The Deathsuit

Author's Notes: This story is erotic fantasy written by Etaski. I reserve the right to be listed as the author of this story, wherever it is posted. If found posted anywhere except Literotica.com with this note attached, this story is posted without my permission. © Etaski 2019

This is my entry for Literotica's "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" event. The setting being used is SLA Industries 1993, created by Dave Allsop.

Special thanks to Blackrandl1958 and DeathandTaxes for their encouragement, or I'd not have finished in time. :)

*

Roya asked brightly, "So, did you pick one?"

The Human Operative was Adorn's assigned roommate. She was kneeling on their tiny, two cushion couch, her elbows resting on the back to see the Ebon standing at the door. A small, blushing smile appeared, unconscious, on Adorn's porcelain face as she listened to the garment bag. It sang softly.

"I think one picked me," she murmured.

"It looks like a body bag."

Roya's dark brown pupils made it obvious that she narrowed her focus too much while she scanned the thick, protective slipcover containing the Ebon's purchase from Dark Lament. Adorn chuckled with patient goodwill for the younger, less enlightened race.

"I suppose it is. We welcome a new body this day, as this shall be my companion throughout my career, to grow with me as my protector. I shall never be alone, no matter where my missions take me as I strive to reach my potential for SLA Industries and the World of Progress."

Roya made a face like she was trying not to laugh. "Uh-huh. It's a suit of armor, Adorn."

"It is much, much more than that, Roya."

"I thought most Ebons already had a Deathsuit by graduation," her roommate said. "One of their first paychecks blown on it, so they can train in it before hitting the streets."

"I wanted to wait."

Adorn had been visiting the regulated corporate shops for weeks, visiting each shipment as notifications popped up on her Oyster. She had delayed submitting for her first BPN contract after commencement from Meny, trying to find The Right One.

If both she and Roya hadn't been blessed with a modest trust of their families, they could have run out of credits while she had been searching. Some Ebons, whose focus allowed them to pass through Operative school without a Deathsuit, must make a hastier choice with a limited selection, starting the very moment they needed to work and progress within the Company.

It is Fate that we found each other, Adorn thought, caressing the bag with one, pale hand.

"Can I see it?" Roya asked, curious as an innocent despite her earlier skepticism.

The Ebon smiled kindly and nodded, stepping farther into their shared, open flat. The short entryway and washroom opened to a functional kitchen, flat steel counters and cabinets hugging the walls, standard appliances and dining table standing in standard order. Next, there was a small entertainment space with no wall to section it off, containing the requisite HD TeeVee and a fair sound system. Just beyond that was short set of seven stairs which led to an elevated sleeping space, a simple railing set as the border between living and resting.

The small flat and a feeling of free-flow to it, with no doors at all except for the one way in and out. This suited Roya, as she tended to drift in and out and not think much of privacy or possessions—something Adorn actually liked about the Human—though they had spoken of choosing more colorful curtains or privacy screens if their future guests protested the "One Space" layout too much to be comfortable.

Adorn walked up the seven steps with her garment bag, counting them with deliberation and reflecting upon this one number, so significant to the Shaktar race. The Ebon imagined how it might feel for them, their sense of pride and strength which arose in honor to it, and how many more times she would take these steps herself as she progressed toward her potential.

There were two, low beds in the loft above the kitchen, two desks and wardrobes and cabinets for equipment. Adorn and Roya could see everything of each other's, even when they opened the cabinets, so then Ebon might as well introduce her to the next significant reality which would alter the feeling of their domicile.

Adorn laid the "body bag" upon her bed reverently. The slipcover had no opening, and Roya peered to attempt to understand how her roommate was to remove her prized purchase. The Ebon smiled, her naked hand resting upon her covered suit, and pure lavender eyes closing to concentrate on her Formulae. She felt her Flux flow.

Rise up. Come out. Let her see you. I'm here.

The Deathsuit obediently left the inside of the slipcover; after a blink, it now rested upon it like a deflated person. Roya made a sound between a yip and a squeal as she jumped back from the Ebon's bed. The Human's tanned cheeks flushed red; her pupilled eyes dilated and sparkled with amazement.

So innocent.

"Shit!" Roya laughed, clapping her hands. "Oh, my Slayer, that's a neat trick!"

"It's not a trick," Adorn said, sensing the delight of her new purchase in her touching it.

Her roommate bent at the waist, leaning over to study the Deathsuit with a frown of concentration. "Ghoulish. I thought these came in all colors. Why pick the one that looks like skinned red meat? It doesn't seem to suit you, Miss Pastel Purple." Roya grinned. "Pardon the pun."

Adorn sighed. "They all look like this within Dark Lament. We have yet to...synchronize, my suit and me."

"So you..." Roya tried to choose her words. "Didn't pick it by appearance, what makes you look good?"

"Absolutely not!" Adorn said, modestly insulted.

"Sorry! Sorry, I didn't know. You Ebons are always so stylish and colorful, I didn't expect to see this." Roya look another look at the suit upon the bed, seeming less intrigued overall. "Where's the zipper?"

"There is no 'zipper.'"

"How do you put it on?"

"That is hard to describe to one who doesn't use Flux."

"A trick like getting it out the bag, you mean?"

Adorn paused, breathing slowly out of her nose. "Yes."

"Can I watch you do it?"

The Ebon stopped moving for a moment, feeling the pleading protest of the suit beneath her hand. Her heart responded with thudding mortification, and she reassured both it and herself.

Shhhh. Calm.

"Mm, no, I'm sorry," Adorn murmured. "Not...the first time."

Roya wasn't insulted, though her lips twisted in a smirk. "Aha. Ebon's gotta practice, hmm?"

"Something like, yes."

"Could look silly, you mean?" Roya chuckled mischievously. "No pictures or vid evidence?"

Adorn gasped, her blank eyes wide in horror.

"Right! No worries, I won't do that. Promise." Roya glanced at the kitchen and the front door. "My turn to grab the groceries, I think, isn't it?"

The Ebon was confused. "We have them delivered."

"Think I forgot something on the list," the Human said as if she spoke thoughts barely touching her mind. "I can go get it. Might be gone a while, kinda hungry but don't want to cook, and I'm curious about that new drug shop that just opened up."

Adorn listened to the Human with bafflement. Roya grinned, straightening her shoulders to display her generously curved body better, framed by her dead-leather jacket, tight red shirt, and blue-weave pants.

"Got the place to yourself is what I mean, sweet girl," Roya said. "Practice. But I totally want to see it on you when I get back."

The Ebon shifted on the bed, lighting rubbing her chin. "Still, I may not be ready."

The Human rolled her eyes and smiled, assuming confidence far beyond her perception. "Slayer, I know you Ebons love your emo-drama, but don't be so shy! Show it off for me when I get back! Not like I haven't seen you naked already."

Roya let herself out soon after, and Adorn pondered that considerable difference between her roommate observing her drying off with a towel while they planned the day, and Adorn being watched bonding with her Deathsuit, seen wearing it before she was ready. Before she was through the first joy.

I would rather be standing naked in Frother's Square.

****

The loft within the flat possessed a large window with a nice view of the perpetually wet streets from only three stories up. Adorn was fortunate in her assigned flat. She enjoyed that she could still make out the lower halves of faces—especially the sets of their mouths—of those walking who had closed or otherwise did not use an umbrella in the rain.

Because sometimes you just want to feel the rain strike you, as life can and does.

Rarer and all the more gem-like for it, Adorn sometimes saw an entire face, without hat, helmet, hood, or cloak. Hair becoming drenched, plastered to their skull, water dripping from their noses and chin.

Or other protrusions, she noted curiously.

A biogenic 313 Stormer lumbered past Doorman John across the street, its shock of yellow-green mane not much dimmed by the rain. The vat-grown guardian created by SLA Industries was catching up with another armored man waving him over from the open door of an APC. For no apparent reason, the Stormer snapped sharp, lipless teeth at the poor Doorman and carried on.

We all snap at threats without giving it proper thought.

Adorn sighed and closed the curtain, knowing she could wile away many hours just observing humanity down below. She was already nude, holding her new Deathsuit in front of her like a stuffed animal. No one had looked up.

With the dark drapes closed and only a single lamp lit in the flat, Adorn turned toward her bed.

No more idleness. We can do this.

The Ebon stretched out with her suit beside her, a pale, feminine body next to a gory, skinned man. Or so her race heard, over and over.

Maybe. But it doesn't feel like flayed flesh.

Her basic blankets were rougher on her soft skin than her suit; she might waver between many textures in trying to name a dominant one, but satin, percaline, and marquisette all came to mind. As did honed, polished, and tumbled, when its scent chose to remind her of mineral or metal.

Adorn breathed out slowly, sitting up to spread out her Deathsuit in a different way, turning the head toward the door and the feet toward the window, rather than as crossroads to them.

There. That flows better.

Should she lie atop it or slide underneath? Might she coax it to embrace, roll with and wrap around her? Or prop it up and then "walk into it?" It seemed everyone at Meny had had their "first time" story except her. She had received loads of advice.

There are so many ways to do this.

The Ebon placed her hand against her sternum to count her heartrate, taking deeper breaths to calm herself as she decided it was too fast to properly concentrate when the moment of truth arrived.

Try as she had to carefully prepare, the universe was ready before she was.

The glass behind her window drape broke inward, shards tinkling to the ground as she screamed in fright. A man's voice called through, sputtering rain from his lips.

"Nakie guurrrl!"

A roar and a whine at once. A bloody, glass-cut hand clawing at the drape. Adorn grabbed her suit and rolled to the floor on the far side of her bed, wrapped it around her like a cloak.

"I seen yea standin' there! Got anythin' tah share?

"Go away!" she cried. "There are no drugs here!"

"Aww, don't be like that. Let's fall together, Purple Puss! Showed me yours, I'll show ya mine!"

The dirty, muscular man didn't care how he was scraped up forcing his way through her broken window; he could not possibly be feeling any pain. Adorn saw the dreadlocks and tartan, knew it to be a Frother, but did not recognize the Clan. She did not even know which drug he was on.

Unpredictable.

No time!

The Ebon scrambled for her Oyster on the nightstand, tapped the rightside panel three times in a pattern for her building's security and stood up to run for the inside door. She took the stairs two and at time, trying not to count them and their unevenness.

"Yaaaaahhh!" the Frother screamed, launching himself over the railing and down to the kitchen, his heavy boots landing on and cracking her table before he leaped again.

He tackled Adorn just short of the hallway.

"Gotcha!"

Sour rain mixed with the grease of his skin to choke her in a foul odor even before he compressed her ribs with his weight. He had an erection wedged between her buttocks, but thank Slayer, both his kilt and her Deathsuit kept their skin from touching directly.

"Help! Someone, please!"

"Tell me where it is! It has to be here!"

"No, please! You're hallucinating! Calm down, you must!"

"Don't lie! Wasn't hallucinatin' the naked, purple-haired girl in the window so the rest has tah be true! Tell me the truth!"

Her ears ached from his yelling above her, and she worked to shut out his rage and terror invading her senses, but it was overwhelming. Her hands were empty; her Oyster had flown somewhere in her fall. The Frother groped at her, searching for whatever "truth" he sought, and he knocked her head in his fumbling. Light flashed behind her eyelids as she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to put the Glyph into focus.

The only one she knew naked. The one Formula which her teachers allowed her to memorize without the suit, again and again, until she saw the Glyph in her dreams.

The One. When she needed it most.

Det'Cerru-Ser!

Her protector seized her, melded to her, reached deep within her to answer. She felt titanium satin dart between her legs, blocking the Frother clumsily searching her, and the suit spread out from there, building and reinforcing a barrier between the defective Human's body and hers; between his raw, howling thoughts and her jarred but quiet center. Adorn became aware of the Welcome, holding her hands like a dear friend, as the final armor slid into place, protecting even a fingernail being bent the wrong way.

The wild man pawed for her breasts, and could no longer reach them.

"What the fuck?!"

"Lift yourself, Frother! Gather your feet!"

She and her Deathsuit became so hot in her mental push that the Frother yelled and pushed himself back, scrambling to get upright. He fell over the next moment, slapping and beating at himself.

"I'm on fire!" he screamed. "Put it out!"

Adorn stared at him, surprised but now feeling safe enough to talk. "You're not on fire. It's a dream. You're dreaming, Frother. Wake up."

The dreadlocks swung in and out of his eyes as his heavy brow furrowed and he whipped his gaze from one side to another. He had no idea where he was, and he still slapped at his boots like the rubber smoked and burned. He whimpered.

"Put it out! Get water!"

Adorn put out her hands. "Shh, calm down. There is no fire."

"LIAR!" He got back up, tripping and stumbling back to the stairs and the broken window beyond. "Rain! Always th' fuckin' rain! Put it out!!"

"Stop!" Adorn called after him, but he would not listen.

The Frother jumped back through her drapes, ripping the piece off the rod and taking it with him through the broken window. His blaring wail soon stopped with a thump, leaving the rain to patter until someone—anyone—responded to her call.

Adorn stood, her mouth covered with both hands, huge eyes staring at the blood streaking the glass shards, the red color slowly diluted by falling water.

Later, in her statement and repeated several times for Media Operatives, she would say, "My Deathsuit saved my life."

****

The heavy music of the Pit throbbed through the walls, and the public water closets were hazy with smoke and vapors. Adorn's suit had extended up over her nose and mouth, filtering the air while her breath grew harder, more desperate. Closer.

So close...

The Ebon was inside a stall with elbow braced on the surface smeared with graffiti and other markings less overt. Two fingers rested just so on the spot between her legs. She held still, her concentration full upon the waves spreading through from her lowest primal center outward, both above and beneath her skin. The only part of her speeding up with the ripples and tremors were her lungs.

Ohhh, yes. More.

She normally did this in private before she left home, so that she and her suit were as relaxed as they could be meeting a new squad for the first time. And she had done it in private once already. Twice.

Just so nervous. Need to feel it again.

Humans and their off-shoot Frothers listened for sloppy-sounding "fapping" if they were curious what a girl was doing in the bathroom so long. Wraith Raiders sniffed the air or listened for rumbling snarls, neither of which would do them good here. Shaktar ignored unplanned delays out of politeness with a hint of bafflement in how their different biology worked.

In contrast, Brain Wasters tended to pound on the door at just the wrong time. Or the right time, depending on which side one stood.

Thankfully, Adorn's yelp of surprise was muffled by her protector.

"Hey, charity case!" the other woman called. "Others gotta squat, too, ya know! Go jill elsewhere!"

Adorn didn't tell her that the stall to the left was empty if she needed to use it. She'd learned better at Meny.

Elders, give me patience.

The Ebon simply had to stop, unfulfilled. Her cheeks still blushed pink as she opened the door and left without a word, her two fingers still buzzing and warm where they had rested upon her suit.

The other woman waiting narrowed her blank, sickly-yellow eyes. Like all 'Wasters, her lids were charred black around the edges from the way she used her Flux, spreading out on cheeks and forehead as if she'd ridden a motorbike at top speed through a fire-acid spray.

She looks perpetually pained, even when she's happy.

"Excuse me," Adorn said, stepping past.

The Brain Waster in the chartreuse Deathsuit grinned enormously wide, as if she'd heard the thought. Her sinewy arms crossed, she sniffed the air as if she could smell the Flux in this place, of all places, where using Flux was suppressed.

"Fff-whew!" the 'Waster huffed, wrinkling her nose. "Never did care for the smell of flowers, Orchid! Or Iris? ...No! Violet! That's your name, right?"

Adorn pulled the main door of the toilet open. There were plenty females of the other races here to witness; they had paused in their grooming, ready if another fight broke out.

Not to worry. I am not a combatant.

"So, what's yer name?" the yellow girl asked at her back. "What'd I say? No body checking, then?"

Body... checking? Ugh!

"Your Formulae make no sense," Adorn said as she left without looking back.

"Yeah, well, fuck you, too, Princess Plum!" the other woman yelled as the heavy door closed in full.

Adorn slipped through the partying crowds, ready to to evade should this lamentable member of her own race follow her. Any Ebon Warrior was all bark in the Pit, no matter how cantankerous they acted, but on the outside, the Brain Wasters were often the sort to Blast at someone's back despite the dishonor and consequences. They would also use Flux to force a drink glass or a mirror to shatter next to someone. For selfish laughter and to cause fear in the other races.

Despite all we do for interracial relations, I understand why they say we Ebons have our own 'Frothers' amongst us.

Adorn paused near a wall when she felt safe, checked her Oyster to confirm the Section and Table where she was to meet the new squad. As she stood, her Deathsuit rippled in a way invisible to onlookers, though to her, it was a slow, sensual tease of which she was aware. From the tips of her toes to the base of her skull.