New Habits Die Hard

The next day, at breakfast, Ara found Oberon with a tail which she really shoudln't have found as good-looking as she did. For a moment she thought about asking him how that felt, but considering that she knew perfectly well what having a tail -more than one even- was like, she decided not to, if only to not come off as sarcastic. Oberon himself didn't seem to act all that differently, except for the fact that he stood on average two steps farther away than usual. That, and Ara could smell a somewhat alluring scent coming from him. It was faint though, enough for her to barely be able to notice it.

"You know" he said as he raised his gaze from the book he was reading "Your eyes changed color"

"T-they did?" she asked, a bit startled.

Not really because of what he said, but rather because the question came while she was busy trying to subtly take in his scent from across the table. How exactly, that's up to debate. She stopped doing that anyway, for a couple of different reasons.

"How are you feeling?"

"... I really think I should be the one asking that question"

"I'd say... just to be sure, don't touch me directly, unless you want to do that. Or at least warn me beforehand"

"O-ok... what should I do today?" she asked then to change the subject "I picked up all the feathers I could find yesterday"

"There is a guest we should check up on, though I'd strongly advise against you going there alone. Unless you've already read the chapter about it"

"I... I didn't"

I didn't even say which guest we are talking about though

"... or we can just play chess"

"Oh, that'd be really nic- wait, aren't I supposed to have actual work hours now?"

"That's more of a formality. I can run the menagerie by myself so, while your help is definitively appreciated, I don't really need you to work yourself to the bone, or much at all actually. At least not right away"

"I... see..." she replied, feeling somewhat unnedeed.

There is one kind of job I couldn't perform myself, but bringing that up again would probably be a bad idea he thought silently.

Their chess game lasted the whole day. And more actually, as by the time she went to sleep the match was still going, though that was in good part due to the fact that, for a certain reason, they were both having a somewhat harder time than usual concentrating on the game, each move consequently taking them more time, especially for him. Since it'd been a while, Ara took Obe out from his hideout -if it could be called that- and kept him next to her as she slept, waking up in the morning with her arms folded around him. She cuddled with him for a while, her hair partially changing color as she did so, though it went back to its usual black when she eventually got up. When, not long after, she walked to the kitchen, her nose was overwhelmed by a perfume she didn't recognize.

"I-is it that bad?" she asked, nearly coughing.

"I might have overdone it a bit" Oberon replied as his gaze turned to an half-empty vial lying on the table "But your scent is getting... harder to ignore"

As fully aware of what he meant as Ara was, she still couldn't help but take a quick sniff at herself, though she couldn't smell anything. Not through the thick layer of perfume filling the room, at least, perfume which also covered his own scent. Breakfast went by almost the same as usual, the main difference being that Oberon was standing around two more steps further away. She wondered if he'd eventually avoid being in the same room as her if they kept that up long enough.

"What's the plan for today then?"

"I have some documents to sort. As for you, have you read anything yet?"

"I... I could use a magnifier for that, honestly. My eyes hurt after just a single page..."

Well, he couldn't really blame her for that. His eyes had an in-built zooming function, but the same didn't really apply to... anyone that didn't have artificial eyes.

"There should be one lying around somewhere in the storage room" he replied as he placed a key on the kitchen counter "It's the locked door in the octagonal room, you can pick it up yourself"

"Sure"

Not long after, Oberon left. Ara cleaned up the kitchen, grabbed the key and headed to the room beneath Eve's private lodging, finding the place still buried in dozens of pillars of papers. She wondered if those were the documents Oberon had to sort, but he didn't seem to be around so maybe that wasn't the case. She headed downstairs, and then realized that she didn't really remember which door was the right one, with all four of them being identical. Well, the one she was looking for should have been locked, so she randomly picked one and tried to open it. On the other side was the room she had woken up in after that little incident under the rain. Quickly closing the door to avoid having her mind linger on that for too long, she tried another one, which didn't budge. Taking the key from her pocket, she unlocked the door and entered the storage room.

The place was somewhat smaller than she had expected. She could almost touch the ceiling with her fingers if she tried, and the walls weren't too far apart from each other. Shelves filled the place, but they all were only half-full, at most. There was a bit of everything there. As she walked she spotted ropes, bandages, pens, books, some electronic instruments she didn't recognize, a sword, chains, clothes hangers, dresses, playing cards and more. What surprised her the most, however, was the fact that it all seemed to have been thrown there without any real order. She quickly reached the end of the room, only to notice a staircase going down. The lower floor turned out to be pretty much more of the same as the upper one. As for the magnifying glass she was looking for, she had to reach the third level before actually finding one.

The stairs kept going down, but she decided to head back to her room instead. Along the way, however, her gaze fell on a carton box still taped shut, with a thin layer of dust on it. She looked around for something to rip the scotch with and opened the box, only to slam it shut right after.

W-why is something like this here... actually, I guess I might have an idea or two... she thought, recalling how Eve... treated her right before and in the early days of the fair.

She stared at the box for a short while, then decided to take that back to her room too, together with another thing she had seen on her way down. She grabbed everything and left, locking the door behind her and making a brief stop at the kitchen to drop the key on the table before walking back to her room. There she sat down, took a moment -quite a few, actually- to wonder if she shouldn't actually put the box back where she found it, then decided to just hide it under the bed instead, at least for the time being.

Then she pulled out the manual Oberon had given her and started reading. While she wasn't exactly as interested in what was written there as someone like Rena would have been, she didn't really find the subject to be all that boring either and, also because she didn't have much else to do, she ended up spending the whole day going through the pages, lunch and dinner aside. The chess match wasn't over yet, but since Oberon didn't mention it once through the day she guessed he wanted to continue the game when he could better handle her sitting in front of him. Night came, but unlike usual, Ara had simply lied on her bed without falling asleep, a few words echoing in her mind. She got up, got dressed, grabbed a small lantern which she had found in the storage room then headed to the elevator.

Waiting for the doors to open made her more nervous than she had expected, maybe because she didn't know where Oberon was, but as it turned out he wasn't inside when she had pushed the button. Stepping inside, Ara headed down to the eighth floor, and from there to the third room. In the antechamber she found the sewing machine active and working, though she couldn't tell exactly what it was sewing. Well, the pile of feathers she had assembled seemed to have lost some mass and a couple of rolls of threads were missing, so it's not like she had no idea what was being stitched together. She stared at the door leading to the dome, remaining still in front of it for a while.

Should I really do this?

Maybe she should have brought her spear with her? No, that would have probably been a bad idea. The general section of the manual did mention that the guests of the menagerie were oddly good at recognizing weapons, so bringing one inside would have probably meant presenting herself as a threat. That, and Oberon said the owl was especially harmless, so she shouldn't have needed it either way. Probably. Asking herself why she hadn't bothered reading the part of the book which talked about said owl in the first place, she took a step forward. She had a vague feeling that going through with it would have locked her on a... most peculiar path of life, but she told herself that she was just overthinking it. After all, there was no reason why that coulnd't simply be a one-off thing. No need to make it an habit.

Assuming that wasn't what it was already.

At last, Ara entered the dome. She turned the small electric lantern on before closing the door behind her. It was dark. The moon was far from full, and the stars, as pretty as they were, couldn't really be considered a source of light. She raised the plain, albeith somewhat elegant, lantern in front of her and started walking, almost sure about where she was going. She quickly she reached a spot mostly devoid of threes, and from there located the few massive ones that characterized that dome, black spots against the starry sky. If her memory wasn't lying, the one where she had found the nest was the one north-east from her position. Having confirmed where her destination was, she started walking. There weren't a lot of sounds coming from the forest, if any at all, and partially because it was night, that made her footsteeps seem louder than usual.

Just as she began to wonder if she had strayed from the path she had traced in her mind, the shadow of the exceptionally large appeared. When looking at it from up close, its size was enough to cover the sky. She walked around the trunk and found the same ladder, confirming to herself that she had gotten the place right. She climbed upstairs and then along the branches, and while she nearly fell down when a leaf slipped to the side upon her placing her foot on it, she managed to arrive at the nest in a rather short time. The owl, however, was nowhere to be seen. That said, the nest was too large and there wasn't enough space to walk around it so, partially out of curiosity as well, Ara decided to try and climb it instead.

She tried to pull a few branches down a bit to find a solid enough spot, then pulled with a bit more strength to make sure she wouldn't bring down the whole nest with her weight, then finally climbed up, though doing so while having the lantern still in hand proved to be somewhat awkward. When she managed to get to the top, the nest turned out to be bigger than she had expected, measuring at least four meters in length. She wondered about crossing it and seeing how far up the branch reached, but ultimately decided not to. She climbed back down instead and sat down, waiting. A while later -an hour at most if she had to guess- a noise suddenly reached her hears. Recognozing the sound of wings flapping, she turned around as she lifted the lantern, and there to greet her was an owl, standing on the edge of its nest.

It was hard to tell since it was hunched down to stare at her, but by the look of it the bird was at least close to twice Ara's height. The creature tilted its head quickly to one side then to the other, its bright yellow eyes fixed on her.

"Uh... h-hi... ?"

The owl then bent down even more and picked her up by her coat, using its beak, before lowering her into the nest. She was getting a bit nervous. The creature then started walking in circles over the edge of its nest, its gaze always fixed on her. He kept doing that for a while, before eventually jumping down next to her, slowly pushing itself against her.

It's so soft...

Without even moving, Ara found herself half immerged in its plumage. The feathers were cold but not chilly, and made her feel like a pillow was embracing her. The owl then flapped its wings a couple of times -she didn't notice it, but it actually had two pairs of wings- and bent to the side. Its head now much lower, he rubbed it against Ara a couple of times, gently, and she found herself scratching its chin -or what she guessed was its chin, at least- as if it was some sort of cat. Which felt kind of wrong, in retrospection, but the bird didn't seem to mind. The creature then brought its head back up and walked around her with quick but tiny steps, its legs hidden from sight by its long plumage. It was a rather funny sight, to her at least. It poking at her with its beak was a bit less funny, but it didn't put much force into it so it wasn't too bad either.

Then, suddenly, the owl turned around and... Ara wasn't sure, but by the sounds it was making and by the way it was moving its head... it wasn't puking, was it? The creature then turned back around, although somewhat awkwardly. Which, as it turned out, was because it had done so by jumping on one leg, the other one raised, turned in a way that didn't look exactly uncomfortable. It was using it as a sort of make-do hand, or at least that seemed to be the case. Ara's gaze fell on its talons, as long and sharp as one would expect them to be for a bird of prey of that size. Her eyes, however, quickly moved from those to something else, something resting on its sole. Assuming it could be called a sole.

Said thing was a sort of... ball, completely covered in short feathers. And while it was surprisingly... dry, there still was some drool on it. Ara stared at it for a few moments, then moved her gaze to the owl's large eyes, wide open and fixed on her. Seeing that she wasn't moving, it pushed its leg against her, just enough to bump against her softly a couple of times.

"... so... what is this again?" she asked noone as she hesitantly grabbed the featherball, which was much warmer than she had expected.

The owl brought its leg back down, the limb disappearing again underneath the plumage, then patted her on the head with its wing. Ara started to wonder if it saw her as a chick or something like that. The owl then rubbed itself against her a few more times before jumping back to the edge of the nest and taking flight, disappearing in the night.

"... this was... not quite what I had in mind..." she commented, somewhat disheartened.

Then the thing between her hands pulsed. Startled, she almost dropped it, but she managed to stop herself from letting go of it. She could feel it moving between her fingers, though she wasn't quite sure how. Then something extended from the ball. Wether that was a tentacle or a more conventional limb, she couldn't really tell.

"... uh... hi... again?"

The feathery thing then suddenly slid over her skin, wrapping around her arms as it moved inside the large sleeve of her coat, quickly reaching her chest. She managed to grasp it as it was crawling in circles around her torso -though the feathers rubbing against her like that made for quite the pleasant feeling- but what little saliva was left on it made it surprisingly slippery and the no-longer-a-ball thing slipped through her fingers. Having made its way to her waist, it quickly ran in circles over it a few times, which forced Ara to hold in a laugh, before managing to slide underneath her shirt. Then, finally, it stopped moving. Perplexed, the girl pulled up her clothing to get a better look at that.

The first thing that came to her mind was a weird, cylindrical, feathery belt of some sort. She poked it a few times with her fingers. There were no responses at first, but then two protuberances extended from it, sliding underneath her skirt and pantyhose, wrapping right at the base of her thighs. It felt oddly nice, in both a good way and a bad one.

"So... how do I take this o-kyahh?!"

She pretty much shrieked when another appendage slid inside her rear, completely unannounced, and started to slowly but steadily move around. Ara moved her hands down to try and take that thing off, whatever exactly it might have been, but then stopped. She limb -if that's what it was- that had slid inside her wasn't really any longer than a finger, nor was it any thicker, and it wasn't squirming around that much either. It felt... a bit weird, but also rather nice overall. Considering why she had gone there in the first place, that wasn't quite what she had expected, but it was better than nothing at the very least.

Rationalizing what she was thinking, her cheeks turned red a bit. Not enough to make her change her mind though.

So she sat down, although a bit hesitantly maybe. Then she got right back up and looked for a more comfortable spot to sit on. When she eventually found it she took a couple of deep breaths. Doing that out in the open was... embarassing to say the least, but then again that wasn't really outside, it was just a fancy looking room. A really fancy room, she told herself. Which was true, after all. So it should have been fine.

She brought her hand down, sliding it underneath her pantyhose and sneaking it into her underwear, over her entrance, which was... reasonably wet. She began to slowly massage herself, gently rubbing her privates, taking her time. She slid an hand underneath her shirt and closed her fingers around her breast, her index slowly moving inside her in the meanwhile. She began to rub her nipple a bit as she searched around for the right spot, finding it fairly quickly. Her face grew redder, but the combination of being in full control -for once- and going slowly allowed her to keep her breaths pretty regular and composed. The protuberance in her rear kept moving around, the feeling getting more pleasant as time went on. Eventually she pushed more fingers inside herself as she rubbed her inner walls, her thumb occasionally poking gently at her clit while her other hand continued to fondle her chest. The pleasure from her own hands combined with the one from her other orifice, the two building up on each other, with a somewhat stingy prickly feeling eventually spreading though her rear, until Ara brought her teeth down on her lips, spilling a single drop of blood, her back arching slightly, her fingers still moving -if ever so slightly- to make her climax last just a bit longer, the feeling echoing within her for a few seconds.

Her tender orgasm began to abate, but she kept touching herself for a bit more, causing the gentle pleasure to linger for a bit more in her body, aided by the stimulation in her rear.

That was... refreshing... she thought, as it really had been a while since she last masturbated in a so relaxed manner.

Then she looked at the hand she had just pulled out from her panties.

"... maybe I should have brought something to wipe myself with..."

It's not like it was drenching, but she was definitively going to leave anything she touched damp, at least. Then she got up and stared at the thing around her waist again.

"Alright, this doesn't feel bad" she said, her face still red "But how do I take it off... ?"

... I guess I've... grown accustomed to this sort of things by now. ... ? she wondered as she found herself quite enjoying the soft stings she was feeling in her rear every now and then. Though they were also worrying her a bit.

Telling herself again that she really should have red at least the chapter about that owl before walking inside on her own, she ran her hands over the... creature? She couldn't really find anything resembling... well, anything on it. No eyes, no mouth, no ears, nothing. Just a mass of flesh covered in feathers, with a few tentacular limbs growing on it. She thought about trying to pull it off by force, but that didn't seem like that great of an idea. Granted, she could just ask Oberon, but she kind of didn't really want him to find out she was doing that. Not so soon after no longer having to, at least. And if she managed to get that thing off quickly enough, her hair -which had for the most part changed color already- should have turned back to normal quickly enough. Or maybe she could just say they were due to Oberon's own changes just like her eye color.

Regardless, Ara decided to head back to her room and see if there was anything concerning that particular situation written in the manual. Climbing back up the nest was a bit... funny with that thing still moving around in her rear, though not really uncomfortable. She started walking, lantern in hand, getting off the tree, and as she traveled through the glade she occasionally casted a quick glance at the sky. Somewhere along the way, however, she stopped, the constant, mild -if not downright gentle- stimulation kind of getting her in the mood again.

... I-I can do that later she told herself as she started walking again, her mind briefly going back to the box she had hidden under her bed.

Just as she reached the door, however, a sound she had already heard that night interrupted her. She turned around to see the owl standing behind her, its large eyes locked on her.

"... ehm... h-hello there?"

It's... not going to drag me back to its nest, is it?

The bird approached her with tiny steps, waddling. Had it been smaller, the sight would have been adorable. Given its size, however, Ara merely found it cute. The animal then walked around her, so she turned around to keep facing it. The owl stopped as she did so, then tried going the other way, with the girl still turning around to face him. The scene repeated itself for a few times, before the owl eventually opened its wings and placed them next to her shoulders. He then removed them and took a few steps clockwise, slowly. Just as Ara was about to turn around again, the bird moved right back in front of her and placed his wings on her shoudlers again, letting out a low, somewhat annoyed -or at least that's how it sounded to her- hoot. After that he started walking around her again in tiny steps, and this time she remained still, though she did follow him with her gaze.

The creature did two complete laps around her before stopping to her side. It bent its head down and poked its beak against her -or rather, against the thing it had given her earlier- softly a couple of times, then... straightened her posture -which by all accounts was already pretty much perfect- with its wings. Finally, it patted her on the head with an oddly happy-sounding hoot before stepping away and taking flight once more.

"... w... what was that about?"

The silent night, however, had no answer for her. So she simply turned around and left the dome. Before she could leave the antechamber, however, something happened. The protuberance inside her rear pulsed. Just once at first, but then it started doing so more often. An odd feeling began to spread through her, a sort of somehow faintly ticklish warmness. She lost her balance, even if for only a moment, then the whole thing around her flesh started to tremble. Lastly, the part that was inside of her began to... swell.

"H-hold on a moment!"

Without bothering to move her coat out of the way, she tried to grab the lump of flesh to pull it out, but as soon as her hands grasped it with enough strength, something else wrapped around her wrists, holding them firmly in place behind her back.

"You're kidd- ah!"

She nearly fell to her knees as the protuberance in her had a sudden burst in size. On the bright side, that was surprisingly painless, for one reason or another. That said, it still sent a jolt up her spine. After having recovered from that, she tried to move her arms, but her hands were locked behind her back, and while she could guess what had happened, the coat had gotten caught into it, ending up covering her wrists for the most part. Well, it was unlikely she could get a glimpe anyway since she could only turn her head around so much without snapping her own neck.

"A-alright, there's gonna be something about this in that book" she told herself, though even she didn't find her voice convincing.

She walked to the door, although turning the knob turned out to be rather awkward with her wrists bound like that, and walked out. Just a few steps later, however, Ara nearly shrieked in surprise as she felt something forcing her rear open, a thing large enough to be a bit painfull stretching her out as it slowly entered her from within the protuberance, though on the whole it still felt uncomfortably pleasant, jolts of delight running through her nerves. Barely managing to not fall on her face from the sudden stimulation, she regained her footing, and noticed that something was wrong. Well, something other than the more obvious thing, at least. She was sweating, even though it was far from hot in there, and there was an itch spreading through her, or rather inside of her. She walked to the elevator, but with every step the object that was trying to enter her seemed to get pushed in a bit further, sending tiny waves of pleasure accompanied by a fairly small bit of pain and a vague sense of uncomfortableness through her.

She managed to push the button then got inside the lift when its door finally opened -that took a while- but the key to head back to the ground floor was relatively high up, and hitting it was harder than she had expected. The elevator's door then closed, which would have been nice, if not for the fact that she hadn't pushed anything yet. Realizing what was happening, Ara turned pale. Time went by, one minute after the other, during which she tried to come up with something, anything, but nothing really came to her mind. To make things worse, the thing in her rear was still being pushed in, and by that point it had completely entered her, though she still didn't know what said thing actually was.

Then, the elevator finally stopped and the door slid open. And Oberon was there, a pile of papers in his hands. He had guessed that Ara had used the elevator at some point during the night, otherwise he wouldn't have had to wait for it to come back down, but for her to be inside just when he was about to head back up was quite the timing. To make things worse, the elevator shaft was, for one reason or another, hermetic. Had that not been the case, he would have caught her scent beforehand. But with things being as they were, her smell assailed his nostrils suddently, without a warning. It was quite a wonder that he managed to not drop the documents he was holding.

"T-this is... well... " Ara tried commented, her face red.

Upon hearing those words, Oberon's ears twitched. She noticed that his scent was oddly strong, which was... a bad sign actually. She felt her ears standing on edge as the smell sank into her nose. She hadn't even realized her fox ears had come out, in all truth, unless they had just grown in response to his aroma. That would explain why she hadn't noticed them up until then.

"We should... take care of that first" he replied, his gaze noticing a few feathers coming out from underneat her clothes, his voice trembling just a bit.

"Is this... bad?" she asked as she turned around a bit, just enough to show him her bound wrists.

The silence that followed worried her-

"... I think it'd be better if you wait for me here. I'll be back soon with something" he eventually replied.

That... somehow worries me even more

"S-sure"

Ara walked out of the elevator while he stepped inside, the two of them leaving as much space as they could between each other, then the door closed, leaving her by herself again. The main reason she didn't drop to her knees out of dejection was that she believed doing so with that thing still inside her rear would have been... intense. She looked around a bit, but the only thing inside there was a table, and she wasn't too keen on the idea of sitting down, so she simply leaned against the wall. There were four doors there actually, but for one reason or another she really didn't want to cross any of them at the moment. On the bright side, the feathery lump of flesh seemed to have stopped doing whatever it had been up to until a few minutes earlier.

Quite a while went by, during which Ara managed to almost calm down, but Oberon did eventually come back. Though her gaze took longer than one might expect before finally falling on the syringe in his hand. She stared at it for a few moments, then back at him.

"It's a muscle relaxant"

"Oh, I see. I think"

He remained still for a bit longer than he had need to before stepping forward. Then he asked Ara to turn around.

"It might tighten a bit around you now" he warned.

She sighed, but nothing more. As she did so he placed the tip of the needle on the feathery mass, much closer to her rear than she would have been comfortable with had she been able to actually see it, but even then she would have felt like complaining about that would have been somewhat petty. Oberon then pushed it inside, the creature of sort closing itself around Ara with more strength in response. Not a whole lot of strength, but still some.

"This acts rather quickly, you should start to feel the effects in a minute or two"

"W-wait, why should I? I'm not the one who took the shot" she asked, her voice a mixture of confusion and concern.

"This appendage takes some nutrients and other substances from your body while injecting you with some of its own. They're mostly harmless, but that means most of the relaxant will end up in your body rather than staying inside here"

"... great..."

"Now, just a moment" he added before disappearing behind one of the doors.

"... sure"

And, just as he had said, she felt her muscles losing strength. Not to the point she couldn't stand, but her knees did seem to want to give out. At most a minute had gone by when Oberon came back, carrying a chair.

"It'd be better if you sit down for this"

Which gave her a really bad feeling, but she decided to go along with it. Or at least she tried.

"The other way around"

"You mean... like this?" she asked as she took the seat, but facing the backrest rather than lying against it.

"A bit more this way" Oberon replied as he grabbed her -somewhat hesitantly?- and pulled her a bit closer to the edge, leaving her rear kind of off the seat.

"No, wait wait wait, I think I need an explanation"

... you didn't read the relevant chapter before walking in alone for this?

Keeping that thought to himself, Oberon answered.

"I have to pull out the protuberance that slided inside of you"

"You have to... what?" she asked, somewhat upset.

Not really because the act didn't make sense to her -she tried to do the same after all- but rather because having someone else do it was... embarassing, to say the least.

"How long has it been since it entered you?"

"I... I think a couple of hours, at most..." she replied, thankfull that he couldn't see how red her cheeks were from where he was.

"Then we might still be in time"

"In time? In time for wh -!"

She stopped midway as she felt him pull down her pantyhose, just enough to leave her panties exposed, then moved those to the side as well.

"C-can't you just get my hands free? I-I think I could do it myself then... actually, what was the relaxant even for?"

"It should come off by itself in two, maybe three hours. As for the relaxant, that was for you, to make the removal easier"

"Then... why didn't you just inject it directly into me?"

Before answering, Oberon stared briefly at his fingers.

"Giving the shot to the carrier diluited the relaxant a bit. I wasn't too sure about sending it diretcly into your veins since it wasn't made for human"

Which was true, but he did leave out a couple of things from his explanation, one being that he believed Ara's body had been altered enough by Eun's essence to be able to take something like that without problems. Then again, he wasn't absolutely sure about it and, as they say, being safe is better than being sorry.

"I... I see..."

"I'll start now"

He grabbed the protuberance and pulled, albeith with more strength than he had intended to use. And while Ara knew that was about to happen, she hadn't expected the feeling that came with it. Something between a shriek and a moan escaping her lips as she felt several thin ligaments of sorts being pulled away from her flesh, scraping against her insides as they were dragged out. It lasted just a few moments, but the feeling was so intense that it left her gasping, partially because she hadn't prepared herself in the slightest, the sudden burst of pleasure causing her ears to twitch.

That said, the reason why it didn't last long was that it wasn't actually over yet. Oberon started pulling again, this time with a bit more care, and the scraping started anew. In particular, there was an especially wide portion of the protuberance that pushed her inner walls apart as it was slowly dragged out, sending jolts up her spine, presumably the part that contained whatever had entered her after she had left the dome. Ara closed her fists as pleasure began to spread through her again, though there was something in the scent she was smelling from Oberon that was making her somewhat light-headed, and that didn't quite help her dealing with the situation. Maybe. Something then reached her ears, a weird sound that seemed to come from within her, and immediatly after the protuberance that was inside her got pulled out in a single, swift motion, scratching her insides as it did so. The sudden stimulus forced her voice out of her lungs, a loud moan with a small shade of cry mixed in escaping her lips.

To make things worse, or better, a sharp pain accompanied the wave of pleasure, just enough to send her over the edge, though her muscles failed to tense up due to the relaxant. Her legs trembled a bit instead, her tail waving left and right a couple of times before Oberon grabbed it with his free hand to stop it from hitting his face. His touch was warm, though by that point that didn't surprise her. There was something odd though. She was still feeling something relatively large inside her rear, something foreign, but something that was... isolated, so to say.

"This is... quite unlucky. It seems that we were a few minutes late"

"S... so what does that... mean?" she asked while regulating her breath, recovering from her orgasm.

"The egg detatched from the carrier, which means pulling out this limb didn't remove it" Oberon commented as he moved Ara's newly-grown tail out of his face, with a bit of reluctance maybe.

Her scent was starting to overwhelm him, but the current situation still required a certain degree of self control. As for Ara herself, it took a while -a short one, but still a while- before she fully processed those words.

"... a... an... egg... ? ... again?!"

"This time it's in a different orifice, to be acc-"

"Please don't point that out!"

"... sorry"

"So, wait, the... right, can you... w-well, can't you pull it out? L-like last time?" she asked, and while she wanted to bury her face in a pillow, all she had was the fact that Oberon could only see her back rather than her completely red face at the moment.

Once again, he looked at his hands for a bit before answering.

"I'm afraid I have to advise against that"

"Why?"

"My hands aren't steady enough to do that at the moment" he replied.

Truth be told, he had broken the needle while pulling it out because of that, but he decided not to inform her about that detail. Ara, on her part, didn't ask why his hands were trembling, since she already knew the answer.

"So... does this mean..."

"You'll have to push it out yourself"

Ara banged her head against the backrest. He was about to ask her if she was alright, but managed to stop himself from doing that.

"The carrier should have completely cleaned your intestine before lying the egg, don't worry about that"

"That... that's... good, I guess, but I'm not sure I really wanted to hear it..."

Oberon was a bit conflicted. On one hand, he should have left, as he wasn't sure for how much longer he could keep himself in check. On the other, if something went wrong and the egg broke inside of Ara, he would have had to intervene, preferably as soon as possible. So he pulled her panties down, not by much, just enough to leave her rear completely bare. On the bright side, Ara's cheeks couldn't turn any redder than they already were.

"I'll... be in that corner there, then"

"O... ok..."

Just kill me already...

Ara spent the next few minutes trying to mentally prepare herself, though one could argue that her attempts ultimately failed. With a storm of conflicting feelings raging around in her mind, she started to push it out. The first thing she noticed was that the egg's shell felt somewhat... rough. No, it was a bit different. The thought that she might accidentally break it was kind of unnerving, though the fact that feeling it slowly slide down, scratching her insides as it did so, was rather pleasant made it somewhat easier to relax. It also made it way more embarassing, for one reason or another. As she kept slowly pushing it out, pleasure slowly building up like a rising tide, she realized that the egg was leaving her flesh... itchy. Trying not to think about that, she focused on what she was doing, feeling the foreign object grow closer and closer to the exit, its size stretching her as it approaced its destination.

It hadn't been long since she had started, quite the opposite actually, but to her those few minutes felt like hours. And while he was remaining silent and out of her field of vision, her nose kept reminding her that Oberon was there, which made her more restless. She took a brief pause, in part to regulate her breath and in -much greater- part because she was close to the edge and she wasn't sure how comfortable she was about having an orgasm from that. Granted, that wasn't the first time she had an egg placed inside of her, but the other time it was at least in the front rather than the rear.

Driving those memories away, for the time being at least, she started pushing again. There was a bit of pain running through her as the egg kept moving, leaving an itch behind it that was getting harder and harder to ignore, and as the egg stretched out the exit the pleasure increased, turning from a slowly surging tide to a wave. Right before it could reach her and take her over the edge, however, the egg fell off, finally outside her body. Ara gasped for air, the task having been both quicker and more ardous than she had expected. She could still feel herself gaping. Her tails -at one point the second one had came out- waved around softly. She kept herself from moving, though getting that close to an orgasm only to stop wasn't exactly the best feeling she could think of, frustration demanding for further stimulation. Then something hit her ears. Or rather, she realized that nothing did. Her tails then struck something as they were moving left and right.

Her breathing still ragged, she turned around and saw Oberon kneeled down, and she guessed he had catched the egg before it hit the ground. He walked back to the elevator surprisingly quickly as soon as he realized her gaze was on him.

"I'll... leave your lunch in the oven tomorrow morning. Once the carrier lets go of you, you can just... drop in in front of the elevator. I'll take care of it" he said as he pushed the elevator's button.

"O-Oberon" she stopped him "T-tomorrow, after.. w-would you mind... coming to my room after lunch? ... working in that state must be hard" she added, though she immediatly regretted it.

"It's getting... troublesome, yes"

Then he disappeared inside the elevator, leaving her alone. As his scent faded from the room, Ara regained at least a bit of composure. She regulated her breath a bit, then managed to reach her panties and pull them up, at least a bit. She tried to do the same with her pantyhose, but sort of gave up when the fabric seemed to be about to rip. Adjusting her clothes with her wrists bound like that was quite hard after all. She remained there, sitting on the chair, for a bit longer, before eventually getting up and heading back to her room, resisting the urge to touch herself. There she threw herself on the bed. She wondered for a while about calling Obe out to do... stuff with him, but eventually decided not to, also because exhaustion was starting to get to her. The night was almost over after all, and she hadn't gotten any sleep at all.

... I guess he talked about lunch because that's when I'll be waking up...

Ara found herself not really minding that. Or rather, the reason for that.

Thank you for reading.