The Missile 3
Copyright© 2026 by Zen Master
Chapter 1: Press and Party
Coming of Age Sex Story: Chapter 1: Press and Party - The third in a continuing series about how the Missile came to be the man we all know.
Caution: This Coming of Age Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including mt/ft mt/Fa GameLit
By the time we’d gotten out of our rooms after our showers, the PRA was ready for the press conference. It was a lot more laid back than the first one, too. Jim was in charge, and there were only a few media brands there. Really, we were just there to get ahead of all the rumors that we’d all been killed in our second Portal Dive, and to explain why it took so long.
Before we filed into the conference room, Eric pulled us all aside and had Cindy ‘Bless’ us again. Outside of the Portals she could only do that twice a day, but it put us in a great mood for the meeting. We were all smiling when we walked in and took our seats.
Jim welcomed us to the press conference and introduced us all, then asked “Is everyone okay?”
Eric, as our leader and spokesman, said “We’re all fine. We’re tired and hungry, but we’re fine.”
“Good. Now, what took you so long? I was told to ask that question first, but no. I’m going to find out if you’re all okay, first. Then I’ll ask the big question. What took you so long?”
“Okay, this Portal has giant centipedes. Most of them are 2 or 3 feet tall and 15 to 20 feet long. They’re no big deal, just don’t let them catch you. Don’t let them grab you with their pincers, don’t let them knock you down. We found 23 of them, and none of them really gave us any trouble.”
“The last one though, was a problem. On most of these levels there is at least one opponent which is bigger, faster, stronger, tougher than the others and we call it the ‘Boss’. It was all of that. Walking around on all of its legs it was somewhere between four and five feet tall and 30 or 35 feet long. When it reared its head up, it was ten or more feet tall. Yeah, it was big and bad and ugly, but we could have taken it in a head-to-head fight.”
Eric stopped and took a drink from the icewater we had on the table in front of us. “As leader of this training team, I’ve been given a lot of guidance on what to do and how to do it. The overriding instruction, the one that is more important than all the others, is ‘Don’t let any of our teenagers get killed.’”
He looked at the audience. “Do you all have kids? Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep idiots from killing themselves? Not that this team...” he waved his hand at us “ ... are idiots, they aren’t. They’re all pretty smart. Still, when you don’t know what you’re doing, no matter what you do you’re gonna LOOK like an idiot.”
“I’ve been calling that thing ‘Big Bad John’ because he ain’t MY boss! We could have taken Big John in a straight-up fight, but we would have taken some losses. Some casualties. After we’d taken care of all the other ones, we stepped back and held a powwow to talk it over. I had my axe...” and he pulled it out, then put it away. “It’s great for chopping up unarmored opponents. These things have thick, hard, chitin exoskeletons, and it doesn’t work that well on them.”
He waved at George, who pulled out his sword. “George has a sword. It pretty much just slides off these things.”
George put his sword away. Eric waved at me and I pulled out my mace. “Sam has a mace. It actually works better against these things than George’s sword, but it still ain’t great.”
He waved at our ‘staffers’. I put my mace away, and they pulled out their staffs. “Our other three just have staffs. They have spells they can use, but as physical weapons they are almost useless here. We didn’t have too much trouble with the smaller ones, but if we attacked Big John like this we were gonna lose some people.”
He asked Matt to stand up for a second. “Matt is one of the smarter people I know. He doesn’t have much experience, though, so a lot of his ideas are kinda goofy and they won’t work. He came up with one this afternoon that, the more I thought about it, the less crazy it sounded. We can cut a tree down, strip all the branches off it, and turn it into a huge spear!”
“Well, I didn’t like it, it was going to be WAY too much work, but we couldn’t come up with any other ideas that wouldn’t get anyone killed. We didn’t have any power saws. We didn’t have any chainsaws. We didn’t even have any HAND saws. All we had was a battleaxe, a hand axe, a sword, and some brass machetes that won’t keep an edge. Oh, and Sam, can you show them your mace again?”
I pulled it out and showed it around some. The audience started laughing. Yeah, it wasn’t much help in cutting a tree down.
Eric went back to the story. “It took a while. Eventually, though, we had a 17’ tree trunk, about five or six inches across at the base. Use it one way and it’s a 17’ spear. Use it the other way and it’s a 17’ battering ram. Us four men picked it up and ran at Big John and shoved it down its throat as far as we could make it go, then got clear while it tried to eat it. After awhile it gave up on that, but now it couldn’t bend any more, with a dozen feet of tree-trunk making it look like a shish-kebab. Now, it was easy to walk up beside it and cut its head off. So, on the one hand I can say “I cut its head off and killed it”, but really it was Matt’s idea that won the fight for us. His brain was the reason we came back out with no casualties, not my muscles. Matt, stand up again.”
He got the applause he deserved, before he sat back down again.
“Okay, Mr. Milton, what was the second question you were supposed to ask?”
“Well, the second one I was supposed to ask was ‘Was anyone hurt?’ but I went with that one first. The third one was, ‘Were you able to bring back any trophies?’.”
“Yes, we did! We picked up a lot of...” He looked confused, then mad. “Damn it! They’re gone!” He looked at us. “Check your inventory. Do any of you have your trophies?”
Margie: “Dammit, no! They’re gone.”
Me: “Yeah, I’ve still got mine.”
Matt: “I’ve got mine.”
Cindy and George were just shaking their heads and smiling. Neither of them had been able to save anything in their inventories.
I pulled three of my ‘Giant Centipede Legs’ out of my inventory and set them on the table in front of us. Matt looked at them and pulled out two more.
Jim looked at the cameras and said “On their first Portal Dive, Sam McGowan returned with some battle-trophies, all four paws from one of the creatures he killed. We were all surprised, because no one else has been able to do it except for a Canadian Hunter who seems able to bring back anything he wants. So, this time one of their instructions was to see if they could bring back more. Apparently, only Matt and Sam were able to.”
I took over explaining what was going on. What we THOUGHT was going on. “We were able to figure out that you can only save something like this to your inventory if you were the sole killer. If you had help from someone else, you couldn’t do it. It had to be a solo kill. Me, Matt, Eric, and Margie all had solo kills today, and we all saved legs from our kills to bring back for study. Cindy and George had no solo kills, so they couldn’t. When we came back, me, Matt, Eric, and Margie all had things like this in our inventories. I don’t know what happened.”
Jim asked “Do you have more?”
I said “I have a dozen more.” and looked at Matt.
Matt said “I have two more, four total.”
Jim asked “Will you sell them to the PRA, or to a research lab?”
Matt looked at me and shrugged. I said “We will sell them to anyone who will buy them. We need better equipment and better armor. That costs money.”
“How about those paws with the sharp claws, from your first Dive?”
I shrugged. “Sure. We’re going back in that Portal next weekend, and we’ll try to get more.”
That was about it for the drama. There were a bunch more questions, ranging from “What will it take to make this Portal secure, if it has another outbreak?” to “Didn’t it bother you to kill those poor helpless animals?”
Eric waved to tell us that he’d take that last one, but then closed his eyes for a few seconds before answering. “Ma’am? What part of ‘four or five feet tall, thirty feet long, weighing far more than us, and both carnivorous and poisonous’ did you miss? Those things see us as food. They see me as food. They see you as food. We go in there to learn how to kill them, so we’ll know how to kill them, the next time they come out here and go looking for you. And your children!”
Jim had an order in to a local sub shop for sandwiches, he just didn’t activate it until the press conference started. As soon as the conference ended, they brought the food in while they were taking the cameras and stuff out.
Someone else from ALPRA showed up while we were eating and debriefed us. We knew it was part of the job, but so many of those questions would have been answered if they could just enter one of the Portals and see for themselves. We tried to be patient, taking turns answering his questions while the rest of us ate. That guy also brought us our checks, $200 for Eric and Margie and $150 for us young’uns.
After that Jim gave Eric and Margie a ride back to the Portal to get their cars, and then we all retired to Eric’s room for our Survivors’ Party. He was the last one to show up because he stayed behind to leave notes on the “Tips and RIPs” board about our run. Oh, and he may have done some shopping. This time he was ready! He had a cooler in his car that was full of cold coke and beer, and Margie had brought some munchies.
Margie had also brought a couple bottles of wine for her, Cindy, and any other ladies around like Matt’s mom. Not everyone likes Miller and Yuengling, apparently. Not that it mattered here, but my Dad had developed a taste for Kirin beer, from Japan. Well, that was where they brewed it, right? It was probably a lot cheaper there than, say, Miller or Yuengling.
I threw it out there, so Eric would know if my Dad ever came to another one of these parties. Dad would bring his own. So, where is he? He’s back in Japan now. He’s in the Navy, and that’s where he’s stationed.
Let’s see ... We had our team, Jim Milton from ALPRA, Cindy’s dad, Matt’s parents, and George’s dad, and Jeff Ostwald had come down from Ft. Payne for the free beer. A much smaller crowd this time.
I grabbed a beer and Cindy got a cup of wine. Once everyone had something to drink and a munchy if they wanted it, Eric threw out “Okay, let’s get the business stuff out of the way. What did we do wrong, what did we do right, and what can we do better? Personally, I thought the teamwork went MUCH better this time.”
That started the conversation. Yes, the teamwork went much better. Having Cindy up in a tree for the fight against the last three ‘normal’ giant centipedes made it easier on everyone; we could all fight instead of worrying about our backs. Or even worrying about her safety.
I was making notes on my phone about stuff to bring. I wanted to add sneakers for me and flip-flops for anyone, some rope, a rope saw, and better water bottles to my pack.
George had an idea. Back in the Civil War, there was a guy Matthew Brady, who became famous for going out to the battlefields and getting pictures using that newfangled ‘photography’ thing. You set up a box, put something in it, told the people to sit still for a minute, and you got a painting without having to paint it. Those old cameras didn’t have any electronics at all and only a couple moving parts. They were completely mechanical. Would one of them work? Had anyone tried to bring one of those old disposable 24-shot cameras into a Portal?
Jim said he didn’t know, but he’d find out and see if it was possible to get us some for our next Dive. That went in my notes, too. A camera that could go in the Portals would be GREAT! We knew some stuff like that worked. Nothing with electronics would work, so a lot of people took wind-up mechanical watches in, just so they could tell how long they’d been in there. THEY worked fine!
The Black Axe had done some testing. His whole team wore cheap Mickey Mouse kid’s wind-up watches. They wore them outside for a week, verifying that they actually kept good time. Well, according to the article he wrote about it, two of them didn’t but the other four did and they bought several more until all six had a watch that kept good time.
Then, they had gone into one of the Portals that took several days. Green Level Four? When they came out a week later, five watches were still showing the correct time. One of them had gotten smashed and left in the Portal. It was probably still there. Showing the correct time twice a day, right?
After a while we ran out of things to talk about. When there was a lull, I brought up my stats. I didn’t want to, but I knew the longer I put it off, the worse it would be.
“Um, guys? I have an embarrassing confession. It was something I wanted advice on, but there wasn’t anyone to ask at first and I kept putting it off until I pretty much forgot about it. When you-all got your weapons, did you get a couple of points you could add to your stats?”
All us kids said “Yeah” or “Of course” or “Yeah, those really helped me out a lot.” Eric said he got two points when he reached 2nd Level, and then a third point when he reached 3rd Level. Margie agreed with him on that ‘Two at Two’. Neither had gotten any points when they first started out.
That turned into a discussion about why we got them. We finally decided that A) it was probabably because we weren’t full-grown yet, but we were old enough to decide whether to concentrate on strength, health, mind, or whatever, so the System let us choose how to ‘finish’ our bodies, and
B) It didn’t matter what the reason was. We couldn’t change it. All we could do was use it.