Lesandra Sukhaja started finally revealing some useful intelligence about Drachma. While she turned out to not know all that much, Armstrong was relatively happy with the little secrets Envy got out of her. As far as Envy could tell, Sukhaja fancied it more than she showed. She was enthusiastic about the plans to take Envy to Drachma and worried about how it would be received there.

Two weeks later came the day when Armstrong's patience with the spy ran out as she thought that Sukhaja either could or would not reveal anything more drastic about her homeland. Armstrong told Envy to imprison the spy and take her into a cell. She gave Envy authorisation papers to take one prisoner's uniform and a set of shackles and to take the spy to the brig.

Getting the shackles from the equipment office was unproblematic, but Warrant Officer Pommern in the inventory office was not as easy. For a start, the man eyed Envy meanly.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"One prisoner's uniform getup, size four, for a woman." It tossed Armstrong's note at him.

He eyed the note, frowned and told one of the privates to get the clothes. He kept eyeing Envy. "Like your underpants?"

"Huh? Sure. Why, did you give me the wrong colour ones for someone of my rank?" it teased.

Pommern was a little confused. "Not feeling tight, eh?"

"No?" Pommern seemed even more confused, so Envy too started wondering what was up with him. It did not take too long for it to figure out the issue. "Eeeh? Did you think I was a boy?" it asked incredulously. "Ha ha! Stupid old man!" Envy continued snickering. In the meantime, Pommern just turned redder and redder.

Soon enough, a private came with one prisoner's uniform. Envy reached to take it while still giggling at Pommern. It then hopped out of the storage room with a small grin on its face.

In the evening, Envy packed some food, the shackles and the uniform in its bag and took two privates with it as it left for the tenth quarters area. It told the soldiers to wait for it at the appropriate doorway and to not let anyone in.

Envy made its way to where Sukhaja was and unpacked the food it had brought. They chatted a little while she ate, and when she was done, Envy took out the prisoner's uniform.

"Oh, I almost forgot. I had a chance to snatch some clothes and I thought that maybe you'd want some new ones since you've been wearing those for the whole time. It's a bit plain and I wasn't entirely sure about the size but I hope it'll fit!" it said to her.

Sukhaja looked surprised and grateful. She moved closer to Envy and gave it a hug. Envy thought that she hugged it for an unusually long time, and the reason became clear when she let go slightly and kissed it.

Envy could not say it was surprised, but it pretended to be. "Sanja?" it asked once they had stopped.

"Thank you," she said dreamily.

Envy was very amused. Now that she was already on the way to massive disappointment, it could not help but think how it could add some more insult to her injury. It did not have enough time to think before Sukhaja started opening its uniform jacket. Envy's amusement just grew, but to Sukhaja, it showed a very positively surprised face with a hint of concern. "Are you sure...?"

"Yes."

Thinking that Sukhaja would probably be more insulted by its betrayal if they had sex, Envy decided to go for it. Besides, this way it would get her to strip down and put on the clothes it had brought without any kind of trouble.

Discreetly, Envy shapeshifted itself to look like a male since it did not feel like explaining its androgynous anatomy at the moment. It understood instantly why Pommern had asked whether the underwear was tight, because it was now, though not uncomfortably so. It also remembered to invent some transmutation circles on its body, even if Sukhaja said that she had already forgotten about them when she took off Envy's shirt.

They spent quite a while making love to each other. Envy did not happen to think about whether Sukhaja would be worried about getting pregnant since it was all too clear to it that it could not get anyone pregnant in the first place. Luckily Sukhaja did not seem to care either.

The soldiers Envy had left waiting grew very bored.

Once Envy and Sukhaja were done, they lay naked in the small service shaft. Sukhaja had her hands crossed on Envy's chest and was holding her chin on them. She smiled warmly at it.

"Did you like it?" it asked.

"Yes." She snuggled her head against Envy and it petted her hair.

"Shall we go to the shower?"

"Is it safe to go now?"

"Oh, I didn't see anyone there and you know people come here pretty rarely. Besides, people won't look so closely if they see we're naked!" It started stuffing its and Sukhaja's clothes into its bag. Sukhaja giggled, with a hint of anxiety but mostly agreeably. After it had managed to stuff everything in the bag, they sneaked out of the service shaft and streaked the short distance into the showers.

They spent some time showering and Sukhaja mostly asked Envy silly questions about its body transmuting: "Why aren't you taller?" "Can you make that bigger?" "How about your hair?" "Can you create clothes?"

Once they had dried off themselves, Envy put on its uniform while Sukhaja tried the prisoner's getup. It consisted of a simple shirt and trousers and was greyish in colour. The outfit came with a pair of simple felt boots.

"Well, it is a bit plain but fits just fine," she said. "These shoes remind me of home..."

At this point, Envy had stashed its bag and the rest of the clothes behind itself and had an evil grin on its face. Sukhaja looked at it, slightly confused. "Ha ha ha! I can't believe how long I've waited for this, you stupid, stupid human! I got youuuuu!" It giggled and continued gloating. "You believed everything I told you! Even that stuff about the plasma propulsion cannon. It's just ludicrous!"

"Wha– – wha– –"

"'Waah waah!' Hahaha! Just in case you're still trying to wrap your tiny brain around it: this whole thing was just a set-up to get you to reveal some juicy national secrets. I never got Shrike to lie to you all that well but I guess it just didn't matter because you really are that gullible!"

Sukhaja's expressions were priceless. She changed from dumbfounded into desperate, defiant, terribly insulted and incredibly aggravated. Eventually she was just a big mess of all kinds of emotions as she tried to come to some kind of terms with what she was hearing. When she spoke, she was mostly in denial. "T-that... can't be true... please tell me it was a ...joke," she mumbled, not even believing herself. No joke could be this awful.

Envy decided to get the last drop of hope out of her. It changed its tone right back to extremely apologetic and agreeable. "Of course... Oh dear, I really went too far with that... I'm sorry." It came slightly closer to her and expressed sympathy and openness by its manner of bearing itself. As soon as it saw the small bit of hope light up on her face and in her nearly teary eyes, it straightened up and started shouting and pointing at her. "NOT! Ahaha! I can't believe you went for that too! Twice in a row. How does it feel to be so stupid? Amoeba, amoeba!"

Now something primal took over Sukhaja and she leaped straight at Envy, ready to rip its throat out. Of course, now Envy was well in control of itself and Sukhaja was not, so evading her was quite easy for it. "Whoa! Getting violent now, you ugly spider? Would you like to hear that the clothes I just brought for you are a prisoner's uniform? How do you like that?"

"You treacherous piece of waste!" she cried. She came at it again, but Envy swatted her in the stomach and made her crash on the floor.

"Oh and the sex was a nice bonus. I wasn't even thinking about it but since you insisted, I thought why not! I knew you'd be softer after it. In the head."

Sukhaja was shaking with rage and could not think clearly. Envy fished the shackles out of its bag and spent a short moment chasing after her and hitting her with them before it could force them on her. Having done that, it placed her on the floor so that she could not get up and packed everything extra in its bag again.

"Oh well, fun's over. But wasn't that just great, eh, Sanja?" it said as it picked her up and placed her on her chained feet. "Now you can contemplate on your humongously embarrassing failure in your very own cell! I wonder if I could get you into the same one where Ruslan was? Just to make it better for you!"

By now Sukhaja was ready to start bawling, but though a few tears fell down her face, she still controlled herself for now.

"Okay, start walking," it said and poked her in the back. She started awkwardly dragging along.

When they made it to the door where the two soldiers were waiting, the soldiers got abruptly up from the floor where they had been sitting.

"Sir! Er, who is that?" asked one of them when he saw Sukhaja.

"A prisoner that we need to take to a cell. Go ahead, Dornier, take the lead," answered Envy.

They walked in silence to the lifts and got some curious looks from other soldiers. Once they had gotten into a lift, Dornier and the other soldier, Handley, took a better look at the spy.

"Man, she's crying!" exclaimed Handley. "You didn't do anything improper to her, did you, sir?" he asked, not overtly serious but not too amused either.

"Huh? No, all that is just her petty little feelings of being upset at me for calling her a gullible idiot which she is."

"You sure took a long time with her, sir," said Dornier.

"That's just because she insisted I make love to her before I could imprison her, so I did. And in case that's unclear to you and your little morals, yes, she wanted it herself, I just decided to not reject her because then I got her to put on the prisoner's getup without any complaints. Then I told her I tricked her. You should've seen her face after that! It was hilarious!" Envy giggled.

"A-ha! So you are a boy!" stated Handley.

Envy scoffed and rolled its eyes very conspicuously. It turned at Sukhaja and leaned close to her. "Or AM I?" it asked very suggestively.

Now even Sukhaja understood that Envy could have just transmuted its body into that of a male. She blushed awfully.

Handley was very confused. "Arrrh, what? This is so frustrating!"

"Ha ha, little fools!" it said happily. Handley and Dornier dropped the issue and were quiet, not taking Envy's words as a serious offence.

They arrived on the level where the cells were. Envy and the two privates cleared Sukhaja with the prison guards and she was put into the same cell where Ruslan had been. Once that was over and done with, Envy went to clear up the things that Sukhaja had left in the storage closet and service shaft and took them to the investigation office with the rest of her previous possessions.

Now that Sukhaja was not Envy's problem any longer, it had no reason to care about her. However, it did not forget about her that easily because she turned out to be a little more interesting. The next day after it had turned her in, she attempted suicide but failed. Naturally, it visited her to make fun about her miserable state and did not even mind that Armstrong told it to leave the spy alone afterward.

#-#

In the evening, Envy had a night shift of ventilation shaft maintenance with Shrike and could not help but feast on its magnificent betrayal of Sukhaja as they walked toward the first target on their list.

"The way it turned out was great. I brought her the prisoner's getup and thought I'd just ask her to try it on, but guess what she did? She came on me and insisted to have sex with me! I hadn't even thought about it but I figured that it would be a great way to mess with her little feelings, heh heh."

"Uh. Well, she had it coming. ...Wait, did you ju– –" Shrike suddenly became more alert, but Envy wanted to go on with its story and interrupted him.

"She was a little bunny. Afterward we went to the shower and she just put on the getup. Then I told her how I'd tricked her and what a moron she was. You should've seen her face! It was something like this..." Envy checked that there was no one around, shapeshifted its face to that of Sukhaja's and imitated her expressions. Shrike looked at it with mixed emotions. He was sort of amused but also inconvenienced, not to even mention the other thoughts he was having about the issue.

Envy shifted its face back. "I made her cry, heh. She wouldn't bawl in front of me but today I heard from the prison guards that she sure did after I left. Oh and she tried to kill herself too! And failed! Haha!"

"Mh. I sort of think it would've been better if she'd gotten out of her misery."

"For her I suppose. She's not my problem any longer so I don't care." Envy shrugged. "Do you? Come to think of it, you're usually not too wild about hurting and toying with people, I've noticed that much. But now you said she had it coming."

"Er... I mean... she's just a stupid Drachman. I kind of thought that she'd notice something was off by the way I acted around her."

"That was the only behaviour she ever saw from you, so it wasn't that easy to notice, but yeah."

"But um... you said that... are you able to have sex?"

"That's what's bothering you? Still? I thought you'd forgotten since you hadn't said anything about that for a couple of weeks. ...But wait, are you jealous of her because you have your little feelings for me and she was the one who got to make love to me?" it asked keenly.

"Um..." Shrike blushed.

"Haha, I knew it!"

Shrike was quiet for a moment. "Is this why your name is 'Envy'?"

Envy made a short chortle of surprise. "Yes! Bwa ha ha!" it said gleefully and snickered.

Shrike was both flustered and quite disheartened. He looked glum and trudged forward absent-mindedly.

"Hm? Are you going to be moody for a few days again?"

"It's just... please don't," he mumbled.

Envy did not understand what went around the man's mind and was annoyed at that. However, now it thought to ask Shrike about the issue. It stopped walking. "Why? I already know you fancy me. Isn't it some sort of silly uncontrollable human thing that you can't help but like me?"

Shrike stopped as well. "Well... I guess you could put it that way, but it doesn't work quite like that, I think," said Shrike nervously. "I mean... if you keep being mean to me, I'll probably stop liking you eventually..."

Envy noticed the pattern of action and reaction. If it treated Shrike poorly, he would grow to hate it. However, at the moment, he still appeared to like it. It frowned and stared at Shrike. "So... Does that work the other way? For example, if I made love to you, would you like me more?"

Shrike's eyes widened in confusion. "Bwah?" Envy stared at him annoyedly until he came up with something more intelligible to say. "I... well... y-yes? B-but, um, would you actually do that? Just to uh... make me like you more?"

"Why not? Isn't that how human relationships work?"

"Er, humans usually want to make love to each other, so if you don't want it..."

"Eh. I don't need sex for anything, and I have no desire to have it or to not have it. It does feel good, but so what? Other things feel good too." Making love did not hold any particular importance to Envy; some pleasure here or there was all it was. Like humans, Envy was able to have sex and even enjoy it, and that was quite enough for Envy. It had no sex drive and saw no reason to become addicted to making love like what seemed to happen to most humans.

Shrike struggled with his thoughts for a moment. "So... are you saying that you'd... be okay with doing it with me?"

Envy realised that it faced a definitive choice. It could either laugh right at Shrike's face or agree to make love to him. Or turn him down more politely than laughing at him, but that would be boring. Of course its first choice would be to laugh at him and hurt his little emotions immensely. It would truly enjoy seeing his expression of deep mental agony. Maybe he would cry or even try to kick it?

On the other hand, Envy saw that this could have been continuation in the path to one of those trusting friendship things it had decided to pursue. Shrike was not too annoying, and Envy figured that sex would not be a high price to pay for gaining his friendship or trust.

Envy decided to play along with Shrike. Even though it was against Envy's nature to just oblige to a human, Envy wanted to see what would happen. It thought that if it laughed at him, it could guess how he would react accurately enough and enjoy its vivid imaginations about his expressions. And besides, even if it did play nicely now, it could always change its mind and hurt his feelings as much as it wanted at a later time.

Envy made a small grin. "Sure. Let's do it if you want."

Shrike's eyes brightened a little and a small smile appeared on his face. For some time, he just watched Envy's face earnestly, and Envy was a little confused as to why he did that. He was still, looked at it quietly and seemed to like what he saw. Normally, it would have thought that he was an idiot for staring at it so enthralled. Now it knew that he admired just it and its superiority and found that justified and correct. Envy even thought that it rather liked getting looked at in such a manner and thus did not do anything to stop Shrike. While the feeling was not nearly as intense, rushing or awesome as the one Envy would get from seeing him get massively hurt, it was pretty nice.

#-#

A while later, Shrike and Envy were in the service tunnel where they had just some time ago fixed another broken ventilation shaft. They lay on top of their overcoats on the floor and Envy twirled a strand of Shrike's hair absent-mindedly while Shrike breathed heavily but was otherwise immobile. He turned after a moment and looked at Envy's face once again. He smiled a little in the faint illumination of their flashlights.

"You look somehow more ...serene," he said.

"Serene?" Envy raised an eyebrow but did not feel like starting to argue. Besides, it did feel rather calm at the moment. If its memory served it right, making love did have a temporary soothing effect. It shrugged and closed its eyes. "Maybe so then."

After a while, Shrike got up, put his getup in order and spent a moment looking at Envy again. "Uh, are you always that androgynous or did you just shapeshift to mess with me?" he asked a little curiously.

"'That' androgynous?"

"Well yes, I mean, whatever part of you I look at, you look pretty obviously like a blend."

Envy smirked. It had not shapeshifted at all but did not feel like explaining that to Shrike. "Why, does it bother you?"

"Um... actually, I was kind of surprised that it didn't bother me that much."

"Well, good for you. Nice human." Envy liked that Shrike did not bother it by asking further questions even though it had not answered him. Some time passed, and then also Envy redressed itself properly.

"Can we... can we do that again some time? Like tomorrow or they day after tomorrow. Would that be okay?"

Envy rolled its eyes a bit. "Sure, why not."

They picked up their overcoats and bags, climbed down and exited the service hatch.

For the rest of the night, Shrike seemed marginally happier. The next day, he and Envy made love to each other again, and that time Shrike managed to be a better partner than a life-sized toy.

During the next few days, Envy noticed that Shrike smiled at it more often and did not feel as reserved around it as before, though of course he would not argue against it and as far as it could tell, he still thought that it was a superior being. Even if he was not that timid now, Envy made him feel very uneasy in other ways, like kissing or fondling him in front of others. However, Envy did not make too large displays and mostly harassed Shrike when only three or fewer people were watching.

Instead of making people think that Shrike was a homosexual, the displays of affection more often made them think that Envy was a woman. Of course, there were people who were fervent with their own opinions and Envy especially liked to listen in on disputes between people with opposing views, then reveal itself, call the arguers morons, laugh at them and leave.

Envy's manner of handling things quickly steered people away from it and instead made them bother Shrike. He hated being bothered, so he tried to always be in hiding or with Envy or a couple of other people who did not ask him any unnecessary questions.