Kaldalis approached Onirioago’s tent alone. Well, ‘alone.’

His friends were near at hand, but out of sight. The plan required Bangen to be in earshot, but sneaking up next to the tent risked Onirioago hearing them. Kaldalis had to act as a distraction for long enough for them to get up close, and then - without being able to receive a signal from them - know the right time to bait her into talking about the quest.

It made him wish this was a single-player game. It would have been great to be able to savescum this encounter. In the absence of being able to carefully toe the line, he was going to have to lean in an uncomfortable direction. And if he couldn’t control the situation, one of two things would happen.

The first was he was going to be framed for Fantasy MKUltra and imprisoned while Onirioago took over the encampment with the very crime he was accused of.

In the worst-case scenario, he might have to have sex with her to get out of this unscathed.

He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Kaldalis couldn’t stall now, though. There was only so long he could stand outside of her tent before the situation somehow found a way to get worse. He pushed his fear down, focused on his goal, and slapped his hand against the canvas flap of the tent.

“Onirioago?” he called.

There was a rustling noise within the tent, but no explicit response.

“Onirioago,” he said again, “I was hoping we could talk.”

“A moment,” she said. She sounded groggy, but pissed off. This was going to be an uphill battle already. He was going to have to start on the offensive, and hope she was too sleepy to figure out that something was wrong.

Rustling sounds continued for a moment, and Kaldalis tried to picture what was going on. Was she tangled in her sheets like Myrin had been? Or was she getting dressed? He didn’t hear any clank or click of metal, so if she was putting on clothing, it wasn’t her usual outfit. Maybe she had some manner of boobytrap set up on her tent to alert her to trespassers, and she had to disarm it before allowing him in.

Or maybe she was smuggling a secret lover out under the back flap of the tent.

He’d never know for sure, but with her, anything seemed possible.

At length, her sky-blue face poked out of the flap of the tent, and her eyes regarded him with suspicion and irritation. As he had suspected, she was wearing a silky-looking robe rather than her armor, and her hand clutched the front of it closed right under her throat. It appeared to be quite the ask of the garment; it looked to be designed to leave as little to the imagination as possible without being sheer. The fabric strained against her fingers, visibly too-taut around her shoulders and chest. The bottom of the robe was, at least, just above her knees rather than too short for modesty.

“What do you want?” she snapped. “Make it quick.”

“I would hope that it isn’t,” he said. “Our last conversation ended on clipped terms, and I was hoping I could set things straight between us.” He let his eyes dart down over her body, the way she had done to him in the past. Though her eyes had seemed to linger in places carefully chosen to make him uncomfortable, he didn’t know exactly where he should be looking at her in turn. So he only traced the curve of her side with his eyes, down to her exposed sky-blue calves, and then back up to her face.

When he got back there, the irritation in her eyes was replaced with confusion. But the suspicion was still there.

“Excuse me,” she said, blinking. “I might be confused. What do you want?”

“I was hoping we could speak,” he said, looking around, “privately.”

She still regarded him with distrust, but there was a glimmer of interest as she stepped aside, holding the tent flap open to allow him to enter.

Kaldalis stepped past her and entered the tent. He knew that as soon as the flap closed behind him, his friends would move into position to listen in on the conversation. The sooner he broached the subject of the quest, the sooner she would admit something incriminating, but if he got her to say something right then, Bangen might not be close enough to hear. He needed to kill some time and lower her guard.

The inside of her tent was much as he remembered it. It was no bigger than his own tent, but far more cluttered, with a desk near at hand strewn with reports and ledgers, as well as some crates of various simple supplies. The only two luxuries she had to offset the more cramped space was an actual bed instead of a cot, and a plush rug in the middle of the floor.

“Have you seen the report on the monster I encountered yesterday?” he asked, looking at the papers on the desk. “It would save me some time if you know the story already.”

“I only get the reports when the research team is done with them,” she said, stepping towards the desk. “I don’t see the reports until Ikzoz brings me the final information sheets.”

As she stepped away from the door she loosened her grip on the neck of her robe, letting her hand trail down a little. It only revealed the hollow of her throat, but the way the fabric hung, it was pretty clear if she let go entirely, there were better-than-even odds that he would see something the FCC would object to. The garment was either too small for her, or had been constructed for lewder purposes than business talk. She caught him looking at her hand, and she let it slip a little farther, showing an inch of cleavage.

Onirioago smirked when he snapped his eyes back up to her face.

“Have you seen any information at all?” Kaldalis snapped, getting back to the topic at hand. “Any description of the encounter?”

“No,” Onirioago said as she moved to the chair at the desk and sat down. She crossed her legs quickly, only flashing a brief glimpse of muscular thigh, nothing more. “Were you going to get to the point, or are you just here to stare at my legs?”

He felt his cheeks heat up. “In a way,” he said, trying to get back on track, “that is my point. Let me explain. The monster took the form of a beautiful woman. More than that, the persona of one. She could speak. Articulate. Deceive.”

“And how did she deceive you?” she asked, tapping her chin. The motion made him suddenly aware that she had let go of her robe, the top of it falling open. His eyes instinctively traced the line of bare skin from her throat to her solar plexus before he could force them back to her face. “Did she look like someone familiar?”

“She tried to seduce me,” Kaldalis said bluntly. “She employed a venom that can only be administered by a bite on the mouth. I don’t know how it worked exactly, I think it may have required some ingested component instead of just the venom in the bite. Regardless, her choice of delivery was a kiss. One she worked very hard to talk me into.”

“And what does that have to do with the quest?” Onirioago asked, her verbal guard coming up again.

“It doesn’t,” Kaldalis said, “it has to do with your… Offered reward.” He swallowed, trying to hide his discomfort at having to do this. “The attack revealed a weakness in me. I never expected to encounter an enemy employing such… Deviant tactics. I was unprepared.”

“So,” she said, slowly rising to her feet. Her eyes crawled over his body again, and he suppressed a shudder at the almost physical heat of her gaze. “You want me to help you… Prepare?”

“I’m a man,” Kaldalis said, “I have needs. I may be an adult, capable of controlling my actions, but if my physical needs are going to be a liability - one that may lead to a painful death - then such an attack-”

“A deviant attack,” Onirioago interrupted, “requires a deviant defense, doesn’t it?”

Kaldalis wanted to say ‘unfortunately’ but he held his tongue. He nodded, and hoped that she would mistake his silence for bashfulness instead of discomfort.

“An interesting proposal,” she said. She let a hand slide down her side slowly, pausing on the swell of her hip. “And what do I get for my support in this endeavor?”

“I was hoping to renegotiate the earlier deal,” Kaldalis said. “Maybe even make it a regular quest. I’ll bring you whatever fish you want - even just more of the same - and you help me attend to my needs?”

“I could be amenable to that,” Onirioago purred, stepping up close to him. Despite cutting a more imposing figure than he did, she was more than a little shorter. “Though my price has changed. Just one won’t be enough.”

Kaldalis frowned. “Whatever needs you have, I’ll meet them. Just name a fish and name a number, and I’ll do it.”

“Desperate, are you?” she laughed. “Is this really about defending yourself against an aggressive seductress? Or is it about submitting yourself to one?”

“I can have two motivations,” Kaldalis said carefully.

“Then I suppose I can agree to your proposal,” Onirioago purred, her hand tracing back up along the seam of her robe, revealing another inch of sky-blue skin. Her other hand snapped up and grabbed the chest of his armor, pulling his face down towards hers. “Ten more of them for an evening. Fifteen for all night?”

“Fifteen of what?” Kaldalis said, hoping he could get her to say it out loud at a volume that Bangen could hear through the wall of the tent, instead of purring it quietly in his ear. “Something specific, or should I just empty my pockets and you take what catches your eye?”

“Fifteen of the deacon tetra,” she said, carefully shaping each word to draw his eye to her lips. “That’s my demand.”

“Do you want to formalize that with a quest,” Kaldalis said, leaning against the steady pull of her grip on his armor, hoping to disengage from her. “Or should I go catch them now?”

“That’s a good idea,” she said, “I wouldn’t want you to get the idea that you’re going to get the reward before you do the job. That’s not a healthy way to start a partnership.”

“I wouldn’t presume to call this a partnership,” Kaldalis said quickly. Her grip was very insistent, and he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to escape it without ruining his cover. “That would be unrealistic, wouldn’t it?”

Onirioago redoubled her pull on his armor. “So you don’t mind, then? Being beneath me? I like that in a man.”

There was no escape now.

Her eyes flickered closed as the gap between their faces vanished completely.

Kaldalis found himself, oddly, thinking of Ara as his lips met Onirioago’s. Her lips were softer and fuller, though the kiss was no less hungry. His mind raced as he tried to think of anything else, fearing that he might fall down on top of her if her tongue pushed into his mouth and he disassociated again. Fortunately, Onirioago showed more restraint than that, and pulled away after only a moment.

“If you want me to formalize it in a quest, though, you’ll have to excuse me a moment,” she said with a wicked smile. “I don’t give quests in my underthings. Or, rather, out of them.”

Kaldalis got a moment to un-spin his head as she whirled away from him and sashayed back towards her bed. The way her hips rolled with every step was so exaggerated it was almost comical, but Kaldalis was too focused on trying to figure out if he’d succeeded. Had Bangen heard? Could he leave? Or did he need her to repeat it again, louder? He couldn’t tell without making contact with his friends, but once he got out of here, he wasn’t going to be able to get back in.

Onirioago shrugged out of her robe right in front of him, shamelessly. Kaldalis immediately turned away, but not before catching a glimpse of her bare skin from the back of her neck all the way down to the small of her back.

There was a chuckle from behind him.

She was enjoying this.

He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised given her earlier behavior.

There was a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye - at the opposite end of the tent from Onirioago. For a moment he thought she’d flung something lacy into his field of view, but when his eye focused on it, he saw that it was a hand.

A red-purple hand giving him a thumbs-up.

It was Bangen.

She heard enough - probably more than enough - and now he could extricate himself from this before getting in too much deeper. Accept whatever quest she gave him, and then bolt under the pretense of getting to the pond while it was still nighttime.

“I could get used to this,” Onirioago purred from behind him, a pair of hands settling around his waist and pulling his back against her chest. “Perhaps I wouldn’t be opposed to thinking of you as a partner, if you’re so disciplined as to refuse a payment you haven’t yet earned.” Her hands slid down his sides slowly. “Perhaps I shou-” The words dried up in her throat. “What is that?”

Kaldalis looked back at her, and saw that she was looking past him.

At Bangen’s hand, which was still poking through the door of the tent.

“Uh,” was pretty much the extent of Kaldalis’s ability to explain.