Choices

Chapter 128
"Tony, you wanted to see us?" Cephera asked strolling to his private lab. Bruce was with him, as usual. The two seemed to be working together more than ever. It was frightening what those two minds got in to.
"You didn't bring a sandwich, you could have at least brought a sandwich," Tony said.
"I didn't know you were hungry." Cephera frowned.
"I'm not, it's the thought that counts." He replied making her roll her eyes.
"We've made a few significant discoveries regarding your population problem." Bruce jumped in before Tony could continue to be his annoying self.
"Oh right, that." Tony added.
"What kind of discoveries?" Seraphina stepped forward, intrigued. Since the extra Mechanovians had gone home, they hadn't heard anything back from Bruce or Tony and hadn't wanted to push it. They'd been nice enough to offer.
"I'll keep it non techy for the little people in the room." Tony replied looking at Cephera who got a little lost with talk too professional. To be honest, so did her sister, most people did. Cephera felt like Tony went out of his way to confuse people and sound smarter. "Let's start with the males, Banner." He turned it over to his sidekick.
"As we suspected, when you first told us about your problem, your males sperm swim so slow it sometimes takes days to reach what could be a potential egg," Banner said. "However, on closer examination, not only do they swim slower but they have less."
"Significantly less," Tony added.
"A human male can have up to 1.2 billon sperm in a single ejaculation, but your people have maybe 1000. That coupled with the slow swimmers certainly accounts for part of the problem, but the sperm of your kind actually lives longer. Instead of a 72 hour period of life, they have at least a week." Banner looked all too intrigued with this.
"I follow so far." Seraphina nodded.
"Did he mention the miss fires, I don't think so." Tony's words sounded random, but everyone in the room knew better.
"We also concluded that not every release contains sperm. About every one in 20 actually contained specimens." Banner seemed slightly embarrassed at that.
"How many times did you have the men touch themselves for those results." Seraphina chuckled.
"They liked it. We gave them magazines and JARVIS was equipped with the highest resolution porn." Tony grinned.
"Is that all for the men?" Cephera asked. As interesting as the results were, Tony made them somewhat awkward, as he was good at doing.
"Yup, my turn." Tony waved a hand to bring up a screen with a female anatomy on it. He picked up a laser pointer and began. "This is a normal female reproductive system..., for a human," he said circling the whole thing in the tiny red light. "This," he began and slide his finger from a far corner to stop beside the first picture. "Is what your reproduction system looks like." Tony pointed to the second picture.
"Oh," Cephera didn't need to be schooled in biology to understand what she was seeing. Instead of two tubes in which egges were released, there was only one.
"Birth defect or an alien thing, we don't know. Otherwise it works the same. You girls have the opposite problem from the guys. When you release an egg," Tony's little laser moved with the active simulation so they could focus on the drop of the egg and Cephera and her sister both took look at eachother.
"I almost missed it." Seraphina commented.
"That's what he said." Tony joked. "The rate in which your eggs drop is like being in a waterslide." The picture kept playing behind him. "They drop so fast the sperm from your people can't actually latch on, that and they didn't seem too interested to get together in our samples either." Tony shrugged.
"I guess that's why we can't procreate with eachother." Seraphina replied. "And?" She asked.
"And nothing. That's all we have for on girls. We've equipped the females who came with a device that will monitor their ovulation. Give it a few months and we'll have more intel, until then we got nothing." Tony looked to Banner. "But the men were a breeze." He added.
"That's one step closer to understanding us anyway. Say Tony, is there a way to compile all your information in like a text book. We've never been able to learn about our anatomy before, it might be good to start." Cephera suggested.
"I'm sure I can hire someone to make you something." Tony smiled. "Oh, before you go, we need to get you equipped to monitor your ovulation." Tony added.
"I'll meet you upstairs." Seraphina told Cephera.
"No, no. Both of you." Tony interrupted. Cephera started at him for a second and decided, what harm could it do.
XxX
"Thanks," the girls left the room after allowing Tony to implant some device of his into their bodies and went back upstairs.
"They have more answers then I thought they would." Seraphina admitted. "I'm impressed." She smiled. Her eyesight had completely returned to normal in the last week and she'd been happier than ever.
"Hopefully it will lead to a solution." Cephera added.
"You know, the longer Thor is gone, the more I'm beginning to wonder if you're right about Loki." Seraphina commented.
"I'm telling you right now, when I get my hands on my husband I'm going to ring his neck. I'm sure he's alive and he'll pay for even thinking about allowing me to go through the thought of having lost him again." Cephera felt very heated over the subject. She'd been thinking about it long and hard, and the longer she thought about it, the angrier she got.
"Look out Loki, our fathers daughter is rearing her head." Seraphina mocked.
Their father had a temper sometimes. Even though Cephera was gentle like their mother, she had a bit of her father in her. She'd never truly gotten that angry though.
It was more likely she'd throw herself into Loki's arms and cry upon their reunion.
"So you and Agent Romanov," Cephera grinned. There was very little her sister could keep from her.
"It's some temporary fun." Seraphina smirked. "I've invited Fandral to come to Earth when he's done doing things for Odin. I think he'd enjoy a little fun," Cephera scrunched up her nose.
"Is Natasha okay with that?" Cephera wondered how such a thing might work. After all, both women were very dominant and she almost pitied poor Fandral.
"She's up for some harmless fun." Seraphina replied.
"You too are far more alike than I thought." Cephera replied, but smiled inwardly. She was amused that Fandral had been Seraphina's goto for extra fun. It was not a surprise she'd share him. After all, when they weren't together they both were with different people.
She wondered how it would be for Seraphina to actually see him with someone else. She had never actually shared him before as far as Cephera knew. It would make for a good experiment, or a really bad one.
"I guess you won't be sleeping in my room for a while then." Cephera sighed. Her bed had been very lonely these last few years. She had been looking forward to the comfort of her sisters arms at least but alas she wouldn't even have that.
Ikol was far too little to have in her bed. She'd heard horror stories of babies being suffocated by their parents from being rolled over on. She wouldn't chance that happening to her son.
Approaching the nursery, Cephera heard a strange squeaking noise. Opening the door she spied Darcy sitting on the floor rug with Ikol on his belly. He'd proven a strong child, pushing himself up with ease and almost crawling.
Darcy was squeezing a fuzzy looking toy which was the culprit of the noise. "What is that?" Cephera asked walking in and kneeling next to her.
"Me and Jane were at the pet shop and I found this." Darcy grinned, showed Cephera the toy and squeezed it.
"You're giving a child a dog toy?" Seraphina raised an eyebrow.
"Why not. It's new, it squeaks, and it's a bunny." She replied. "Plus, he loves it." She squeezed it again and Ikol's passive expression widened in to a smile only to drop to a passive look once more until she squeezed it again.
"Just don't leave him alone with it. Apparently, his tiny hands are capable of pulling apart things." Cephera warned. She'd learned only a day ago that Ikol was stronger than he looked. He'd pulled the plastic part of his nummy right off with barely a flinch.
"Fair enough." Darcy replied dancing the toy around the floor and making it squeak as she did.
"He's gonna be a brute." Seraphina rubbed her hands together. "I can't wait to train him." She added.
"Train him?" Cephera turned to look at her twin.
"To fight..., come on you're not leaving that to an instructor. You don't fight, even though you can, and you don't have the guts it takes to do it without feeling bad. I, however, could teach my little nephew here how to be a real warrior."
Seraphina looked so excited Cephera couldn't think of a good reason to say no. It was the Mechanovian way and she was right, Cephera didn't have what it took to go hard on her son. Cephera couldn't argue that her combat skills where important. They had saved her on more than one occasion.
"Fine," Cephera agreed. If she trusted anyone to do this, it was her twin.

Notes