Amaranthine

Cait hadn’t been lying over comms. With her mobility restored, the silver goo wasn’t having any luck locking her down, but she wasn’t having any luck making there be less of it. In fact, she suspected there might actually be more of the stuff than when she’d started, since the goo was beginning to eat away at the walls and floor of the chamber as well.

This is exactly what Gwyn is always worried about! She thought, kicking off of a wall to shoot out of the way of more reaching tendrils. She blasted a ring ineffectually into the main lake of goo, but however much it may have destroyed, it wasn’t going to be enough. Even if she had infinite blastrings, a nice notion given that she only had three left, she wouldn’t be able to shoot them fast enough to outpace the spread of silver goo.

Still, her antics seemed to be slowing it down. Whenever she got close to branches eating away at equipment or walls, they switched focus to her, peeling away from their inanimate prey to deal with a very animated threat. Once she’d realized that, she’d turned the ‘fight’ into a dance of close calls, just hoping to keep the thing occupied until someone who knew what the fuck they were doing showed up.

Her link to Kennedy was telling her she wouldn’t have to wait long. She kept an eye on the tunnel she’d entered from, each moment hoping it’d be filled with the woman she loved, hope in tow in the form a well endowed nerd.

It turned out, she’d been watching the wrong entrance. Or rather, where Kennedy entered from wasn’t an entrance yet when Cait was looking for it.

A massive chunk of the roof fell free, and a lithe black form rode it down to the floor, hissing in irritiation as silver splattered onto her, then was immediately burned away. She began using that fire indiscriminately, fending off tendrils of ‘bots like a caveman fending off wolves with torch.

Incomparably dope sight as that was, she wasn’t going to be enough to deal with this particular crisis either. The only real chance of that floated down after her on her own cloud of nanobots, distractedly fiddling with what Cait realized was one of the things B-Man had grabbed before he fled.

“Yes!” Cait heard Gwyn hiss, as the canister popped open. Another swarm poured out, mixing with the one carrying her. For a moment, Cait’s heart fell as the cloud began to crackle and pop, sparking like things were about to go very wrong. Then, Gwyn let out a full-on Mad Scientist cackle that shouldn’t have been comforting, but in this situation, might as well have been the laughter of angels.

Her cloud burst out, rushing down into the goo. Every place it touched, the ravenous goo began to burn away, sparking and fizzing like had happened every time Gwyn had tried to fight any of their Silvered foes. The reaction only sped up, racing along the floor, leaving trails of ash and scars of destruction on the walls before eating away all the way back to the main lake of goo.

The lake’s buzzing probably didn’t actually change. Cait had no reason to suspect this mass of nano-bots could experience fear. But damn if it didn’t sound like a note of the noxious emotion entered its buzz as Gwyn’s anti-bots ate away its last remnants.

Cait kicked off the wall again, slamming into Gwyn and wrapping her up in a hug she hoped conveyed the correct amount of gratitude.

“Fuck yes Gwyn!” she shouted, as the girl struggled futilely against her embrace. “You have my blessing to deflower my friend, you deserve it.”

“Uh, yeah, I guess thank you?” Gwyn said, as Cait finally let her wiggle out of her grip. “I mean, little late, but approval after the fact is still approval.”

She adjusted her glasses on her face and squinted at the patterns etched into the floor by the ravenous ‘bots. She tsk’d, shaking her head in disbeleif.

“Irresponsible,” she hissed, then materialized her tablet, display already showing readouts Cait didn’t understand. Seemed wise to leave her to that.

Instead of bothering her further, Cait sauntered over to where Kennedy stood, near the edge of the pit and peering into it. She looked up as Cait approached, teasing smirk coloring her scale-lined features.

“Saved you,” Kennedy said, craning her neck back to meet Cait’s lips. A tongue that was considerably longer than normal traced the inside of Cait’s mouth, and she made a mental note that they were going to have to explore other uses for this form.

“So, how am I feeling Lira right now?” Cait asked. Far as she knew, 300+ miles was well outside of Kennedy’s rsnge, bond be damned.

“We have a penchant for picking up witchy women who bend the rules of what’s possible, apparently,” Kennedy answered sardonically, leaning back into Cait. From the way her body relaxed, Cait could bet the last hour or so had been no less stressful for her. “Willow helped out. She also let us talk to the ghost of a dead DriveDiner.”

Cait’s eyes widened at that, but to be honest, she was almost surprised she was surprised. Kennedy was right, the bounds of possibility just kept getting pushed back.

“Okay, unpack the implications later…. But why?” She asked.

“Dude attacked us as a humanoid Ironhide. Seems like he wasn’t in control of his actions.” Kennedy grimaced, and Cait felt some of that tension re-enter her body. “So pretty much had to put down an innocent man, I guess. Wouldn’t know either way without Willow’s help though.”

Fuck, there goes any hope of this being an insurgency. Not that that would be a good thing, but it would mean I didn’t just spill a lot of innocent blood.

“Damn,” Cait breathed, surprised to find she almost choked on the word. Kennedy’s fire gold eyes looked up at her, concern clear on her face.

“Oh, shit, wasn’t the only one, huh?” she asked, turning to Cait and wrapping her arms around her waist.

“Nope,” Cait forced out. “We probably took out hundreds. Didn’t have a lot of choice, but…. Not a good feeling.”

Kennedy didn’t say anything, just hugged her a little tighter.

“Hey, lovebirds,” Gwyn called, snapping her fingers at the couple. “Think I got a lead on where this guy ran off to.”

She turned her tablet to them, floating unsupported in the air as they walked over. Two blinking red graphs lined up, and a path was superimposed over a map of the tunnels.

“Had like find like,” she explained. “If Breastman hadn’t grabbed that jar of unprogrammed ‘bots, this shit would have been a lot harder.”

Gwyn tossed the open cylinder to Cait, who caught and examined it. Pretty standard sci-fi bullshit, emblazoned with the stylized ‘up’ arrow of the ER.

Good man, B-man. Saved my ass again.

“All we gotta do now is find this guy,” Gwyn said, face darkening in a storm of malicious fury. “I am the fuckin’ Norton to his virus, and he’s gonna get deleted.”

“Nerd,” Kennedy responded, patting a scowling Gwyn on the head as she passed, following the line on the map through the sewers.

Cait patted her too, on the shoulder, with a little less judgement. She pointedly did not let the girl see the smirk she wore as she passed.

As ever, Kennedy was an easy girl to follow. Not practically speaking, especially in dragon form. Her midnight black scales seemed to merge into the shadows to the point it was almost certainly supernatural. But from a scenery standpoint? The sharp edges of her scales just served to enhance the silhouette of her generous curves, hips swaying with each step.

You wanna hypnotize me, you’d have a lot better luck with that ass than a coin on a string, Cait thought, reflecting that despite the fact that she and Kennedy tended to make a pretty good combat team, goddamn was it easier for her to focus when the girl wasn’t present.

The firegold glow of Kennedy’s eye over a sly smile told Cait that she knew exactly what she was thinking. She didn’t need to say that out loud though, instead, speaking into comms.

“B-man, Qi, update on The Council? Firewall’s kids?” she asked.

KIDS SECURED, Breastman replied. THEY WERE FANS, SO IT WASN’T AS TERRIFYING AS YOU’D EXPECT. SPLICE WASN’T LYING, THE ASSASSINS WERE TOTAL JOBBERS.

“Good news then, she gets a couple more hours of life,” Kennedy responded.

“Willow and I are keeping an eye on The Council,” Qi said next. She didn’t sound as pleased as Breastman. “Kennedy, things are bad in the city. Without Splice, a ton of their defenses are down, and they don’t have the Guardian population DSM does.”

Cait watched Kennedy’s face harden, brow furrowed in indecision.

“Okay…. Okay,” she sighed. “Qi, let Willow watch The Council. We should be able to trust the rest of them. Work with Zebrowski to get yourself to where you can do the most good.”

“Roger roger, boss,” Qi said, excitement evident in her voice. She was always ready for a fight, but that character trait only magnified the further she fell into dragon form.

“Kinda hot seeing you in charge,” Cait said, not over open comms.

“Yeah?” Kennedy laughed. “Coulda fooled me. Can’t remember the last time you came without your hand around my throat.”

“Eh, bedroom life ain’t the same as real life,” Cait chuckled. She knew Kennedy wasn’t entirely serious, but it was true that ‘in-charge’ didn’t describe her dynamic with Cait sexually at all. Part of that was probably just Cait, who was naturally dominant, but she suspected it was also why you heard about a lot of prominent men getting pegged at BDSM clubs: when you were at the top in normal life, it was just nice to let someone else take the lead at night.

“Fuck,” Gwyn cursed, “Guys, he’s running, we gotta pick up the pace. Here.”

She waved, and a path appeared in the air before them, a buzzing red line that raced through the tunnels. Cait got it immediately, dancing past Kennedy to turn and grin at the girls.

“Last one there eats my ass!” she declared, then kicked off, booming down the tunnel, once more reflecting how much she had missed this tech.