“Stop using her like that! Let her go!” you demand, surprising yourself. You didn’t rescue her just so she could end up like this, and you’re a bit surprised at how protective you feel of your recent companion.
“Human this isn’t going to work…” you hear Tex hiss into your ear. But you can’t just walk away.
“What do you care?” Kate says again in her own voice. “You took what you needed and left me here. I’m surprised you even bothered to come back.”
It’s her voice, but something still sounds off about it. Though she’s affecting anger, it feels dispassionate. When you try to meet her eyes, they appear unfocused, like she’s looking towards you but not really seeing you. The whole affect makes her seem almost lifeless, like a doll that someone is trying to force through a semblance of humanity. The whole thing gets your hackles up, and your instincts tell you that something is very wrong with this thing that looks like Kate.
“Human, we seriously need to go. This one isn’t going to work out for you. Please!” Tex whispers urgently.
“That’s not how it happened. We were both victims of you fucking monsters, and she knew that. I didn’t like how things with Lascivia ended up, but neither of us--”
“Ah, so it was her,” Miscea says through Kate again. “We thought we recognized that pervert in this one’s memories, but it’s so hard to tell when they haven’t yet been fully incorporated. That will come with time. However, we can promise you that she was very upset when we found her here.”
As she says this, Kate’s expression changes from one of hurt to a sardonic smile.
“What? You look surprised. We’ve been through this song and dance enough times to know that you’re not likely to be drawn in with the usual tricks at this point. You’d be surprised how often they work, though,” she continues, no longer feigning to speak as Kate.
“Either way, the offer is still the same. You can join us, and I’ll let you retain a piece of yourself in here with all the others, even your friend here. We promise you’ll be better off with the rest of my subjects than you would be out there on your own, especially once the feast starts in earnest. You’ve only seen the faintest hint of what’s to come.”
“And did Kate take you up on that offer?” you demand accusingly.
“There are levels of acceptance,” Miscea says casually. “Kate here is still working through them, as are many of our new acquisitions during this cycle. Though as you can see, we’ve only collected women thus far and we’ve found that having a man or two can ease the unification process. If you come willingly, we’re sure you won’t regret it.”
“Hah, yeah right. I’m not buying that for a second,” you retort, only barely managing not to shout, “especially after you already tried to trick me once.”
You’re furious at this creature for what it’s done to Kate. You want to make amends for what happened with Lascivia, but you want to make it up to the real her, not some puppet, and you can’t stand seeing her being used like this. Your mind races as you try to find the best course of action, resisting urges to find another stick to whack Miscea with. All you can think of is trying to bargain.
“Look, I’m never going to join your ‘collection’ or whatever you call them. All I want is to get Kate back. What… what would it take for that?” you ask, trying not to let your voice falter as your confidence wavers. “You can take whatever essence from me that you need. Just let her go and leave us on our way. Or at least just let her go.”
Kate grins, as do a few other women that come to stand beside her. Miscea speaks again, this time her voice echoing from all of them in tandem.
“Oh, how noble. Yes, you would make a great addition to us, to my ‘collection’ as you so condescendingly called it.”
You realize the voice isn’t only coming from in front of you. You turn around in alarm to find yourself surrounded. Latex women with varying mixtures of human and animal parts are slowly encroaching you on all sides, apparently having sneaked up while you were distracted in your conversation. Each of them has a rubbery umbilical chord that snakes from their stomach back into the darkness, many pulsing occasionally as their forms shift.
You spin around looking for a potential route of escape, but you’re effectively trapped. You may be able to surprise two of them and dart between, but the eerie unison of their movements hints that that wouldn’t be as easy as you might hope. What’s more, every time you turn back in a direction you were just looking, you find the women there have advanced just slightly. The circle is closing in disturbingly fast.
“I’m sorry, I can’t stay any longer if this is the way things are going. I promise I’ll do what I can. If I can,” Tex says as you hear her whisk off. For some reason, none of the women seem to notice her shoot between them in the darkness. They all remain wholly focused on you.
“We’re afraid you’re making the wrong bargain,” Miscea explains, using alternating mouths to speak with each word. You can’t help but look around in response as the women get closer. “We’re offering you the only choice you have. You’ll join us willingly, or you’ll join us and be made willing.”
“F-fuck you!” you manage to shout as you dash away from Kate, readying yourself to barrel through the women in your path.
You take two steps before they grab you.
With startling abruptness, all of the women lunge at you at once. Each one targets a limb to restrain, working in perfect concert with each other. Before you can even process what’s happened, you feel various hands, claws, and what even feels like tentacles gripping you tightly. They hold your limbs outstretched, completely immobilized.
Kate approaches you holding one of the umbilical chords. You can see it running back to Miscea’s main body, but the end that Kate carries isn’t attached to anything. Instead, it drips liquid latex that looks troublingly close to the same color as your skin. The tube pulses slightly, and with each pulse, more liquid spills from the end.
Without any fanfare or emotion, Kate shoves the tube against your stomach, knocking the breath out of you. It holds fast, and you feel a strange cramping in your torso that isn’t just from the impact. You gasp for breath, but as you do, your head begins to spin wildly.
It’s okay, calm down.
You feel like something is pressing against your mind, trying to divert your thoughts. The shock from the initial impact almost distracted you from the mental assault, but you just manage to hold onto yourself and keep your focus under control.
There’s no need to struggle, you’re safe now.
You feel something pulling at you. You get the sense that it’s coming from your stomach, but it’s deeper than that. More encompassing. You don’t know how exactly, but you pull back against the force as hard as you can.
Why keep yourself separated? Do you want to be alone?
The pulling is replaced by a strange warmth. It’s comforting, and it takes a lot of effort not to let yourself be drawn into it.
Who are you?
You are yourself. That thought is becoming harder to hold onto.
Do you want to be more? You could be more.
You are yourself.
It would be so nice to be someone else. Something else. Only for awhile. It only has to be for a moment. And we’ll be there.
The warmth increases. You can’t keep it out. It’s too much. And why would you want to? You begin to feel at peace. It’s like snuggling into a soft bed after a tiring day. Like coming into a warm house from a cold winter. Like a hug from a lover that’s been away for too long. Like…
YOU ARE YOURSELF.
It’s getting so hard to hold onto that thought.
It would be even better than you could imagine.
The warmth takes on a different edge. Your heart begins to beat faster. You find yourself getting excited.
One with all of these women. What would that be like? What could they all do to you together?
You feel the familiar sensations of arousal overtaking you. Only, they’re combined with the very alien shifting and tingling in the latex patch on your crotch as it begins to reform into a phallus. The tingling spreads, shifting into a sinking feeling quickly overtaking your body. As it spreads to the latex umbilical chord, you fully open yourself to Miscea.
“What is this?!” dozens of voices cry out around you. “What are you doing!? Stop! Let me go!”
The latex tube yanks hard at you as the women release you at once, dragging you on the ground towards Miscea’s body as she tries to wrench free. You’re only partly processing what’s going on, still overwhelmed by the mental assailment you’ve endured. Your vision blacks out as your eyes are once again covered in latex. The last thing you see is her distended, balloon-like head looking down at you in horror.
The heartbeat-like pulsing along the protrusion at your stomach doesn’t stop. You can feel Miscea trying to reject you, but it’s too late. Something akin to the external pushing you felt before keeps its steady rhythm, but this time you feel the resistance on the other end. Somehow, your arousal builds with each beat, already far exceeding anything you felt the last two times you went through this process. Before long, you’re reduced to writhing around on the ground in lust without an outlet.
Slowly, the pulses reduce in intensity. You try your best with your useless hands to pull at the chord on your navel as it seems to reduce in width until it eventually shrinks away into nothingness.
For a moment, everything around you is quiet.
You just lie there on the cold ground as your head swims. You feel a confusing cacophony of internal sensations, both mental and physical, not the least of which is the overpowering arousal that you can’t do anything about. You feel a strange awareness at the edges of your consciousness, like a memory that you can’t quite pull up but you know you were just thinking about. And your body feels all stimulated, and not just from the erogenous latex skin that covers you.
As you try to process what exactly you’re experiencing, you hear a familiar flutter of wings.
“Uh Human? Are you… Are you okay?” Tex asks somewhere above you with concern.
You try to shrug and nod.
“Are you sure? Do you know what just happened?”
You try to shake your head no. You point down at your erection insistently, unable to focus on anything else right now.
“Oh. Well I said I’d help with that, but I’m not sure that’s such a good idea just yet,” Tex begins to explain…