Chapter 2: Reunited

Author's Notes:

OK, seeing as how I've already got a review (wherefore thnx!:D) after putting this story up only last night, I decided to give it another go and to continue on with the next chapter :) There will be a very startling revelation at the end of this chapter, which will probably decide whether you hate this story or not :P I am planning on getting things back to normal eventually though ;) And a much needed explanation will of course follow in the next chapter (if anybody bothers to read this one that is) ;)

I hope I'm not going into dialogue too much here, when having a lot of characters around and a lot of conversation going on I tend to get more dialogue-focussed, which I know some people don't particularly like when reading fic. Do let me know if it is bothering you at some point in the chapter and I'll see if I can add some more descriptions in between :)

I've also adapted the previous chapter in order to get some more of Riki's suffering into it, but I think I'll include flashbacks at some later point in the fic as well so that could also give you an idea of what he was going through during those 3 years after Dana Burn ;)

…...

opening theme: Nano – Magenta

…...

Darkness. Slowly, but surely, she felt her thoughts return to her conscious mind and the sensations into her limbs, first the fingers, then gradually the rest of her sensitive, battered body. It wasn't anything like an automatic reboot, for that was immediate and right now she felt as if the swoon of sleep was trying to lull her back into it. And the soreness, by Jupiter, the soreness. She felt pain in places she didn't even realise she had, yet the pain could not be pinpointed accurately which made it feel as if it was everywhere at the same time. She thought about sitting up multiple times, but for some strange reason her body did not obey her cerebral commands. Finally she managed to crack open one eye but immediately shut it again when a terrible migraine kicked in. She groaned and decided to wait a little while longer to sit up and to mentally assess her previous state in the mean time … Riki! Riki had been there, along with two other mongrels, just after she had crossed the bridge over Orange Road into Area 5.

"Hey, I think she's finally waking up!", she recognised the voice of one of the mongrels. Not Riki though.

"No shit! I was beginning to think she wouldn't wake up, she must've been sleeping for three days straight man!" Again not Riki. Where was the dark-haired, feisty, spirited mongrel that had caused this entire mess to begin with?

"Yeah yeah, I'm comin! Try not to accidentally kill her before I get there, dumbasses!" There he was! But his voice sounded different than she remembered, less loud and overbearing, with a definite lower pitch and a bit more gravelly.

…...

Riki approached the blonde girl they'd rescued several days earlier and who had spent the entirety of those days sleeping in Riki's bed while he'd slept on the couch. He had washed her with a cloth and tried to bandage up her wounds as best as he could. But when her fever didn't go down he called a guy Katze knew who apparently had acquired certain doctoring skills. Rumour had it the bloke wasn't originally from Midas so that would explain where he would have picked up something like that, while being just an ordinary lowlife like the rest of them. According to the "doctor" she had a minor concussion and indeed a minor flue virus, however it was nothing too serious so a couple of days of peace and quiet ought to do the trick.

As Riki bent over her still, slender frame to check if she was truly waking up or was having another nightmare, she suddenly turned her head his way and slowly opened her eyes. When obsidian met blue it was as if time momentarily stood still …

For a moment Riki was completely gobsmacked. Nothing in the world could have prepared him for the piercing, highly intelligent gaze that met him through those familiar ice blue orbs that sparkled like sharply cut sapphires and appeared to contain the wild depths of all the planet's oceans. It was a gaze that left one wondering whether the person that gaze originated from could actually read one's mind. It was the kind of stare that intoxicated and fascinated a man yet left him nailed to the spot with instinctual anxiety.

It took Riki several moments to gather his wits again and reflect on this rationally. Surely he must be imagining things, no pet could have that kind of intelligence, that kind of presence that left someone feeling so captivated yet so distraught. Not to mention the way in which the fierceness of those sapphires immediately sent cold shivers down his spine, yet not necessarily in a bad way, struck him as intimately familiar.

Sid and Norris were not entirely oblivious to the sudden transformation upon awakening either. It was as if the pretty doll that had been lying in Riki's bed for the last couple of days had, by some divine intervention, transformed into a full-fledged Venus. Which was very remarkable, seeing as how most pets even when being awake gave that lifeless, tame impression almost as if they really were objects rather than living creatures. But this was an entirely different creature all together. Yet it was without any doubt female, small, with perfectly symmetrical proportions and fair pigmentation of the kind that could only be obtained in a test tube. So if not a pet … what was she?

"Fuck… she's like a goddess or something, man … Riki, dude, what the fuck did we pick up? What if she escaped from one of Jupiter's secret labs or something?" Norris was known to read too much into the overly exaggerated rumours the residents of the local pub told each other to pass the time. However when confronted with such an unusual combination of striking features, his perspective sounded a lot more convincing than usual.

"Shut up! I think she's going to say something!", Sid barked and then all three stared at her, mouths gaping open, almost as if in trance. She opened her rosepetal-ish lips but no sound came out, after which she briefly coughed. The flue must not have entirely passed yet and her voice was probably a bit hoarse because of it.

Riki hurried over with a glass of water. Not the disgusting brown-ish kind that came out of the tap in these parts, but the clear bottled kind that Riki had actually gone to purchase for exactly this occasion. It had amazed him how clean water actually cost more in the local supermarket than a bottle of stout. Even after having been back in Ceres for years, part of him still took the luxuries he had experienced on a daily basis in Tanagura for granted.

To everyone's great surprise she tried to gulp down the water so quickly she almost choked on it, yet while choking she still appeared to be doing it in an elegant fashion. "Easy now, easy, don't drink too much all at once. There's more where that came from, nobody's going to take it away from you", Riki gently told her, trying to use his most suiting voice yet not used at all to addressing people in such a soft, civilized manner. He remembered how Mimea would often be frightened if he started speaking too loudly and directly towards her. Pets, especially young females, were very sensitive to that sort of thing. Yet Riki had never really cared about such things until now, never had he wanted to not frighten a pet so badly as right now. Which was very strange considering she was a complete stranger, right?

"Ri …. ki….", a shrill small voice came out of the little goddess' mouth. The volume of the utterance so low that Riki, who was about 3 inches from her face, almost couldn't hear it. "Yeah, I'm here, don't worry about …" Then it struck him. She knew his name! Yet he had not told her his name. So how did she know? "She …", Riki nervously licked his lips. "She knows my name."

"Maybe she unconsciously heard us calling you by it while she was sleeping or something? I've heard that sorta thing before, y'know, that people in a coma can hear it when you talk to them. I even met a guy once who used to go to a hospital to play music to those coma patients…"

"Sid!" Riki and Norris simultaneously exhaled.

"OK, sorry, I'll shut up now", Sid responded with a grin and a mischievous sparkle in his muddy brown eyes.

"Riki…" A small, pale hand that looked as if it could have been made out of porcelain reached out and took a hold of his wrist. Damn, there was a lot more strength in those fragile fingers than he would have imagined.

"Ergh… sorry but have we met somewhere before? I'm pretty sure I would have remembered that…", Riki hesitantly began. Perhaps he shouldn't have said anything, what if she became upset that he was asking her all of these annoying questions? What the hell am I worried about? I don't even know this girl!

"D… Dana…. Burn…", her high-pitched but melodic voice came out again, while she determinedly grasped Riki's wrist more tightly, as if trying to stress her point.

"What'd she just say?", Sid asked with a frown on his face. Ever since he'd gotten involved in a grenade fight while on black market business he'd had some hearing problems.

"I think she said "Dana Burn"…", Norris responded.

"Well, that makes no sense whatsoever, what the fuck is Dana …"

"It's those old ruins, man, y'know, beyond Guardian? There was an explosion there a couple of years back, I even heard that there was an elite who died in 'em or something …"

"You and your ridiculous rumours, Norris!"

"No man, I'm serious, it was on the news and all that… some big shot elite from Tanagura… Surely you must've heard it as well, Riki? Wasn't that right around the time you came back to Ceres? Riki?"

The moment the name of that dreadful place that brought up so many bad and good memories for Riki was spoken aloud, Riki looked as if he had been struck by lightning. Dana Burn. That was the place where the love of his life both began and ended. He often wished he could have died there as well, sometimes he felt as if he wasn't truly alive anymore, despite his friends' best attempts to cheer him up. Although the passing of time had significantly healed the old wounds in his heart, the scars were still there and even a brief mentioning of that place like now just tore those wounds straight open again.

"No, you're in Ceres, in our apartment, we live here. You're perfectly safe here. Or… well as safe as you're gonna get in Ceres that is", Riki continued in a rather distraught voice he could barely keep the suffering out of.

"This is… your bed… then?" The girl continued, opening her eyes again to stare at her surroundings with a mix of worry and curiosity on her face. Somehow it made her appear more human straight-away, those simple expressions that swept over her youthful, snowwhite face unchecked. The mongrels began to feel more at ease around her.

"Ergh.. yeah. I mean, I couldn't let you sleep on that horrible couch, we found it in a junk yard and we never really managed to get the smell out of it …"

"How very…", she briefly coughed in her hand. "Apologies … How very gallant of you, Riki. Most definitely… full points for style."

Riki was about to respond to her appreciative remark when his heart appeared to freeze stuck inside of his chest all of a sudden. Zero points for style. I'm not impressed. Those were the first words Iason Mink ever spoke to him. What in Jupiter's name was going on here? Who was this mysterious girl and how did she know those things? Or did she? Perhaps it was just a coincidence that Riki was reading too much into.

…...

She saw how he completely froze up again, similarly to how he had when she had first opened her eyes and looked into those gorgeous, fiery obsidian orbs that could now actually make her heart beat faster. She decided she had to erase all doubt from his mind right-away. If she had interpreted his actions 3 years ago correctly, such knowledge would only be beneficial. Hopefully.

"I'm very impressed", she managed to add after another terribly embarrassing coughing fit. Oh, well, she had been able to observe him in all kinds of compromising situations. What harm could it do if he were to observe her in such a situation for a change?

One of the other mongrels even approached and gently started hitting her on the back. She was guessing it was meant to be an attempt to stop her from coughing but from the feel of it he was only managing to beat her whip lash marks black and blue all over again. "Stop… torturing me already… you bastard…" She did not succeed in making it sound particularly menacing though, with her hoarse feminine voice. Norris quickly pulled his hands away from her back, almost as if being electrocuted. "Wohow! She can actually curse! I've never heard a pet curse before!"

She studied Riki intently again. Was it these organic eyes that did not function properly, or did he look different? Why of course he looks different, humans tend to undergo physical changes between the ages of 18 and 21. Indeed upon closer inspection he did look different. He was taller, making him tall enough to literally tower over her now, interesting development that was. His build had also become more sturdy: his shoulders were slightly broader and he looked as if he was packing more muscle, although still in a sinewy rather than a bulky way. His beautiful exotic black hair had grown longer and was in a ponytail, which only accentuated the pleasing yet strong proportions of his facial bones better. His skin was tanner than it had been, no doubt caused by spending his days once again under the merciless sunrays so near the desert wastelands that Guardian and Area 9 bordered on. As such it was not merely a physical extra wild touch added to his already feisty appearance but a manifestation of his years spent as a free man as well. In short: he looked even more stunning than he did before.

And without even having to spend one conscious thought on it, she felt her body reacting to his presence almost as if it had a will of its own. Now here's something that hasn't happened before. She was usually very much in control of this body, at least to the extent that she could decide whether it got turned on or not, which was remarkable considering it was actually based upon the genetic blueprints of a pet body. Then she couldn't help but wonder. Is this what he has been experiencing all those times? This wonderful yet uncontrolled raging fire that just swoops up your spirit and sweeps through your body completely outside of your own will? No wonder he screamed so loudly.

"Ergh… I… Well, I…", Riki stammered and apparently couldn't manage to pronounce another coherent sentence. What the fuck?! Could it be that this girl … is a messenger, sent by Iason? But no, Iason is dead… or is he?

"Have you any food?" Perhaps taking in some protein or sugar would help her ailing brain recover itself from all the stress brought on by the escape and the physical exertion that came with it. Not to forget that anxiety probably did not work miracles for an improved brain chemistry either.

"Wh… what?..." It appeared as if he had not understood the message she had been trying to implicitly pass on to him. Seriously, how blunt must one be with these mongrels to get any information into their thick skulls? But she couldn't be too explicit, not with those other two still in the room and within earshot. After all, the last one of Riki's gang associates, the one known as "Guy", had turned out to be a very derailed and psychologically unstable individual. Riki's term for it would probably be "nutjob" or "psycho killer". What if all these mongrels were insane and Riki was the only one with a semblance of sanity? She could very well perish for good on this impulsive expedition, but then again that had not stopped her from going "on a suicide trip" earlier so it made perfect sense it had not stopped her now.

"Riki, dude, are you all right? You look kinda pale … When was the last time you ate something decent yourself, huh?", Norris asked in a chill yet concerned voice.

"I'll see if we still got something in the kitchen, guys…" Sid disappeared into the small kitchenette that was only separated from the rest of the small living space by a series of make-shift cupboards and an old gas stove. "Er.. not exactly what you'd call princess food but it's edible. I think I could cook up an acceptable pot noodle with this stuff." Sid was the chef among the three of them, not that he was particularly talented, not in the way that Daryl had been back in Tanagura. But Sid somehow managed to use just the right amount of spices to make people forget what disgusting stuff it was they were actually eating.

"How about some more water?", Norris said as he approached the girl with the glass. All of them looked surprised when she, her initial unquenchable thirst having passed, sniffed the glass and stared at it with a calculating gaze.

"What are you doing?"

"I am merely trying to establish whether or not you are attempting to drug me… which I suppose you would have no reason for doing…", she responded as she tried to sip the glass at a more steady and elegant pace rather than just gulping it all down in one go, as even now her reflexes were still screaming she should be doing.

For a moment Sid and Norris had no idea what she was saying, but after picking up the word "drugs" they understood she was worried that they were trying to poison her. A good thing she hadn't chosen the word "pharmaceuticals".

Riki, who was slightly more versed in the wordiness of the Tanaguran language and more knowledgeable on the practice of feeding pets aphrodisiacs, immediately understood what she was talking about. "Shit, we wouldn't do that, OK? We're not that desperate to get laid that we'd poison someone just to have our way with 'em, and even if we did there'd be no satisfaction in it if we could only get any if we won from our opponent using poison instead of our own two hands and feet …"

"Something tells me you would not have a lot of trouble "overcoming" me as an "opponent". Besides, the whole point of using "poison" is not because of a lack of prowess in combat, in a pet-related context that would of course be very improbable, but because it leads your "opponent" to believe that he or she is actually a willing participant in the whole event and is therefore at least partially to blame for it, which would significantly rule out further misconduct and resistance to the norm in future…", she responded almost in an automatism. But when she consciously started thinking about it, she added: "Which is of course a very cowardly and manipulative way of maintaining order, suggesting that the actual order being maintained is not democratically accepted as being the advised order at all but is something a minority has forced upon a majority with nothing but the reinforcement of their own power as their aim."

"Crap, Riki… I think she speaks another language or something, what the fuck did she just say?" Norris asked, his mouth slightly gaping open as he stared at the girl as if she'd transformed into an alien.

"I thought pets were supposed to be kinda stupid? That one doesn't sound stupid to me …", Sid interjected.

"She said them fuckers in Tanagura use aphrodisiacs on people to trick them into blaming themselves for being raped", Riki explained while still trying to wrap his head around a pet using such an extensive vocabulary in such a round-about way. The contents of the second statement also showed that she actually knew what the system in Tanagura was truly about and was not afraid to express her own disagreement.

"Why'd she use so many words just to say that?", Sid wondered.

"Why would anyone need to convince pets that they want to get laid? I mean, isn't it what they like doing more than anything else?", Norris added.

"Perhaps you're trying to "lay them" with a person they don't like. In which case if they would be allowed to refuse, it would confirm their freedom to choose which would in turn result to them beginning to see themselves as free-thinking individuals rather than just tools used as part of the social system."

"You know a heck of a lot about how Tanaguran bullcrap works… especially for a pet. How about we stop beating around the bush here and you tell me what it is you know about Iason Mink? And don't play dumb with me, there's just no way you speaking the same words he spoke to me the first time we met is a fucking coincidence!"

"Riki? Who the fuck is Iason Mink? Do you know this girl?" Sid asked, not used to Riki getting so worked up over something a mere stranger said.

"Could you guys perhaps go for a walk? Just for half an hour or something. I need to talk to her alone, I think she knows something that's important to me …" Riki hated to ask it of his friends, he didn't want to give the impression he didn't trust them. But they didn't know anything about his time in Eos or Iason Mink, and he wanted to keep it that way.

…...

"So… why are you really here, huh? Who sent you?" Riki asked as he sat down next to her on the bed, close enough to use his physical proximity to get answers even if she didn't want to give them.

"I didn't get "sent" by anybody, I came by my own will and means, which are rather restricted right now I must admit."

"Oh yeah? Then who does that pet ring belong to?" Riki grabbed the necklace she was still wearing and snatched it from her neck, breaking the delicate gold chain it was attached to in one movement, after which he examined the sapphire pendant in the palm of his hand.

He made it look so easy to remove that thing. She had spent hours trying to rip it off of her throat after she had lost the lasergun, yet simply lacking the tools and apparently physical strength to remove it. She hated the thing not only because it represented her own imprisonment, but also the betrayal associated with it. And also because it reminded her of how Riki had been treated unjustly during his time in Eos.

While studying the pet necklace to try and figure out whether it had any owner initials engraved in it, Riki's free hand absently reached towards his own pet ring, which was now attached to a black string on his neck but under his shirt to avoid any questions about it. He'd just never had to hard to get rid of it after Katze had somehow managed to retrieve it from the rubble (apparently his pet ring had been made out of a very tough and indestructible, very expensive metal). Her eyes followed his free hand as it went up towards his chest while he was studying her pendant. When she saw those tan, strong fingers reach under his shirt and retrieve the familiar ring, her heart leapt up into her throat. He's still wearing it!

Then another thought occurred to her: pet rings almost always came with trackers. Without a doubt Katze had removed the gps-tracker from Riki's ring, he would have had ample time to do so over the last 3 years. But hers was still active!

"We have to destroy it. If not Jupiter's droids could be upon us in a couple of hours."

"Jupiter's bloody droids? Shi-it, just how stuck-up are you pets nowadays in Tanagura? They'll probably just send the police, if anyone, why would they bother to …" But she wasn't an ordinary pet, that much had been obvious right from the start. What if she was some secret messenger sent by Iason and her interception would mean Iason himself would be at risk? Riki threw down the necklace without hesitation and crunched it under his heavy biker boot.

"You've got one too."

"What?" Riki asked distractedly, his eye still upon the destroyed pendant on the floor. The sapphires had reminded him of Iason for a few seconds and he suddenly felt bad about destroying the object so carelessly.

"A pet ring", she pointed at the ring on the string around his neck.

"Oh. Yeah … it's a long story."

"I have plenty of leisure time at my disposal."

"Why the fuck do you talk in that refined kind of way? Does your Master like you talking that way?"

"I don't have a Master", she sniffed with an air of disgust and slightly scrunched her pretty little nose up. "And if I did it would definitely not be the owner of that trinket."

"Doesn't look like a mere trinket to me. I mean, sapphires and gold, your non-Master must be well-off …"

"There are some things more valuable than money. And he significantly lacks all of those admirable qualities. And your ring is a lot more expensive, you could buy an entire strip of apartment buildings in down-town Midas with that kind of money. I suppose it's a small price to pay for something that's indestructible."

"Gee, I didn't think anybody could tell the difference between this "indestructible" stuff and plain silver just by looking at it. I sure didn't. Shit, I feel kinda guilty now." For some strange reason Riki felt as if he could trust this girl, that he could express his inner feelings to her and that she would understand. He couldn't recall ever having felt that way around anybody, least of all a complete stranger. After all trust was hard to come by in the slums, and impossible to come by in Midas or Tanagura.

"More debt to repay? If it suits your mind, I'm sure your soul would most definitely make up for the costs."

"You know everything, don't you? But how? Who are you?! Did Iason sent you?" Riki couldn't keep his emotions under control any longer and grabbed unto the girl's arms. "Is he alive?! Please, tell me at least that much!"

"Like you said, that metal is indestructible and his skeleton was made out of the very same material your ring is made out of."

"So he is alive?!" For the first time in years Riki allowed himself to hope, despite being fully aware of the fact that if that hope were crushed his heart might very well not survive this time.

"He is. But if you keep shaking me like that I'm afraid he won't be for much longer, there is only so much this pet body can take."

"What do you mean? Is Iason in danger? Where is he? Can I speak with him? I must speak with him! I must tell him … something very important." That I love him. That I'll love him forever, only him. That I'm his for as long as he wants me, no matter the cost.

"It took him a while to come to grips with all that is emotional and human and to draw his own conclusions from that. And then to come up with a feasible plan of escape. But he succeeded at long last and now he is right here, Riki. Although I believe the more accurate term under the current circumstances would be she rather than he", she added with a wink and that sexually depraved, half-evil half-taunting sparkle in her icy sapphire eyes that Riki knew so well.

Iason!

…...

ending theme: Duran Duran – Save a Prayer

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To Be Continued …

…...

Author's Notes:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh I can't believe I actually wrote it!:P

I read several "Riki as a girl" alternate universe fics, but something like this I've never encountered and it definitely never had Iason as a female character. So it's original. Possibly too original? I leave that up to whoever decides to read this fic ;) Mind you, this is not meant to be an alternate universe or alternate gender fic or something like that and it will be explained how this unlikely transformation came about in the next chapter. And in all probability the transformation will be reversed at a later point in the story (unless some readers really don't want to see that happening?).

I thought such a transformation would be interesting not only because of the change from male to female but also because of the change from android to human body. The way I see it you definitely experience the world differently in an actual human body than you would in a robotic one, at least that's my take on it ;) Also our little "imperfections" are often said to be what "makes us human", therefore in order to get the full "human" experience one should be able to deal with physical imperfections such as illness, pain, anxiety and so on. And in Iason's case it definitely helps to create a better understanding of what Riki was actually going through during those years as a pet and even fighting for survival while growing up in Ceres.

So let me know what you all think and give me some reviews pls!:D