Content warning: scenes of strong threat with themes of violation. Reader discretion strongly advised.
She felt Ahea's body settle against her back, and most of his tentacles wrapping securely around her waist and shoulders, smiled softly when the tip of one cradled her breast, then heard a soft click. Lines of faint light etched into being, joining into a rectangle, as the panel moved in, then it filled out from left to right as the panel slid aside.
The corridor beyond was silent, dimly lit by intermittent strip lighting along the ceiling, and seemed empty. Krystal, her ears taut, cautiously leaned out, looking left and right, and saw nothing. She stepped from the secret room, paused while Aeha closed it and secreted the remote in a crevice behind a broken light, then began creeping in the direction of the control room.
They retraced Krystal's route, step by noiseless, gradual step, with no signs of life, until they neared a crossroads, and the vixen's ears caught movement. She froze until the sounds faded, then stole to the corner, pressed against the wall, and peered round. Some way down the other corridor a securibot stood, facing away from them. It started to pivot, and she snapped her head back.
The fox listened intently, soon determining it was turning on the spot every ten seconds. After four of these ninety-degree shifts, she looked round the corner again, to see its back. She retreated before it moved its focus, debated internally for a moment, then conversed with Aeha, before finally, when she knew it was looking away, darting past it.
The pair were unsurprised to find another in the central passage, the routine of it identical. A third stood facing the main door far beyond it, and she ducked hastily back when a fourth emerged from the doors to the control room. On a hunch she risked peeking one more time, and the latter bot was gone.
She withdrew, slipped back past the original bot, and returned to the passage outside the secret room. "There must be one in all three main north-south corridors," she reasoned. "Plus one guarding the entrance and one patrolling the control room. Whoever's in charge clearly isn't taking any chances."
"The other four must be on the middle floor," Aeha concluded. "Most likely searching it, which hopefully means they're easier to avoid."
"One way to find out."
Krystal continued to the end of the passage, in a corner of the base, a rounded metal hatch set right where the outer walls met. She pulled it open, kept watch while Aeha flowed down through, then followed him in via rungs bolted to one of the walls of the space beneath, and closed the hatch behind her.
It was even more cramped than the secret room, barely big enough to fit them, lined with equipment, cables, conduits and access points, and illuminated by a sole flickering light source. A small, battered terminal clung to a beam, and a second hatch sat at the bottom of the rungs, to which Krystal set an ear.
Hearing nothing from below, she started lifting it, only to almost drop it at the sight of the top of a securibot's head. One tentacle helped her hold the hatch, while another assisted in stifling her shout of surprise, and together they waited, taut with tension, until the bot moved away, metallic footsteps swiftly fading.
They waited another full minute before opening the hatch all the way, Krystal looking out, then dropping down in a silent crouch. She helped Aeha descend, consulted her mental map while he settled on her back, drew a breath, and got moving, ears bolt upright, tail motionless, one hand holding the tentacle tip curled round her breast.
Halfway to the next hatch they came across a door that had formerly been sealed shut, but was now wide open, its lock blasted to slag. The pair darted back to cover, watched and debated, then after a minute of nothing but silence, Krystal stole forwards, up to the room and, tensed to bolt, took a look inside.
She found a mess of toppled and collapsed shelves, broken machines, and piles of shredded equipment, tools and metal. It was free of bots, so she stepped in for a closer look while Aeha kept watch outside. She crouched to sift through the detritus, trying to be careful but quick, an ear canted toward the door.
Something shifted. Her head snapped up, to see a tentacle rising out of the clutter. It was metallic, segmented, tarnished and whip-like, and lashed at her so fast she'd barely moved before it grabbed her ankle, a cold and biting pressure.
"ScAns deT...eCt inJury," a smoothly digital, highly distorted feminine voice intoned. "Cl...oseR eXamiNa...tion NeedeD. This wIll...not hurT."
Krystal clawed at it and hit it, with her hands and a lump of metal, but it didn't give at all. Throwing the lump at the root of the limb only hit aside some clutter, revealing part of a rounded body that was buckled with a fissure stretching across it, sparks flickering. A second tentacle latched onto her other ankle.
"No nEeD...to b...E afraID. This WILL not HURt."
The bot started dragging the vixen closer. She fought back, digging in her heels and bracing one arm while the other searched the rubble.
"I rePEaT, this...wilL not huRt. Please stoPRESIS...ting."
A third metal tentacle snared her tail, and she began to slip. Live ones caught hold of her haunches and shoulders, anchoring her. She threw a grateful look at Aeha, the rest of his limbs hooked onto the frame of the door, then resumed the urgent search with both hands.
"ScAns indiC...ate a way of CaL...MInG you down. You...havE nothInG to...FEAr. YOu..are Safe."
Krystal's head snapped round. A fourth metallic tentacle was moving deliberately up between her legs, which the ones gripping them pulled wider apart. She writhed, twisted, bucked and strained, muzzle gaping and ears flat back, while the tips of the tentacles Aeha had round her haunches tried to fend off the metal one and cover its target. Her gaze snapped to them, then she locked eyes with him.
A beat passed, then Aeha inclined his head and the covering tentacle tip gently tucked itself in, blocking the metal one as completely as possible; it stopped less than an inch away, flexing and twitching. A surge of relief flooded through her, and she physically slumped. One last mad scrabble in the rubble produced a sharp shard of metal, and she lunged forward to bury it in the fissure in the bot's body. Violent spasms wracked its tentacles, it sparked and it shuddered, and finally collapsed into stillness and silence.
Krystal levered the fissure open further, studied the bot's workings for a moment, frowning, then surged to her feet, grabbed Aeha and raced out of the room. Three corridors later she skidded to a halt by an open hatch barely visible in a shadowy corner; Aeha slipped through it, then she dropped down. The space below was dusty and almost completely dark, the only wavering trace of light filtering up from under the other hatch, also standing open.
Heavy footfalls approaching fast, Aeha made all haste to flow through the lower opening. Krystal hurried to follow, sliding feet first into cool, gently shifting water. She paused with only her head above it, taking a series of deep breaths as the footfalls passed right by the upper hatch, then silently sank under.
A tentacle rippling in front of her face drew her focus immediately to Aeha, who surged away with powerful, octopus-like mass thrusts of his tentacles. She followed, swimming strongly, gracefully along a surreal, hazy otherworld of a corridor lit only sparsely by the few lights whose cases were fully intact.
They curled around a corner in inky near-darkness, glided beneath a ghostly impression of a dented, buckled, immovable hatch in twilight, wove through a confusion of collapsed floor and ceiling panels cast in stark relief by the light directly above them, pushed past a fast-moving cross-current, and finally rose up through another hatch.
There was a working light in the space, and a lot of scorched, melted metal and wiring across the roof, the half-fused remains of the hatch in the midst of it. Krystal, her fur plastered to her frame, sat with her legs stretched out, and gathered Aeha to her, his head settling between her breasts, her muzzle on top of it, his tentacles cocooning her again.
Silence reigned for a long time as the two worked to calm themselves and each other, the vixen keeping an ear primed for noise from above, but catching only distant stirrings she couldn't begin to identify. It was Aeha who first stirred, some minutes later, if only to rest a tentacle tip against Krystal's cheek and stare at her in questioning concern.
Taking a focusing breath, she marshalled all the images and memories that had been swirling restlessly around her mind, and started working through them. The first was of a six year old her with her foot trapped by vines, unable to free herself, her distress palpable as she pulled and twisted and struggled to no avail. She was rescued by her parents.
This was followed by a series of her as a young teenager, one of half a dozen training together. Some were blue like her, some orange, some purple and some green, and all wore simple loincloths. She was tactile and friendly with all but a fellow, surly blue fox-girl, who used bands of energy to trap her, pinning her to or hanging her from things. The last time, she was tied to a tree in a forest, a gigantic centipede probing her mouth and ears. She was found and released by a green fox.
Finally, a recurrent nightmare, of the vixen strapped naked to a metal table surrounded by murmuring darkness, being probed by prehensile, robotic, tentacle-like limbs. It ended when one drove up between her legs, and she fell limp. On waking, she was held and comforted by Fox, or Peppy, or Katt, or two or three of them together.
Aeha took a moment to process it all, then squeezed her, and stroked her cheek. "That explains a great deal," he murmured. "But I still have a few questions."
"The medibot." Krystal nodded, rubbing his back. "Clearly inspired by you; almost certainly discarded because it never worked properly; and it never worked properly because it was built with Cerinian technology by someone with little to no understanding of Cerinian technology."
"Hence it misreading your mind."
"And nearly making my nightmare a reality." Her expression darkened briefly, then she sighed, shook her head and kissed the top of his. "But it didn't, and I owe you serious thanks for that."
"Thank you for trusting me so completely."
She smiled gently. "I knew I could." An ear flicked and her lips pursed in thought. "The question that's concerning me is how they got hold of Cerinian technology, mostly because I can only think of one answer."
"Other survivors."
"Exactly. There were three others on training flights when the planet was lost. I looked for them, but never found a trace, so presumed they were all..." Her voice hitched slightly. "Dead."
"So either Keyvas found one of their ships crashed and looted it, or..."
"Or he found one of them." Krystal frowned, her ears sinking. "Which raises some disturbing possibilities. Did you find the vault?"
"Not as such. Only a passage I think it's at the end of, but it may not be possible to reach it."
The vixen's eyes drifted, then focused on Aeha. "Show me."
His response was to slide from her lap and down through the hatch, a tentacle beckoning her to follow. Back underwater, they retraced their route to the current, then followed it until they reached a huge, ragged rent in the outer wall of the base. Aeha anchored himself to a beam exposed in the wall opposite, then gripped Krystal's hips as she took a look through, into a sucking, plunging, roaring void.
At a signal, he helped her pull back, then they hastened to the nearest air pocket, a deep dent in the ceiling they had to press tightly together to share, treading water.
"That breach wasn't made by the river," Krystal observed.
"Neither was the other one."
"Someone flooded this place on purpose."
"Any idea why?"
"Maybe. How much further?"
Aeha extended a tentacle, pointing out a pair of heavy doors wedged apart by dense metal rubble some twenty feet further along the outer wall. "There, but be aware I've found no air closer than this."
"Understood. Stay here."
Krystal drew breath, dived, and swam fast and direct to the doors; she examined the detritus from top to bottom, finding an opening near the floor she thought she could squeeze through; she very carefully eased her head into it, and found herself staring down a long, shadowy wreck of a corridor, the only light right at the end, starkly backlighting an arm reaching out from a slump of metal, hanging in the water.
The vixen extracted her head and returned to the air pocket. "It looks traversable," she reported, "but...there's a body."
Aeha shivered, huddling into himself a little. "I don't...think I can..."
Krystal squeezed him. "Then don't. I'll go alone."
He returned the clinch, with all his tentacles. "Be quick. There might not be any air in there, and this pocket won't last much longer."
"I will." She pressed foreheads, breathed hard, then dived again.
Back at the doors, she worked her way through the opening, thankful there were no sharp edges or jagged bits, but still needing to twist and wriggle and flex. Once finally through, she surged as fast as she could along the corridor, over, beneath and around toppled wall or collapsed ceiling panels and supports.
Halfway down she began to think something wasn't quite right about the arm. Three-quarters of the way there she realised that it wasn't an arm at all. She drew to a halt, limbs lightly flexing to hold her in place, in front of a long surgical-style glove caught on the rubble, filled out by the water, four small vials attached to it, tubes and filaments running through it, and sensors and a pair of needle points on the finger tips.
She recoiled from it, lip curling, then passed it with a wide berth. The immensely thick vault door stood slightly open a few feet past, and she hurried to curl beyond it. She entered an angular oval of a room lined with mostly destroyed equipment, remnants of it floating or trailing in the water, all barely lit by a single flickering light.
At the far end stood a large capsule, a terminal beside it, many tubes connecting to it, the door open. She swam across to it, pushing debris out of the way, and examined it thoroughly. Finding a sole, green hair, she held it in front of her face and stared at it until her chest began to tighten, then whirled and powered out of the vault.
In her haste she just brushed the glove aside, but it twisted round and under her, its fingers trailing across a breast as she passed it, one of the needles pricking her. Ignoring the sharp throbs that radiated from the contact, she forged on as the weight in her chest slowly grew. A pulse of relief washed through her when the throbs died, only to be followed by a jolt of shock when the weight on her chest started to increase.
As quickly as she reached the doors, her breasts had still expanded so much it was a serious struggle to fit herself through the opening. Aeha saw her head sticking out as she strained, and flew over to help her, his tentacles pushing, rolling and tugging until she finally tumbled out. He caught her as she tried to scramble to the air pocket, then half-guided, half-hauled her as fast as possible in the opposite direction.
They skewed around a corner, down another passage, then he pushed her up to an open hatch. She pulled herself through with help, and he followed, holding her and watching in deep concern as she gasped and shuddered, her chest heaving violently, all her limbs limp, her ears flat to her head, her eyes shut.
When she'd finally recovered enough Krystal pressed a long, hard kiss to Aeha's scalp, then directed a hard and incredulous stare down at her breasts, now three times as big, and far rounder and firmer.
"I can't believe," she husked, "I almost drowned because some crazed scientist had a breast-enlargement serum in their med-glove." Sensing deep confusion in her companion, she explained, then prodded one of hers. "Why? Why would they have it?"
Aeha nudged one. "They look...uncomfortable."
"I basically have a pair of big rubber balls glued to my chest." Loosing a sigh, Krystal shook her head. "It better not be permanent, or walking is gonna be an issue, let alone fighting, and I need to fight."
Aeha's gaze jumped back to her face. "You found something."
She nodded, her expression darkening. "They were holding someone here; experimenting on them." She held up the green hair, staring at it with anger burning in her eyes. "And I know who." They snapped up, to see no hatch in the ceiling, then down to Aeha. "We need to seek out a hatch we can use. We'll get our bearings, see where the bots are, and then..." Her hand clenched around the hair. "We take this base back."