Ch. 101 - 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

  ***

  The first particles of vomit-inducing stink of bloating, decaying Antithesis floated free from the facility, and screwed with my appreciation of a gorgeously messed-up Leah.

  Damn. That shit's foul! My antennae instinctively rotated to hide behind my back and the sensilla clenched up against the stems.

  Ah, well. No reason to mourn the interruption. 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, and whose nose wasn't near as sensitive, was fighting to regain her equilibrium from my fullbore tease. I couldn't help a grin when I saw her distracted gaze remain stuck to my antennae.

  I'd loved that she liked to pay them attention. 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 expressions.

  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. Her hand automatically curled around my fur, and at the end, her metal fingers click-clacked musically across the articulated scales of my harness.

  Even as I got to work again, I dwelled 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 potential in our relationship.

  ***

  Satisfied, I stepped back from the sealed entrance to the facility. The same corrugated steel sheet I'd used to lock the first Three into the pantry, and which it had attacked for several minutes and therefore left very real damage on, lent veracity to the bait. I'd bent the bottom corner up a bit, just enough that a Three or two might've gotten past. Some smearing with mud, and a little exposure to acidic rain, absolutely sold it.

  I grinned. Couldn't help but love it when a plan came together, whether by accident or not.

  "We're done, aren't we?"

  I would consider your efforts reasonably complete, yes.

  Job well done. It even kept the stink inside.

  ***

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

  My eyebrows jumped. Oh, right. I'd completely 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 down the javelin.

  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. I sent it some gratitude, and she/it/I replied with a bout of satisfied happiness that seemed to stretch like a piece of rubber between the pieces of me. It was very strange. Kind of alien. As if I'd been drugged, but without the queasiness.

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

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The javelin's malleable metal melted aside, and revealed two…twigs of artificial grapes-on-the-vine. The little bunches fell out and plinked against the delicate scales along my thighs and feet with a multitude of metallic chimes.

  Oh. That was positively pretty. 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 Leah's Littles would enjoy these, I thought with a smile as I wandered over to our 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.

  ***

  I watched Leah work with Ypsi to finish installing the big jungle cannon under Daddy-Long-Legs' belly. She'd already loaded two 75mm howitzers—the very same as her pod's penis cannon—into gimbaled hardpoints around the upper sides of the abdomen, and the fat maintenance drone was busy fitting four sidearm smoothbores to additional hardpoints around the lower sides and back. Their small caliber and high rate of fire would be quite cost-effective and useful for killing groups of single-digit Antithesis.

  My eyes slid across the various weapons, the up-sized bank of defensive electrolasers that would throw lightning beams 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. 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, just powerful enough to drape the scene in faint rainbow shades, all the way from the infrared and into the ultra-violet. Leah was beautifully framed by it all. She wore her black-body suit, adorned with a filigree of golden lines that gracefully painted and obscured her contours in equal measure.

  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 in a blinking daze, 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 first time she'd played with me. I wasn't as gone with the emotional whirlwind of her claiming of me. Yet 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. She'd done it again. I sighed in quietly amused exasperation and pinched the bridge of my nose. Last time she'd played the strings of the web I'd had strung between my antennae. 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 reined my desire in. It wasn't gonna do us any favors.

  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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