Chương 160: Chapter 155 – Locked In, or Locked Out?

"Some folks get all tangled up worryin' about what another's intimacy looks like, instead of who's doing the intimacy. They fret over the shape of the bond—the timing, the suddenness—and forget it's the hearts in it that'll make it work or not. A salesman in a holy place's still rotten, boy, and a good woman in rough company's still worth standin' by."

– Aunt 'Auntie Care' Carroll, giving advice to her young shadow, June 2056 ⁂ Leah stared as her girlfriend approached and the details of her conditions were revealed. Injuries. Lots and lots of injuries. Lacerations, abrasions, contusions, she could even see some Antithesis gunk being expelled from the deepest of the cuts. The corrupting, carcinogenic fluids weren't able to overpower Tinea's enhanced immune system, but the sight still made the guardian-at-heart queasy.

The only reason Leah wasn't panicking was the deeply satisfied expression the woman sported, and that her movements were transforming from strained-and-sprained to unhinged, chipper, and anticipatory. Not a balanced mood either, but at least it didn't speak of lethal wounds. But really, ragged was a very appropriate adjective to apply to Tinea. A closer look revealed thin armor scales slowly flaking off of the brunette's arms. Broken ones lined some of the cuts, neatly bisected in some cases, shattered in others.

It was clear that they hadn't done much to protect her flesh. Perhaps they weren't dense enough. Leah had learned enough in her shopping that she understood just how much mass had to be compressed into a single shingle of properly resistant armor. It'd make sense that Tinea couldn't grow scales worth much in mere minutes, not unless she bought specialized organs for that, and then the protection might not be worth the weight.

She wouldn't be able to get into the sky without a lot of additional flight upgrades that would also need protection… The laws of physics were despots that even a samurai paid dearly to evade. She sucked in another breath when she noticed the horrible condition of Tinea's tail. Its beautiful translucent white had been stained a stark, bloody red and an entire meter was gone from the end.

Leah nearly leapt from her pod, but by the time her body tensed Tinea had already grabbed the airlock's rim and pulled herself through. She stilled as their eyes met. There was still a certain… predatory madness in the flying warrior's rapt regard. A fey wildness, full of consuming and restless energy lacking an outlet. Combat hadn't left her yet, Leah realized.

She wondered, somewhere in the back of her head, whether she'd have witnessed the same intensity if she'd arrived earlier at the glassed crater, or if Tinea had joined her sooner after their first big battle. Does she always get so hot-blooded? Does it mean something that she didn't wait outside to cool down today? It took her several moments to breathe again, and like a starter firing the pistol, the small motion set Tinea off.

Between one moment and the next, the smaller woman kneeled above Leah on the flanges of the pod's hatch—still clothed in that beautiful, partly sleek and partly fluffy armor-weapons combo, the trailing skirt of which had split at the front and draped itself across the pod's opening like a train. She was flushed and panting, but she held herself back, and instead of touching Leah, she hovered and fidgeted left and right.

Elegant, feminine, and uncharacteristically hesitant hands alternated between reaching out, and pulling back, clenching the pod's lip. They were full of energy and tension, like they hadn't yet had time to forget the wreaking of carnage. Tinea's eyes switched rapidly between her own, and Leah saw way too much stuffed into way too little space behind them. A real pressure cooker. The girl's mouth seemed stuck. Trying to shape words but having too much to say to get any of it past her teeth.

All she managed was an overloaded"Leah." Shocked into action, Leah reached up to grab Tinea by the sides of her face even as she found herself contemplating what might happen if all that energy were to hit her at once. She dragged her love down, and kissed her full on the lips. The little battle maniac ceased fidgeting, but she continued vibrating in place as though uncertain how to respond to Leah's oral invitation. Or perhaps, waiting for Leah to… show her how to fit together what didn't?

She realized that Tinea didn't know where to channel her overloading battle-self without something to fight. The girl was always calm when she wasn't facing danger. She probably didn't have any experience discharging her battlelust in any way other than constant motion. Yet, you came to me instead. Somehow, that was very dear to Leah. Sex, she supposed, was but another expression of survival. One that could be shared with a friendlier…

combatant, though she wasn't sure whether Tinea saw the connection between sex and survival. Or even sex and violence. No matter how visceral and physical they all might be to Leah, Tinea had discovered intercourse as a way of identitary healing, of—in her own words— becoming human. Even their more recent explorations had focused more on self-discovery than physical fun. Stolen novel; please report. She carried on coaxing Tinea with her lips. No tongue, she didn't want to invade, just… set the bait.

Her fingers wandered up and caressed black, softly curling hair. The closer her hands got to Tinea's spine and the muscles there, the more she could feel the nervous jittering, and the more intense their eye contact. But… not with heat, somehow. Not the sexual kind, anyway. Even if putting her hands on her girlfriend did things for Leah, prosthetic or not. At least they did have pretty comprehensive feedback.

It was like Tinea was caught in a labyrinth of impossible actions, or a locked room of competing impulses, and was waiting for her to supply the key. Leah changed tack. She moved her hands past the beautifully shaped bulk of the pauldrons and slowly drew her fingertips down the adorable killer's arms. It didn't take long for her to reach the first of the gashes. They weren't bleeding, even unscabbed—an unsettling thing in its own right.

With the bionites controlling the blood flow, it looked less like living flesh and more like a cut in freshly butchered meat. The warmth and softness of the skin was real, though. So was the slight puffing and redness of inflammation around the edges. The entire site around the healing injury was hot to the touch. Probably from the bionites' activity, Leah thought. Gently, carefully, she brushed her fingertips across the last of the broken scales and they fell away like dead skin.

They were stiff enough to tinkle quietly as they hit the metal of the pod. She let her fingers wander down to Tinea's wrists, counting every injury along the way, until she finally reached her hands. The brunette's muscles still hadn't loosened, and Leah found her prosthetics didn't have the strength to match Tinea's. She couldn't quite get her fingers between Tinea's hands and the pod, and when she tried anyway, the shoulder sockets pinched painfully against her stumps.

Undeterred, she gave her girlfriend an impish smile and started tickling the undersides of her wrists. It wasn't the most sensitive area she could've gone for, and less ticklish than some, but it was enough to get a reaction beyond pure eye contact. Tinea jerked in surprise, her muscles contracting hard enough that the interior plastic lining of the rim cracked beneath her thumb. That, in turn, made her loosen her grip just enough that Leah managed to squeeze her palm underneath.

Tinea's eyes shot back to meet her own again. There was a new fear in there, new worries about hurting Leah if she so much as twitched wrong, and her body went back to vibrating, except even harder. Her hands, too, shook badly on top of Leah's. Desperately not clenching. Leah slowly brought them to her own prosthetics' upper arms, speaking softly.

"I don't care if you break these, Tinea. They're not really mine, and I turned off the pain processing a while ago." After the Twenty-Eight, to be precise. That she felt more comfortable not trying to accept these prosthetics as her own had only reinforced her decision to regrow her natural arms.

"They're cheap, too. I'll buy as many replacements as I might need to, love." Finally, her girlfriend grew animated again. She went back to fidgeting and moving her hands back and forth uncertainly, but this time she kept touching Leah, at least. Even if only on her shoulders, arms, and hands, so scared to hurt her for real. There were tears in Tinea's eyes, and Leah recognized this particular shade of desperation.

The painful realization that you were so close to finding the solution that would fix everything, if only you could put your finger on it. Leah thought she knew what that solution might look like. It was kind of obvious if one didn't overcomplicate things, and she wanted to find out whether her warrior and murder machine would agree. But that wasn't something to be hurried along, not if she truly meant to stabilize Tinea.

Once Tinea had fully released her hands, Leah slid them back up her arms, tickling her gently along the way and keeping their eyes locked. Some of the instant panic had fled her girlfriend, but there was still a lot of hot blood pumping through the woman. A lot of adrenaline—which Leah understood Tinea's entire being continued to associate with extreme violence and mortal danger—along with every tool of subconscious biochemistry and warfighting psychology in the child-soldier-cum-freedom-fighter's armory.

Why did she come and find me instead of cooling down outside? The fears riding Tinea hadn't shown before she'd gotten within literal arm's reach. Close enough to cause harm she didn't mean to. Had she just not… thought about it until she'd suddenly put herself face-to-face with Leah? That didn't seem likely. Tinea knew herself pretty well and wasn't gonna get caught out by her own biology like that. This reaction was exactly the kind of thing she'd see coming a mile away. Unless she was intentionally winging it?

Ah. That would line up with that promise Tinea had made to herself. The one she'd engraved in her fingernail with the squiggly line. The one about how she'd keep following that journey, even if she slipped up. Well, as she'd already told the beautiful battler, Leah didn't mind getting a little slipped up on. She set about coaxing more reactions from her Tinea, first by playing her fingers up the ticklish insides of her arms and, when that didn't quite do anything, across the new wing arms.

The straps of the jetpack were still fastened tight, but Leah figured that made sense. Even though her sensors weren't showing anything but lots of rain, the mountain of corpses outside would eventually attract more attention of the Antithetical variety, and Tinea would absolutely want to be ready for them. Perhaps that was keeping her in this charged state too?

Either way, there were plenty of little strips of bare skin to explore now that the limbs had begun to outgrow and stretch the Second Wind's mounting sleeves. The scales were smooth and dry to the touch, shimmering a warm gold in the light of the cabin, like they were soaking it in and taking on its cozy nature. Just like the few remaining patches of clean fuzz on Tinea's tail. She didn't want to touch it, figuring that, injured as it was, it must've been hurting quite badly.

Additional pain might just cause Tinea's battle instincts to lash her even harder, something they didn't need any help with. Leah continued to absorb Tinea's undivided attention, watching how the girl's emotions moved and evolved as she traced the lines of powerful limbs meant to support an entire body in flight and a lower back rendered both alien and fascinating by organic augmentations.

She found herself torn between encouraging Tinea to relax fully and lie down, or keeping her right where she was, somewhere Leah could meet the full force of that intense regard and see inside those expressive windows to her soul. She may have come to be just a little… obsessed, perhaps. ⁂