"Hey, Clank... you have any clue where Al went off to?" Ratchet blinked, his ears perking up at the errant thought crossing his mind.

"I believe he stepped aside to go check out some of the more cybernetic guests at tonight's party." Clank remarked. "I've seen him around, but not within the last two hours."

"It's not really like him to be that kind of a social butterfly... at least not with a monitor separating him from everyone else." Ratchet glanced back at his pal, his eyes suddenly at half-mast. "You don't think he'd-?"

"The night has been full of enough surprises so far, Ratchet." Clank shrugged, curling back up into the pillow-chair. "To be honest, I'd suspect that's exactly what he's been doing since I last saw him."

"Hey, more power to him then!" Ratchet chuckled. "I better find Sonata . . ."

Ratchet found himself wandering through the crowds, coming up just to people's armpits at times; he was having a hard time finding his way about, until he found a wide clearing set up, and he noticed the pair of women painted on the nearby wooden board, with bullseyes censoring them up. He blinked, standing in front of it to stare for a moment.

He heard a voice shouting at him soonafter. "Get out of the way, man!"

Ratchet blinked, then turned to the source. "Al? Is that you?"

"I'm right here!" Al spoke up, his shirt not tucked in at all into his pants like he normally kept it. "From what I've heard you've been treated pretty well so far tonight!"

"You have no idea."

Al rolled his eyes, or at least rolled the one remaining organic eye that Ratchet could notice. "I could take a damn good guess. By the way, mind if I take a look at your 'souvenir'?"

"What do you mean, my-? Oh . . ." Ratchet sighed, bending over just enough for Al to pull on the collar of his shirt and see it. Al whistled, and Ratchet right then could have just crawled into a hole and waited to die from the sheer embarrassment. It was bad enough to have found himself trapped in Gleeman Vox's games as it was, but to find himself permanently branded with what was effectively a slave mark just added heaps of insult to the injury.

Al didn't seem to mind though. "Nice work on it. I'd always heard it was hard to get a nice dark ink to show up on fur."

"I don't care about the quality of it!" Ratchet hissed. "I don't like it on me, period!"

"Hey, at your age? It's probably worth keeping around." Al spoke, giving Ratchet a hearty slap on the back with his metal arm, and catching Ratchet in the other. "I mean, come on, it's a basic dark tattoo in a concealable area of your body, no words or lettering . . . it's pretty classy as far as tattoos go."

"I didn't fucking want it on me in the first place! What part of that is your stupid half-brain not picking up?" Ratchet growled, before seeing the look of anger on Al's face from the remark. "Woah, not like there's anything wrong with-."

"Look, I'm not saying you have to like it right away, but if you're stuck with it, you're stuck with it, right? The best you could do is get it altered later into a different image, but either way you're still going to have a tattoo there, so you may as well get used to it!" Al hissed, done with being nice for the moment. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm waiting in line for the accuracy competition you just walked though. There's a bit of a line if you want to-. Ratchet? Where'd you go?"

Ratchet shuddered at the idea of Al and his 'accuracy' as he scrambled off, adjusting his shirt back into place. Fortunately, Sonata was easy to find, as she was sitting near a pond where Hydro Girl had set herself up in.

Hydro Girl spotted Ratchet first, though, and as she sat up it was obvious to Ratchet that the heroine also happened to be as topless as a toddler. "Hey there, hero! Anything I can do you for? Or maybe just do you?"

"Not right now, thanks." Ratchet remarked, before kneeling down to Sonata's level. "Hey, I was told I needed to talk with you about . . . y'know . . . stuff?"

"Indeed." Sonata smirked. "I assume you want to do that in a more secluded area?"

"Depends how much there is to talk about." Ratchet shrugged, sitting down to let his feet dangle in the water.

She shrugged, glancing over at him. "Well, most of the initial questioning involves your actual sexual preferences . . . besides the obvious, of course. It's fairly bland stuff; whether you prefer men or women, if you like to please rather than receive, oral versus anal, 'equal' roles versus dominance or submissiveness . . . though that last one seems to get some of the strongest responses we come across . . . it's weird. People are perfectly happy to go on about how much they like giving head to their brother, but we can't get them to actually admit if they like it better with handcuffs or not."

Ratchet's eyes quickly fluttered. "You're kidding me."

"No, it's that damned slavery complex again . . . people think too much about it to the point that they think something's wrong with them if the sexual relationship starts to show any actual power struggle. They don't get that it's a normal sexual fetish among other species . . . sure, the whole concept of 'Master/slave' relationships is not about to go over well with the average Lombax, just on the wording alone . . . but that doesn't mean all power-play is suddenly bad. Besides, if nobody wanted it, Justice wouldn't be as popular as she is."

"Who?" He darted an eyebrow up, confused.

Sonata blushed. "My mistake! That's not her real name . . . She's another Lombax in the industry, but unlike us, she's an actual performer rather than a director like Staccato and myself . . . You've probably seen her. She's known as 'the white Dominatrix' in certain circles . . . . unlike most power-play performers, she's often in this skintight white outfit with a blindfold on... she started wearing it to hide her identity at first, but it's become her trademark." She leaned over to Ratchet, chuckling as she tacked on, "It's just as well. She looks ten years younger than she really is as long as she keeps those eyes hidden!"

Ratchet chuckled, blushing slightly as he noticed himself growing more 'interested' than he expected to. "Now that's something I didn't expect to pick up on."

"Well it still leaves me to question just where you lay on the scales . . ." Sonata purred into Ratchet's ear, heightening his ears as well as his 'interest'. She reached over, just enough to let her hand rest on top of his lap, keeping her hand flat to sense his baser instincts. "What kind of experience did you see yourself having while you were growing up?"

"I didn't exactly get too many chances as a kid to get laid . . ." Ratchet remarked. "Which reminds me, I'm supposed to tell you that I'm still a virgin . . ."

"Really?" She blinked. "Fooled me . . . kidding, it was written all over your face from before. But I've not forgotten; it just means we'll avoid any actual penetration tonight." Suddenly, she felt Ratchet soften underneath her touch, She blinked again as she glanced down at it, then looked back up at him. "You were looking to do that tonight, weren't you?"

Ratchet winced. "I just . . . look, I know I'm too old to still be like this."

"No, no! Lots of bright Lombaxes like yourself don't break themselves in until they're at least your age! They're usually just too smart and too worried about the consequences to even bother half the time . . . or else they just stick to the simpler arts rather than actual penetration . . ." Sonata chuckled. "You think Staccato would have won me over so quickly if I'd already been shown the ropes by someone else?"

Ratchet shrugged. "Well, that was sort of why I wanted to find out with you . . . I figured I'd cede to experience." He pulled her in close, pressing her lap in against his, trying in vain to get his point across. She pulled away, though, and Ratchet found her slipping out of his arms.

He fell back against the slick stone near the water's surface, just looking up at the ceiling, and noticing Sonata's face in the way. Ratchet coughed, murring to himself. "Weak . . ."

"Well, yeah, you're not working with your armor anymore to help you keep up with what you need." She remarked, straddling across his clothed lap. "Come on, you deserve better . . . you deserve to make sure your first time's special, you know? I'm not saying you have to wait for marriage or to turn 30 . . . but you need to make sure you've got a great girl in mind for it."

Ratchet groaned as she shifted on top of him. "I guess so . . ."

"Good." Sonata smirked, holding still and putting out a pair of hands to hold Ratchet's arms to the floor. "Doesn't mean we can't do a few other things with you . . ."

He squirmed, his muscle weakness even more apparent as he found himself being held down by, of all Lombaxes, a pregnant woman. Someone who should have, by all means, been exactly the sort of person he wouldn't fight not because he was worried about their skill, but that he was worried he might accidentally kill them just trying to hold them down . . . and here he was, being sat on and held down by her.

The only thing that made it worse was that he was entirely too turned on right now from this. He shut his eyes, ceding away for a moment . . . he shouldn't have felt like this. Hell, he felt like absolute shit while in Gleeman's clutches, he never slept well because the Deadlock collar bothered him so much, he had come to absolutely loathe being an actual prisoner . . . but had the experience warped him that much? Was merely pretending to lack control more fun than losing it?

Ratchet calmed down, getting the mental image in his mind of kneeling at the feet of 'Justice' — he'd seen her before in plenty of pin-ups (and a few other places as well, for that matter), in her thigh-high boots and ribbon-fringed skirt, her blinded face looking down upon a handcuffed, leather-wearing Ratchet . . . perhaps with some sort of a muzzle or mask on Ratchet as well — he'd definitely need a mask if he was ever going to get close enough to her, since he'd likely have to perform, on camera no less.

She'd make him prove himself, no doubt. Possibly she'd go about it with mere measurements or an analysis of just how nicely the leather cupped his hindquarters, or maybe make him 'serve' her somehow. He could almost imagine how she'd taste once she gave him just enough leeway to reach her body. Or maybe . . . perhaps she'd even test him on his endurance . . . to see how far she could take him, how many ways he could fit inside of her, how deep he could go, before he . . . he chirped for her . . . because once he gave in, he wouldn't stop . . . he'd be hers . . . all under her control . . .

Sonata blinked, noting the strangely blissful yet labored look on Ratchet's face. "Ratchet? Ratchet!"

"Mistress . . ." Ratchet purred, and Sonata's face dropped in expression as she noticed just how stiff against her that he now was.

She snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Come on, wake-up time! Fantasies later, questions now!"

Ratchet mumbled some as he opened his eyes again, looking up at her. "I think we may have to make sure what whatever you've got in mind, it's anything but 'equal'."

"Looks like we know what you are. At least for tonight, anyway." She smirked, rolling off of him. "Now, onto slightly more mundane details . . ."