Sigma AU Short Story: Reprisal Pt. 2

 CONTENT WARNING
THE FOLLOWING FICTIONAL LITERATURE CONTAINS SEVERAL INSTANCES OF TRIGGERING MATERIAL, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO DRUG USE, STRONG LANGUAGE, AND SEXUAL ABUSE. INDIVIDUALS SENSITIVE TO THESE TOPICS SHOULD STOP READING IMMEDIATELY.

    "Are you sure about this?" Etrius asked, the concern audible in his voice.

    "Fuck off," Zoey replied, angrily crossing her prosthetic arms while waiting for the chimeric tiger in front of her to finish assembling a rather intimidating-looking steel chain.

    "I only ask because I care about you," he said, fiddling around with one of the heavy links.

    "You know I can handle my shit, and you've known practically sssince the day we met." Zo replied, her forked tongue producing a slight lisp.

    "The day after we met, you were buried under thirty tons of rubble and begged me to save you," Etrius chided.   

    "Fuck off, don't remind me of that. I would have gotten out. Eventually."

    "Well it looks like these are done back here. Please stop breaking these, they're annoying to fix and finding quality metal like this is getting harder. Old world steel is just better." Etrius began to affix the chains to Zoey's arms, around her torso, and her legs.

    "You've lost weight, have you been eating properly?" he remarked.

    "Shut the fuck up and tie me down already." She slapped Etrius in the side of the head with her serpentine tail, urging him to hurry up as her arms were bound.

    "Alright, almost done here," he said, hooking a crane hoist to the chains around her back. "Let's can get this over with. You know I hate this, what it does to you."

    Zoey stared Etrius dead in the eyes, her own burning with the fire of a thousand suns.

    "It'sss better than endlessssly sssuffering." she replied, with strong sincerity. "Give me the fucking drugssss and let'ssss go already."

Etrius yanked the chains to make sure they were tight, checked the massive padlock holding them together behind Zoey's back, and then pulled a large auto-injector from his waist pack.

    He stabbed it into her naked buttock, waited a moment, and then dashed off.

    Surrounding Zoey was a serene industrial scene. It was late at night, the full moon shone through the smog of Sigma City. The docks were silent save for the sound of the harbor water lightly slapping against the concrete pylons. She was surrounded by metal cargo containers and the equipment to move them. But all else was quiet.

    As she felt the injection begin to swim around in her bloodstream, the chain hooked to her back tightened and she was raised into the air. The sound of a crane's winch sputtered in the background as it lifted her off the cold, wet asphalt below her.

    Her head began to swim. Her horns felt heavy on her head. Her tail twitched to-and-fro. Then, the very bowels of Hell itself emerged from her heart, searing pain spiraling through her chest, into each nerve in each limb, in each cell. She could no longer see anything around her. Blinding fire seared her retinas. It felt like her fur was on fire. Her scales felt like they were molten. She felt as though her skin was going to melt off. A raging inferno deafened her, making her cry out as loudly as her smoking lungs let her.

    As soon as the sensation of being boiled alive began, it was replaced with complete, soul extinguishing darkness. There was no sound, there was no light. It was as if she was at the bottom of the ocean, being crushed by the immense pressure of the water. She felt frozen, as if moving would shatter her. She held her breath, waiting for every next moment to free her. Seconds turned into minutes. Minutes turned into what felt like hours to her.

    She was floating, sensationless and serene, in the nothingness of space itself. A completely empty world devoid of existence. The scene shifted and she was in Germany, being experimented on as a kit-fox. The Americans came and tore the place down. Then, she was wandering the wastes of mid-war America. Next she was fighting in a very real battle for Sigma City, the sounds of gunfire, the clank of tanks, the sounds of fighter jets and bombs.

    She exploded, standing right next to the nuclear reactor of a submarine, her power armor taking the blast. She spent weeks in the sand of a beach, waiting for someone to rescue her, wasting away without food or water.

    Suddenly coming to, she was standing, laughing next to a friend, unidentifiable but friendly. She was having a great time, drinking, telling stories of her adventures, laughing at great jokes that she'd mess up if she tried to repeat.

    In the next moment, she was being raped, taken by ugly men, bound by a pillory in a decrepit factory. Mocked, stained, put down, and drugged into enjoying it. She felt desecrated, and less than human. Self pity wasn't enough. She just wanted to curl up and die.

    Time accelerated and her face was spattered with blood, and she couldn't tell if it was her own or someone else's. She only remembered the rage, the anger, the primal desire to kill everything that moved. She howled like a wolf, roared like a lion. She was the demoness of the world, and it would succumb to her rage.

    And with a jarring thud, everything was black.

    Etrius watched as Zoey thrashed and jerked about, suspended and bound. He felt immense pity for her. Someone who had been through what she had been through deserved so much better. It was amazing to him that she had made it this long without somehow killing herself, either through accident, self annihilation, or an overdose.

    What he gave her earlier was respite sorts, a cocktail of drugs to keep her sane. He knew all too well the kind of rage that builds up from feeling like the world owes you something for all it's done to you. She didn't ask to be born. She didn't ask to be a mutant. She didn't ask for her traumas, she didn't ask to be freed from her prison. She never asked to exist.

    He was able to deal with it better than she could. Etrius sought therapy, while Zoey took shelter with drugs and substance abuse. It got to such a horrible point where not even mechanical blood cleansers would have helped her. Her pain was too great, too severe, and too deeply rooted in her own psychology to ever be cured.

    When he looked up from his thoughts, Zoey was still. Her head drooped, her eyes were half closed and glazed, and drool dripped from her slightly open mouth. He lowered the crane and gently set her down, and began to unravel the chains that bound her. When he finished, he wrapped her in a big, soft blanket and carried her to her truck and drove her home, to her dirt plot of land on the outskirts of the city.

    After giving her a wash and cleaning the abrasions where she struggled against the chains in her drug induced seizure, he laid her down in her bed, gave her a smooch on her forehead, closed the door to her home, and left.

    When Zoey came to, she was laying in her bed in her APC. She could never tell if it was a dream. She never remembered the time leading up to it, and she could never remember what had happened the day before. A week had passed since she could last remembered the date. It was surreal. But, it made her feel better, at least until the next time her own brain got her in trouble against her will. It gave her overactive mind time to rest, overwhelming it so much it shut down temporarily. She swung her feet over the side of her cot, put her head in her hands, and cried.

Sigma AU Short Story: Reprisal Pt.1

CONTENT WARNING
THE FOLLOWING FICTIONAL LITERATURE CONTAINS SEVERAL INSTANCES OF TRIGGERING MATERIAL, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO RAPE, DRUG USE, STRONG LANGUAGE, GUN VIOLENCE, GORE, AND SEXUAL ABUSE. INDIVIDUALS SENSITIVE TO THESE TOPICS SHOULD STOP READING IMMEDIATELY.

    Zoey knew that her addictions put a giant target on her back. In a city where she was constantly making enemies, traps and set-ups were inevitable. She had been jumped several times before, knowing well that the sales were probably a sham.

    Nothing, however, could prepare her for what was about to happen. It was a cool evening, no cloud cover, and the sounds of the city drowned out her soft footsteps to the abandoned industrial facility. It was some sort of old factory, where chemists now manufactured new synthetic drugs and sold them to anyone looking to get their mind off whatever was bothering them.

    Zo was no stranger to trauma, her life was full of it. Dependencies like hers are what allowed her to function at all, and gave her the nerves she lacked while sober. As she walked down an alley, she couldn't help but feel like she was being watched. Maybe there were cameras. Maybe there were guards on the roof. All she wanted was to buy some drugs and go home.

    At last, she found the door she was looking for and knocked on it.

    "Whatcha want?" came a gruff, cockney voice from the other side.

    "I'm here to make a special purchase of BX-17," she said.

    The door opened and she stepped inside. As the door shut behind her, she was grabbed by both arms and her legs were knocked out from under her. She felt a sharp pain in her neck, and suddenly became very, very sleepy.

    "Get her tied up," another voice said, before everything went black.

    When Zoey woke up, she couldn't tell how much time had passed. She tried to move around a bit, but as the world around her became clearer, she realized she was naked, and locked in some sort of makeshift pillory, and in a small room with concrete walls and a high ceiling, most likely used to be a closet or storage room. Her legs were held apart by bar shackles, and her abdomen was supported by some sort of harness hung from the ceiling.

    She tried to break the pillory with her arms, but her prosthetics didn't seem to have enough energy to power through. She had been asleep for quite a while, at least a whole day.

    "Aha, the stupid, brutish fox awakens," a man's voice said over some sort of intercom. It was the same one from before, that wanted her tied up.

    "You have absolutely NO idea how fucked you are!" she yelled in no direction in particular.

    "You see, Kriegsherrin, it's you who is about to be fucked." The sound of a door opening somewhere and big, heavy footsteps approached her from behind. 

    A strong hand grabbed her muzzle and twisted her head sideways to the point she yelped in pain.

    "Tell me, bitch, where's your home? Where do you live? Because you've destroyed and sabotaged many of my operations. And I'm gonna destroy yours, forever."

    "I'm not telling you anything, you fuckin asshole. We had a deal!" she snapped.

    "Oh, you will talk eventually. Speaking of fucking assholes," the man said.

    Zoey felt a sharp pain in her buttocks, like a needle being inserted. She suddenly felt calm, and her whole body relaxed. Without warning, something big, cold, and metallic was inserted roughly into her ass, but she was too sedated to do anything or cry out. She managed a whimper, but then fell silent as her eyelids grew heavy. 

    A second needle was inserted into her buttock, and although her body remained relaxed, she suddenly was very, very aware of everything around her and everything touching her body. Her paws on the floor, the cuffs around her ankles, the object in her rectum, the needle being pulled out of her, the harness around her waist, her breasts dangling and swaying with slight movement, her neck being held by the pillory. She felt her arms that had long been gone, despite her prosthetics not able to relay tactile feedback.

    She was able to hear the chains of her shackles, hear a draft coming in from an open window, feel the air moving slowly across her naked body. She could hear footsteps coming closer from behind, the sounds of zippers being undone.

    Zo felt hands against her twin vaginas, spreading the lips, testing the pliability. She knew exactly what was going to happen next and dreaded every moment of it.

    First, the left one. Then, the right one. Two men, whom she couldn't see. She could hear them grunting, feel them having their way with her. She could feel them twitching and throbbing inside of her, and couldn't do anything to stop it. She could feel that one of them was smaller than the other. She could feel the object in her ass move around as it was bumped by their torsos as they thrusted into her.

    Her legs tensed against her will, and she felt her nipples grow harder and become moist. All without wanting it. She was no longer in control of her arousal. The first man on her right came, grunting loudly, and a few minutes later the second man finished and they both pulled out of her without a word.

    More of the same heavy footsteps from before, and suddenly she felt a needle in her right breast, and another needle in her left breast. As the footsteps withdrew and faded, she could feel the prolactin surging through her. More, lighter footsteps followed, and the metal object in her ass was ripped out, only to be replaced with warm flesh.   

    As she was taken, her body moved back and forth, her breasts beginning to spew milk all over the floor. She could hear the liquid splattering, and she could her the wet sounds of the man behind her, grunting and slapping her ass.

    She suddenly had a horrifying thought - they might be recording this as well. The mighty Terrorfox, the Vulpis Belli, brought to her knees and made into a toy.

    Her horror was replaced with fluttering joy as she heard a familiar sound, very faint and distant, but unmistakable. Her vulpine senses were keen enough to hear sounds miles away, amplified by the drugs she was forcefully given.

    So he does care, she thought.

    As the sound grew closer, Zo could hear it suddenly stop, replaced by the sounds of a car door opening and closing, possibly a few blocks away. Instead of focusing on her body, she put every ounce of her will into focusing on the sounds outside the building. The soft footsteps, the rustle of light clothing, the slight clank of metal lightly bouncing across someone's body as they ran.

    More men came into the room she was in and took turns having their way with her, but she gave them no notice and focused on the sounds from outside. Light footsteps on the roof, someone slipping inside an open window, footsteps on the catwalks in the ceiling. Men choking and being laid on the ground, the sound of a neck snapping, and a blade through someone's chest.

    She could hear all these things, growing closer and closer, while the men behind her took no notice of the intruder in their compound. Finally, there were no more men behind her, and she just rested there, her back area soaked with fluids, her breasts sore from milk production, and her stomach grumbling from hunger.

    "Are you ready to tell me your secrets yet?" the voice from before said menacingly. Someone in black paramilitary garb stood in front of her. She couldn't do much more than whimper, and lost focus of what she was listening to.

    She was struck hard across the face and could feel blood dripping from her cheek.

"I can do this for as long as you will be alive, and as soon as you tell me where your base of operations is, I will let you go." 

    "Go...fuck yourself," Zo managed to reply through the drowsiness. She couldn't tell at first whether she had simply just thought the response or said it aloud, but found out after she was struck once more.

    "It seems like you haven't learned your lesson yet, you despicable abomination," came the reply. "Bring in the dogs," the man said over the intercom.

    Several moments passed, but no reply came. 

    "I said bring in the dogs, you useless lackeys," Once again, no response on the intercom. "Fine, I'll do it myself." he said, and left the room.

    Zo heard the sounds of extremely light and soft footsteps almost immediately after the man had left the room. She felt the shackles being removed from her ankles, the pillory lock being lifted, and she was lowered to the ground from the harness.

    Strong, metallic bronze arms held her and set her upright, and another needle was pushed into her thigh. Suddenly, she uncontrollably pissed herself, and was pulled into a standing position by her silent rescuer. Already she began to feel her adrenal glands working, flooding her system with epinephrine.

    She couldn't bear to look at her savior, not like this. She was given a towel, and as she dried off she could feel her strength returning. Her heart began to beat faster, and with it, the piezoelectric generators attached to it began to charge her prosthetic arms more. Once she was dry and at least modestly clean in her crotch, she was presented with her clothing she had arrived in, and a bronze hand held her revolver out for her. As she dressed, she turned to ask her hero a question, but he was already gone.

    As she heard the heavy footsteps returning, she hid behind the closed door and waited for it to open.

    "What the? Fuck, fucking fuck!" the man said, realizing Zo wasn't in the pillory any longer. Zoey slammed the door shut from behind it, and the man turned to face her.

    She held her revolver out, the massive underbarrel bayonet touching the man's nose as he looked directly down the barrel.

    "I told you, you're fucked," Zoey said calmly.

    "You're dead meat," the man said, reaching for the pistol at his hip. Before he could finish, Zoey pulled the trigger and the man's head exploded. Blood and brains sprayed everywhere, the wall in front of her, and on her face. 

    The scent of fresh viscera sent Zoey's predatorial instincts into overdrive mode. She yanked the door open, right off its hinges, and ran through the building as fast as she could.

    Her large, fatty body gave her momentum, and she slammed through every closed and locked door like they were Japanese shoji. She pounced on the guards and other henchmen as if they were merely plush toys, knocking them into walls and slamming them into the ground with the force of a maelstrom. At last she found the exit, and shoved the head of the door guard into the door frame and slammed the door, decapitating him.

    Zo didn't leave yet, as she hadn't found what she was after. Going through the rest of the building, she searched high and low for her prize, until she found it in a room reached by catwalk stairs. A small, metallic briefcase with 8-digit locks. She tucked the little box under her arm and jumped out the window to the roof of the factory, tumbling down the slight decline until she could stop herself.

    After dropping down the roof to the street below, she found her motorcycle where she had parked it last, albeit with a freshly printed parking ticket. Shredding it, she put the case into the storage under the seat and rode off with a squeal and some smoke.

Author's note: While this story is purely fiction, it is inspired by real people and real events. It is not a rape/drug sex fantasy of the author, it is an expression of trauma. 

Sigma AU Short Story: Zoey gets her Horns

 "And how the fuck do you expect me to deal with this? My head needs to go places! Like my helmet!"

"You'll have to adjust. The growths are too solidly fused to your skull to remove."
"Fuck that, you do what I pay you to do!"

"I'm sorry, Zoey. I can't do anything, there are practical limitations to my abilities. I'm an orthopedic surgeon, not a neurologist. Find a neurologist. The best I can do is suggest you reduce psychoactive drug use but I know you won't do that."

"Damn right I won't, you think I can do any of the shit I do without that shit? Fuck me, I'd be dead in a week."

"Well, it's either stop taking drugs or deal with the horns. Your choice, Zoey."
Zoey stood from the operation seat, the servos in her prosthetic arms quietly whirring, her huge frame towering over the doctor. Yet, he didn't seem intimidated. "Can I at least file them down?"

"It'd be painful since there are nerve endings in the core, and you'd have to take care otherwise they'd get infected."

"Ugh, fuck this shit. Sucks."

"I really wish there were other options. You're lucky they're benign and not growing into your brain."

"How the fuck does doing drugs even cause horns to start growing? I'm not a goat!"

The doctor took off his glasses and folded them, and then quietly tucked them into his white lab coat and spun around to face the giant cybernetic fox-person shouting at him.

"Zoey, you take all sorts of synthetic drugs, and half of them you don't even know what they do. Some may be interacting and some may even be metaphysical in nature. You should be worrying about death, not goat horns sprouting from your skull."

Zoey paced the examination room, her head ducking every time the horns growing from her skull touched the ceiling.

"Ugh. Fine. If you find anything that can help, tell me immediately. I know where you live."

"Zoey, you know threatening me isn't going to do anything. You're the biggest source of income I have and the last thing I'd want to do is piss you off. I'll most certainly-"

The doctor stopped as Zoey turned and left the room without a word. The sound of a motorcycle starting up ricocheted into the office from the street, drowning out the other noises of the city.

Sigma AU Short Story: For better, or worse

    Despite her best efforts, Zoey's drug addictions had dictated her life's direction for the better part of her life. From the time she was freed from the Fourth Reich testing compound in Germany where she was created, she had been exposed to drugs and addictions by every facet of her life.

    When the Americans liberated her, they took her to their own testing facility, where she was pumped full of growth hormones and other substances. When America got nuked, she relied almost entirely on painkillers to stay alive. When making the journey to Sigma City, she relied on stimulants to stay awake and alert. When she hustled on the streets making a name for herself, she relied on relaxers to stay calm during shootouts.

    And now, she relies on all of them, as Sigma City's most notorious mercenary. Some of them made her piss blood. Some of them gave her a headache. Some of them made her see sounds and hear colors. Some of them made her angry at the moon, and some of them made her viciously hungry.

    So when she described these effects to her doctor, it left him stumped. Of course, he had never heard of half of the drugs she was on, but that didn't stop him from asking her for samples and running tests of his own.

    He was quite surprised when Zoey showed up at his clinic in tears, sobbing, and making no sense.

    After arriving in his office, she pointed at her mouth and at her rump. Immediately, he knew what had happened: She had no tail and no tongue. Both were simply gone. There was no wound where her tongue was, but there was indeed a stump where her tail should be.

    Zoey pulled out her datapad and wrote something down, practically shoving the thing in his face.

    "Ah, I see. I shouldn't have to remind you, but there are consequences for your actions. You might be biologically immortal, but things can and will still happen to you. I'm sorry that your tail got cut off, but I don't know why you would ever inject such a thing into your tongue no matter the effects," the doctor mused.

    Zoey scribbled some more, and once again turned her datapad to face the man.

    "There's no need for that much profanity in one sentence, but I do know of a couple treatments that might be able to fix your issues. Come back in a week or so and I'll have the meds ready."

    Zoey left in a hurry, covering her face from other patrons as she left the building. She was quite embarrassed that some crucial aspects of herself were missing.

    Day after day she anxiously waited for the notification on her pad that her primary care doctor had the meds she needed, constantly checking her bank balance to make sure she had enough to pay for the treatment, and then cried herself to sleep worrying that she won't return to normal.

    On the eleventh day, she got the ping she was waiting for and eagerly jumped on her motorcycle, completely disregarding the rules of the road on her way to the medical clinic. She nearly ripped the front doors off their hinges on her way in, startling everyone in the waiting room. After a few moments, Zoey's doctor, a tall, bald, white man appeared and directed her back to his office.

    He produced a syringe from a box on his desk. "Give me your arm," he said. Without missing a beat, Zoey took her jacket off and presented her bare forearm. The doctor slowly inserted the needle into her, and slowly depressed the syringe until its contents were empty. "This will take a few months, but you should have tail and tongue back soon. Send me updates when you notice progress. And don't forget to pay me, this experimental treatment was not cheap."

    She put her jacket back on and pulled out her pad. After a few taps she grinned and gave him a thumbs up, but it was bittersweet as this treatment had wiped out her entire life savings. She wasn't quite sure how she'd be able to make that much money again.

    After shaking her doctor's hands and giving him a hug, which she typically doesn't do, she left with a new bounce in her step.

    Over the following weeks, she carefully monitored her own body, as her tail stump began to grow and she could feel a new tongue in her mouth. But excitement grew to dismay as she realized something was wrong with the new tail: it was growing scales. Iridescent red and black lizard scales. There was no fur, there was no skin. 

    As time progressed, she noted similar discrepancies with her new tongue - it was long and forked, serpentine like a snake's. Her speech was slurred as if she was always drunk, and her high pitched squeaky voice and thick German accent didn't help this fact.

    Within two months she noted that the growth had stopped, and she had a rather thick and supple serpentine tail with a spade tip. It was strong and prehensile, she could grab objects or hit things with it. Her tongue was incredibly long, moreso than her old one, and it was difficult to keep inside her mouth, something she had to practice and get used to. The only real benefit she found was that eating ice cream was much easier, and her speech problem was quite annoying to deal with.

    At her follow-up appointment, she made this quite clear.

    "Zoey, you know I would never betray your trust. If I knew you would have problems with a treatment, I would not give it to you," her doctor said plainly. "Furthermore, I know you'd kill me and suffer no consequences. That's not something I want."

    "You ssshould have told me firrrsssht! Orrr at leasssht warrrned me!" she shouted. The doctor was having trouble keeping a straight face; the lisp combined with her high pitched voice and thick accent was quite hilarious to him, especially with the contrast of it coming from such a big creature. "Wherrre did thisssh even come frrrom? What company made thisssh?"

    "It's an experimental treatment from Nova Medicine in the business district. Technically still in clinical trials, they still offer it to those who need it. Stem cells from salamanders combined with human DNA for compatibility. You are not entirely human so I'm not surprised something odd happened," he said.

    "You arrre lucky I ssshtill need you, otherrrwissshe you'd be dead," Zoey said. Her new tail twitched and flicked in annoyance as she violently pushed the office door open and left the building.

Author's note: there's more to this story but I have writer's block :(