Rilian sat on a backless stool in the HAS. Kel dragged it in directly after their first ‘meditation’ session. Kay left for VR class earlier, so it was just the two of them in the cabin. She held still as he fiddled with fastenings around her waist.

Morning training had been… intriguing. She was over five thousand years old, but even she had never experienced that. She could feel the others as they sat in a loose circle. As though her proprioceptive sense had been loosened from the confines of her body somehow.

What a fucking rush! It took great pains to extend it even a little through the air, but the hull of the HAS was like jumping into a placid warm lake. With her aura flowing through the composite layers of the floor, she found Kel and Kay quite quickly—sitting cross-legged like her. Their auras stopped her advance, of course, but Solid was her domain.

They could only get out the way or be pushed out of the way while she channelled through her resonant state. Even Kay with her limited earth affinity was no match on Rilian’s home turf.

There were analogues up in Alpha, but nothing like the visceral rawness of direct interaction with the forces of the universe. And, oh did she like it raw. The initial disappointment of failing at her Life magic gambit wore on her a bit. But she found those emotions gradually replaced by something she had forgotten she could even feel. What was it? Did it have a name?

She tried to parse it out. There was the failure, the inability to change it, and then Kel immediately warming to her at the revelation. They had teased before, but it was more personal now, more genuine. He loved her failure, her greed. Why?

“Kel, why are you happier with me now?” He paused with tightening the corset-like nylon straps.

“Oh, that’s easy: Avarice.” He stepped back from her to gauge alignment. “To be truly selfless would be inhuman, insentient. Of all the things you might bring down to fuck with my shit, it’s what you might not have that I feared the most: your humanity. You Alphas live long, forever really, it’s a simple thought experiment.”

Aww, he was adorable: worrying for an Alpha, like a dog fearing for its owner. No, she shouldn’t think like that. He was a self-autonomous unit just as she, more primitive, but still.

Yet, there was more to it; she felt a kind of rising tension. She was part of the picture now, one of the 'strokes on the canvass'. Her stroke had gone awry, but instead of scraping the piece, he embraced it, embraced her. The ‘wrong’ was as much fuel to his fire as the ‘right’. He consumed it all.

It was... Rilian squeezed her legs and bit her lip as she almost climaxed right there in the stool. Talking. Yes, talking can distract me.

“So, this is an interesting vest. I didn’t know you were into corsets. I’ll have to make some orders.”

“You don’t have corsets?! Well, to be fair, your midsection would never need one. This getup, however, is a female multipoint stunt vest.”

“Are we making movies? I’ll get the tripod set up, your room or mine?”

“You’re laying it on really thick recently, you know that? If I didn’t know any better—and fortunately I do—I’d say you’re horny.”

Maybe she had tweaked this body’s hormones just a bit too much.

“So, why do I need the harness?” Rilian asked.

“Two reasons, one is future-proofing, the other is plenty places for attaching stuff. If you’re gonna wear this a lot—and we all are—comfort is key. So corset vest for the girls it is. You could wear it under clothes too, and we gotta let your babies be free. I doubt I could find anything more dangerous to put on your chest anyway.”

He needed to stop with that shit immediately; as it was, she’d have to relieve herself in the shower. He’s just a simple little Gamma Boy; if I’m not careful, I’ll break him. Her body was a fresh virgin too. She inwardly purred.

“You feel it, don’t you?” asked Kel.

Jesus fucking Christ! "Ye—"

Oh. He was at her side, nodding toward the thing mounted on her back. It was a metal clump covering her upper spine, cradled in a military brown canvas pouch. She had yet to see it but could feel it there.

Structural details and materials resolved in her mind as if she could almost taste them and she let slip a soft moan of delight. Two flexible metal pipes were firmly attached to the vest near her shoulder blades. Conducting her aura through them, it ran up their lengths reaching the hinges of the contraption. Its mechanistic anatomy rendered in her mind via a mix of senses: nested shells of various metals, some more comfortable—tasty—harmonic—than others. X-rays or CT scans had nothing on the resolution she was getting. Deriving the rustic construction in moments, she inferred how it must unfold.

“But you haven’t been out since you knew. How did you—?”

“I just saw the helm in Bron’s shop and thought ‘what is the absolute worst thing I could put on your head’. I didn’t think about how I’d put it there; different magic would have had a different solution. Let’s firstly see if you can move this thing.”

There was a symmetry to all this. Did it just emerge out of the chaos with him, or was there a grander design? Did he know, or intuitively act?

She urged her power through with greater amplification and the conscious desire to imbue; it soaked in as if the metal were absorbent ceramic. She manipulated the two articulated coil pipes like extra limbs. The feeling was not unlike flexing wings, especially where they were attached. Rilian had, of course, flapped and flown with gene-crafted wings many times, what Alpha hadn’t.

Though, even with Rilian’s personal experience—controlling extra-limbed and extended sense bodies—moving the metal took iterative trial and error with many starts and stops. She came to this world blind, sporting none of the augmented neural mappings such bodies shipped with.

Kel patiently assisted, prodding and guiding both physically and with his aura to support her. Their amorphous influences could not simultaneously occupy the same space, exactly like their bodies. Instead, the magical boundaries ebbed and flowed around the other like sentient oil and water trying to mix. In some ways it was more intimate than sex, and that further exacerbated her flailing and flagging attempts. Ordinarily, she might grow frustrated and give up, but Kel’s full attention—mentally, magically, and materially—was far too precious—and intoxicating—to shirk.

Finally, Ril managed to place the folded contraption on the back of her cranium; she would practice more in her own time, and Kel promised to loosen and oil the joints. She felt the padding press up to her skull—her new metal arms somewhat more responsive—then she slid open the plates. Each segmented shell pulled free as it slowly covered her head until the battered, corroded, and scarred faceplate came down. Polycarbonate covered the eyes, and dull grey mesh was over the mouth and ear slits.

Jon produced a mirror. The face was varnished and then sandblasted, preserving every flaw but giving it a matte sheen. It was ghastly, and it was the very last thing anyone would ever give an Alpha.

“Does it fit all right?”

It did. Rilian nodded, words were very hard at the moment.

“To be clear, this is not to protect you; it’s to protect everyone else. You wanna win any fight, don’t wear it.”

She stood and made the helmet slowly and carefully fold up and snuggle into its canvas hood on her back. Withdrawal was a little easier, unconcerned with the hassles of alignment.

“Smooth disengagement, could be quieter though.” Kel was in his world of mechanisms and machines.

She moved over and put her hands around the back of his neck, arms on his shoulders. She was just slightly shorter than him without heels. That got his attention.

His eyes riveted to hers, and he took a steady nasal breath. “I smell scented esters coming off you. Modified sweat glands? Maybe pheromones too.”

“That pesky biofeedback training takes out all the fun.” She brushed her nose past his and pulled him close to whisper in his ear. “You know, I used to sometimes tap into your olfactory feed just to smell what you smell.”

“We don’t ship that feed out.” He nodded in contemplation. “Hmm, if you weren’t extremely wealthy, powerful beyond conception, and drop-dead gorgeous, I might consider you a stalker.”

He could call her whatever the fuck he liked, repeatedly.

Gently and respectfully, he grabbed her wrists and pulled her arms free.

She clenched her teeth; respect was boring.

“Something wicked this way comes, Ril, I need to concentrate. But thanks for the thought; you’ll knock a mule out with that smell.” He backed away, turned, and left. “Drop it off when you’re done practising,” he shouted out of sight.

Rilian was deserted in HAS, left high but nowhere near dry. Honestly! If someone or something didn’t fuck her brains out soon, there was going to be trouble!