Heartthrob

Electrodes kissed soft skin. Bare feet braced themselves upon polyester treads, pale on black, ready to begin. Ready as she'd ever be.

The monitor bing'd to notify everyone in the room that Esper James was, in fact, alive - on technicality. Her heartbeat was worryingly slow, or would have been so if she had been alive in the first place. In fact, every vital sign they could pull was startlingly slow, so very desperately close to a corpse... except, perhaps worryingly, the actual electrical activity.

In her chest, near her heart, activity was already beginning to tick at 'normal' levels. Normal for a Wayward, of course... someone whose body was composed almost entirely of machinery, who had mechanized themselves to nearly constituting an android. All across the ghoulette's tender, unassuming frame, with its muscle as loose and relaxed as it could be allowed to be... she was lighting up the registers like she had already begun running. Something about her was crackling with energy, just below the skin.

"Hey... What the...?" Zofia scowled at the monitor, giving it a whack. Percussive maintenance proved itself to be ever so slightly too little; results were not garnered, and the readings remained the same. Another whack, then, this time more forcefully - synthetic skin slapped against sheets of metal, jostling the internal workings with every impact. Another whack, then again, then again, then- The mother abbess's hand shot out to take Zofi by the wrist as the latter lady wound back once again.

The abbess stared at Zofi, facing away from EJ, though from Zofia's unblinking return-stare, they had locked eyes and entered a sort of trance. It was actually an uncomfortably long amount of time before any motion was made - even their breathing seemed to stop, eyes unblinking, bodies still as statues. EJ smiled awkwardly, looking around to try and occupy herself in any way she could.

Of course, she had no idea what the monitors meant... what their readings implied, what their feeds displayed. She had watched plenty of cop shows where they go to interrogate someone in the hospital, and they're hooked up to a... what was it... EKG machine? And those had always been taking readings of whoever was laid up in the hospital bed, but none of the shows ever explained what the point was. EJ could only figure it was something about bodily activity - and even then, she had no idea what normal levels would look like.

Zofi's rhetorical musings were the only thing which had given Esper James any real indication that things were weird. Those, and the fact that she had just attempted a mugging on her own machinery. Really, what had that thing done to piss Zofia off so badly? The time to ponder was cut short by the return of both women's attentions, turning nearly as one to observe the blonde anew. The mother abbess offered Esper James a smile that she supposed was an attempt at comfort, but it came across more as a stern headmistress who was two seconds from beating an insubordinate child.

"Sister Esper James, please forgive sister Zofia for her little... outburst just then, won't you? She was, ah... She's had quite the time, recently, what with her... arm..." The mother abbess gestured to Zofia's empty socket and tied sleeve, her smile never wavering, but her brows dropping further into a scowl-smile bastard child. Zofia looked away bashfully, chancing a soft twinkle of laughter... though it hardly seemed or sounded genuine.

Esper James nodded, the awkward atmosphere only deepening its hold on the trio of ladies. It was like some kind of muck of social inability, a thick, sludgy mire which held each in sway with its sticky, gluey mass. She lifted a verbal leg, feeling that bog's filth sucking at her proverbial feet. "Ah-ha-hah, yeah...! I'm... I'm gonna drink this blood now. Not all of it, just... Just enough, haha! Okay-y-y! Let's do this, and then I'll just... start running, I guess!"

The blood bag lay like an abandoned juice sack on a nearby tray-stand, straw angled upwards. If Esper James really tried hard, really poured herself into the act of it, she could swear she could smell the blood's warmth and essence through the millimeter-sized hole of the straw. It tempted her, even now... Even after the other night when she'd thought she'd had every last drop of blood she could have ever wanted. Fuck.

Her hand took the bag in its grasp, fingers wrapping the squishy sack of plastic and plasma in a five-armed hug. Esper James could feel herself begin to tremble, for only a moment, as she raised the blood bag up towards her mouth. She tried not to feel the eyes of Zofia and the mother abbess on her as she did so, though - tried and failed, it would seem. The two holy women were wholly engrossed in the display, even though the display hadn't yet properly begun. Just the promise of seeing her guzzle blood was like a circus freak show exhibition, and the audience of two was at rapt attention to watch the proceedings.

Lips parted, allowing gentle breath to roll free... The released gust rolled across the bag's exterior, a summer breeze over a mown field, warm and light yet drawing no ripples. And then EJ stuck the straw between her front fangs and closed her mouth. Those soft pink lips wrapped about the straw's plastic carcass, cheeks becoming the barest bit concave, tongue retracting as its root came to contact the rear of the soft palate. Sanguine succor coursed up that synthetic vein, lone and white, pooling on a ghoul's drooling tongue before being gulped down hastily.

It was as good as it always was, as euphoric as it had always been. Her muscles roared to a life nearing individuality; her brain kicked into overdrive, a personal computer overclocked to the gills and then some. The familiar twitching had dulled, however... That old friend, the uncontrollable rush of lust and excitement, was less focused on up-front payoff. Of course, blood flow in her own rivers and lakes had been restored to phenomenal efficacy, and so the lack of immediate delight was still accompanied by the expected swell, throb, and twitch.

Her body roiled, as it oft did, as it always had... Always until recently, it seemed. Every time she had drank from Purity or Est, every dose, she had been trying harder and harder, focusing more and more on keeping a level head. She had remembered how it felt to lose control, and while she had been thinking first of the blood-hunger that inspired her to bite Purity, and then the cat, and then the man... Now, she thought back to the bowl of blood she had been fed. She thought well upon how it had made her feel - what to expect, and how to subvert it.

How to stay herself, even when her body didn't feel like her own.

Despite the stiffness betwixt her thighs, the stiffened nibs on her chest, and the way her whole body seemed to flex and relax in a wave of timed exertion, Esper James felt surprisingly fine. It took some strength, a great deal of it, to cut herself off... To stop the flow of blood, to stop the oral love she shared with that pale plastic tongue. Just as she had thought of her past failures to prevent a new one from occurring, she reminded herself of the pool - of the willpower she had shown, of how she had followed through despite her own doubt. It was enough.

The straw left her mouth, and she was left there, eyes readjusting to see what Zofia and the mother abbess thought of it all. Zofia's eyes were like a deer on a Midwestern road, staring into forty tons of death racing its way. Her mouth, however, was shaped into the most absolutely charged smile Esper James had ever seen the woman bear - it almost made up for the missing arm, EJ thought to herself. Zofia's smile was infectious - hell, it was plaguelike in its spread. EJ smiled back from ear to ear, giggling softly, forcing herself to set the blood bag back down on the tray.

The mother abbess, however, was less enthused about this whole thing. Her eyes, too, were saucers - she regarded Esper James as if she was watching an orphanage burn, an arson with no survivors. Her right hand was over her mouth, though one could tell from the way her cheeks were drawn that she was forming a silent gasp. Her pupils were contracted to pinpricks; every hackle she may have had was raised, without doubt.

"Wh-... Are you... Sister Esper James, are you...?" The mother abbess gestured down, her hand raising at waist height and falling not far from its initial position. Zofia's eyes followed the motion down, seeing to what her superior was referring to - and the grin on Zofi's lips broke for a moment, forming a delighted gasp before her beam returned, now redoubled. The nun tried not to laugh, and said nothing in particular... though Esper James was convinced that Zofi was filming, with how intently she was staring.

The blonde hadn't been this aware of her own womanhood, pressed to the fabric of her boyshorts, since Purity had popped her cherry two weeks ago. It was... it was anything but the same sort of feeling, really. The two couldn't have been further apart. Esper James opened her mouth, incensed, balling up every ounce of courage she had to form a paper wad of wrath to whip towards her interrogator. She stopped, however, when she took a second to actually consider it all.

The mother abbess had literally seen her naked just earlier today. Zofia had, too - even if only one of them had cut her free of her habit after the breath test, the other had surely seen EJ being carried out of the damn lab. If she had had an issue with Esper James having a different loadout than her, well, she could have said something earlier. She likely would have, if she had been upset by it.

No, no... Further thought reminded Esper James of a striking truth between the first-living and the second-living: only one of them normally got aroused and swelled to full mast after quaffing human blood like a juice bag. Yep, no, that was... That was definitely what it was. Great - now EJ'd need to convince these women that she wasn't some kind of weird, sadistic pervert, on top of trying to hide that she was very much a normal, unassuming, run-of-the-mill pervert. It would be too hard to avoid being a pervert wholesale, so... She'd have to make do.

"I-! No, no, hold on...! No, I... It just... The b-blood, it, uh...! My body just does this! Every second-living does this! It's n-not a... It's not a sex thing! I promise, I'm not getting anything out of this! I'm not r-riled up, not... Not sexually! This just happens! It's from the blood!" She had felt ready to give it an honest try, attempting to shut down any thoughts of cannibalistic carnality that may have borne fruit within their minds... but when she tried, she just sounded like she was scrambling to defend herself.

She was. She was telling the truth, but still, she was falling over herself trying to get these two women not to think of her as a degenerate. The mother abbess shut her eyes and pulled in the air around, a long breath entering her lungs and not yet being given permission to flee. She blinked, finally, long and hard and with a sense of determination that lent itself to the image that she was trying to squeeze what she had seen from her brain, if not her eyes. A heavy sigh, then, before another breath rolled in.

"Well. Regardless, dearest sister Esper James... Detached of whatever your proclivities may be in the bedroom... The blood is having a fascinating effect on your musculature. Are you... you're not doing this actively, are you? It's not a conscious effort?" The mother abbess's words came with a level of concern that seemed to imply a desired answer: she wanted EJ to tell her no, it wasn't something she was trying to do.

It made sense. If Esper James had that level of control over her muscles... Well, that would be a terrifying concept just on principle, if not in the context of her being a potential enemy to the Waywards. It would've allowed her to do... Well, she actually couldn't really think of any specifics, though she knew it would've been impressive to have that sort of individual muscle control. She would probably have been an amazing dancer with skills like that, if nothing else.

"No! No, no, haha, sorry mother abbess... No, this is... This just happens. All of it. Most people get a little weird too, kinda 'pushed down' under the sensation of it all... but I've, er. I've been drinking a lot of raw, fresh blood recently, and not taking my meds anymore, so... I've got a different sort of reaction to it, I guess? It doesn't fuck with my brain how it used to." She smiled with wavering grace, a timid expression for a timid girl who leaned on a strategy of appeasement.

At the lack of an immediate answer, EJ began to shift back and forth from heel to heel, swaying side to side to accompany her worried heart. The mother abbess's eyes bored a hole into EJ's head and then through it, punching down to the machinery behind... but she said nothing more on the topic, simply hmmph-ing and giving a nod.

"Alright. Fine. Hop to it then, sister Esper James... Let's-..." She was cut off once again as she looked towards the readouts for EJ's electrodes. The machine had begun to emit a gentle warning beep... A soft little sound, so innocuous, so positively unassuming... but even without touching it directly, Esper James could feel the heat shimmering from its entirety. Whatever was going on inside her, whatever unknown energy was rippling through her meat, it was more than the machine had been built to withstand. It was dying trying to even comprehend what her biosigns were putting out.

The mother abbess's jaw fell once more, but this time she was quick to right it; Zofia was the researcher, it was her problem to deal with. The abbess would just urge Esper James to perform as she'd agreed to; that fit them all pretty well, she thought. "Alright! No more distractions. Go ahead, sister Esper James, just... Begin running, and I'll increase the speed until it seems like you've peaked. Go on." And without waiting for a response, the treadmill's blackened belt began to make its rotations.

EJ did as she was told, legs spurred into motion: right then left then right once again, beginning at a walk, then a hustle, then a jog, then a run... The run was where things grew more gradual in their incline, though it had only taken a few seconds to get to that point in the first place. Esper James was more than able to keep up with the pace she had been dealt, foot and shin and thigh all raising in repeated unison with every footfall. The faster she went, however, the lower she began to lean... the closer to the ground she got, instinctively drooping.

It didn't feel right, didn't feel natural, to run standing up. It felt weird... Felt too performative, too much like a thing she was doing just because others were watching her. Getting down nearer to the surface below her, the blackened spool which was whipping by, just felt... right. The hunch had become near to a crouch, and as the speed increased... fuck it. Fuck it, who cared if they saw? Esper James certainly didn't - she was fairly certain the mother abbess still found her distasteful on principle, and Zofia...

Well, it'd take a little more than this to break Zofia of her gross fetishism.

Palms touched down upon the singular tread, EJ's whole body now thrown into the action of sprinting. At this point it was less of a sprint and more of a fevered, needful dash, a burst of the rawest speed that Esper James's body could produce. Hands beat the drums of war upon the treadmill's track, feet joining in to keep time and pace; the girl with the dyed tips felt more bestial by the second, lowering herself just barely more; she didn't even care that it set her ever so slightly off-balance.

Much like how her chest had hurt in the breath exercise, reminding her of a seemingly ancient pain which she had nigh upon forgotten existed, this scramble too seemed to dredge up memories of another time, when her body had been both more and less her own. Subtle hints of exercise fatigue began to appear in her body, clarifying themselves as the seconds ran - EJ couldn't help but imagine the fading of a song on the radio, but in reverse. It grew slowly, the sensation starting as a minor annoyance and only drawing to a sort of discomfort after nearly twenty seconds, but it was both refreshing and revolting that it had shown its hideous face at all.

EJ grimaced, then, throwing herself into the action with every bit more gusto. She put forth all that she had to give and then some, the sounds of whatever Zofia and the mother abbess may be saying now completely drowned out by the squealing, whirring din of that polyester track beneath her. It screamed in protest as she ran, howling out for respite. Such agonized autonomous audio couldn't do anything to distract Esper James, however; she kept on at the same sort of gradual increase, having long since nearly reached her apex, but every fistful of seconds gave a glimpse of heightened speed.

Would this thing break? A sick part of Esper James wanted to try and run this machine into the ground in the most literal sense possible, throwing herself into the act as emphatically as she could, until the training apparatus's auto-pilot offed itself. And if not that, if not causing an error within the program, she wanted to create an error within the actual operation. She wanted to fuck it up. She wanted to break it. However she achieved this didn't really matter, at least not to her.

The mother abbess's voice rose now, feeling more dominant, more curious, and more personable with her as she peeked her head into the affairs of her subordinates. She did, at the very least, address Esper James almost immediately - EJ recognized her own name, but the tone wasn't desperate enough to pierce the veil of concentration. Instead, her thoughts were glued on a singular idea: the abbess needed a ghoul, someone who the Easterners could rely upon. One who was, admittedly, hurting sorely for any sort of clout... anything to prove that she was worthy, of anything...

She took a deep breath, pushing out one final burst of speed. She swore she could hear the EKG machine burst into flames.