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Jumping into the side-story wasn’t a hard decision to make. Easy, quick, just a hop and a skip away from their dragons, play around for some minutes and explore what one of them had written. Mio hazarded a guess that it was her own work, seeing as Zoe failed to decipher whatever swirled beyond the portal's edges. That, and Rader’s Machine seemed intent on having them alternating to a degree, back and forth experiencing, and stealing, everything they had hidden away.
But the electric sphere resolved images in grainy pixels, flat land and sharp greys, little swirling hints of something that might’ve been jade, or emerald.
Mio couldn’t recall having written anything like that.
She jumped in anyway with Zoe at her side, electricity swirling and pulsing as it stripped them down to subatomic particles and reformed them as pixels, things that were real, clothed in the same garb as when they’d leapt.
Odd. Oddity buoyed by more confusion; the world seemed fused, smashed together with so much force that the combination was more than the individual pieces.
Mio recognised some of it; the architecture was all hers, reams of flat plates built up a metal walkway overhanging a pit, the walls on either side just scaffolding left in place until something more permanent could be erected. Beyond them rose a tower, a door, far off but watching as the Company monitored their progress.
And down below where Mio knew there should have been a sun was a dark star that bled crackling noise and wind. It swirled below them, howled, a voice but broken, hovering just at the edges of comprehensibility.
Other details didn’t add up.
There was moss over metal, age, lichen that grew across pitted rust and impenetrable polymers, consuming plastic as it encroached. Vines wove their way across metal struts in ways that seemed more bracing than destructive, supportive in a way that wasn’t natural.
And far up above her was an actual sun, the image of it washed and faded at the edges, ethereal, wispy clouds passing by that she’d never imagined for this setting.
And why did that fill her heart with dread? The sense of knowing this space, of recognising it, a pit of anxiety that split her open while Mio tried to focus on why she’d ever thought up this world.
“Hey Zoe?” she asked, turning along the gangway towards her friend. “Do you recognise any parts of this? Some are mine but, the dressing seems off.”
Silence.
No answer from Zoe, and when Mio turned fully she saw the woman acting odd.
Strange.
Off.
She wasn’t doing much of anything really, just staring out somewhere high above them. The wind gusts picked up as Mio followed Zoe’s gaze, wondering just what was so enthralling about some cloud high in the sky.
Well.
Almost a cloud. Wispy, but green. Tinged and swirling, coalescing, more a mist than anything else and with each passing second she grew more certain that it was coming at them.
Dropping from the sky.
Slipstream lamenting, drooping, painting out the background of empty towers and transmitters hauled from all across time and space. Radar dishes blinked away, obstructed, metal hides pitted and-
It finally clicked when the thing passed by an old satellite dish.
Mio did know this story, fully. Knew its purpose.
Its need.
“Oh, fuck.”
It was a showdown at the furthest edges of reality, the last ageing fortress against the bulwark of decay. Entropy made manifest, fought against by the plucky heroine and her comrades. Except that they all lost, were broken, and it was here that she was to be abased. Disabused of the notion that fighting for a cause was worthy, or right. Despoiled as the last secrets of the universe unravelled before her.
She was but a vessel to be used up and discarded, broken, left at the altar of the End. Even if she fought against it, even if she hated it, she loved it.
Needed it.
Craved it.
That deeper pit, the blackened sun.
Except Mio didn’t see her foil here, just Zoe. Just Zoe, and that notion became a concrete thought, a realisation that flew through her veins and burned with acid.
Something in how they’d crashed the Machine was twisting this story apart, melding them together. Zoe’s thoughts invaded Mio’s world and her story, and now there was no telling what was in store for them except that it would surely hurt.
The mist encroached further towards them and Zoe still wasn’t talking, reacting, wouldn’t move when Mio reached out to grab her shoulder and shake her for all that she was worth.
“Come on,” Mio commanded, dragging Zoe back towards the other end of the gangway, off towards where a single metal door might offer them shelter from whatever was coming. “Let’s go Zoe!”
Pulling harder just left Mio straining as Zoe refused to budge even a little. She tried hauling and tugging, but Zoe seemed to actively fight it, leaning away even as Mio’s actions became frenzied. She just wouldn’t stop staring at the whatever-the-fuck floating down at them, placidly broken in a way Mio couldn’t comprehend.
Why the fuck isn’t she listening to me?
“It wants me,” Zoe finally answered her, voice floating up as if from a dream. “I have to, It needs me, Mio. I need to let it in.”
Well, alright. That made no fucking sense and Mio wasn’t exactly willing to wait around and find out what It was, or what Zoe thought it neededher for. She had more than half an idea about that anyway, at least based on her contribution to this little messed-up exercise.
No fucking way was she going to let that happen.
It was a little awkward but fervour pushed Mio into a swift momentum; reaching down between Zoe’s legs, grasping her tricep, tilting the woman forward into a fireman’s carry that left her hobbling towards the door. Zoe didn’t fight against her as she moved but she didn’t help either, just laying there with all the weight of a sack of potatoes and refusing to do anything else.
They just needed to reach the door. If Mio had written that part, it would be open. Just shove it away, push Zoe inside, and then hole up until the Machine let them leave this space. Avoid the ending to her own story, and whatever Zoe had dreamt up.
It could work.
Would have worked.
Except that Zoe was all lost inside her head and Mio was too slow from the get-go, and as the mist descended onto them she lost the chance to even voice that frustration. She lost everything, her body stilled by unseen hands and breath caught tight in her throat.
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even try, and Zoe just slipped right out of her unbound hold.
Puppet strings moved Mio into standing tall as the mist devoured them both and Zoe rose on steady legs. It slid against the inside of her skin and spoke, touched the pulsing meat inside her head and gripped down, sliding against folds and invading, twisting, neurons bent to its own will. It spoke to her then in tones and words she didn’t recognise, a language she knew too well, all the things that her character had been forced to say.
Forced to submit to.
That beast was still present in this story despite whatever Zoe had brought in with them. It slipped through her eyes and ears, violating the cells it touched in a way Mio could feel.
Unclean, unclean things for unclean means, for unclean burdens.
Languid, slow as it revved her up, as it took the reins and steered the electrical signals of her brain. It grasped sinew and marrow with cold hands that sparked darkness, twisting and testing her gently. Out, up through her veins and sparking green inside her eyes, organs, suffusing every atom with pinpoint desire.
Mio wasn’t her own person any longer. Belonged to It, the Beast, the thing that lived inside her head, the one that craved completion on her knees as she was broken, forced to love the things she hated.
A hand moved on its own and she couldn’t fight it. Had no choice except to watch through redirected eyes as the wind began to die down around them. She could still feel, could still understand, but trying to talk felt like pushing up against a mountain, trying to control her motion was as impossible as bringing something dead back to life.
Some measure of control slipped, the grin it sent her wide and sharp because it knew that she’d hate this more.
Released in such a distinct manner, allowed to finally-
“Zoe, what the fuck is happening?”
Her body turned to face Zoe fully, forced to watch placidly as the woman mirrored her actions.
“I don’t know, Mio. This isn’t what I’d written.”
Zoe’s body moved closer, face to face as her hands started to unstrap leathers and clasps, buttons popping as pieces of her armour fell away.
“What the fuck,” Mio squeaked out, watching as necklaces fell to the ground, as cotton and hide were stripped away piece by piece. “Zoe?”
“I don’t bloody know, Mio! This isn’t my story!”
Their hands kept up momentum as they stood there and soon enough they were bare and nude, not shivering at all despite the chill against their skin, not reacting except to stare at one another.
Mio didn’t want to be staring at Zoe like this. Didn’t want any bit of it, any part, tried to hide herself away somewhere safe and small, closed off. The faint crush she’d been nurturing was thrown up against a wall saying too-fast, too-much, her eyes forced to rove over Zoe’s pale skin and why the fuck couldn’t she stop?
There was a beauty mark placed just below Zoe’s left breast, her nipples inverted and painted rose, sharp pink, a scar in waxy white just to the left of her belly button. Mio tried to blank out what she saw, forget it, avoid it, and count out everything else she could see. Metal against the background of her peripheral vision, the lichen spiralling out from a central core. Thin wisps of whatever had invaded them were still stretching out, flowing through the air as it caressed them. Red-gold nestled in curls above Zoe’s small but rising cock, stretchmarks patterned on her thighs-
Mio thrashed for control yet again, bashing and straining inside her mind. But she was just a limb asleep, there and present, but stilled and powerless. Unmoving except for the instances when It moved her, when her hand reached out to Zoe’s shoulder and nothing she could do would stop it.
It - She - grabbed at Zoe’s skin, dug her nails in deep and held tight to that shoulder, a lifeline while she fought against it.
She failed, again.
Was forced to watch and feel as her hand released and then followed the curve of Zoe’s musculature, her neck, pale skin warm beneath her touch. Higher still to Zoe’s cheek, a thumb brushing her bottom lip-
“Mio, stop it!”
“I can’t,” she whined, pitiful and soft, voice a whisper and lips barely moving. “I can’t, Zoe, I can’t-”
The hand fell without her input. Like falling, like submission, fingers spread wide against Zoe’s neck and then tightening on her. Pressure built up slowly as it grasped down, pulling Zoe closer in search of better leverage.
Mio’s fingers squeezed down as she pleaded for it to stop, to just release, her free hand falling low to Zoe’s breast and pinching, drawing out stiffened buds and rolling the warm flesh between her fingers. Pinprick light shattered Zoe’s pupils, eyes full of emerald and captive like Mio’s. She could see fear and terror in them, worry, wordlessly pleading for this to stop.
A hand pressed against Mio’s cock and she tried to look down, was instead forced to look ahead as Zoe began to fondle her, massage her, finger pressed gently to the underside of her softened head. It moved by Its will, whatever was controlling them brought them closer until the distance had nearly vanished and Zoe could grasp her fully, awkwardly pumping up and down until blood began to pump and biology followed through.
Stiffening in Zoe’s hand unbidden, unable to tear herself back and flee even as her chest tightened with roiling shame.
Her strings pulled Mio along and away as Zoe released her hold with a whimper. A side step brought her behind Zoe’s back while the hand clamped over her neck remained steady and present. As she moved Mio could hear Zoe’s whimpers turn to muttering, mumbling something over and over again as if it could protect her.
“Zoe, I’m sorry, I just can’t stop it, it isn’t me, I swear,” Mio whispered against Zoe’s ear, bodies rearranging until she was slotted against her back.
Her free hand dropped to a pale hip and then forward, down, fingers gripping long hair between Zoe’s legs. It was impossible to push away all sensation; she couldn’t just blank it out and ignore it, whatever controlled her wanted her present and accounted for. The thing riding her spine wanted what it wanted and it wanted her to know-
“Mio!”
Her attention was redirected as the thing inside her reached lower to the base of Zoe’s cock, finger and thumb encircling it, squeezing gently as it pulled back foreskin to reveal a soft, pink head. She was so small in Mio’s grasp but swelling quickly as her hand began to move, unbidden on Zoe’s part and all Mio could do was ring out apologies as if that’d save them.
“No,” Zoe said, voice forceful now, tone wrung through with tears. “Mio, I don’t want this, please, not like this-”
“I know!” Mio half-shouted, half-sobbed, trying to tamp down on the fear rising into anger, the shame burying her in fright. “I know, Zoe, I know.”
She did. Could have seen it another way, another time, far from here and Rader and all this nonsense.
But it was happening now whether she wanted it to or not, and her own length was stirring with every slow roll of her wrist. Each pump left Zoe’s body warming up, a steady shiver, the hand on her throat leaving it to drag scratches like daggers against a pale front. It shifted the arm down and curled possessively across Zoe’s midriff, the fingernails pressed in so hard she could feel blood leaking by.
“Too sharp, too fast,” Zoe whined, outright sobbing now, body perfectly still except for the furious beating of her heart and the jerking of her lungs. “That hurts, Mio!”
But there was nothing she could do to slow the pace and she was sure Zoe knew it, had to fight it by voice alone. The hand didn’t belong to her anymore and the one on Zoe’s cock was uncaring as she stiffened fully.
A second later and Mio had joined her, ramrod stiff and bent just a little to the left, pulsing and straining as the head tingled with need. Their bodies pulled flush together as Mio was angled into position, the thing inside her core forcing her into grinding up and down, an unsteady rhythm that burned more than anything.
It kept her slow after a second, soft on Zoe’s body as she was forced to lean in and bite against the soft flesh of the woman’s neck.
Zoe screamed as Mio’s teeth sank in. High, tightly pitched and splitting Mio’s heart open, her mind echoing long after Zoe stopped. Her ears were ringing too, mouth unable to pull off as blood settled heavy on her tongue.
The hand on Zoe’s length kept moving, kept squeezing, rolling forward at the tip as Zoe’s body began to buck and writhe.
Mio’s own rut followed, leaning into Zoe and pressing against her entrance now, logic dictating an end state that Mio knew would hurt.
The hand with nails embedded in Zoe’s skin released the grip before settling back against the hardened curve of her hip bone, squeezing flesh as she was prepped to dive in.
“Mio, if you can stop it, please, please-”
“I can’t Zoe, it won’t let me,” she said, voice low as she laid her forehead against the back of Zoe’s neck. The grip on her cock tightened to something surely painful, the motion as she jerked her frantic and unsteady.
She was forced in, slipping through as though friction didn’t apply to them. Harder, Zoe’s body tight around her and mind clouded because this was wrong, and yet parts of it felt so right. Inching in, forward, wet heat clamping down with every thrust of her hips.
“No, no, no, no-”
Mio wasn’t sure which of them was saying that, repeating the word like it could somehow protect them. Maybe Zoe, maybe her, perhaps they were both in one another’s heads and chanting it the same. Just voiced fear and terror and the subtle hiss of pleasure that wound up both their spines. It wanted them to feel it, to know it, to get off as it used them and understand that it was by Its will alone that they could end this.
She settled fully into Zoe, hilted and shaking, and the only thing Mio could feel in that moment was that it was good.
All she could hear was Zoe’s moan, a pained hiccup. Body braced as Mio pulled back and then dove back in, rolling her hips down as Zoe angled herself. The hand on Zoe’s cock turned to furious pumping, forearm burning and voices tangled as the strain rose around them both.
She had no idea how Zoe must have felt.
She knew precisely how Zoe felt.
Had written it in, the abuse, the sensation and knowledge of being used, how the story was meant to hurt so good.
It was just never meant for anyone’s eyes but her own.
Not something she wanted to share, not with Zoe, and she couldn’t stop it even as she hilted herself again, even as Zoe backed up against her and matched each thrust. They moved back and forth again and again as the air turned green and heavy around them, bodies in sync and writhing.
Mio let her tears fall silent against Zoe’s back, tasted salt on her tongue.
Was forced to listen to the slap of skin on skin, rutting moans lifted from them without permission as Zoe strained against her.
Mio wasn’t certain who came first.
Zoe gasped out shock amid a moan and tilted, body shaking as she laughed something broken and hollow. Mio tightened up, locked in place as her seed filled the woman and her breath came tight.
They shivered together and felt warmth blossom from inside as it spread, following pathways for shame as they became lightheaded and shaky. Mio exploded with one last thrust before she pulled out, the hand on Zoe’s cock released its hold as the other turned her around.
Zoe’s body didn’t stop; she just fell towards the ground and landed on her knees with a thud. Her head dipped low and lips swallowed up Mio just a second later, the tongue against her heaven and hell, horrible and beyond relief.
She hated this. All of it. No measure of spurious pleasure could overcome that, could shake from her the quaking terror as Zoe licked her clean.
The green faded away as Zoe finished and leaned back, as Mio cried and whimpered.
Then it was gone from them. Evacuated, banished away, their bodies limber and soft and their own for the first time since this madness had begun. They used freedom to collapse onto the metal gantry, exhausted and mimicking one another’s tears.
And around them the simulation crackled instead of simply ending, spitting out static that burned as they collapsed inwards into nothingness.
—
Mio came alive with a shock of electricity and rolled onto her back, the sunlight from above burning her eyes as she struggled to get her bearings. Her body didn’t hurt but she felt violated, used up and spent, empty inside.
She turned to find Zoe and saw the woman on her knees, eyes wide and manic, body hyperventilating as she stared through the world to nothing Mio could follow.
She wanted to reach out and reassure her. Just touch her once and tell her that it wasn’t real in a way that mattered.
It hadn’t happened.
It was fake.
Except-
She couldn’t.
Couldn’t bring herself to bridge that gap, the thought of her hands on Zoe making her skin crawl, her breath constricting to a choking gasp.
The sound knocked Zoe from her stupor though and when she looked at Mio it was with eyes filled with fear and shock, soft green turned poison jade.
Zoe jumped back and shook as she rose up, her hands missing in the first few attempts to smooth out her clothes. She wavered above Mio, her eyes pointed into the distance and face closed up, inscrutable now that she knew Mio was still here.
The look didn’t fit. Felt wrong.
“Zoe,” Mio tried to say, stuttering as she stood up and lurched with legs that’d forgotten how to hold her up.
The woman ignored her, started walking at a brisk pace towards whatever it was she’d focused on.
“Hey, Zoe! Wait, hold up!”
“Let’s go, Mio.”
“Can we please just talk about-”
“What is there to talk about, Mio? We made our way through a side story, now we’re done. Let’s get moving, before Rader finds something else to inflict on us.”
“You know it wasn’t just that, Zoe. Will you please just-”
Zoe rounded on her and bounced back, away, her eyes feral and wet and sharp, the green in them gone foul and bright.
“There isn’t anything to discuss about what happened, Mio. Nothing. It’s over and done, so let’s just get moving.”
Zoe didn’t bother to wait for her. She just turned heel and stalked off, the dragons shifting uneasily beside them as Mio stood there and shook.
She could only follow along at a distance. Slow, never letting Zoe out of sight but never really catching up. The memories were still in her veins, her hands, sense of touch disoriented and broken.
But she followed her, towards whatever would come next.