Rescue From the Swamp Gatoress's Lair, Part One - RPLOG
Participants
Date
8/9/2016
Log
With the air nearly thick enough to drink, and clouds of gnats and swamp gasses filling the space in between the densely-paced trees, the swamp was a very uninviting place. Not to mention it was crawling with tough mutants. the toughest, a feral gatoress, lived in a cave in the center. Inside that cave, the gatoress liked to capture and sexually torture victims until they were nearly feral with lust
Inside, one such agent was currently bound. Galve was tied with a woven rope to a thick root by the metal collar around his neck, mindlessly trying to relieve the built up sexual tension constantly being dumped into his brain by the nanite-infused metal around his neck.
The sky was clear. Too clear for the Storm Dragon's liking. And what wind existed wasn't blowing his direction. With his mutant sensitivity to the weather, he felt distinctly uncomfortable as he flew, beating his wings, working hard for altitude. The very air seemed laden with bad omens. There weren't many warm thermals at this hour, but Acetyl found one and took advantage of it, rising to a dizzying height very rapidly. Rolling his body sideways, the draconic mutant slid sideways in the air, moving off the thermal. As he felt himself beginning to fall, Acetyl locked the joints of his wings in a fully spread position, allowing himself to glide like a kite. Not for the first time, Acetyl was grateful that he was relatively small. If he were too much larger and heavier, he wouldn't have the stamina to fly as far as he needed to tonight, even though he would never have to leave the relative safety of the bubbles. Working his wings slightly to slow his rate of descent, Acetyl peered down, squinting his slit-pupiled eyes as he assessed the ground far below, trying to navigate. What he saw was correct, thank the Warden, and he nodded to himself. From this height, he should be able to mostly coast the rest of the way. No more exhausting flapping for now. He could reserve energy for the rest of the work ahead. Assuming nothing went wrong, of course. Acetyl sent a silent prayer to the Warden of Storms that he would not encounter any flighted ferals or other problems.
Stimulants crackled in his bloodstream, lending aid to his laboring muscles and clarifying his mind at the same time. As he flew, Acetyl's mind cranked along, calculating as quickly as it could without succumbing to panic. He was doing his best not to panic. That wouldn't help at all. That sort of bestial thinking was what got you in this mess to begin with, Acetyl scolded himself. Taking refuge in the cold logic of his more rational aspect, the Storm Dragon growled to himself, shaking off the anxiety, though he still felt a small, chill spot in the pit of his guts, as if a tiny creature made of pure fear had burrowed into his insides. That same troublesome, emotional, wild part of his mind kept ranting and howling in the background, throwing blame every which way. It was his own fault for losing control. It was Zephyr's fault, with their damned combat drugs and their damned lax oversight. Of course, he knew better. Zephyr's oversight wasn't at all lax, not really. And he wasn't merely being indulged. They were studying him, that was all, and so long as he didn't become too troublesome, they wouldn't interfere with him, at least not outside the confines of carefully designed experiments and 'missions'. Because that would taint their observations and bias their results. Acetyl was a scientist himself. He understood.
He also understood what would happen if he did step across that hidden, invisible line, the one labeled 'You've Gone Too Far'. He would probably not be killed unless he gave them no choice. Human life, even mutant human life, was too precious these days. But he would no longer have even the pretense of being an agent in the field. He would be a prized lab animal... if he was lucky. He didn't want to think about the less savory possibilities.
And this time, it wasn't mere killing. He'd screwed up much worse than that. He'd descended into a state of almost pure ferality for several hours the other day, and when he came back to himself, he discovered that he'd done terrible things while under. It was only after Acetyl had fled the scene that he realized just -how- bad what he'd done was.
Acetyl swallowed, willing himself to focus. First things first. For now, he needed to get ahold of the agent he'd victimized. Not only for his own reasons, but because the kemo bunny herm had been a victim of opportunity. Someone else had captured the kemo, probably a feral gatoress by the smell of the cave where Acetyl had found the bound, sexually abused mutant. What he himself had done was bad enough, but the gatoress would probably destroy the kemo bunny's sanity if left to her own devices. Acetyl owed the bunny a rescue, if nothing else.
Acetyl spotted the cave a few miles ahead and banked, sliding sideways in the air. His shoulders and back muscles ached with exhaustion even though he was a very skilled and able flyer. He was glad to land soon. They'd have to get out on foot, anyway - he couldn't fly carrying someone else, not unless they were much smaller than Acetyl remembered the kemo being. Finding himself heading toward a tall tree, Acetyl grabbed a handy branch with his clawed hands, flipping his wings to his back instantly to keep them from snagging on other branches in the tree. He rested for a few minutes, breathing hard, but as slow and quiet as he could, to keep from drawing too much attention. He was very still. Then, when he felt rested enough, the Storm Dragon climbed down from the tree and prowled the last mile or two through the swamp. He could probably defeat most of the nasty things here, but he didn't have time or energy to waste tangling with them. Acetyl had a self-imposed mission here.
There it was. The cave loomed ahead. Acetyl smelled his own presence, a couple of days ago, plus the heavier, lived-in musk of the gatoress, and the thinner, weaker scent of the bunny herm. Gritting his teeth, Acetyl licked at his tusk-like lower canines in anxiety, then prowled on all fours into the cave, senses open for any sign that the gatoress might be at home. He was resigned to the likelihood of a confrontation with her at some point, but hoped it wouldn't be now...
It seemed as if the gatoress had been there between now and then but she was gone at the moment. Her presence was apparent by the rope now binding Galve in place, and some fading bruises on his hindquarters where he had probably been punished. The bunny herm was currently in the middle of pawing himself off, one wrapped around his cock and the other wrist-deep in his recently-stretched cooch as he stared blankly into the distance, his eyes and any sign of intelligence clouded by lust and his collar.
Moving with every bit of cautious stealth he could muster, the once-again-sexless mutant was inexpressibly grateful that the genitals he'd unexpectedly developed the other day had gone away when he returned to his senses and activated his Nanite Adept programming. The smell of sex and fear was rank in the cave. If Acetyl still had genitals, he might have found it more difficult to resist the ravening instincts that those scents teased out of his mutated brain. As it was, his willpower was still tested, but in a way that Acetyl was now well-practiced in ignoring. Luckily, the feral gatoress didn't seem to be present. Peering around a bend in the cave into the depths of the gatoress's lair, where the bunny herm had been kept before, Acetyl was relieved to find the bunny in the same place.
He wasn't as happy when he discerned the kemo's current state of mind. He felt a little guilty, knowing his own feral lapse had contributed to this person's degeneration - but in truth, it was hard to wholly blame himself for this part of it. After all, it was pretty obvious that the gatoress had been going out of her way to reduce her captive to her own state of wild hedonistic abandon. ('Cet realized he was feeling envious as he considered the ferals' lifestyle, and quickly squelched the emotion as too dangerous to indulge.) Most ferals liked to infect others. Not just with their form, but also with their madness. This seemed to be a pretty typical case, in that respect. Still, Acetyl was personally involved this time, which interfered with his ability to keep his emotions at a cool, professional distance. He sighed. Clearly, there was no time to lose. The longer he waited, the more damage would be done to the agent's mind.
Approaching Galve, padded hands and feet moving in near-silence across the cave floor, Acetyl reared to his hind legs beside the bound kemo. Closing his eyes in concentration for a moment, Acetyl activated his NICE unit and initialized the Emotional Aura programming. Within seconds, Galve's nanites received a strong signal instructing them to tone down the kemo's sex drive and dampen any fear he might feel. The code contained a timer, though, allowing it to execute over a few minutes rather than trying to rewrite Galve's mental and biochemical condition as fast as possible. Not only was this easier to accomplish as a timed effect, but Acetyl needed Galve to be as clear-minded as possible if the two of them were to get out of the swamp alive and sane. Acetyl knew he could get himself out, but he needed to get Galve out too, and sending the other agent into shock with clumsy nanomagic wouldn't help at all.
(The specific emotion being sent is serenity or calmness.)
While Galve's nanites began their work, his actions continued. The programmed nanites in the collar were now at war with the nanomagic eminating from Acetyl. A surge from the collar brought Galve to a forced orgasm, and it backwashed up the nanomagic pathway. And it didn't seem to have made a single bit of difference as Galve just kept on masturbating.
Acetyl's slit-pupiled eyes, with their molten metallic golden-bronze irises, gave off a distinct bioluminescent glow here in the darkness of the cave. There was a slight flickering quality to the glow, as if it were powered by a varying flow of electricity. Acetyl squinted at the results, as if he'd found an unexpected bug in his code. Fortunately, of his two 'day jobs' in Clairmont, the one he thought of as his 'real' job was researching and designing nanomagic. So it didn't take the nanomage long to figure out the cause of the problem. His lips twitched over his fangs, revealing those long tusk-like fangs in his lower jaw. That was a pretty sophisticated device for a feral to be using. It implied that the gatoress who laired here was more than just a garden-variety feral. Perhaps a Promethean agent who'd fallen back into a wild, nanite-maddened state. It was a disturbing thought. Acetyl decided not to think about that for now. Instead he focused back on the collar itself, leaning in close to examine it as best he could without touching it. His fingers twitched against the input panel of his comm unit as he activated another set of pre-coded instructions, attempting to communicate with the nanites in the collar, to obtain information about any security routines or safeguards that might be coded into the collar's nanites in addition to their primary function of - apparently - driving their victim insane with lust. (Come to think of it, who'd make such a thing, anyway? Might as well just call it the Feralifying Collar, Acetyl thought.)
