With a Single Step (Lita)

[Karishima Yumi]

It had taken sometime for Karishima to uphold the supply side of the bargain.

The warehouse was ready for Lita and her employee/salve Izzy the day after the night at the play, as promised. Inside there was space for days, an open floor plan with no walls or halls, aside from a tiny walled of area in the corner that could serve as an office or sleep station. There seemed to be no end to the available cages or metallic operating tables in the space, ranging from cat sized to human sized to something that might he larger than a human but smaller than an orger. There were also wheel-borne tool kits, a total of five of them, each filled with shinning and new dissection and medical tools as requested.

No, the space was fine. What was taking so long was the materiel to use all this fancy equipment on. It was three more weeks before the clay arrived, and each week was accompanied by apologies form Karishima herself, expressing nothing short embarrassed frustration and how hard it seemed to be to get a hold of 400 hundred pounds of soft clay. Coming up with bodies was actually proving be be far easier.

The day after the clay arrived, there was another delivery of three innocuous-looking wooden crates delivered just before sunrise and the docks got busy. Doubtless these were the three average sized human bodies Lita had also been promised. The only odd thing was, in addition to the crates, Lita was handed a small paper package, rough the size of large medical text. It yielded to the touch, and though it was filled with fabric. in the front it read simply: Lita Annabelle Triat . On the back of the package, it read "Please place inside your office."

[Lita]

Lita was pleased to finally be able to work again. It had been quite boring with all the tools but no supplies. She had come up with dozens of ideas, many far beyond her current abilities, though tha hadn't stopped her in the past. The clay arrived without the bodies, though that suited Lita just fine. She spent most of the day, and nearly the entire night, working with it. By the end of it she had created a man shaped figure, though entirely smooth. It was not unlike a manikin that might be found modeling clothes. She finished it up by slicing it in halfso that she had two identical halves. This would be her first test body. Her only one too since she had already used most of the clay. Fortunately she still had some left over, and hollowing out parts of the thing for the first bits of transplanting would free up even more.

Then the bodies were delivered. It was perfectly discreet, she doubted anyone would notice such a minor thing in the future, but she was forced to hold off her examination. First she would have to open the package. Perhaps rules had changed, something new had come up, or maybe she was getting some more funds. What Lita did know was that if she started working immediately like she so very much wanted to, she would forget about the package and it would be left unopened for a long, long time.

Lita walked into her office. It was weird having an office. She mostly worked in the workshop, which was the same place she kept her notes and everything else. Being so used this preferred method, the office was still almost unfurnished. Simply a few chairs and a desk table. Lita walked up to her desk and leaned against it while she fiddled with the packaging. Getting her thumb into a seam she split it open.

[Karishima Yumi]

The package seam split open under Lita's thumb without hesitation. Of all the things she was expecting, what came sliding out was probably not one of them.

It was a dress, simple and long, dark blue, or perhaps black in color. As odd as that was, what came next was odder still.

"Ah, thank you, Lita," came Karishima's voice from somewhere in the room. The dress was gently lifted from the inventors hands by some invisible force, then floated through the air away from the desk for a few paces. It was then twisted and flitted before the outline of a face began to travel up its length as it began to lower itself down.

Karishima's now visible head soon emerged from the neck hole, and as she worked the dress down into place, the rest of her became visible as well. Her hips and tentacles were in plain view before the hem of the dress finally fell over them before stopping. It was much shorter than her usual attire, leaving pretty much all of her tentacles below her crotch level plainly visible.

"Hope I didn't scare you," she said with a slight smile that suggested otherwise. "I slipped in during the latest delivery while invisible. I can't really be seen coming and going from this warehouse. People think I'm too "important ' to be in such places, and it might draw undue attention.

"Sorry again for how long it took the clay to get here," she said, gestureing toward the door to the office. "The bodies I had right away. I had them placed in those crates and used a stasis spell I know to slow their decomposition. They should have only decayed by roughly three hours these last three weeks. Hopefully that is not too much? I might be able to secure something fresher, but it would take several more weeks.

"When you're ready, I can remove the stasis spell on the boxes," she added finally.

[Lita]

Lita's eyes followed the dress and she watched closely as Karishima became fully visible again. Magic, it was always magic making the weird things happen without any scientific backing at all. Still, magic was useful for some things. Her eyes drifted toward the tentacles, watching them move and analyzing the different types of movement they performed.

"No, I wasn't scared. Any invisible people meaning me harm would have already stabbed me before revealing themselves, at least from what I've experienced. They certainly wouldn't send their clothes on ahead as well." She smiled a bit awkwardly. "The bodies should be perfectly fine and don't worry about the delay." She sat up on the desk and looked at Kari. "Though if it's possible for invisible people to get in we'll need some sort of defense against that. Not that I'm expecting invisible people to come in or walk out for that matter, but I'd prefer it if the security could make sure that it is a little harder to come up on me unexpected." Lita shrugged and leaned back.

"Why are you here though, I've hardly made anything worth checking up on, the supplies were delivered and I doubt you feel the need to oversee every small delivery."

[Karishima Yumi]

"I have considered that," Karishima conceded. "The problem is there are so many kinds of invisibility, and not all of them magical in origin. I could arrange for a perimeter spell that banishes invisibility magic, but that wouldn't affect people like me, whose abilities are wholly natural or racial. For now, I'm outfighting the guards with sneaker scopes, which will alert them to unseen individuals with malicious purposes trying to get in. Its not perfect, but will serve as a stop gap until I come up with a final solution."

Karishima placed her hands behind her back, gliding across the floor on her tentacles too look out one of the office's small windows at the warehouse floor. "As for why I'm here...well, I have to remove the preservation spell on the boxes before you can begin. Also, I've noticed you staring at my tentacles." She turned to look back at Lita. "I get stared at a lot, so I'm used to it, but they you look at them is different. Its more like.. your eyes move with them instead of just staring. I guess you're trying to figure out how they work?"

She took a deep breath. "My schedule is clear for most of today. I'm not sure when I'll be this free again, so if you are so inclined, I'm available for a closer examination. If you think it will help your research. To be honest, it be a pleasure."

[Lita]

Lita blushed at having her examinations be noticed by her technically boss. "It would do a lot toward helping my research." She was half lying. Any examination would be completely useless to her research in creating something for Kari, but her own research might certainly profit from learning how each of the tentacles functioned both as an individual and a part of the whole. "I suppose I would like to figure out how they work, scientifically of course." She amended. She didn't want to do anything that might insult her only source of income.

"It's just I haven't seen something like you before and it seems like a perfect merger. I suppose it's all due to genetics but if I could come anywhere close to replicating something of that quality..." She trailed off. "Well it would be something I've tried to do for a long time. Nature has always been skillful at her craft and I'd just like to understand the ins and outs of her creations."

[Karishima Yumi]

"Nature may be skilled, " Anactoria conceded, "but even she makes mistakes. I shouldn't even exist. Humans and dealthwok demons are so biologically different that they never should have been able to procreate. Gods know my parents weren't the first coupling of those two species... though they might have been the first consensual one. In my father's language 'karishima' means 'miracle'. Apt name for a woman who shouldn't even be here, dont you think?

Karishima shrugged hr shoulders. "But I'm here now, right? So what do you need from me? Skin samples? Range of motion tests? Shall I produce more tentacles? Less? Lets set aside the fact that I'm our investor for a few hours. You're in charge, Lita. How can I help?"

[Lita]

Lita was thrilled at the offer. An actual chance to examine such a marvelous example of a hybrid. She could scarcely keep her face from beaming. She moved in close and took one of the tentacles in her hands. The feeling was so strange, so new. She had forgotten what a thrill it was to feel something so foreign to her hands. Her mind went through some basic checklists. "Now you say your father was the demon, that's interesting. She began asking a few generic questions about any strange or unexpected allergies, past sicknesses and other things that were only slightly relevant to Lita's exam. Lita's mind was so focused, in fact, that she hardly noticed what her hands were doing while she studied.

Slowly her hands had been moving up the tentacles. They had taken on the former pattern of lightly squeezing the tentacle every inch or so as they moved up. Lita was marveling at their strength, yet delicacy, the soft feeling that was still felt incredibly thick. Her hands had moved quite close to the hem of Kari's dress before they pulled away and began repeating the process with another tentacle. Hands moving slowly, rubbing, massaging, then moving on to a new target before reaching what might be considered a bit too far.

[Karishima Yumi]

At first, Karishima had no problems answering the questions, though she did have to rack her brain when it came to the topic of childhood illnesses. 150+ years was long time ago when you try to remember ever having the sniffles.

The feel of Lita's hands on her four main tentacles soon drove her to distraction though. The way her tiny digits storked and squeezed their length was terribly soothing, and Karishima found herself wishing she had sat down first as the accidental massage left the normally thick muscles in her limbs feeling like jelly. Her eyes were half closed in what could only be described as a blissful expression as Lita hands contained to climb up the first tentacle.

She wasn't sure when the nature of the tingling she was feeling had changed. As Lita hands came teasingly close to her crotch, the started on the next tentalce, Karishima felt herself growing warmer, and less steady. She had to lean on the wall to maintain her balance. Her contend sigh became tiny gaps and moans. By the time Lita ended her prodding on the second tentacle, Karishima face had turned an alluring, but humanely impossible shade of pink.

She knew there might be trouble when, as Lita continued her way up the third tentacle, she felt more than commanded still more limbs to emerge from her lower body. Responding to the unconscious desire of their owner, as they often did, these thinner tentacles began to lash and coil at Lita hands, as if each fighting for a turn to feel the inventor's skin against their own. Still a third was lightly wrapping its way around the woman's arm, a fourth sliding across her shoulders, as if looking for a way in her top, and a fifth content to slide along the back of her waist.

“S-sorry about that,” Karishima said carefully after realizing that he had missed the last question. “They're getting a little difficult to control... your touch, even a clinical one is... really something. Just give me a moment to pull myself together, then we can continue...”

[Lita]

Lita continued her massage, doing her best to ignore the other tentacles as they tried to get in the way of her hands until Kari spoke. Lita stopped her examination and pulled her hands away quickly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable." She apologized, mistaking the discomfort as being from inflicted pain. "I sometimes forget myself while working and I don't normally preform procedures on living things." Her mind focused on the touch of the other tentacles on her, trying to get a feel for them without using her hands. She briefly wondered how strong they were. If they were both dexterate and strong they would certainly be useful. To be honest she was a tad bit jealous.

[Karishima Yumi]

Lita might have stopped touching her, but Karishima was still touching Lita, and that made pulling herself together harder than she could have imagined. There was just... something about the way the other woman's skin felt against hers that was set something inside of her screaming, more, more!

Karishima shook her head. “Don't apologize,”;she said carefully trying to keep her growing, inexplicable desire out of her voice. “It wasn't uncomfortable... if anything it was too comfortable.”

The two lengths that had been fighting for Lita's attention all but plopped themselves directly into the woman's now empty hands. “I told you, my father's kind experience the word though scent and touch. Your touch has always been soothing to me, I told you that the night we met. Only now.. its become so much more than just 'soothing'.

The tentacle that had been on Lita shoulders final foun a gap in her top wide enough to slip inside to her collar bones. Karishima was able to stop it before it plunged itself between Lita's breasts, but it was a very near thing. Meanwhile the one behind her waists was trying to pull the inventor closer to Karishima.

“I think...” Karishima said carefully. “They're.. I mean I'm.. having some kind of biological reaction to your touch. Never really felt anything like it. I'm curios to see what happens should it runs it course... but... this your examination..."

[Lita]

Lita smiled hesitantly and said "That's good. Reactions to touch can be an important part of the study as well." She was now even more distracted by the tentacle around her shoulders and near her neck. Worries about strength aside, being strangled was not a pleasant prospect and was in fact a small fear she held. Being hanged can do that to a girl. Still, she tried to swallow her fear and her hands went back to to work, though this time they were working on autopilot, each on their own tentacle. Her mind just couldn't get over the fear of being strangled. It didn't show on her face but it was there.

Still her hands kept working their way, doing their step by step analysis of each tentacle. Though the loss of focus had now left her silent, her breathing grew a bit faster, her heart rate went up a small percentage, and she was forced to lick her lips to remind herself that her mouth was not the cracked desert that it felt like right now. Maybe this was a test, if she failed it the result would be death or something. Lita would have to prove her loyalty. Or at the very least prove that she knew how to make her boss properly comfortable when performing tests. Carefully she focused on her task, never forgetting the tentacle almost around her neck. While still trying to take notes, her grasp took on less of the clinical focused rubbing and squeezing and became much more smooth. Lita decided that instead of squeezing to work out the density, she would try rubbing them to understand the texture, not too hard but not too soft either. Nothing is ever perfectly smooth, and Lita wanted to see how this was different from other skin, even her own skin.

[Karishima Yumi]

Karishima own breath was devolving into tiny gasps and moans. Her eyes were half closed in rapture as Lita touches changed in style and tempo. Through her limbs, she felt the inventor's own pulse increase and heard her breathing change, and lost in the haze of her own pleasure, complete misread the reason why. And in that instant of excitement, she felt something give in her mind.

She had the presence of mind to try and gasp out a warning, but it came out as a sigh. "Lita! I cant stop --!"

She would have been more alarmed if it didn't feel so good, but the tentacle near Lita's neck was moving again, down the inventor shirt into her cleveage, where it playful and softly curled around the woman's left breast, the tip now teasing the nipple. With a shuddering cry, still more tentacles slipped free of Karishima's body, and though she could feel them as the crossed the air, finding whatever part of Lita's skin they could find, she found she could not control them. She was not even sure she wanted to.

Karishima finally slid down the wall on to her rear, unable to support her own weight. But her tentacles now seemed to be everywhere, sliding under Lita's clothes, exploring the length of her legs, her thighs and rear, the small of her her back, both nipples, her arms, her toes, one complete with a tiny mouth and tongue was closing in on her sex.

The odd thing was, as much as they coiled around and on her, they weren't holding her as tight as they could, nor were they lifting her off the ground. There was a general pull-push feeling as they tried to lay Lita on her back, but it was a nudging, not a demand.

Karishima's eyes fluttered open, as she tried to focus on Lita. The mish-mash of panic and naked desire warred on her pink face. "I--cant stop them!" she moaned. "They arent listening! This has never..." but then the tentacles with the tongue had reached Lita sex and the feel and scent and taste of it washed over Karishima , and her sentence was lost to moans.

[Lita]

It had gone on for hours before finally it all stopped. Energy that seemed limitless eventually faded and they came down from the artificial highs of the other's scents, though the spicy air was still thick with pheromone. As feeling returned and the exhaustion returned, so did Lita's minds, all parts of them came at her like a burning line of powder and slammed back to the forefront in a wave of mental agony. She pulled herself up and off of Kari, staggering first to her desk where she grabbed a vial and then to the window which she threw open. She nearly collapsed on it before ripping the stopper off the vial and drinking it all. In seconds she was vomiting all that had entered her stomach, both before and during. The liquid was vile and smelled sour, but it did it's job well enough. She kept it around for ingested poisons in case she had to get rid of them quick, but it worked just as well to cure most toxins and what were pheromones but another sort of toxin to the body.

She leaned against the sill but her mind screamed at her. It wouldn't last forever, she had to get out of the rooms pungent atmosphere. With a small maneuver she collapsed over the sill and then slid outside, still naked, still covered in the roadmap of marks left from the sudden sexual assault. the air was cold, but the shivers were a welcome change. Nobody was in the alley, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. She had to process what had just happened. The pheromones had gotten to her. She managed to clap her hands twice and a cascade of water drenched her, washing away any traces of the pheromones still clinging to her body. The outside anyway. Kari was a woman but she was also a demon. Lita had been penetrated and would need to clean that out soon enough too. Who knows what strange effect tentacle slime would have on her common sense.

Her logical side began to take over, she was naked, wet, and it was definitely freezing outside. So long as she avoided that room it would probably be ok to go back inside. Even if Karishima had done it on purpose, which seemed illogical based on the events leading up to it, there was a slim chance it would happen again in the openness of her workshop. She stood, staggering a little, and began walking back to the front door using the wall for support. People looked at her but that didn't matter. There were far more important things to take care of. With some major modifications, tentacles would definitely be an addition to her lover.

[Karishima Yumi]

Karishima hadn't been asleep per se. Rather she had been hovering in that pleasant state of half-wake, the in-between where one could still dream and carry some of a waking conversation simultaneously. She held as tightly to this state as she dared; to wake meant thinking about what had just happened, and to sleep would mean losing the delicious scene of completeness and rightness she was feeling right then in favor of hum-drum unconsciousness.

Then Lita was scrambling off of and away from her, pulling Kari from the in-between to the full waking world. Her senses still burned from the over stimulation of the last few hours, and it took her a minute to focus. Her vision finally resolved on the naked figure of Lita as she staggered away. Kari rubbed at her eyes and sat up. She reached toward Lita's retreating back with one hand and opened her mouth to say something, when her accidental lover stuck her head out the window and was violently ill.

The sound of her being sick crashed over the naked half-demon like a splash of cold water. Her hand and her jaw dropped and for a moment she felt as though she was going to throw up herslef. Lita all but dove out the window without so much as a backward glance and Karishima felt as though she had been slapped.

Was it that horrible? she wondered. Her throat felt tight, her eyes and nose burned. She stood, cast about he room in search of her dress, found it, put it on, and slipped out of the office on shaky tentacles. The room still smelled like them, and it made thinking difficult.

Outside, she leaned on one of the unoccupied surgical tables, its cool metal surface a welcome feeling. She ran over the last few hours in her mind backwards. They made love -- no that wasn't the term for what they did. Karishiam remembered quite clearly stroking Lita and kissing her, but there was no tenderness there. It just seemed important, to keep her soothed and calm so she could --

Kari's hands flew under her dress, between and behind her two main tentacles. She found her own sex, and her clit -- which now actual looked and felt like one again. Touching it elicited no pleasure, however; it was far to sore for that.

No. Not love making. Just sex. Raw, in your face, matter of fact, f*cking. Like demons do it.

Karishima eyes winded at that thought, and she reviewed the last few hours again. When had Lita asked for this? It was obvious that she regretted it now -- happy women dont throw up and escape post-coital after all. But when --?

She replayed the begging over head over in her head. And it all came down to one thing: Karishima had lost control. Maybe Lita had never said no, but she had never said yes either.

"Oh gods," she whispered. Somewhere in her head she could hear Rasha's snide voice: Sooner or later demons bring pain and misery to everyone.

Gods, I raped her didn't I? Karishima thought with growing horror And I enjoyed it! I enjoyed every last second of it!

Now she really was going to throw up. She could taste the bile in her mouth already. She had to get out of there. Away from the scene of the crime, away from the district, away from Lita. Away from everything.

I should go find Rasha and throw myself on her sword, she thought as she backed away from the table, ducking back in the office just long enough to find a pen and some parchment. She was right. Gods, she was right about me.

She left the note on Lita's desk. It read simply: "I'm sorry."

That done, she all but flew to the front door, not caring who saw her leave the warehouse and knowing that was stupid, and swung it open wide to escape.