down now that he is as secure as we can manage for now.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

To that Laka just bowed her head in shame, not saying a word and trot over into a corner to ponder her mistake,

Sarsa then addressed Vaskra with. “How did the rest of you react? Did it work as trained?”

Vaskra nodded and then commented. “Everyone was ready and every corner was watched, even Scavera joined in as if on instinct.”

Sarsa nodded to that and slithered back out of the room to get back to her job of herding cats, horny, over eager, slightly possible hostile cats.

Laka being culled stays quiet for a while, giving someone else the chance to take center stage of the VIP audience attention. Said VIP is busy looking around if he managed to collect all the metal and didn´t miss anything. So Vaskra and Scavera both rush to gain that center stage.

Scavera runs in eager to do more kissing with them juicy lips filled with that delightful spit, that can make her underwear peal itself of off her nether region, carried by the flood of the liquid released. Being a stealthy person by hearth she goes in with no voice or sight of her to be seen, a grave error as it turns out to be.

Vaskra doesn´t need to rush a distance or be unheard, she takes that field of battle with might and determination, knowing she was the first, even if she isn´t first wife. So, she steps around to face him, shoulders back, chest out as high as possible, arm and finger pointed asking “Hubby what did you even try to do that got our Laka so panicked?” And thus, she won the race just before her unknown opponent could turn this into foreplay deluxe.

“I was trying to make a prosthetic, so I can move my arm for me again.” He answered flat and not even looking once at anyone, instead Karl was refocused on the metal.

Attempt three was a modification of the second attempt. This time the metal rod didn´t have the distance of two stacked hands away from his flesh and weren´t pure round. Instead, the positioning rods looked like some fancy cast into shape double T beam reminiscent of designed machine parts. Like one could open up an old 1980 machine and find one of these arms holding an electric engine in position inside of a factory machine.

The function worked and he was able to freely move his arm again at the shoulder joint. His elbow movement wasn´t ideal but seemed to be working good enough. Sadly, the aesthetic died when Karl tried to move his arm around a bit faster and ended up crafting the double T beams into what happens when big machines slap fight structural components against each other.

The attempt worked good enough, but the look of the prosthetic in use was degrading fast. So, everyone but Karl himself pitied the loss of looks. He just was happy that he could somewhat clumsily use his arm again.

As a final step he made the contraption removable so that someone could remove it without the crafting cheat in an emergency.

Then as Karl-Heinz requested more metal for what next came in crafting tasks and boredom chasing, the bunker shook in its entirety.

Panicked yells could be heard thru the door and down the hallway.

Oddly Karl started to reminisce about how medieval Germany farm houses had no hallways as every square meter of roofed heated space was to be used and was valuable. So, people build inter connected rooms were one just passed thru rooms to get to the different work or sleep spots in the house.

Which distracted Karl long enough to warrant a gentle shaking from Laka as he got back to the real world, if not the more important world. He did kind of have a self-sustaining and perpetually faster growing harem on his list of duties that did want him and their own lives to continue.

“We are being attacked!” said Laka as she stopped shaking him to his senses, at the same time the ceiling shook again. Lucky for all the worried upwards lookers, there was no or only minimal dust to be shaken lose and thus no one got blinded from that movie cliche.

Before Karl could drift off into the next side tangent, as the real world really was more subjective to avoid his lingering depression pains, he got half dragged by his hand and following Laka to the command center to Sarsa.

Essentially, he ended up again in the big everything room of the mess hall, this time extra cramped due to the doubling of bunker heartbeats in the last hour. Sarsa was organizing the rows of viewers or rather soldiers she had and Doc and Tris were setting up a black board for her to soon plan on.

The ceiling shook again, but this time most eyes were on Sarsa, some were on Karl.

Sarsa then took her spot next to Doc and the blackboard, and the Nagasha asked. “Do we know where the explosions are happening?”

One woman from the back of the room answers. “It feels like they are happening in the entrance room, it shook more there than the second explosion shook here.”

Sarsa looks at Vaskra, Vaskra takes a too long moment to notice the look, then looks back questioningly, then goes over to actually ask what is wrong as Sarsa´s grim look gains some hints of rage and some more down curling lips of disappointment. “What should I command or do in this situation?” The Tret woman asks a bit fearful.

“In this moment you go and check the claim. Either yourself or someone who can do it.” Answers Sarsa, leaning in close and being dangerously quiet.

Vaskra gulps and runs off as if in fear of being eaten if she didn´t complete the task in the next 5 seconds with SSS rank skill score.

Sarsa has a bit of pity and send 2 random wives after her to aid her.

The planning goes on but Karl-Heinz fails to stay focused, his thoughts wandering again, he grabs himself something to eat. It feels like he is reaching his limits and a break down is this time not sneaking up but announcing its soon arrival in his mind.

When Laka manages to notice and reaffirm his attention on Sarsa the blackboard was formed with a rough sketch of the entrance hall with crude stairs and symbols he can´t make out as he missed the context of them being defined in the planning session.

And all looks are on him, Making him feel very self-conscious and as a consequence very, very, worthless and panicked of letting others down. He swallows his current bite, buys some more time by drinking water and then crumbles by looking back at them, not knowing how to react as the looks turn more and more downfallen.

Sarsa then breaks the ice of this by saying. ” Karl-Heinz, Husband, we need you to make a small set of stairs and stay close by to close them again if they try to push us back. Can you do that for us?”

He takes another drink and just nods yes.

The ceiling shakes again from the next blast.

Why was he losing his mind now?

Usually, he would be able to push on working even thru breakdowns, he would just not go near the big machines that could potentially kill him and stay away from sharp objects. Like take a break for 10 minutes on the toilet and distract his mind with meme pictures on his phone and be good again for the rest of the day.

But now he didn´t have his phone, or memes, or his inner defenses up that suppress every sliver of emotion. He had opened up a tiny bit and now the collector has come to get his due owed.

He didn´t have any memes, music, games or internet to distract himself. He could start binge eating as a minimal distraction, so he did that and really started to dig in and start drinking the fancy bottles too.

He must have blanked out again as he was sitting in the defensive lines again, Laka was opening the next bottle for him, Vaskra was pointing in the direction of the mostly emptied currently closed exit of the bunker.

The others around him seem very worried but the looks they give a grinning Tris and a high standing Sarsa gives them confidence.

Karl manages to pull himself together enough from his emotional storm of concentrated “I feel bad, I am worthless, Why do I even live.” to ask. “When do I open the stairs?”

Vaskra looked a bit happy at him as she answered. “After the next boom, we don´t want to get exploded down here, can you do that?”

Karl first nods yes, the he slaps himself with his right hand, gets his adrenaline pumping a bit and answers with proper words “Yes”. He takes another deep gulp of the current taste distraction that does spark some ever so small amount of happy feelings in him, even though his belly is by now protesting to be full and his bladder soon will join that complaint line.

With that small added amount of feel good he manages to reactivate his well-honed if slightly rusty skill of suppressing feelings and adds to his answer. “I can hold it together for now, just don´t let me relax or get bored too much or I will lose myself again.”

Being ready to be productive again, but still being impaired from his issues, Karl jumps the gun and opens the way up to early.

The stairway to sunlight and bad smelling soldiers’ parts its way up the old rout and out of sight, just to allow a strong gush of wind and explosion shock wave down into the room, shortly followed by lose debris of kicked up dirt and sharp gravel chunks.

Karl was expecting and hoping to get dirty glares for his fuck up, it would match how he had experienced the world so far, what he got was many concerned looks of the closer circle and no reaction from the soon to happen combat focused wives. Somehow the worried looks hurt him even more and he got very close to breaking down again.

He started tearing up and took big long gulps, finishing off the half full bottle he had and refocused on the crawling slow unfolding encounter.

New front line, new soldiers in the meat grinder, old problem of “them” thinking they could force the issue.