Perverse Instantiation Ch. 03

Disclaimer and Acknowledgment:

All persons engaged in sexual activity or otherwise sexualized are over 18.

As always, a special thanks to my editor, LiterKnight, for catching the obvious errors that inevitably litter my early drafts.

-00000-

The thermo-mix packet began to vibrate as Layla cracked the outside casing, and even through its foil packaging, her hands began to warm at an alarming rate. Yelping at the sudden heat, she quickly dumped the packet into the waiting miniaturized pot. The unappealing mass of nutrient paste began to bubble as the chemicals within the thermo-mix began to superheat its new container. She bit back a slight gag as the first waft of her breakfast reached her nostrils.

Scooting away from the brewing pot, Layla sat back on her hands from her lofty position above the security hub, her legs tapping out an idle rhythm on the slab-crete wall. Her softsuit unzipped to her navel, fresh beads of sweat were running down her exposed collarbone into the small valley of her breasts, the humid temperature no less than the day prior. And yet, the scavenger was loathe to fully pressurize her suit once more. Somewhere within her, she still wanted to experience the heat and moisture on her exposed skin. Near weeks on end spent in the recycled air of the Yak, or sealed up in her suit when dirt-side...it was a sensation that suddenly felt valuable to her.

And of course it had absolutely nothing to do with her memories of the night prior. Layla shifted uncomfortably as an involuntary shudder of remembered pleasure rolled down her spine. That vicious, messy, sweaty, near-painful round of debauchery had left her sore, stinking of sexual fluids, and utterly satisfied. At least, after she woke Shae up for a round two a couple hours later. And even worse, as Nixie brightened the level's lights to indicate that morning had come, when Layla awoke to find herself still cushioned on the soft, still-sleeping body of Shae...a sensation that had given a permanence to that feeling of satisfaction that was hard to describe.

But that afterglow quickly faded as reality set back in from her jungle paradise. A very annoying reality.

"You'd be amazed at just how much time you organics waste with all your disgusting bodily functions." Nixie complained, her mermaid sprite swimming impatient circles around the bubbling pot of paste. "We're wasting time! Just grab one of those stimulant bars and let's get going! I'm booooored."

"That sounds like something that's entirely not my problem."

"It will be when Prime shows up and blasts your scavver ass out of an airlock."

Layla waved off the A.I.'s concerns. "We've got time yet; they've got bigger problems than one non-responsive station right now. Reliance and Moonbound were landin' troops on Mars last time I checked the news-feeds. So yeah, lootin' can wait a bit. My 'organic functions' demand a full meal."

"Maybe if you hadn't burnt so many calories stuffing your twat full of corpo dick, you wouldn't..."

"Shut it!" Layla hissed, jerking to shut off her emitter as she saw a certain fox-girl emerge sleepily from the foliage where they had made their impromptu bed. Her cheeks immediately colored as she took in the woman's uncertain form, given that she had only put on her own softsuit up to her waist. And her torn bra apparently wasn't worth salvaging. Despite laying on those perfect breasts for an entire night, Layla still felt an excited twinge in her sore nethers as she watched them bounce with Shae's stumbling gait.

"Layla?" Shae called out as she rubbed her eyes, clearing the sleep from them with apparent difficulty.

"Up here!"

The gene-mod blinked, her furry ears turning towards the sound of Layla's voice before her head even moved. Spying the scavver's elevated position, her brow furrowed cutely as she slowly scanned the sheer sides of the hub. "Oh. Good morning! How...how did you even get up there?"

"Gene-spliced with a spider." Layla smiled cheekily, wiggling her fingers as she spoke. "Got sticky fingers."

Shae stared up at her blearily for a very long moment. "Really?"

Layla snorted. "Nah, there's a ladder 'round back."

"Oh. You were joking." Shae said flatly. Layla's teasing smile began to wane at the empty response, but then Shae's face warmed with a little grin. "It was very funny."

"Stop humoring her," Nixie's voice echoed from inside the security station. "Her comedic ability is abysmal."

Letting out a little yawn as she spoke, Shae shook her head. "I am doing no such thing! Layla has a wonderful sense of humor."

"Suck-up."

Layla swung her legs up, moving into a low crouch on the edge of the hub's roof. "Ignore her," she said, "She's just jealous that I have someone else to talk to." She reached down an arm, extending her hand towards Shae below her. "C'mon up, I've got breakfast cookin'."

Shae didn't even question why she couldn't just use the ladder, shaking the last of the weariness from her form before running at the wall. With two agile steps, she jumped high off the grey surface, her hand landing on Layla's forearm. The scavver pulled the lightweight girl up easily as she gripped her arm, helping her scale the last meter or so. Entirely by accident (so she told herself), as she yanked her onto the roof, she pulled too hard, sending the two falling gracelessly to the rough surface. Layla fell onto her back, Shae's soft form landed solidly on top of her, her suited groin pressing tightly against Layla's.

Though the fox-girl's expression showed her surprise, she quickly found herself laughing at the compromising position. "Why, Layla," she chuckled with slitted eyes, wiggling her hips provocatively, "I didn't think you missed me that much."

"Just some parts of you," Layla replied teasingly, rubbing her groin against the corpo's rising bulge. A little moan escaped from Shae's lips as Layla's lithe form moved beneath her, and she pressed her uncovered breasts harder against the scavver. But with a rough slap on the tight fabric covering the corpo's ass, Layla shoved her to the side, "But that'll have to wait."

Rolling easily with the shove, Shae pulled herself into a seated position alongside Layla, her smile reproachful but not at all displeased. "You're an awful tease. Has anyone ever told you that?"

"Says the woman with her tits hanging out," Layla shot back, easing the response with a smile. "But yeah, they have. Just part of the fun."

"It certainly was that." Shae scooted closer, pressing her side against Layla. To both of their surprise, she didn't pull away. Smile widening, Shae rested her white-haired head against Layla's shoulder. As her fluffy ears just barely began to tickle at the side of Layla's head, the gene-mod let out a conspicuous little sniff. "What is that smell?"

"Your breakfast, princess."

Reaching over, but notably without shifting the woman against her side too much, Layla snagged the rubber handle of the heated pot, bringing it between her spread legs. The congealed mass within didn't look any more appetizing than it had ten minutes prior, but at least it was warm now. "Fresh-mixed nutrient paste, straight from a Reliance Co. MRE. Which I happened to loot from a battlefield about a month ago. Appetizing, I know."

Shae's head shifted to look into the miniature pot, her nose crinkling as she took a deeper whiff. "It certainly does not look very good, but that smell..."

"Yeah, it's rough. Best plug your nose, rough's all we got."

"You misunderstand." Shae said, her oval face turning to look at Layla. She took another deep breath, and her eyes sparkled as she seemed to savor the sensation. "It is delectable. It is making me simply ravenous."

Layla raised an incredulous eyebrow. "You're kidding, right?" At Shae's blissful expression, she just shook her head in disbelief. "You aren't kidding. Well, shit, guess someone had to actually like this slop if Reliance made so much of it." Chuckling to herself, she pulled out a pair of small trays from her pack and two multi-tools with utensil attachments. Scooping out the grey-hued sludge onto the plates, she gave Shae an extra-large portion, which she gleefully accepted. Layla watched in bemusement as the corpo dug into the paste, her eyes closing as she let out a near-orgasmic moan of pleasure.

"Oh, this is marvelous!" She said through a full mouth, eagerly shoveling more into gullet. It was an entirely incongruous image; the gene-spliced perfection of a privileged corpo slurping down budget slop like it was gourmet.

Shrugging her shoulders, Layla began to eat her own portion. The taste was far less offensive than the smell in her mind, but it was hardly good. Just a bland, awful texture with the inescapable hint of foul chemicals. But she was very much used to it.

And somehow, as she watched the happy expressions flit across Shae's face, the taste wasn't quite so terrible as usual.

"Try not to choke," Layla advised, only half-teasing. Shae just nodded hastily before taking another massive gulp from her spoon. Layla continued as she took another sip herself, "We've got a ways to go, and a resuscitation wouldn't be a promisin' start to the day."

Shae wiped her mouth, finally taking a breath after her unrepentant gorging. "Oh, I don't know," she said offhandedly, wiping off a dollop of paste that had fallen onto the swell of her left breast. Sucking the finger into her mouth very suggestively, she pulled it from her full lips with a pop. "A little mouth-to-mouth might be just what I need."

Despite the blatant shamelessness of the come-on, Layla still felt her chest heating slightly at the display. "That'd...ah...well..."

"What?" Shae practically purred, setting her half-eaten plate to the side as she placed a hand on Layla's upper thigh. "Cat got your tongue? Or...should I say...fox?"

Though Shae had clearly meant the gesture as being eminently seductive, the phrasing struck Layla as deeply awkward, and she just snorted, little chuckles shaking her ribs. Throwing her own plate to the side, she grabbed Shae's encroaching hand and shoved the fox-girl down with her other. She straddled the unresisting corpo, who raised her uncovered chest willingly to Layla's gaze.

But Layla just smirked down at her. "You need to work on your game, kid."

Shae smiled challengingly back up at her, flexing her restrained member pointedly under Layla's ass. "I think it's working just fine."

"Only because you look like a fuckin' vid-star," Layla said, lowering herself just slightly closer to the restrained woman. "And got the tits to match. You could lecture me on multi-dimensional theory and I'd soak my suit."

"Using Ōtsuka and Jenkins' theorems of spatial drift and localization, as well as a sufficient energy source, the barrier between our dimension and the one dubbed 'sub-space' can be breached, allowing FTL travel through this spatially compressed mirror-dimension. Thus, a Yashi field is established around a vessel during..."

Laughing, Layla tweaked one of Shae's protruding nipples, causing her to break off her sudden speech with a little gasp. "I didn't mean literally, you cog-brain." And yet, as her fingers lingered at the fox-girl's breast, unconsciously tracing around its overfull curve, it seemed she'd been right. Fuck, she thought, if only the corpo instructors at the company school she'd been forced into as a kid had talked like that. Maybe she'd actually have paid attention.

Shae seemed eminently aware of the effect she was having on her as her grin widened. "No game, huh?"

"Shut up," Layla protested, yanking her wandering hand back as if the girl's soft skin had bit her. She let out a frustrated growl as she looked down at Shae's unrepentant grin. "I underestimated you. You're a dangerous beast, Specialist Miyako."

Shae's hands moved to rest on Layla's tight ass, squeezing experimentally there. "You know very well how to tame me, Freelancer...uh..." Shae blinked, her lascivious tone abruptly derailed as she stumbled over the imagined title. "Oh. I don't actually know your last name, Layla."

Layla grinned, both relieved and disappointed that the little game had come to an end. Before she found out if she'd actually win or lose. "Solovyeva."

"Solovyeva..." the gene-mod rolled the name around in her mouth like she was savoring it, "Nightingale. Layla the Nightingale. You have a beautiful name."

Layla blushed. "'Course you somehow speak Russian too. It's just a normal name though."

"Nothing about you is normal, Layla Solovyeva," Shae said softly, something unreadable behind her silver eyes. Something that set those Enkindler-damned butterflies fluttering in Layla's stomach again. But Shae continued, her brow furrowing just slightly. "And I am curious. The security A.I. had a point yesterday. Your weapon, your ship, even your name and race...what was a family from the Collective doing on a mining station in Moonbound space? They are an infamously reclusive people."

And just like that, those sickeningly warm feelings within Layla shriveled up and died. With a grunt, she shifted off of Shae, shuffling over to her pack and grabbing a spare rag. She angrily began to clean off their discarded dishes. "I'll say that same damn thing as before. I'm not a fuckin' communist."

Shae leaned up, her expression apologetic. "I'm sorry, Layla, I wasn't trying to cause offense. You must admit that it is quite the coincidence, however, if you don't actually have any relation to the Collective. And you don't have any love for the megacorporations either." There was so accusation in her tone, just honest curiosity.

Layla was silent for nearly a minute, her calloused hands clenching hard at the plates as she rubbed the crusting paste from them. Her teeth tightly clenched, a dozen cruel or angry responses rushed through her head, all clamoring to escape. And yet, after a tense moment, she just sighed, her shoulders slumping. "Fine. Yeah, my family is from the Collective. Generations of mud-splattered farmers, all the way back to the revolution. Happy now?"

"I am not going to mock you, if that's what you're asking," Shae spoke, shifting to a cross-legged position. "I just want to understand you better."

"It's got nothin' to do with me," Layla spat, but her normal bite wasn't in it. "Never even set foot on Siberian soil. My family left before I was even born. Raised me in the ass-end of local space, as far from their utopian homeland as possible." Her raised voice lowered to a mere mutter. "All so their daughter could scrounge around in filth for a living. So no, I'm not part of the Collective, and they can go fuck themselves for all I care."

Shae stared at her in silence for a long moment. There was a want in her face, an obvious need to try to comfort Layla somehow. But she was wise enough to avoiding moving in for an embrace at the moment. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to dredge up bad memories. I won't ask about your past anymore."

"Don't worry about it." Layla said gruffly. "I'm fine." With jerky motions, she stuffed the rest of her cooking supplies into her pack and slung it over her shoulder. She stood. "I'm gonna get ready to head out. We've got a long day ahead of us." Without a second glance at Shae's worried expression, she strode to the other end of the roof, mounting the ladder and sliding to the bottom quickly.

-^^^^^-

Shae stared after her, her ears almost drooping at the scavver's sudden departure. She jumped as a notification ding sounded from the trailing arms of her softsuit, and she scrambled to pull it up. On her sleek wrist-mounted computer, a notification text had appeared, written in a blocky, stylized font with golden coloring.

"Don't take it personally," it read. Another text came in a second later. "Layla can be like that sometimes. Best just to ride it out while she gets over herself. She's had a difficult life, most of it due to the mess her family left her with. Her father, Fyodor, is a complicated man."

"Nixie," Shae acknowledged, looking down at the unexpected message. Gears were turning in her mind. "He built you, yes?"

"Pretty much. And, believe it or not, Layla helped. Maybe not consciously, but I was in their home quite a lot when she was little. Watching her grow up taught me much about humans."

"But then why are you so antagonistic to her?"

"I like you, fleshbag, but you don't get to ask those kinds of questions yet. Maybe if you survive this deathtrap Prime calls a station, and my Mistress doesn't leave you here to die." Shae didn't know how the little sprite managed to convey the exact tone of sass she usually spoke with through a typed message, but it was very apparent. Before she could open her mouth to respond, another line of text appeared, coupled with a little image of the sprite mooning her.

"Don't worry, she'll be awkwardly flirting with you again in no time. Now get those droopy sacks of meat you call mammaries back into your suit and get down there. Layla's waiting."

Despite the barb of the comment, Shae smiled, "Thanks, Nixie." She hurriedly stuffed her arms through the holes in her suit, zipping it up as she approached the edge of the roof. Just as Nixie had said, Layla was waiting at the bottom, battered blue helmet in place, plasma carbine resting on her shoulder, and a foot tapping impatiently on the ground. In just the short day of their acquaintance, Shae felt like she knew the scavenger well enough to recognize that if she had truly been angry with her, she would have just left her here entirely.

Little by little, she thought, I am winning her over. She climbed down the ladder, making sure Layla got an excellent look at her descending ass.

But as she reached the bottom, her smile faltered as she found that the scavver had turned away, seemingly unimpressed at her display. She hurried inside the hub to grab her gear, embarrassed at failing to grab her attention.

As she rapidly fitted her weapons and small pack back onto her suit, a little frown tugged the corners of her lips downwards. Layla was more complicated than she had anticipated, both in temperament and history. It made her job here all the more difficult. And yet, at the same time, much more interesting as well. The scavver was this fascinating puzzle of disparate parts that tickled Shaevi's mind to distraction, even when she knew full well her attention should have been on more serious concerns. With Layla's company, this deadly assignment had turned into something...actually enjoyable. Fun even, something Shaevi couldn't have ever really pictured when this monumental burden had been placed on her unprepared shoulders.

She had become intrigued by the surly scavver, and dare she say, even enamored with her. Despite the weight of responsibility, she was dedicated to enjoying this unexpected companionship she had found, and clawing some small joy from the tragedy her life had fallen into so recently. And maybe...Layla could even be trusted with more. To be something more than an enjoyable partner on a dangerous mission.

But Shaevi was getting ahead of herself. She had a rather unfortunate habit of doing that these days. The scavver still didn't entirely trust her, and, honestly, she didn't know if she deserved to be trusted. The two of them still had a long way to go before that distant fantasy might ever come to pass. But she could still hope, despite herself.

Winning Layla's trust just couldn't take too long, she worriedly continued in her mind. After all...

Her life depended on it.

-^^^^^-

The thud of Layla's mag-boots was heavy in the small corridor, the metal station walls doing nothing to muffle its sound. Already she missed the faux-natural environment of the garden, but it simply could not be helped. There was tech to be looted, a crazed A.I. to deactivate, and a much-needed shower in the Yak's berth waiting for her. And, if the corpo didn't continue to stuff her cute little nose where it wasn't wanted, the growing promise of great sex after a job well done.