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Adventures on the Lost Continent (Midnight Lass x Blood Red Romeo)

“I think both of us will get a lot of self control practice,” he replied, a lecherous grin accompanying the statement. He was considering renouncing Safa’s fortune telling if it would let him take this woman to bed. But he knew better than that. Unfortunately.

Even if it was unfortunate to see her dress herself, it was also sexy. Orson was starting to think it was less the actions that were arousing him than the woman performing them. “So, I know it might be challenging, but I hope you can maintain both a professional and a personal relationship. I’ll do my best not to be distracted by you during inappropriate times.”
 
"Me and you both," Tamra said with a blush. "And I know I should be jealous, and maybe it was because you, me and Safa being together, but I'm...well, I'm kind of intrigued about the idea of, you know, being with you and another woman, dressed like I was earlier. Or maybe undressed would be the right word. Just as long as it's someone we're sharing this adventure with. I mean, not this adventure..." she laughed nervously, gesturing toward the bedroom, "But our adventure to the Lost Continent."
 
“We’ll see how the wind blows. I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to be in my bed, just that they’re more than welcome to,” he said with a laugh before stepping over to her. “There’s one thing I’ve been wanting to do for ages, so I hope you’ll forgive me.” With that, he leaned in, giving her a light kiss on the lips. “Good night, Tamra,” he said. It may be overly cheesy of him, but he had always wanted to give a partner a goodnight kiss. Granted, he’d rather they be sleeping in the same bed, but this was enough for now.
 
Tamra gave Orson a shy smile before leaving his cabin and heading to her own quarters. Where the first thing she'd be doing would taking a long, cold shower. And using that shampoo that Safa was so insistent she'd use.
 
For Orson, it had been a long, tiring day. A fight, him almost losing the crew, him kind of entering a romantic relationship with two, potentially three women. It had been a wild ride that he was ready to end. Of course, being as aroused as he was, there was only one option.

Later, he flopped into bed, having completed both his shower and a fearsome masturbation session in which he couldn’t help but imagine Tamra. He was dead tired after all that. It only took a minute for him to completely pass out, leading him to dreams of very predictable and erotic nature.
 
It was a loud knocking on his door that would wake Orson the next morning.

"Captain James," the voice of the ship's nurse, Bianca Costa, called from the other side of the door. "You need to come to sickbay. We have a situation."
 
Orson pulled himself out of bed when he heard this. He had been in a hazy state of waking when she had knocked, blissfully remembering last night with Tamra. He was also entertaining perverted fantasies, but that faded when she said there was a situation. He went from horny virgin to serious captain in seconds. He moved to the door, still in the disheveled clothes of last night, opening it for the nurse.

“Nurse Costa, what’s going on?” he asked, ready to move the second she told him too. In his experience, the word situation rarely accompanied anything good.
 
Bianca was in a crisp set of white blouse and slacks, her appearance the opposite of Orson's own disheveled look.

"It's uh...." Bianca shrugged and sighed. "You're going to have to see it to believe it. It's not going anywhere if you want to straighten up first."
 
“Okay,” he said cautiously, backing away from her and into his room. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said before closing the door. Orson moves quickly, calling back on his training in the Navy. In under two minutes, he was back to her. His hair was still kind of messy, but otherwise he was back to his normal look. The shirt, the slacks, and that old beat up coat.

“Sorry for the delay. What’s the situation?” he asked as the pair began to make their way towards the sickbay. “Is someone hurt?”
 
"Not hurt, just...changed," Bianca replied. Before she had a chance to elaborate, they were in the sickbay.

The Midnight Curse didn't have a cramped sickbay, but neither was it particularly roomy. There was room for a writing area, two beds for patients, and a cabinet with medical supplies. There was a stairwell leading downward that led to a laboratory that would be eventually shared by Doctor Motwani, Doctor Dubois and Doctor Dimitriu and a doorway that led to the quarters shared by Doctor Motwani and Nurse Costas.

The sickbay was also filled with a number of women. Tamra and Lauren Evans were sitting on two of the beds, in a heated discussion with Doctor Motwani, who kept shaking her head. Occasionally, Lauren would shoot a glare at Safa, who would shrug and return a "Who me?" look at Lauren. Doctor Dubois has just stuck her head up the stairwell and shouted scientific gibberish at Doctor Motwani, who turned her head and shouted equally scientific gibberish back at her.

None of the women initially noticed the arrival of Orson and Bianca, so wrapped up were they in their conversations. After a minute, though, Lauren spotted Orson at the doorway.

"Captain James, do you see what she did?" Lauren said, pointing to Safa, then at her own head.

It wasn't obvious at first, but a few seconds of staring would make the change obvious. Most of the women on the Midnight Curse had hair that extended down to at least the middle of their back, if not longer. The only two exceptions to this rule were Tamra and Lauren, whose hair went just to their shoulders. But now both women had hair that easily draped down to the peak of their breasts.
 
If Orson wasn’t focused on the incident he had been informed of, he would have taken a moment to admire how lively the ship has become. Not long ago, he had been here alone. Now, all sorts of voices filled the halls of his ship. It was enough to make a Captain thrilled. If it wasn’t for his focus being drawn elsewhere.

At first, he couldn’t really tell what the problem was. But then he realized it was her hair she was talking about, and the difference became quite obvious. Both her Tamra’s hair had grown overnight. That’s when he remembered the issue involving shampoo the night before.

“Dr. Wilson, I’m going to need to ask you to translate for me,” he started as he turned to address Safa. “Safa, why did you give these girls hair growth shampoo?”
 
"And how did she get their hair to grow with shampoo that quickly," Ayisha Motwani demanded. "That is simply impossible."

"I haven't been able to discern anything with the equipment on board," Sabrina Dubois remarked, as she stepped completely into the sickbay. "I could run some tests over at the university, with samples of the hair and shampoo, but I doubt that we'll get any answers, at least not before we leave."

Tamra asked Safa some pretty pointed questions, which the other woman shrugged off before answering.

"She says it is a...the word she uses translates roughly as 'home remedy,' but not quite," Tamra explained. "She assures me it's harmless, other than instilling a large appetite for the next couple of days. The ingredients aren't easy to come by, but she thought they were worth it."

"I caught it! I caught it!" an excited voice said from behind. Miharu came running up, holding a jar with an odd looking wasp in it.

Upon seeing the insect, Safa said something, which Tamra interpreted, "She says that's why she gave me and Lauren the shampoo. To protect us from that."
 
Orson watched the women, wondering why she would do it more than how. She used cards to see the future, so he wasn’t exactly ready to look for the scientific explanation for this. Why grow a woman’s hair out was the more pressing issue for him.

Of course, before he could ask for more clarification, Miharu showed off her prize and Safa made her declaration. Orson looked at the glass and was surprised to see it was a very strange looking wasp indeed. He looked at it for a moment, trying to see if he could recognize it, but he had never seen a wasp like that before.

“Okay, how would growing their hair help protect them from this?” He asked, still looking at the jar. “And, more importantly, what is this and why would they need protecting from it? Unless you both have a dangerous wasp allergy.”
 
"I know that wasp," Tamra and Sabrina said simultaneously, then looked at each other.

"It's a wasp that's been extinct for at least a thousand years," Sabrina told the rest of the women. "The only existing specimens have been ones captured in amber."

"There's a drawing of that same wasp, in the seventh of the Voyages of Sinbad," Tamra added. "It's the vessel by which the sorcerer Sokurah casts a spell on the Princess Parisa, shrinking her."

"I think I will set it down," Miharu said, hastily placing the jar on a shelf in sickbay. Tamra and Sabrina immediately converged on the jar, both of them apparently having forgotten their Captain and everyone else in the room.

Safa turned to Ayisha, saying something in the doctor's native tongue. Ayisha exchanged a few words with Safa, before turning her attention to Orson. "She says she needed to grow out Dr. Wilson and Miss Evans' hair in order to confuse the wasp. That just doesn't make any sense at all," the ship's doctor added, obviously confused.
 
Orson felt like he was starting to get some sense of the larger picture here. It was fuzzy, but he felt like pieces were starting to fall into place. But what they picture was, he had no idea.

So, if Tamra and Lauren needed longer hair to confuse the wasp, that meant... he wasn’t sure. He smtried to think through it while the women examined the captured insect. Eventually, he found a few more questions. “Was the wasp targeting those two in particular? And are there more wasps out there like this?” he asked. Then something very obvious dawned on him. “Is this the Hunter?”
 
With Tamra and Sabrina still focused on the encased wasp, Ayisha found herself as translator again.

"She says that this is the Hunter, and she thinks it is alone, but isn't sure," Ayisha Motwani translated. "Captain, what is this Hunter that the two of you are talking about?"
 
“Ah, my apologies,” Orson told the impromptu translator. “Safa suspected that there may be someone looking for the crew with less than noble intentions. We referred to this person as the Hunter since we knew nothing else about them. Though it appears it was not a someone at all,” he said, glancing back at the wasp. “Sorry you weren’t informed, but there was no hard evidence and I don’t want terrify the crew with stories of a potentially nonexistent threat.”
 
"But how does a wasp hunt somebody?" Ayisha said, still confused.

Ayisha turned to Safa, asking the same question. Safa said something in return, which confused Ayisha even more. Before she could ask anything else, Tamra shouted out, "It's disintegrating!"

All eyes turned to the wasp in the jar, which slowly faded away.
 
Orson moves quickly to the jar, staring on with the rest of the women as it began disintegrating. Orson had already seen a lot in his life, but this? This was completely new.

“Tamra, does this match up with anything from Sinbad? And Safa, do you have any idea what this is or what it’s doing?” he asked both the women. He needed answers and he needed them soon.
 
"The story doesn't say anything about what happens to the wasp, only that it carries the spell that shrinks Parisa," Tamra answered.

Tamra turned to Safa, talking to her for a few minutes, before turning back to Orson, "She says she believes it was being used as an instrument of revenge, in the same way the sorcerer uses it in the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. To strike out at one of the crew, to get to you Captain."
 
This made Orson’s blood boil. It wasn’t just the idea that someone would hurt his crew, but to hurt them to get to him? That was unacceptable. But even through his anger, suddenly it became obvious. If everything that had been said so far was true, there was only one valid explanation.

“Eddie,” he said aloud for everyone to hear. “He has the same specialty as Tamra so it’s possible he knows what she does, has access to the university’s storage where the wasps would be kept, and he has a reason to want revenge on me. Add in his dangerous nature, and I think we’ve got a prime suspect,” he told them.

“Safa, could this thing follow us all the way to the Lost Continent? And what’s this shrinking you’re talking about?”
 
"I can answer the last part directly, Captain," Tamra answered. "In the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Sinbad rescues a sorcerer, but the sorcerer loses a magical object, and wants Sinbad to help him recover it. Sinbad refuses, since he has his fiancee the princess on board and wants to get her home. To convince Sinbad to help him retrieve the lost magical object, the sorcerer shrinks the princess to just six inches high. Then the Sorcerer tells Sinbad that, in order to reverse the spell, Sinbad must take the sorcerer back to the island where the magical object was lost. Because the island also happens to be the only place where the cure for the shrinking spell could be found."

"But Captain, that's just a story. A legend." Tamra shook her head in disbelief. "Yes, Professor Murdoch knows the legends as well as I do, but we're talking about...well, magic."
 
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is just a story,” Orson conceded. However, he then gestured towards the glass jar where the wasp had been only moments ago. “But maybe it’s not. What I just saw was a thousand year old wasp flying and disintegrating on its own. If you have a more different idea for what happened, please tell me.” He knew some would have said this in a dismissive way, telling her she was wrong. But Orson’s tone made all the difference. He was legitimately asking her for input. He would be happy if she could prove him wrong.
 
"I'm inclined to agree with the Captain, Dr. Wilson," Sabrina Dubois chimed in. Before Tamra could argue, Sabrina lifted her hand up. "I'm a scientist just as you are, Dr. Wilson. And I am as committed to furthering science and beating back superstition as anyone in my field. But you saw the same thing that I saw. An insect that has not flown on this planet for more than a thousand years just disintegrated in front of our eyes. No matter how improbable it may seem, there is no other alternative explanation. The question now is, what do we do?"

Safa, watching the conversation, asked Tamra for an interpretation, which the archaeologist promptly gave. Safa nodded thoughtfully, then replied.

"She says that she is not sure," Tamra interpreted, "But whoever sent this could have only sent one at a time. And if the wasp does not get on the airship, it won't be able to follow us to the Lost Continent. She also suggests that, if the test flight is successful, we fly to the Lost Continent tonight."

"I got all my gear onboard," Lauren volunteered.

"We do have all our supplies, Captain," Tamra added. "And everyone is onboard, including the Contesa," she said with a smile. "She's enjoying the breakfasts our wonderful chefs are cooks are serving."
 
Orson nodded to all of this information. He was glad Dr. Dubois was on his side. She provided a rational and more valid perspectives to back him up. She was right that it might not be magic, per say. But he had heard it said that technology that’s advanced enough looks no different from magic. If they could go back in time hundreds of years, his airship would look like sorcery. So maybe thus was a science that was just really advanced.

“Okay, we need to move soon. I had some things I needed to take care of tonight, but I’ll have them moved up. We may need to scrap the test flight, depending on the schedule. I don’t like it, but I like getting chased by a madman even less. I want everyone making a final check to make sure everything is on board and secure. I’m going to go outside and check with the dock workers about making sure we’re fueled up and ready to fly early. No one else is to leave the ship,” he said to everyone gathered in the sickbay. “Dr. Wilson, I want you to gather the de la Vegas and Luisa on the bridge. I have important things I need to discuss with them before we fly. Are there any questions?” Orson had adopted a firm an authoritative tone. Not tyrannical, but clearly not playing around.
 
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