Chapter One Hundred One - Tit For Tat

Be Your Finger The Pen Of Your Heart
Upon The Canvas Of My Skin;
And My Palm A Raft To Carry My Dearest
Desires Across The Swells Of Your Body

– Poems Touch-Starved, from A Commentary On Modern Wants, Valentine's 2057

 

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The first particles of the vomit-inducing stink of bloating, decaying alien hit my antennae and screwed with my appreciation of a gorgeously messed-up Leah.

Damn. That shit's actually foul, I thought as my antennae rotated to hide behind my back and the sensilla clenched up against the stems to reduce surface area.

Ah, well. The faster we are done here, the faster we'll be home, the faster Leah will be free to, uh…return the favor. Yes.

Leah with her flushed lips and panting breath was fighting to regain her equilibrium, and I couldn't help a grin when I saw her distracted gaze being stuck to my antennae. I'd noticed that she liked to pay them extra attention, and I loved it. There was something really uncomplicated about having my mood, my focus, perhaps even a sense of my thoughts just laid bare for her to see.

Something that freed me from a need to be in control of my appearance.

I had a feeling she liked it, too. Liked knowing what was on my mind and how I was doing, without having to dig for answers.

Settled and happy on the inside, I turned to move to the facility's entrance, giving Leah a long and sinuous, huggy, stroke with my tail as I walked away, careful so the harness wouldn't scratch her or catch against her suit. Looking back to share a smile with Leah, I dwelled a moment on that interaction.

I loved my antennae, but the tail might've been even more awesome, really. The recent hours had taught me much about its physical potential in our relationship.

Amusement tickled me and I giggled. Potential. Heh.

The amazing sort-of-sex aside, having the fuzzy thing made me want to explore a unique kind of love language. A way to communicate via touch and movement that just broke past all the conventions and learned stuff, and engaged directly with the primal instincts deep inside the brain.

The happy thoughts prettily served to distract me from the disgusting nature of my last little bit of work on the facility—weaving a small silk sheet to tear on the teeth of the Three to make it more believable that they'd broken into the facility.

"Hmm. Can't plant any in its stomach, though… Can I, Tynea?"

That could of course be accomplished. There is a large variety of drones, bacteria, or other tools that could be used to plant or produce your silk within the Three.

"But is it really worth the points?"

Perhaps not. The Antithesis are rather adept at taking organic material apart. I do not believe that any scientists would wonder why there isn't any silk to be found within their digestive tracts, despite it being stuck in their teeth. Even after death, the enzymes will remain active for a while and make it difficult to even

place such…evidence.

Huh. That made sense.

"Nice and easy, cool. In that case…we're done, aren't we?"

I would consider your efforts reasonably complete, yes.

My eyebrows jumped and I giggled at Tynea's big-sisterly vibe. It'd been a while since I'd heard it. I turned and quickly walked past the corrugated sheet of steel and out of the entrance, only to freeze when a new thought popped into my head. So I twisted around once more to snag the sheet, and then walked back to the entrance.

There I hummed with a satisfied grin as I glued the thing to the inside of the destroyed door's frame. I'd make it look like a proper job of sealing up the facility, not merely a half-assed bit of silk the Antithesis basically just walked past.

I giggled at a plan coming together so well, whether by accident or not.

As it so happened, there had been a Three attacking this sheet. Just not quite here. The damage on it didn't just look real, it was real.

Once the steel rectangle was properly affixed, I carefully bent a bottom corner inwards and upwards, using the hooks in my feet to grip the cement floor for leverage, forcing the silk glue to stretch and tear—handy that, happened to explain the silk bits in the other Three's mouth while also explaining why there wasn't much of it—until it looked like the aliens had successfully broken past this barrier.

Then I stepped back, dusted my hands off, and grinned at the results.

Job well done. It even keeps the stink inside.

– Observation: Raptor's Dance fuel levels at twenty-five percent. –

My eyebrows jumped. Oh, right. I'd forgotten about that thing.

I'd barely even raised my hands before Mission Control—one of the buds, and probably the closest one to becoming more than just an extremely complex thought process with access to my amygdala—had called the javelin to flash into it from several meters up above.

Sending…her? It? Myself? This crap was weird, especially during this phase of nothing having really happened yet to differentiate these AI-I selves from…me.

Anyway.

After sending the bud some gratitude, she/it/I replied with a bout of satisfied happiness that seemed to stretch like a piece of rubber between what felt like my…normal brain, and the Quanta.

It was very strange. Kind of alien. And yet…it was all just me. A little bit as if I'd been drugged, but without the queasiness. Just strange and indescribable but also known and understood. Because it was ultimately, so far at least, still myself.

I shook my head to clear away the funny-feeling fuzz of my musings, I refocused on the flying spear, where Tynea had already helpfully highlighted a spot just below each of the engine clusters.

The javelin's malleable metal melted aside and revealed what looked like an artificial bunch of tiny grapes-on-the-vine, which fell out moments later and plinked against the tiny scales on top of my feet with a multitude of metallic chimes.

Oh. That was positively pretty. Hmm…

I bent over and picked the two bundles of, presumably, fuel containers up and let my nails play across them to produce more of the musical tinkling.

I bet a few of Leah's Littles would enjoy these, I thought with a smile as I wandered over to Leah's to-be-packed pile of gear. The Myriad still watched over it, propped up on stiffened segments, ready to launch a missile or two at any unwelcome visitors.

Not that there were any inside of several hundred meters, as far as we could tell.

I watched Leah for a few moments, who was working with Ypsi to finish installing the big jungle cannon under its belly. She'd already placed two of the 75mm cannons in gimbaled hardpoints around the upper sides of the abdomen, and I watched as the fat maintenance drone fitted four smoothbores on additional hardpoints around the lower sides and back.

My eyes slid across the various weapons, the up-sized bank of defensive electrolasers that would throw artificial lightning strikes at incoming projectiles, and my own Myriad that could spew volley after volley of missiles. Then I remembered that I'd also still need to buy a new primary to replace my old hunting rifle.

I added two and two together, and came up with dakka.

Me likey.

Leah saw my smile and returned a brilliant one of her own. I froze, and for a moment I just stood there, struck by the multi-hued mirage in front of me.

Thousands of tiny stars lay glittering across the body and legs of the spider mech above her, powerful enough to drape the scene in a rainbow of faint shades, some of which I could only see in the infrared and the ultra-violet. And framed by it all, stood Leah in the middle. She wore her black-body suit, adorned with a filigree of golden lines that gracefully painted and enhanced the contours the goop obscured.

Tiny sparklings of lightning fizzed up and down my spine, and a possessive desire made me lick my lips. Mine, I thought, as my cheeks flushed and my head tilted so that I met Leah's eyes through my lashes.

Whatever she saw on my face, it drew her towards me with a silky, dancer's gait. Those prosthetics might not have been much for a samurai, but they were better than almost anything Earth had to offer—and it showed. Her hips rolled and seduced, and her legs didn't just move, they turned each step into art. They flowed and floated, bewitching and enchanting.

My heartbeats fluttered in my throat and I felt like I was barely drawing enough air past my lips, panting, half-dazed already by the absolute satisfaction and confidence in Leah's eyes, as she reached up and tugged on a strand of my hair. The intimate gesture drew a quiet whine from my mouth and sent little shocks of numbness through my scalp, but I followed her unspoken command and unsteadily closed with a final step forward.

Then I stood in front of her, staring up at her with blinking confusion, barely a few millimeters between her breasts and mine. I felt the warmth of her body radiating, and shuddered as my nipples hardened with the ghostly caress of it.

This was different from the last time she played with me. I wasn't as gone with the emotional whirlwind of her claiming of me. Blood was pounding through my veins and I might've been wavering on my feet, just a little. There was a steady buzz in my head from the power of her tall presence, but I was…more aware. More there. More in my body.

And my nipples were telling me a lot of interesting things about being a woman that were confusing and new and incredibly delicious.

She opened her lips, those luscious red lips, and my eyes were glued to them as my antennae fluffed her freshly washed hair, the scent of her soap a breeze of mild oranges across my sensilla.

"Tinea."

I moaned at the velvet she put in there. She flicked my bottom lip, very lightly, waking me just a little from my trance.

"Tinea?"

My eyes jumped back up to hers, and she raised an eyebrow at me. The arched and domineering look almost submerged me again, but her fingers on my chin nudged at my lips and pushed a pill between my teeth.

Lightning fizzled across my tongue and crashed my thought processes. A different kind of confusion had me blinking rapidly as the me that was AI-I, and therefore not affected by my emotional condition, laughed her ass off at me somewhere in the back of my head.

"Tinea," she said again, with twitching lips and twinkling eyes.

Oh god. I thought back to the last time she'd done something like this with the strings of the web I'd had strung between my antennae, and sighed in quietly amused exasperation as I pinched the bridge of my nose. She just loved messing with me.

"Yes?" I grumbled, once again denied my release.

She chuckled and said, "I promised you that I'd play with you, didn't I?"

I nodded, pouting and looking away. She sure was making me wait for it, though.

"And I will," she continued. "Soon. Very soon."

That velvet again. It had me rub my thighs together at her promise. I nodded obediently, and Leah smiled at me with satisfaction playing around her lips.

"But for now, Tinea, we've still got work to complete." She tilted my head up with a finger underneath my chin, until I was properly looking her in the eyes again. "So get to work, okay?"

I wanted to pout, play with her a little more, but I reigned in the desire. It wasn't gonna do us any favors. I just reminded myself of my promise to help her get home quickly, instead.

And so, as unfulfilled and needy as previously—if not even more so—I got back on track with a sigh, looking at the javelin lying on the ground that I'd dropped sometime during the…haze of Leah's complete sensuality.

"Tynea, gimme that fuel, please."

Certainly.

 

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