"So, where do I begin?" John wondered, blowing out the breath he'd been holding.
"Why don't you let me start you off?" Alyssa asked, as she rose and glided down the room to pick up the remote for the holo-projector.
She returned to her seat and then pressed a few buttons on the remote, displaying several images in the centre of the table.
*The girls are all okay with this?* John asked Alyssa considerately.
*Of course, I asked them a few minutes ago,* she replied reassuringly.
"Thanks, I've got it from here." John said, before turning to look at the three images hovering in the air. "Now no doubt, you'll recognise the lovely girls aboard this ship."
Rachel looked up at the happy, beaming faces of Alyssa, Calara and Dana, and nodded with confusion, not sure where he was going with that.
"How about these girls, do you recognise them?" he asked her probingly, as Alyssa used the remote to change the images.
The 3D holo-images were all close-up face pictures of the three girls, but as they appeared when they first met John. Calara had black eyes, a broken, swollen nose, and was looking tired and drawn. Alyssa and Dana were both ghostly pale, with Alyssa painfully thin, while Dana had a horrific red burn scar disfiguring the side of her face.
Rachel was visibly moved by the sight of the three girls in the pictures. "Those poor girls! Who are they, and what happened to them?" she asked compassionately.
"You just met them all. They joined my crew over the last few months," John said gently.
Rachel laughed politely, thinking this was some kind of strange joke where she just wasn't seeing the punch-line. She looked at John and Alyssa, noting their quiet, sombre faces, and realised they weren't joking.
"You can't possibly be serious," she protested, as she looked up at the pictures of the girls, examining them intently. She began to notice the similarities in the shape of their faces, the curve of their lips and the colours of their eyes. "Calara I can just about see, but it looks like Alyssa was suffering from severe malnutrition, and Dana's burn scars..."
"We're telling you the truth. That was me a couple of months ago," Alyssa said, looking up at the image of her ghostly pale face. She pressed another couple of buttons on the remote, and the images zoomed out, showing each of the girls as they appeared when they joined the crew. Another set of images sprang into being alongside them, showing each of the Terran girls as they were now, gloriously nude, their stunning athletic figures posed seductively.
Rachel gasped in shock at the images above the desk, and leaned forward, taking her glasses out of her pocket and putting them on, so that she could examine them more carefully.
"It just isn't possible, unless all of you underwent full body-sculpture procedures." Rachel said out loud, her mind whirring. "But that can't be right either, the recovery time for a change that dramatic would span months, and I must have met you the first time, only a few weeks after this supposed transformation."
"That's right, about three weeks after, in fact," Alyssa said gently.
Rachel stared at them both, looking from one to the other in turn, and studying their faces. "My mind tells me you're lying, but I can feel that you're telling me the truth," she said in frustration.
"Why don't I show you Dana's changes as they occurred. The ship has security cameras all over the place, and I was able to assemble a montage for you," Alyssa offered.
"Okay, go ahead," Rachel said, curiously, looking up at the images again.
The holographic images of the three girls disappeared, leaving a nude full body image of Dana as she originally looked; pale, thin and much shorter, with a crop of short spiky red hair. Alyssa progressed through the images, time-stamped over a two week period, and they showed her growing six inches taller, her body filling out and becoming more toned. Her skin began to get more colour, going from ghostly white, to a light pink, before beginning to darken to the lovely bronzed tan she now wore. Her breasts grew larger and sat proudly on her chest, going from a non-existent 28A to a pert 32D, while her hair grew thick and lustrous until it was tumbling in waves around her shoulders, darkening to a rich auburn. The final images showed her before and after the burn scar tissue had completely healed and been washed away.
"How?" Rachel gasped, staring up at the images in awe.
"It's all his doing," Alyssa said, looking at John affectionately.
"What do you mean?" Rachel demanded, desperate to understand the miraculous transformation the girls had undergone.
"You asked about my species earlier. My mother was human, but she went missing just after I was born. I never knew anything about my father, at least until a week ago. I formed an alliance with the Ashanath, who claimed to know something about my mysterious parentage. After we had saved them from the Drakkar raiders, they finally revealed what they knew." he explained carefully.
"Which was what, exactly?" Rachel asked, her eyes burning with curiosity.
"They believe I'm from a species called the 'Progenitors', who haven't been seen around our galaxy for nearly ten thousand years. We think my mother must have run into one, because everything they showed us corroborated their story," he said with a sigh.
"What did they show you?" the brunette asked, transfixed by his tale.
"Stone monoliths, with ancient pictographs depicting pointy eared humanoids surrounded by women," Alyssa interjected. "The Ashanath collected them from dozens of worlds and have them all stored on their homeworld."
"The Progenitors were a race of tyrants who conquered and subjugated planets, taking hundreds of women as slaves," John said grimly.
"But that must just be pure coincidence, you're nothing like that!" Rachel protested. "You're so heroic! You saved all those people back at Port Medea. Besides that, you're... nice," she added, stuck for words.
John laughed and Alyssa giggled too. "Thanks, I appreciate the vote of confidence," he said, the mood lightening a little.
"But I don't understand, what has any of that got anything to do with the transformations the girls supposedly underwent?" Rachel asked in confusion.
"It was John that triggered the changes in all of us," Alyssa said. "We changed after..." she paused and glanced at him lovingly, while Rachel waited on tenterhooks.
"After what?!" Rachel asked impatiently.
"Swallowing his cum," Alyssa said coyly, gazing into her probing grey eyes.
Rachel paused for a moment and then burst into laughter. "Oh man, you had me there. Ancient civilisations, miraculous healing... you guys really had me going," she said good spiritedly with a grin on her pretty face.
"We aren't playing a trick on you," John said patiently. "It sounds preposterous, but it's true."
"You mean all three girls have been..." Rachel said falteringly.
"And Jade too," Alyssa added with a mischievous smile. "She's a shape-shifter so his cum worked differently, and even more dramatically on her."
"So if I was to join your crew, I'd have to do the same?" Rachel said in shock.
"No, of course not," Alyssa replied with a laugh. "But you'd be missing out on an awful lot of fun if you don't. There are also other benefits as well, it's not just a beauty makeover."
"What do you mean?" the brunette asked bewildered.
"We're all stronger, more agile, and have faster reflexes due to the improvements to our bodies. Mentally, we've changed too. Dana was always exceptionally smart, and had a natural gift with machines, but now she's a genius. She invented a new alloy in a matter of hours, that was well beyond anything the Ashanath civilisation were able to come up with," Alyssa said, proud of her friend.
"You've already seen Calara in action. I've never known anyone remotely close to being as perceptive and insightful as she's become, and her accuracy with the Invictus' weaponry is practically supernatural," John said with a smile.
"What about you?" Rachel said tentatively, looking at Alyssa.
"I'm Psychic." Alyssa said with an impish grin.
Rachel laughed in disbelief. "Come on, this is becoming absurd! There's no record of anyone in Terran history having psychic powers, you can't expect me to swallow that one too!" she exclaimed, then flushed with embarrassment at the inadvertent double entendre.
"It's true, she can read my mind," John said honestly.
"You can test me if you like," Alyssa offered playfully.
Rachel narrowed her eyes suspiciously as she looked at Alyssa. "Okay, what did you have in mind?"
"I read your military personnel file, and it said you were an emancipated minor, that you left your parents at the age of sixteen. Tell John the reason, and I'll repeat back everything you say to him," Alyssa said, as she appraised the brunette carefully.
"There could be hidden mics in here," Rachel said, looking around the room.
"Whisper it to him then. I'll leave the door open and stay in your line of sight, so you can see I'm not listening to any receivers," Alyssa said patiently.
Rachel nodded cautiously, and Alyssa rose from her seat and glided out of the room, standing some distance away, but still visible through the doorway. The brunette moved to stand on the other side of the desk where John was sitting, so that she could still keep an eye on the blonde.
"Hello," John said with a smile, as she stepped up to his side, her body tantalisingly close.
"Hello," she replied shyly, before leaning in close to place her lips next to his pointed ear.
"My father and step-mother didn't approve of my youthful indiscretions. Apparently I was 'bringing disgrace to the family name', and he threatened to cut me off. I beat him to the punch." she whispered fiercely.
