The Long Shot Pt. 11

Xan breathed out a ragged sigh. "Goddess...that's a lot, you know?"

"I know," Gyre said. "But you should get over it quickly -- I'm running my bridge at faster than normal timescales, so you have more time than you'd normally have before Tulon starts shaking me." He smiled. "But not an infinite amount of time."

Xan gulped, then nodded. "Right." He rubbed his palms against his face, before drawing them back, looking at his palms. "I've never had this much body before." He wiggled his fingers, slowly. "It feels nice. Natural, even."

"Maybe-" Gyre was cut off by a flickering light on the coms console. He stood and walked to it, and saw that his sensors were picking up the beginning of a holographic display warming to life in the cave beyond. He looked over at Xan. "One second, something's happening." He flicked his hand, spreading his fingers. "You can watch through my eyes. See?"

Xan nodded. "Will you be able to hear me?"

"Yup!" Gyre said, before opening his eyes in the world beyond.

[[Hello?]] Xan asked, while the hologram, displaying at normal speed now that Gyre wasn't running his internal processes faster, flared to life, all three girls gasping in shock as the display filled the center of the cave.

YOU HAVE COMPLETED YOUR RUN OF SHARK MISTRESSES! CONGRATULATIONS!

YOUR STATS...

Your Mistress' Wealth: D-Rank

Your Mistress' Combat: S-Rank

Your Mistress' Land Conquest: F-Rank

Your Mistress' Lust: S-Rank

Your Mistress' Overall Level: C-Rank

You have placed 798 out of 1,000 logged players.

Would you like to try again?

"What does it say?" Tulon asked. "And where's Xan?"

"He's in my head...right..." Gyre shook his head, his hand going over his mouth. "Oh my god."

"What?" Chinsara asked. "What is it?"

Gyre opened his mouth, then closed it. Every single possible explanation that he tried to compose for them sounded more and more insane to him. Tulon made it easier by grabbing onto his hair and yanking at his head -- if he hadn't been a Starship, it would have hurt. As it was, she mostly just used it as leverage to lean in close, growling. "What does it say, Gyre! And where is my goddess damned husband!"

"It...it's a list of your accomplishments," Gyre said, his cheeks heating. "Uh, well, uh...I just figured out why males when, you, uh..." He trailed off. "This is a femdom planet."

"A what?" Chinsara asked.

Gyre closed his eyes, slowly. "This planet, when it was made, it wasn't just any paradise planet. It was specifically a...a...femdom planet. That's why your males lack all agency during sex. They just, uh...become a sex toy. Then are used. By their women." He put his hands over his face, laughing despite himself. "Oh my fucking god."

Chinsra's gills opened in shock.

"Well..." Yetna said into the silence. "I guess that does explain a lot."

"I don't even care anymore," Tulon said. "I don't care about the why. Just let me talk to Xan. Please."

Gyre looked at her. He placed his palm against the stone, closed his eyes, got what he needed...then stepped backwards into his bridge. Xan was looking at him with confused desperation -- and Gyre spoke, quickly. "I'm downloading another backup -- but while I talk to them, you? You can use my body." He smiled. "Transferring temporary physical control to you. It'll feel weird, but...I think you'll get used to it."

Xan opened his mouth-

***

-and stumbled forward, falling to his hands and knees. Which were both things that he hadn't had before. He looked down at him, gasping -- then lifted his eyes to Tulon, who was kneeling before him, looking so...desperately lost and alone and sad.

Xan had no thoughts, then. Just Tulon. His arms swept around her, drawing her close, and he kissed her. His tongue swept into her mouth and her eyes widened, then slowly went slack as his tongue quested inside of her, his hands caressing along her back, holding her close. She moaned into his mouth, her gills fluttering -- then Xan drew back, whispering, hastily. "It's me, I...G-Gyre is letting me use his body, it's me."

"I...I can tell," she whispered. "Your voice-"

Xan paused, then spoke: "My voice?" He stopped. "Hello? Testing. Testing." He blinked.

He sounded like himself. He had expected to sound like Gyre, since he was using the other man's body through a magic that, honestly, he was happier not understanding for the time being. Then he had no time for wondering about his voice because Tulon had pressed herself to his body, swung her legs wide, and scissored them behind his back. Xan found that there were some advantages to having a body.

The first?

Contact.

He normally only felt this level of raw touching when he was in his sex form, and there was almost no thought when he was reduced to that state. Now? Now, he could feel every inch of Tulon's muscular, curvy body pressed against him without hesitating. Now, he could do more than just feel, he could touch back. His white palms glided along her back, teased the tiny vestigial lump where her tail would have been if she had been of the right race, clutched to her hair, squeezing her tight, holding her as their tongues met and dueled again and again and again.

When he broke the kiss, he noticed that the other two women that he had barely noticed were gone. "Where-"

Tulon shoved him onto his back, grinning eagerly as she spread her palms along his chest. Her voice was a hungry purr. "Who the fuck cares?" She spread her thighs, then lifted herself up. Her hand dragged her tattered leggings aside...and there was the soft, glistening folds of her grayish sex. Xan had never seen something that looked quite so sweet -- and he had never been able to do...

This.

His palms cupped his wife's ass, dragging her down to his face. His tongue swept into her cunt, teasing the folds of her sex, curling up and pressing against her G-spot, the place he had tried to stimulate with his whole body when he was in his sex form. With just his tongue, he could taste the juices that dripped from her and realized that his wife was delicious. What was even better was that he could still hear -- and thus, hear her moans as more than just vibrations that echoed through her whole body.

"Oh Xan! Ah! Yes! Yes! Yes!" She gasped, her palms cupping her breasts, her fingers tugging on her nipples greedily. "Oh goddess! Goddess, yes! Yes!"

Xan was more than happy to oblige. His tongue swept up and down, up and down, then thrust up -- and he found he could move it with more precision than he thought possible. He was rewarded with a literal gush of warm juice, which flooded his mouth as Tulon let out a choked gasp, her spine arching, her hands gripping her own breasts so tightly that they squished around her fingers. She trembled, then went slack, gasping, putting her full weight onto his head. Xan expected that to be uncomfortable.

Instead?

It felt rather nice.

Hells, he didn't even need to breathe. His hands caressed her rump until she slid off his face, panting, whimpering. "Oh yes..." She leaned forward and thrust her ass into the air. This had been one of her favorite postures to hold him in -- to push her ass up, crook her arm underneath her, and shove up into herself. It wasn't the most comfortable -- but...she said she liked it because it showed the whole world just who's husband was where. She liked to demonstrate his girth and his scale in his sex form, and she enjoyed the raw, lewdness of it.

Now, though?

Now, that posture spoke to Xan of raw opportunity. Because he had a sex body that was thrusting from between his hips -- achingly hard and just as big as he used to be...but he still had the whole rest of his body. He grinned and then gripped the base of his...his cock and rubbed the dark glans against her folds, teasing her with the hardness of him. His other hand gripped her ass cheek, squeezing her as Tulon let out a soft mewl, desperate. Needy. She thrust her hips upwards and...and...

She was crying.

Xan could see the tears, glittering on her cheeks.

"T-Tulon, are you all right?" Xan whispered.

"Y-You're back..." Tulon sniffed. "I never...I never dreamed...y-you know my body, just like you used to. And you have this gorgeous new form and-" She rolled, then, onto her back, abandoning her normal posture. She lay there, her breasts heaving, her thighs spreading. "And I need to see your face. I need to know you're Xan."

Xan crawled atop her. His palms pressed to the floor to either side of her. His eyes filled hers as he looked down at her and his cock slotted against her cunt, with almost perfect synchronicity, as if they had been doing this their whole lives. Her breath caught and she cupped his cheeks, lifting her arms up, sliding her hands back, to cradle his head. "You don't look like him, you know?" She murmured. "Gyre...he has these features, but they all look different when you're wearing them."

Xan nodded.

"Did he ever-"

"Never," Tulon whispered, softly. "My body's yours, Xan."

He smiled, wryly. He leaned forward, then kissed her -- and as he kissed her, his cock began to push into her sex. She felt tighter than he had ever imagined. It was both because of the change in posture, because of her raw excitement...and also, more, from something else. He had never felt her like this. It was one thing to be enfolded by her sex, as if it was his whole world, his thoughts buzzing into incoherent lust as he was turned into a toy for her amusement.

It was another thing entirely to fill her with his dick and pin her to the ground and fuck her. He had never understood the true, gut sense of that word.

Until now.

"Xan! Ah! Yes! Yes! Fuck me!" Tulon moaned, as his balls slapped her ass, roughly clapping against her muscular rump, while he leaned down, kissing her gills, sucking gently on the folds of them, teasing them with his tongue. She groaned deep in her throat, and her sex clenched on his cock like a fist -- and Xan felt the urge to fill her with seed. He kept it back, driving into her faster and faster, until he couldn't hold it back anymore. He threw his head back, his spine arching, as he cried out in purest bliss.

His balls tightened.

And he groaned as...as...

He came.

His seed filled Tulon's pussy. Poured into her womb. Burst from around his dick, making a glowing, sloppy mess of her thighs and his own pelvis. Some droplets slid along his balls, beaded, and dripped to the floor with a wet slapping noise. And still he kept cumming. It felt as if his whole body was being wrung out. He thrust and churned his cum into his wife, and she groaned and quivered and her toes curled as she arched her spine and came again, crying out with raw, feral joy. Her fingers grazed along his back, squeezed him, held him close.

Slowly, the two came down. Xan panted, looking at Tulon's slack features.

"Never leave me again," she whispered.

Xan chuckled. "I won't..."

He leaned down, and he kissed her.

And inside of his skull, unnoticed by him, a very shocked sub was having an extremely weird day.

***

"Run that by me again," Yulong Tagalot Davidson said as he watched Gyre pace back and forth before him.

"It is the year 10,000 AD, appropriately," Gyre said. "You were on vacation on a paradise planet and for one reason or another, logged a backup in this data crypt. For all I know, your original self even got off the planet before it was knocked out and reduced to the stone age. But then for several thousand years, this planet has been running on autopilot -- forgetting why it was made and what it was for. Now, I've crash landed here, and I need to get off this planet. I've checked the metadata in your storage records, and you're the only E-space navigator I could find that was still a coherent memory pattern."

Davidson rubbed his simulated hands against his face. "Okay," he said, slowly. "I'm going to need a second."

"Take all the time you need," Gyre said. "And, if...if you want, I can have you-"

"No, no! Shut up! Stop! Right there!" Davidson said, standing up, holding up his hand. "What I want? If you cared one single second about what I'd wanted, you wouldn't have fucking forked me."

Gyre winced.

"I didn't exactly have a choice," he said. Then, at Davidson's expression, he added: "The Galaxy is under attack from Voidbringers."

"What the fuck is a Voidbringer?" Davidson asked, sounding almost plaintive.

"Extra-galactic aliens of unknown providence," Gyre said.

"And you are..."

"The CNS Widening Gyre," Gyre said, spreading his arms. "I'm a member of the Starship Corps."

"You...don't...look like a starship, aren't they, like, half a kilometer long?" Davidson asked.

Gyre laughed, softly. "It's been six thousand years. We've managed to beat a few tech plateaus in the time. Not all of them, obviously, but a few." He paused. "I know it's a fuck of a lot to dump on you. Were you civilian or military E-space folder?"

"Uh, yes," Davidson said, laughing. "I was in a few merc contracts for the Trade Baronies."

Gyre whistled. "Fhew. Old history."

"Oh, what happened to them?" Davidson asked.

"The Concord had to go in and kick their faces in, about five thousand years ago," Gyre said, grinning. "It was pretty dramatic. They're still making mecha-themed vidshows about it now, there was a lot of powered battle armor fights in the last few years of the war."

Davidson chuckled.

"You, uh...I hope...shit, you may have-"

"Oh, no, they got what's coming to them," Davidson said, shaking his head. "Do you still have credits?"

"No, actually, the latest economic reforms in the last Millennial Conclave finally nixed the last vestiges of the credit system," Gyre said. "Now we use a system called P2C -- Planetary Production Capacity. It was going to be called PPC but that's already the old name for-"

"Particle cannons, yeah, I know." Davidson grinned.

"Right. So, P2C basically just maths up the total planetary production, then divides it evenly among the population once base requirements and interplanetary needs are considered. If you make the P2C bigger, everyone has more P2C, it...it's kinda complicated and requires a big chunk of the Pantheon's help to keep it working, since there's so many factors involved, but...hey, it works." He shrugged a bit. "So, the Trade Baronies would have been pissed."

Davidson laughed. "All right." He stood up, slapping his hands on his knees. "Six thousand years out of time, with my original copy and his descendants long, long, long dead, my homeland altered beyond recognition, and you want me to plot your navs for you into the maw of an extra-galactic invasion force so massive that, despite having a comlink home, you still can't get rescue. Have I missed anything?"

"No, that just about covers it," Gyre said.

"Certain doom?"

"I wouldn't say certain," Gyre said.

Davidson laughed, then threw his head back. "EeeeeeeeeeeeeeAIH!" He shouted to the simulated heavens. "Fuck it! Fuck it, why not!?" He stepped forward, then grabbed onto Gyre's hand.

"So, I have to know," Gyre said, leaning in close.

"Yes, it was femdom," Davidson said, shaking his head. "Get uploaded into some nanites and, uh, used by sex shark ladies as a literal sex toy." He laughed. "It was fun, too."

"Cool," Gyre said, nodding. "And the shark ladies, who were they?"

"Oh, they're just biots," Davidson said.

"...biots?" Gyre asked.

"Biological robots -- I guess the term's fallen out of favor in interlac. Honestly, I'm shocked there hasn't been more linguistic drift." Davidson said, gesturing between himself and Gyre.

Gyre shuddered, his eyes closing. "A-Ah!" He laughed. "S-Sorry, uh, yeah, they work hard on preventing that, um, anyway, yes, biots. They're clones?"

"Kinda, clones with a central controlling facility," he said. "They're supposed to be run off the simulation's patterns -- to keep the scenario on track. You pick a biot to be your partner, then guide them through the scenario, winning points, and if you hit the high score, you get a prize."

Gyre frowned. "Well, the biots are all sentient now."

"Then the central control facility must be offline," Davidson said, shaking his head. "And the biots have been alone for a long, long, long time. Which, uh, both tracks." He frowned, then walked over to the communication console. "Lets see if my old authorization codes work -- I should have basic guest access." He tapped at the console, frowning as he did so. "There we go, okay, it looks like the central command platform's offline...ah! But we have local access. That's you, right?" he pointed at the logged interactions.

Gyre nodded. "That one is, that one is...that one?" He pointed at the logged interaction right before his access. "That one is not."

"Lets bring it up!" Davidson said, humming as he worked the console. "Man, your new UI is a lot easier to follow on the workflow front..." He threw up the recording he had pulled from local security cameras. It showed a woman -- a native. She was tall and gangley and had thick bandage wrapped around her cheek, as if to cover a recent wound. She was dressed in thin tatters and looked desperately up at the camera. There was a hologram hovering before her -- it was the stat-board, showing a different array of statistics.

She spoke -- and Davidson blinked. "Huh, Interlac!"

"She's not speaking Interlac, it's my translation systems," Gyre said, then reached over Davidson's shoulder to reverse the playback.

Both listened.

The woman spoke.

"Oh great oracle, I have come from many leagues, and braved the Deadman's Coast. Please...please tell me...how might my husband be returned to me?"

A synthetic voice spoke in Interlac.

"We're so glad you have enjoyed your time in SHARK MISTRESSES! You have achieved a score of ERROR."

The woman looked down at a small booklet. She read from it, whispering to herself. "Okay, the Oracle speaks in the ancient tongues. If...my research is right, 'we're so glad' means...greetings? Or maybe...'welcome.' She shook her head -- and Gyre frowned, adjusting the display -- so rather than providing a verbal translation from her tongue to Interlac, they would switch to subtitles. He got a feeling that it was going to be a lot less confusing.

The woman, speaking her native language, said: "Can you understand this tongue, oracle?"

"I'm sorry, please repeat your query, PLAYER NAME NOT FOUND!"

Stumbling, she tried Interlac. Her accent was atrocious, but understandable. "Oh oracle. Me am from far. Please tell: Husband?"

There was a pause.

"Do you wish to see your place on the charts?"

She muttered in her own language. "Charts?" She flipped through her little booklet -- Gyre could see it was full of notes and scribbled asides. It looked like it was less a printed book and more a wild collection of different scrawled notes and details, compiled across many years. Gyre wondered, seeing that book, how many of those years had been this woman's personal, desperate quest. She spoke in Interlac. "This place...legend of...the dead stay?"

"Do you wish to see your place on the charts?"

Exasperated, she slipped to her own tongue. "Why do you speak in riddles!? Do you know how many people have DIED to get me here!?" She stepped forward. "Just give me my FUCKING HUSBAND BACK!"

"I'm sorry, please repeat your-"

She threw up her hands, stomped away, then stomped back, breathing. "Yes! Show charts!"

The scoreboard popped up, showing names, and a map. Davidson pointed, whispering to Gyre. "That map show islands conquered -- the whole idea was you had your biot fight other biots and...if you conquered more land, you'd get more points. The most points wins."