Breaking Point

The following day went by uneventfully. After the initial excitement had died down, Ara realized that it was a bit early to pack her stuff -she didn't have much anyway- and decided to enjoy the quietness of the place instead. That was probably the most silent part of the city after all. Lunch and dinner went by smoothly, and her cooking lessons too. Mostly. Oberon did seem a bit... distant during the lecture, but maybe it was just her impression. Or he could be worried about the fact that, unlike hers, neither his eyes nor his hair had gone back to normal. She was rather concerned by that too, but she had no idea what to do about it. That, and maybe it was nothing serious. Night arrived slowly, and went by just as quickly.

The next day, something odd happened. When she went to the kitchen for breakfast, Oberon wasn't there. The food was cooked, served and all, but he wasn't around. By itself, that wasn't something she'd worry about. But the same thing happened again at lunch, and for some reason the fact bothered her. Later in the afternoon, while she was in her room wondering how to move Obe to her house without having to explain anything to the neighbours, she heard knocks against the door. Making sure Oberon's spare body was hidden, she went to open. Standing in front of her was, well, the only other person currently in the menagerie. But he was wearing his helmet. It wasn't that she had never seen him with it on, quite the contrary, but she was fairly sure he'd never put it on while at the menagerie, at least not while she was looking.

Without a word, he handed her a bag, turned around and walked away. She called him, but got no reply. She was... a bit angry, actually. That was just rude. She walked back inside, closing the door behind her, and opened the bag. Inside were the sheer top she had cut open herself under the rain and the dress which had been torn to pieces by that feathered snake with multiple arms. She was impressed he had managed to piece that one back together. To the point she kind of suspected he hadn't really and that one was simply the same model. Well, not like it really mattered even if that really were the case.

"... he could have at least waited for me to thank him" she pouted.

Ara had a solitary dinner as well. She thought about waiting for him at the elevator, he had to go through there sooner or later for work after all, but... maybe whatever was going on had nothing to do with her? Or rather, she didn't want to bother him for something which might actually be nothing serious? ... no, not even that. She just had this feeling that something wasn't quite right. What exactly, she didn't know.

The next day, during breakfast, Oberon was there. He still had his helmet on, but at least he had showed up.

"Good morning" she said as she sat down.

It took him a few seconds to reply, and even when he did he didn't quite greet her back.

"Are you ready for work this afternoon?" he asked instead.

"Well... yes"

"Very well. I'll wait for you at the elevator after lunch" he replied as he stood up and walked away.

"Hey, wait a mom... ent..." she said, but once again her words fell on deaf ears as Oberon closed the door behind him.

... was he just avoiding her? That was getting a bit on her nerves. As she had expected, he didnt' show up for lunch either. She took her sweet time eating then leisurely walked to the lift. She stared at him -he wasn't there when she walked by to go to the kitchen-, the helmet still covering his face as they silently stepped inside. As the elevator moved downward, she looked to the side and noticed that he was standing quite farther from her than usual.

"Did something happen?" she asked.

"Just a minor inconvenience. Nothing you have to worry about"

"Is that minor inconvenience the reason you're being so elusive?"

"... yes, I'd say it is"

"Would you mind telling me what it is then?"

"Yes, I would" he replied.

The doors opened and he quickly stepped out. Ara hurried after him, not really paying attention to what floor they were on, or what door they got through. The antechamber they walked into contained, aside from the usual furniture, two large freezers and a refrigerator.

"Did I do something to upset you? I don't think I did, but if I'm wrong please tell me" she said, not really trying to hide her irritation. Which was a bit... odd, in a way.

"No, this... I'm just having some personal problems, nothing more" he replied as he placed the chastity belt's key on the table "I'll go ahead while you get ready"

"Would you at least..." she began to say as she grabbed his arm, but as she did so she felt something weird underneath his shirt.

In response, Oberon grabbed her as well, almost reflexively, and for a few seconds they stood there like that before letting go of each other. Without a word, he entered the dome first. Left alone, Ara stared at her arm, where he had grasped her. His hand was... she felt like there was something weird about his hand, though his gloves prevented her from seeing his skin. That, and when she had gripped him she had suddenly felt warm. Her mind had almost fizzled out for a moment, and her heartbeat had suddenly increased. ... she had a bad feeling about that. A really bad feeling. She took off the chastity belt, readjusted her clothes a bit, left the key on the table and stepped through the door.

She found herself on a beach. The sun was high in the sky, the sea almost flat, the breeze barely perceptible against her. Since he hadn't talked about any sort of swimwear she guessed she wasn't going out into the water, though a part of her didn't really exclude the possibility that he hadn't told her about it because he was too busy avoiding her. That sounded excessive though, and she didn't really believe him to be that kind of person. ... not that she thought he was one to suddenly start avoiding someone without saying why even after being asked either.

There were a few bushes and trees quite far away on her left, on the side opposite to the sea -which, by all accounts, was actually just a lake- but she couldn't really see anything there. She looked at Oberon, who was sitting a bit further ahead, his gaze... somewhere on the sand. She really couldn't tell with his face hidden.

"... what should I do now?" she asked.

"Take a walk on the beach, that should be enough to attract this guest"

That sounded simple enough. She wondered about taking off her shoes, and soon after did just that. She began wandering around barefooted, her footwear in her hands, staying far enough from the water to avoid getting wet. At one point she looked back. Oberon hadn't moved an inch, still sitting in the same spot, and since she didn't want to go too far away from him she turned around and began walking in circles. Then she stopped for a moment.

The sun was warm. Too warm, actually. She took off her coat, and then stared at her pantyhose. Walking on the beach with that on wasn't exactly comfortable, but she kept it on anyway because her skirt was short and there wasn't much else covering her privates, but the nylon was making her legs burn. It was a wonder how she hadn't already started sweating -that, or the pantyhose had just absorbed it-, but it was getting unbearable. After a minute or so of fidgeting with her feet, she gave up and removed the pantyhose. What little breeze there was felt pleasantly cold on her legs. Now barefooted for real, she looked around for something to drop her clothes on since carrying all of that around was somewhat bothersome. But she stopped on her tracks before she could find a good spot.

There was something in front of her. She saw something moving right underneath the sand for a brief moment. She barely had time to spot its eyes before the creature emerged completely, barely a couple of meters away from her.

The first thing she thought of upon seeing it was a centipede, though its body and all of its limbs were covered by a sturdy-looking, orange shell which reminded her of a crab. Its belly wasn't really exposed, but the carapace did look thinner there. The end of each of its legs, of which there probably were at least four dozens, was oddly split in three, with each ending in an oddly blunt-looking claw. On top of that, it had three pairs of limbs that clearly weren't legs protunding from its back. Placed at regular intervals from each other but all still rather close to the head when compared to its body length, they were probably longer than the legs, though Ara wasn't sure as unlike those they were folded on themselves, and each ended with a large chela. Its body, while nowhere near as massive as that of the caterpillar, was still large enough for her to possibly lie down on its flat side. Well, mostly flat, since aside from its belly the shell was fairly irregular and knobby. The centipede didn't seem to have forcipules at least, which meant it wasn't venomous. ... probably. She wasn't exactly an expert in biology and such.

The creature moved its head around a bit as it stared at her, its folded arms extending a bit, their joints bending in rather... unusual ways. The centipede then dashed forward, almost slamming itself against her, two of its spincers closing around her arms just below her wrists while two other grasped her near the ankles. Yelping a little as her back hit the sand, her coat, pantyhose and shoes all flying away as she lost her grip on them, she found herself lying on the beach, the centipede's body staying a bit above her, its weight resting on only a few of its numerous legs as the others loomed in the air next to her. She felt a bit of pain and saw a few drops of blood falling from her skin where the pinchers were holding her, even though she wasn't feeling much pressure on her flesh. When her gaze moved back to the creature's face, two large featherlike antennae were there. That almost spooked her, as she had no idea where they could have been hidden up until that moment.

The large bug then began to move them rather violently against her body -thankfully those weren't covered by its shell- probably to examine her or something like that. They felt a bit ticklish against her neck, and at one point a small bit of them nearly slipped into her mouth, but aside from that it wasn't as uncomfortable as it looked like. Soon after the two antennae began to focus on her breasts and between her legs, and while that didn't really stimulate her it still was kind of embarassing. Then it moved them back up and rested its two remaining free arms against her belly. At the same time, a few smaller limbs moved from underneath its belly, previously perfectly hidden along the shell. They each ended with a few small claws, though those looked quite blunt too.

The sheer amount of limbs looming around her was making Ara nervous, not that the situation itself helped her anyway in that regard. The creature began to... tap on her body, somewhat softly but quickly, rhythmically almost, with its claws. That felt quite awkward and a tiny bit uncomfortable, at least at first, but nothing more. The tapping slowly moved to her sides, which made her squirm a bit, then slowly creeped downward, reaching her hips, her thighs, and eventually even her feet, before finally stopping. The whole time, the creature's gaze had remained on her face. Not really sure what to think of its actions, Ara just stood still -not that she could do much else anyway- and wondered what would have happened next.

As if to answer that question, the centipede placed several of its appendages all over her skirt and began to push it up, slowly and somewhat awkwardly but steadily. Ara blushed a bit but said nothing, maybe because she was used to it, maybe for some other reason. Then the creature did the same with her dress. After having rolled it up all the way to her breasts, however, it struggled for a while against them, eventually resorting to sliding it down rather than pulling it further up as the shirt was rather tight and the centipede probably didn't know how to remove it. It then began to tinker with her bra, managing to push it up in a relatively short time, leaving her chest bare. Ara's cheeks turned a bit redder than before, and the centipede quickly tapped its fingers over her exposed breasts again, as if to make sure there weren't other layers to peel off. At last, it moved back down to her legs.

Ara made sure her breathing was regular as the centipede finally moved its gaze away from her face, its arms still holding her in place as it examined her now half naked body. Having brought its antennae back down, they each split in two before slowly rubbing against her body. The creature's two free chelae then closed on her breasts, sort of groping her. She saw a few drops of blood coming off her skin from there as well, but for one reason or another she pretty much didn't feel any pain. Then a few of the centipede's legs moved closer to her exposed entrance. They began to tap on her skin, namely on her thighs and belly, rather softly but quickly as they slowly approached her privates. Ara found that surprisingly... arousing. A bit ticklish too, but not that much. That said, she definitively hadn't seen coming what happened next, which is to say the tapping continued even after the creature's sort-of fingers reached her entrance. The odd, unexpected and not too weak stimulation continued for a bit longer than one might have expected, getting her more and more flustered.

She struggled a bit against the centipede's limbs holding her in place, realizing that the pain from its pinchers had faded, when the creature moved its antennae down. The way it moved them around actually made her think of something other than what they supposedly were. Especially when she felt the tip of two of them right against her entrance, which by then had gotten... reasonably damp. The creature lifted two more legs from the ground and began to tap on her breasts with those right before sliding its antennae inside of her. Ara had braced for that, but the combination of unusual foreplay and large amount of bumps on the featherlike feelers managed to make her let out a weak moan anyway. What she hadn't prepared for was the antennae's turning around on themselves as they began to move around, pushing against her inner walls, scratching pretty much her whole inside almost all at the same time simply because of how many bumps were on them.

Trying to keep her voice down while at the same time kind of savoring the feeling, the creature raised even more legs, dozens of its pointless claws tapping quickly and repeatedly on her arms, on her legs, on her sides, on her belly, almost everywhere. While not really unpleasant, the feeling did kind of take her out of it, making it easier to handle the pleasure while not actually making it less intense. Because of that, her clit suddenly being reached by the relentless motions of the centipede's fingers caught her completely by surprise. She let out a surprised shriek as the sudden, additional pleasure hit her, adding up to the one she was feeling from within.

Building off each other, the stimulations began to pile up, though... maybe it was just an impression, but she felt like the centipede's tapping was kind of changing. As if its fingers began to trace an ever so short line over her skin before pulling back. It was sort of ticklish. But maybe it was just her impression. With nothing else to really do, she tried to focus on the pleasure -the alternative suddenly seemed to be worse- and on keeping her voice down, until a soft laugh escaped her.

A chill ran down her spine. No, she had probably imagined it. She had to. The creature was still tapping over her entrance, frequently poking her clit, while two of its antennae were still moving around inside of her, though the sudden laugh made an unexpected amount of the built-up pleasure fade away. She regulated her breath again, something not overly simple in her current situation, and tried again to focus. ... it was hard. Another laugh was slowly creeping its way up her throat, every motion of the centipede's fingers over her skin pulling her voice out, bit by bit. Her expression began to twist as she tried to resist, but eventually her mouth gave way to another, brief but clearly audible laughter.

She shut her mouth as quickly as she could, a few drops of sweat starting to run along her forehead. She couldn't really lie to herself anymore. She was being tickled. Her face grew pale as she realized that the centipede's motions were slowly going from tapping to scratching. On her sides too, and she was ticklish there. To make things worse, she felt the creature's other antennae sliding inside of her, sending a few jolts of pleasure through her body, jolts quickly dampened by the tickling. She forced her mouth shut to hold her voice in -wether that would have been a moan or a laugh, she wasn't sure- as she struggled against the centipede's arms holding her down. Not out of instinct but out of... desperation might be too strong of a word, but it wouldn't be too far off either. She didn't have much experience with being tickled, but still enough to know she couldn't handle it.

As she squirmed around with more and more strength, her mouth slowly but surely curved into an unwilling smile. The creature's legs were focused mostly at her sides at the moment, and because of that she kept moving her waist as much as she could in an attempt to escape its touch, though with her wrists and ankles firmly held in place she couldn't quite do much. And when the centipede moved its two last pinchers from her breasts to her sides, further pinning her down, her last faint hope of escaping from that situation faded.

The creature was still scraping her insides with its feathered antennae, and the tapping over her entrance hadn't stopped either. Actually, that had turned into more of a scratching as well, resulting in a more intense stimulation, but the pleasure couldn't build up. Truth be told, she didn't really know if she was particularly ticklish or if it was normal to react that way as she had never talked with anyone about it, but the tickling made her arousal fade, the pleasant feelings from her privates dissipating too quickly to be able to get her anywhere. But the creature kept stimulating her anyway. It was beyond frustrating. The only bright side was that it kind of worked both ways, with the actually sexual stimulation distracting her a bit from the tickling, albeith it was much more effective the other way around.

Soon after, Ara could no longer fully hold her voice back. Soft laughs began to escape from her lips, growing slowly but steadily louder and more frequent. There was an occasional moan mixed in, but all the scraping against her sweet spots was doing at that point was just keeping her aroused while not getting her off. To make things worse, the creature was using more and more of its limbs to tickle her. She had almost stopped squirming to focus on dealing with the stimulation, but upon realizing that the centipede would have soon reached her armpits and soles, panic took over her. It wasn't putting that much strength into the tickling, which was the whole reason Ara had managed to hold out so well -relatively- up to that point, but there was no way she could handle being tickled in all those spots at once. She began to struggle violently, and at first she did manage to move a bit, probably because the centipede hand't expected it, but her escape attempt quickly died as the creature's limbs strengthened their grasp on her and pushed her down against the sand again.

She considered biting her lips, and for a moment she almost did so, but then feared that she might accidentally put too much force into her jaw as a reaction to the tickling and decided it was better not to risk that. Then, the centipede reached her other ticklish spots as she cursed herself for having taken her shoes off. Maybe the pantyhose could have protected her feet a bit too? ... probably not.

Ara managed to hold on for only a few seconds before bursting out laughing, her voice filling the air as she squirmed uncontrollably against the creature's pinchers. While it was still running its antennae around inside of her, the feeling was completely lost in the laughters, her mind too busy dealing with that to even process the pleasure. She tried to focus on something, anything else to distract herself, but to no avail, each single motion of the centipede's limbs bringing her mind back to the cruel situation she was in. Her eyes began to tear up as she trashed around so much it was a mystery how she wasn't hurting herself against the centipede's pointed pinchers. Panic gave way to confusion as the overwhelming feeling made her more and more light-headed, her lungs getting less and less air in as she was unable to stop herself from laughing, sweat running down her skin. Eventually -and quite quickly, truth be told- she got to the point where her lungs were almost empty, and then she heard something.

She had no idea what that sound was, but it made the centipede come to a sudden stop. She took the chance to catch her breath, and just when the creature was about to start again the sound filled the air again. She turned her head around and saw Oberon with an oddly shaped whistle in hand, his helmet lifted just enough to leave his mouth exposed.

"T... thanks..." she said, her breath still ragged. Though he was standing quite far and her voice was rather low, so she wasn't even sure he understood her.

He placed the whistle against his lips and blowed once again.

"Using it a fourth time isn't advisable" he said, loudly enough for her to hear him "It might react violently, which would be... troublesome, given the current situation"

"I... see..." she replied, her face doing a terrible job at hiding her disappointment.

While her lungs managed to take in quite a lot of precious air, she barely had time to mentally prepare herself when the centipede started tickling her again. Unlike before, she completely failed to stop herself from laughing, her loud voice bursting out from her throat as she squirmed around, not because she wanted to but because her body responded that way to the stimulation. Soon after, tears began falling from her eyes again. At one point, however, she realized that the centipede had moved away from her armpits. Why, she didn't know, and at least at the moment she also couldn't care less, but soon after her soles found themselves relieved of the stimulation as well. Ara was still laughing, but the centipede was tickling her less and less, and slowly she managed to regain some of her composure, not much but still a bit.

Eventually, it fully stopped. Grateful for that to finally be over, Ara tried to regulate her breathing a bit, her chest moving up and down irregularly with every ragged breath she took. Then, a quick motion of the creature's antennae reminded her that those were still inside of her, something she honestly had completely forgotten about. Her previous arousal had completely died down, but upon feeling the appendages scratch against her inner walls she realized that she was still wet. With the tickling gone, her excitement grew quickly, unproportionally to the actual stimulation she was receiving, but she managed to keep her voice down this time. Her muscles began to tense up as warmth spred through her body, as if all the pleasure she thought had disappeared suddenly came back out from hiding. It happened too suddenly, and Ara barely had time to bite down on her lips before being brought over the edge.

... or so she thought. Not that she didn't have an orgasm, but... her lips didn't hurt. Lacking the trigger she needed, the pleasure simply reverberated within her without getting quite there, frustration quickly kicking in. Confused, she bit her lips again. She was sure her teeth were digging into her flesh, maybe even a tad too strongly, but... it wasn't painful. No, that didn't make sense. Maybe her lips had just gone numb somehow? That... didn't quite make sense either. So she tried something else, which is to say, digging her nails into her palms. Nothing. She could feel her fingernails pushing against her flesh, maybe even enough to spill a few drops of blood, but there was no pain. Confused and somewhat frantic as the centipede continued to move its antennae around within her, another orgasm quickly approaching, she tried to bang her head against the ground, but the only thing she gained from that was a brief moment of disorientation and quite a lot of sand on her hair. Then the pleasure piled up past the breaching point, her muscles tensing up but, once again, with not even a tiny bit of pain she couldn't really reach her climax, and the feeling began to slowly fade before it could reach its true apex.

Ara groaned, inadvertently loudly too. She managed to keep her complaints inside her head. The only explanation that came to her mind was that the centipede had -somehow, somewhen and for some reason- injected her with some sort of painkiller. Thinking about it, it didn't hurt when the creature closed its last set of pinchers on her. That, and the bleeding, so... did its chelae inject it into her? She struggled once more against the creature, once more to no avail, unable to get away from the constant stimulation that was currently doing nothing but bringing her ever increasing amounts of frustration. Her third almost climax shook her body as unsatisfyingly as the previous two, and the next one came and went by in the same fashion.

The worst part was probably that she was still getting oversensitive from all of that, her privates feeling every motion with more intensity than the previous one. She reflexively bit her lips again, with enough force to make herself bleed, and while an oh-so faint jolt of pain briefly raced to her brain, it was both too little and for too short a time to help her, on the contrary, it only made her squirm even harder against the pinchers. She was so caught up in the moment -arguably a terrible one, but definitively one intense enough to make her completely focus on it- that she hadn't even realized that the centipede was now holding something with four or so of its legs. It was a sort of ball made of a material that loosely resembled a spider's web.

The creature unceremoniously dropped the object over her belly, then pulled its antennae out of her, sending a last wave of pleasure running through her system before releasing her limbs. It then took a quick look at the surroundings before simply going away, diving back underneath the sand and disappearing. Ara, on her part, remained lying on the sand for a while. Probably a short one, but she wasn't exactly sure. She forced her hands to stay still and not touch herself, both because she was way too sensitive at the moment and because it would have only made things worse as long as the painkiller was still in her body. Assuming it was really a painkiller and not something else entirely. Then she realized that her fox ears had come back out, and she had a tail resting on the sand next to her. She took several slow, deep breaths, then grabbed the somewhat sticky ball resting on her belly. She looked at it for a bit, not really sure what it was, then weakly tossed it aside before slowly getting up and readjusting her clothes. They were a bit roughed up but still intact, which was nice. She walked up to her shoes, coat and pantyhose, grabbed them, then turned around.

Oberon was now standing, but aside from that he hadn't moved an inch from where he had been the whole time. Though, upon seeing her walking up to him, he simply turned his back to her and headed to the door. Ara's fur stood up. She hurried after him, almost running, and got to the antechamber before he could close the door behind him.

"Listen here" she said as she dropped her shoes, her voice louder than usual, her face still red "Why... " she began saying, then realized that she wasn't sure what exactly she wanted to bring up "... why didn't you tell me about the painkiller?" she then asked.

Oberon, who had put a few steps between the two of them, turned around from the other side of the table.

... she was right. Why hadn't he told her? No, that wasn't the right question. He said nothing because he had forgotten. The point was: how could he have forgotten that? It was one of the things they harvested from that centipede in the first place, he was fully aware of it producing such a substance. Yet it had completely slipped his mind.

"I forgot" he replied.

"You forgot?!" Ara shouted back, her fox ears standing right up.

He immediatly realized that he should have said something different. It wasn't normal for him to forget something like that, and Ara knew that too. Maybe she thought he was lying. He wasn't thinking straight. He needed to get away, quickly. But she acted quicker, and grabbed him before he could get to the door.

"What's up with you?! You've been acting weird since..." she began shouting, but then stopped suddenly.

Her nose had caught something. A smell. No, a scent. It was faint, but also alluring. It was coming from... him. She placed her hands over his helmet and began to pull it up. Oberon shoved her away, putting even too much strength into it, but too late. Ara got pushed way back, his helmet in her hands. Her coat and pantyhose, which were resting on her arms up until then, were sent flying.

Oberon had a pair of fox ears coming out from his head. They looked just like hers, the only real difference being that they were black instead of white. His eyes were still blue, his pupils vertical. And there was... fur on his face. And whiskers coming out from his cheeks. Time seemed to freeze for just a moment. Then the sound of glass cracking suddenly filled the room. The bottle with Ara's scent had been forgotten in her coat, and when he pushed her back the perfume ended up flying from the pocket it was in and landing on the floor. The glass shattered upon impact, its content filling the room far too quickly, her concentrated scent hitting his nostrils with all of its alluring sweetness. Oberon nearly fell to his knees as black tails began to grow from his lower back, the fur on his skin growing thicker, his face becoming a bit... longer.

He raised his gaze, placing it over Ara. His eyes met hers, which were arguably even more confused that his.

Something inside of him snapped.

Thank you for reading.

And, once again, I apologize for how long this took to come out.