Chapter Ninety-Six - Cleanup

"What's Road Rash's favorite video game?

Minesweeper."

– Get Rekt; Annals of The Burn, June '56 Edition

 

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Eventually, the bunched-up Myriad between us got quite uncomfortable, tail to cushion it or not. I got up and leaned back on my haunches to share a smile with Leah.

She was adorably mussed, all heavy eyes blinking at me through the drizzle, flushed lips, and wild hair. Which was all sorts of filthy now, caked with mud.

I grinned a little as I stood up and took Leah’s hands, whose thumbs stroked the knuckles of my fingers with a stupid, gushy smile on her face. The expression touched something soft inside me, and I giggled as I tugged her onto her feet. Leah in post-nut bliss was something else.

“Come on up, Leah. I don’t think we’ll want to wait for that shower after all.”

She yawned, my brain went goofy with Aww, pwetty girl!, and then I witnessed the beautiful transformation of Leah getting back on her proverbial horse.

She sprayed down her soap hand to clean off the mud, then grabbed two brown pills out of the air. One she tossed my way, a bud went through the calculations of catching it, which…wasn’t really necessary, but was weirdly fun, apparently? And swallowed the other herself.

I caught the flying pill between my index and middle finger, so fast that Leah froze with wide eyes. She shook her head and said, “I saw your battles through the drones and know how quick you can be, but seeing it in person is hella cool. Friggin’ amazing. Real samurai shit.”

I laughed at the enthusiasm in her voice and leaned up to kiss her as the fizzle of an energy booster buzzed through my system.

“It’s good to see you so happy, Leah. I was a bit worried that being a samurai didn’t seem very fun to you.”

She looked to the side and chewed on her bottom lip, then sighed and turned back to me. Wow, getting to see all kinds of new facets today, huh? I thought with amusement. She wasn’t usually quite so demonstrative of her feelings around a topic that may have been a little touchy. 

Maybe, I supposed with a rising blush, being girlfriends has changed things?

Leah looked at me, and I happily leaned into her palm when she laid a hand against my cheek, smiling as her thumb continued the stroking on my cheekbone instead. “I may have been a samurai for a while, but aside from Ypsi’s support and friendship, I haven’t really…taken advantage. Sometimes,” her gaze fell as she kept chewing her lip, “I worry that I may have put too much weight on my mission with the Littles.”

I raised my own thumb to massage her lip, softly tugging it away from her teeth. “Well, it is a way to cope, isn’t it?” She nodded, and I continued, sure of my words. “In my experience, keeping the balance is really, really difficult. Maybe even impossible. I was genuine in my attempt to do so for…years. A decade, easily. And never found real happiness. Lost myself to isolation trying to sort things out, instead. Even after I started to know better.”

Leah’s expression fell and she teared up. I took her hand and led her to sit on a stump. Then I climbed onto her lap and rested her head in my boobs. 

Slowly petting her frazzled hair, I took up the explanation again. “So while I was creating Tinea, I decided to have a fresh start. That I’d simply forgive myself for fucking it up, and look at it as a series of course corrections instead. There’s a saying in German,” I said with a light giggle, “that translates to the ‘golden path of the middle’."

Leah looked up, quite cute, with curious, shimmering eyes, and I traced her eyebrows while I continued speaking. 

“It speaks of finding the balance, the median. Of idealized self-control." I presented my fingernail to Leah, the one with the golden wavy line terminating in a flare of brightness above the black abyss.

"But I don’t think it’s a path so much as a ridge that I’m constantly stumbling along, and slipping from to tumble off into the darkness. Staying on it is so difficult that I couldn't possibly succeed. So I stopped thinking I owed it to myself to do so. That it was even something I should do.

“Better to look for the knowledge and support I need to find my way back to it, hmm? Over and over. If I fuck up, I fuck up. That’s fine. I’m, mostly literally, only human. For now.” I chuckled, and Leah smiled at me. Her anxious squeezing lessened, and her arms just lay warmly around my hips instead, while her fingers languidly played with the fuzz on top of my tail’s root. “These days I only seek to realize when I’m slipping, and I try to move back toward that golden mean, the place where I don't act out my fears. Doesn’t matter that I slipped. That’s unimportant and changes nothing, yeah?”

Her nose nudged my solar plexus when she nodded, and the warm breath of another sigh spilled into my cleavage. I brought my tail around and rested the plushy tip of it on Leah’s hair as I set the mechanical shield-fingers to open up. My little organic limbs hidden underneath had fallen asleep without me realizing, and cribbled a bit. The funky feeling increased as I massaged them slowly into waking up and waited for the blood to return.

Then, I moved on to Leah’s hair and combed it with my fingers, digging a little into her scalp before rinsing the dirt from it strain by strain. I felt Leah’s shoulders relax against me as I went through the motions, just basking in my attention.

Not that you haven’t had plenty of that already, hmm? I thought with a giggle dancing in my chest.

After having her dispense some soap and giving her a proper wash, she got up again, looking a whole lot better and far more certain of herself as she took my face in hand and kissed me full on the lips.

I smiled at her when she released me, and she returned it with another quick peck.

“Thanks, Tinea. Needed that.”

“No worries. I don’t doubt that you’ll find your golden path.”

“Mm.” She nodded at me with certainty, and stripped her goop suit, bending over to step out of it, displaying her body in all its naked glory. Her flavor smashed across my sensilla with breathtaking intensity, and she jumped when the tip of my antennae was suddenly there, tasting her.

My cheeks flashed scarlet as I almost literally drowned in her, a metallic note with elements of the sweet juice we’d drunk and the broth we’d eaten. It bashed my brain in with the scent of sex.

I groaned as I stumbled backwards, and rubbed my face with my palms. The taste-smell wasn’t going away. It totally stuck to me. Oh god.

I’d just calmed down from the lack of an orgasm of my own, and now it was back, front and center, heating me up, making my hips shift and my thighs rub against each other. Hurriedly, I spritzed my sensilla with water, vigorously, even risking a certain level of pain as I panted with an open mouth and bought a mint from Tynea for a point to drown the taste and scent of…Leah.

Who was standing a few meters away, half bent over from taking the suit off, and restraining laughter with twitching lips.

I spritzed her nipples with pin-point accuracy, and she broke out in laughter as she twisted away. “W-Well,” she gasped at me, “now I know how to get you interested in a hurry.”

Cheeks hot, I glared at the evil woman and threatened more spritzing.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" she yelled, holding up her hands in surrender and still laughing. "I'll make it up to you! Promise!"

Interested, I raised my eyebrows at her. "Mhm? You will?"

"Yes!" Leah nodded quickly, grinning.

I squinted a little harder and pursed my lips. I suppose I could use some…venting. 

Yes. Venting sounded useful. 

"You're going to make it good, you hear?" I ask-threatened Leah.

"Definitely!" More fast nodding. She was gonna get a sore neck at this rate. Which…I'd rather she have a sore neck for other reasons.

"Alright. Later. Business now." I slunk closer, swishing my hips. "We get going and out of this crater, and do what we must to return home." My fingertips echoed the earlier strokes of my tail's tip against the soft skin under her chin, and Leah blushed hard while my thumb kneaded her lower lip and slipped into her mouth just far enough to gather moisture. "And then, my lovely girlfriend," I rose onto my toes and whispered into her ear, "you'll take me." She shivered, and a hot breath warmed my thumb. "And you'll do me every-which way, yes?"

Leah's tongue lay warm against my finger, and she nodded at me with darkened eyes, exactly as aroused by my dare as I was from tasting her. Satisfied, I smiled smugly, and with a last stroke of my thumb, I pulled out, gently rolling her lip along the way.

I sent her on her way with a swat on her gorgeous ass, admiring the tightness that only regular exercise would gift as she bent over to pick up the under-armor. Then I went to pick up my harness and its sock to clean, before starting after her.

Squirming as my own arousal had me, we did already have plenty of fun today, and much work left to do. Thinking of which, I should probably make a list, huh? I'll definitely kick myself for forgetting some stuff otherwise.

"Hmm… Tynea, Ypsi, and you too, Leah, help me create a To-Do list for the evening, please?"

Leah gave me a thumbs-up and grinned at Ypsi's cheerful Yup! Ypsi's polite and helpful to her friends, after all!, while Tynea opened up a new text window and started a bullet list for me with the first task, leaving me with a blinking cursor in the second line. I tossed a link to Leah.

• Resupply
• |

I nodded. "Sure. Restock and reload. I need a new firearm too, something that works with the old Sentinel, maybe?"

We kept walking towards the facility as Leah spoke up. "I'll need to install an actual pilot's implant, along with downloaded knowledge to operate the scout. Equip the tank with whatever turrets and weapons we already have available."

– Advice: Utilize swarm of drones to scout underground nest, call RFG bombardment. –

"That too, yeah. We'll do that last. I'll have to buy a blueprint for those bacteria that Tynea suggested to use as bait. The ones that go after plant muscles."

Pulvinophages. Shall I begin synthesizing them immediately?

"Yes those, and sure, get started."

Understood. I'll have them readied to be dispensed via molecular capsules.

Our point counter ticked down another thirty points, and a timer began tracking the phages' production while I added the poisoning of the food jars to the list.

"What else…"

"Tinea, do we still want to clean up the facility?" Leah asked.

I tapped my chin.

"We don't really need to, do we? We'll make it obvious and unmistakable that we're gone, so they'll have no reason to get spooked by any of our left-overs. Yeah. Might even serve to pull them in more."

Leah nodded in agreement and added, "We'll just bleach any organic material we don't want them to get their hands on. Leave the damn trash for them to sort through."

"Right. Oh! Tynea, I'd wanted to ask you about my changing tail length?"

Your body's still balancing itself. You've seen a considerable amount of action in a short time, and your biochemistry is adapting with a more active metabolism. Your tail, and thus your spine, have lengthened to provide more blood-producing marrow.

"Ah, the balancing thing is basically a bit of puberty?"

That's an accurate assessment, yes, though your non-human parts will never lose this capacity to adapt. A slower life would lead to a shorter tail with reduced demands on your reserves, if you allowed it. Or a longer tail if you further increase physical activity, which would lead to greater requirements of sustenance.

"Huh. That's kinda cool, not gonna lie. Can I set a specific length, though?"

Of course, though that would require adaptations elsewhere. New organs, better organs.

"I see." Well, I was going to leave it at that; tail awesome. 

Longer tail, more awesome, I thought with memories of a warm body entangled in the flexible limb distracting me. I'm sure Leah would agree. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, and she waggled an eyebrow at me with a cheesy grin.

Then she moved closer, once again grabbing my tail at the base, and quickened heartbeats tinged my cheeks as the warmth radiated into my spine. She let it play through her hand and I kind of automatically pulled it through, just like cats do.

Oh god, that feels all kinds of amazing. 

It wasn't exactly sexual, but there's no way I'd let any random person pet me there either. I kind of arched my back and snuggled into Leah as she repeated the long, slow stroke. It honestly made me want to purr for her. Lacking that ability, I rubbed her side with my cheek instead, and she giggled.

But then AI-I chimed in again, pulling my attention to the thought-complex that had created a keepsake for the rifle, and I murmured to myself, "Let's add that to the bottom of the list. Leisure time activity…

"What else?" I asked, louder.

"Don't you still have that silk tube thing stored in the cocoon from yesterday?"

"Uh…"

You placed a number of surplus ball-shot in it and left it behind.

"Right, I…definitely remember that. Yup." 

Leah giggled and I ducked my head a little as she squished me closer.

"Wings! My wings. If we have the points for it." 

She mussed my hair and said, "I'm sure we will."

Wings added and expanded on by Tynea, I studied the list's current iteration:

 

To-Do

• Resupply
  • Fuel Raptor's Dance
• Rearm
  • New Primary compatible with Sentinel
• Procure Daddy-Long-Legs
  • Arm and Ready
  • Pilot readiness
    • Implant
    • Skill-download, or several hours of practice for minimum mobility
  • Load up with surplus gear and ammunition
• Destruction of subterranean Antithesis nest
  • Disposal of drone swarm
• Seed nutrition jars with pulvinophages
• Destroy any genetic traces
  • Handle cocoon
• Wings
  • Class II 'Origami' Saturniidae Moth Wing
• The Rifle's Keepsake

 

Yes, it's coming along nicely. A lot less work than I was expecting, too.

 

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