Aberrant: 200X - Steps Re-Stepped

[WhiteRain]

The studio lay on the edge of town, not far from where the Crush site began and Vancouver ended. Two blocks over and the studio would have ceased to be. It made her wonder about fate, about those cosmic dice rolls that meant this or that happened just so.

Chang sat on a bench, hair wrapped tight and molded into skin tight leather and PVC, her body molded into a curvaceous shape that had been modelled on a dominatrix she had seen on TV. Her cock bulged the PVC obscenely, as it always did, but she had grown to like that.

Her high heels were eight inches long, attached to red PVC boots that went up to the thigh, before webbed fishnets offered a glimpse of flesh tattooed with dragons curling up towards her crotch. She had swollen her three breasts, more than doubled their size so they were crammed together, the result of a little remaining inspiration from Bombshell's visit.

She had been hard at work producing art for the charity event, throwaway sculptures and paintings that she knew the baselines would like. A couple were good enough to make money off and she had already contacted Noah about fencing them. If she were ever going to get to photography again she needed to get her funds back in shape.

Chang's mind had been occupied with what to do about Jason's offer. A photo shoot, perhaps? A painting with her as model? Or sculpture, perhaps? Maybe something more impressionist, less obvious?

Over the last few days she had toyed with and discarded so many ideas and possibilities that she felt there might be no art in history that met her satisfaction. But why would there be? She was Nova. They were the ushers of a new age, and she perhaps the usher of new art, or at least one of a breed that would bring it in.

Right now, Olga was in the studio, attending her four o' clock photoshoot.

Chang intended to go in and see how things were going at the shoot. But these things required the right timing. The shoot had begun an hour or so ago, and she wanted it to be as noisy and chaotic as possible before making her entrance. On this occasion, she did not want to be seen.

Her morning meditation had been full of thoughts about the Olga situation. She could not be sure of what she would do when she saw her. The rage had bled away, the humiliation had lost its sting. Yet she knew there lay the capacity for vengeance in her heart. She worked tirelessly to quell it, yes, but working and succeeding were separate things.

She had not yet succeeded.

So the compromise. Sneak into the shoot, and spy on Olga from afar. She would decide then whether it would be wise to see her at their scheduled date later that evening. Chang had picked The Female for their meeting. Why not? Olga had been the beginning of her change of sexuality. Might as well be honest about it.

Chang's flesh creaked and groaned as she softened and flowed up to a standing posture. The bench compressed and pulled up off the concrete, turning from wood and metal into flesh that flowed into Chang's buttocks. Her fishnets extended a fast-spreading web of hair that covered her butt and turned into a layer of inky black PVC.

She listened for a few moments, until she was certain no cars or people would be coming along. The area around the Crush site had generally been left alone since the incident, the memory of it still raw and bleeding. People had no wish to come here save for work or to pay their respects.

Quantum flushed through Chang's being, and she began to hear everything around her. The crackle of hand-held radios as studio security spoke to one another, a loud and urging voice that had to be the lead photographer, models chatting about their outfits and preparations for the shoot.

CCTV dotted the studio's exterior, gaudy and obvious. A discreet strip of razor wire rimmed the roof in case someone might attempt to climb it, and anti-climb paint had been used for the last three feet of wall. From this distance she could also see a more blatant coil of wire positioned away from the lip of the roof but close enough to make climbing up impossible. She found the amount of edges to the building quite disturbing. It had been converted from a warehouse, much like her own apartment, but still, she thought they could have removed the wire. How often did people climb on the roofs around here?

Chang smiled as she crossed the road. People might not often climb the roof... but someone was about to.

She found a space in the camera position and looked up at the roof. Then she stretched. Her body warped like a rubber band. She felt warm and flexible and good. The roof was not far to reach.

Rather than stretched over the wire, she moved past the wire strip, then squeezed her head in flat, compressed her body almost into a tube, and wound through the loop of wire, threading in and out but always coming close to cutting herself. Pushing her limits, testing her control, these were the things which separated her from some other Novas, who took their gifts for granted and never really tested themselves.

Chang pushed to the outside limit of her stretch, expanded until her flesh and leather and PVC bulged out around the barbs of wire, hugging close like a glove. Yet, though she felt the prick of the metal, it never cut.

She boiled out of the loop, semi-liquid, and reformed standing on the roof proper. The skylight was not open, but she had no trouble making a hole. Chang molded one finger into a blade so sharp it could cut glass, and did, removing a small square that she popped into her mouth, chewed and swallowed.

This glass tasted a little different to the glass she had eaten recently. That glass had the taste of beer and other alcohol. This tasted of sun and sky and the remnants of last week's rain. Her mouth watered.

She oozed through the hole and dropped to the ground inside.

Chang landed as a shapeless mass, but bounced back into shape in moments, clothed and fetish-clad and beautiful once again.

Inside the noises were clearer. She could hear every footstep from every person in the building. Every word, every breath. She could scent perfume and fear and lust in the air.

Then came a moment where she could not just hear the steps, but feel them, feel the vibrations in the ground, the hurried beating of their hearts as they scurried hither and thither.

A moment only. It left her a little dazed.

"Just checking, Kev. Thought I heard something."

A guard approaching. Chang raised her arms as if in worship, and melted, flattening herself out on the floor and altering the colour of her skin and hair to match the carpet.

He entered the room, stepped on her, unknowing. A broad fat baseline clad in a dark, nondescript uniform with a logo on the right breast pocket. The underside of his shoes tasted of varnish and dust and blood. She wondered what trouble these shoes had seen. The blood tasted strongly enough to make her suspect it to be recent, within the last few days. Perhaps he had done something to regret.

The guard looked up at the skylight, swallowed, then gave another wary look around the room and went back the way he had come. Some deep, animal part of him knew she was there, and it quailed.

Chang reformed and slipped to the doorway, moving with boneless elegance. She flowed her skin to match the surroundings and clung to the wall as she slid out, squeezing herself flat once more to slide behind a desk that had been almost flush to the wall.

The corridor she had entered into curved for a long way, with many doors, but she just followed the voices to the photo shoot. She passed four doors that opened onto small rooms dominated by white sheets covering furniture, and then came to the brightly-lit shoot room.

She saw the first of the models, a pretty eastern european blond. A young thing, looking nervous in her skimpy, glittering clothes and makeup.

Then came the sound of Olga's voice.

"Like this?" She always possessed a rich accent, and time had not changed that. Her voice rang with the tones of mother Russia, a kind of haughty self-awareness. Not arrogance, but confidence born of knowing herself and her place.

Chang squeezed and molded her body into the form of a small table so the guards would think nothing, and snaked a tendril of herself across the floor and into the room. She cleaved to the wall, and stared at Olga through that piece of herself.

She had aged since they had last met, even though their last meeting was just a few years ago. Chang could see new cracks in the skin, past the layers of makeup designed to cover them. A few more lines were around the eyes, the look of pouty seduction seemed a touch more forced. Olga's hair was swept back in a dramatic wave, dark at the roots and bleached blond as it reached the tips. Her figure was still good, but it no longer stirred Chang's blood or inspired lust. Maybe her desires had shifted, maybe not. Olga's beauty, like her star, had begun to fade.

She had wondered for so long how she would feel when she laid eyes on Olga, feared killing her, hating her, or writhing in remembered loss and pain.

The answer disappointed her.

Chang felt nothing dramatic. A faint, lingering sadness, like a ghost glimpsed through a distant window, dull remembrance of happiness passed, and no more.

Olga turned this way and that for the camera, struck poses, thrust out her assets, which were still more than sufficient for the task, and in all showed herself as the veteran she was.

Chang realized that she had changed more than Olga. For the lines were there, the angles of the body. Yet she stirred not a bit. Perhaps her standards had risen subtly, or perhaps her taint had changed her more than she realized, and that time, that glorious moment when she sucked the woman inside herself had been a sign of changes coming.

She retracted the filament of herself. The table-self creaked and cracked, making wooden twisting sounds as it flowed into her human shape once more.

Chang headed back the way she had come, stretched up and out through the hole in the skylight, and flipped off the roof to land gymnastically below. She no longer feared the meeting. Olga would be safe. She wondered, though, what the woman would say.

Her hair rippled, clothes vanished for a moment, and then reknitted into jeans, T-Shirt and hooded jumper. She stuck her hands into her pockets and walked off into the sun, unblinking, and whistling a merry tune.

[WhiteRain]

***

Chang rolled the vodka on her tongue.

She had begun to read up on food and drink, learning how such a meal was prepared, such a drink brewed. Vodka had seemed a simple drink in the past, one of the simplest, cleanest tastes imaginable. No longer.

Chang tapped a finger against the glass in her hand, and swallowed the mouthful of vodka. "I'm certain that's charcoal," she said, frowning. It did not matter, of course. She could snack on lumps of charcoal the way a child might on sugar cubes, and unlike the child she would come out healthier for the experience.

That feeling had returned. She could feel the steps of the baselines. Their beat was like thunder in her blood, as they danced the night away to the latest, hottest novox dance tunes. She could feel them, place them, see them in a way. Over there a girl was jumping one leg at a time, off to the side of the dance floor, near a friend. She knew it was a girl because of the strength of the vibration. Men and women felt different, men were denser somehow, constructed differently.

She had not yet put it all together. In truth she did not think herself able to quite yet. This was not 'listening'. She could hear someone talking outside The Female, but she could feel them as well.

Chang took a deeper drink. Alcohol had little effect on a Nova physique, but the taste bit nonetheless, and helped to clear her addled thoughts.

Vancouver had proven to be a wise move. She had grown since arriving, and fast, in ways that she she could not of expected and that she relished already. This was her. Songs were stirring in her mind, and more of them came the more clearly she could perceive the world. She wanted to share these wonders. She had to. The artist's duty was to do so.

Olga was running late. Ordinarily Chang would have been angry. Olga was a baseline, fading. Chang was Nova, and growing ever stronger.

However, right now it was her who enjoyed the addled senses one associated with age. She knew her mind would refocus, her nerves reform and sharpen. Two, three days, perhaps a week from now, this would be natural. Natural.

Joy filled her heart. She felt closer to her future self again, like she had taken another stutter-step toward the change promised by chrysalis.

Overall, then, she appreciated this time alone to think and relax and rest.

Twenty minutes passed. Chang remained in her booth. She did not bother to leave it for a new drink. She just stretched one arm all the way to the bar and beckoned for another. They knew what it meant, and brought her more vodka.

That felt easier, too. The distance to the bar from the booth had been a bit of a stretch before. Some might say it looked it now, but it felt effortless. She was loosening up a little. That much she had already tested, warping herself into a mass of coiled limbs and torso and neck inside the booth, testing her 'easy' limits. More than a few baselines had stopped to stare when she did that. She supposed some camera footage would be on the OpNet inside the hour, but she did not mind.

Her changes were something to love, to share. If they wanted to watch, all the better. If not, then she would have to enjoy them alone.

Chang knew now, though, that she would rather not enjoy alone. She wanted company. She wanted someone to share her growth with. A lover would be good. But someone that she loved would be best.

Seeing Olga again had confirmed it. Meeting Bombshell had helped, too. Oh, she knew that Bombshell found her peculiar, perhaps too peculiar to ever want to spend time with her without some ulterior motive. But was that so bad?

Some might say she asked too little. Did not everybody want close friends? Was it not something to expect from life?

She had always been the loner, though. Friends were something to appreciate, not something to demand. They were rare, valuable, and she would not give out the word without due cause. When she called someone 'friend', she intended it to mean something to both of them, but to her most of all.

Olga entered The Female.

Chang could hear her dulcet voice, English flavoured by the fine accent of Russia. She asked where Chang was, perhaps expecting her to be awaiting in some back room or quiet, private place.

For many reasons, she had no intention of being private with this meeting. One of them was simple enough: she had begun already to transform The Female. A few quick pieces of suggestive but subtle art had been hung in certain places. Chang had drawn up designs for images to be painted onto the walls themselves with paint that would respond to the flashing lights on the dance floor, the better to stir the blood of the dancers.

The manageress had been grudging, of course, but she was warming to Chang's ideas already. All of the clientele knew that Chang was the source of these recent changes, but none had dared approach her to say something. They talked on the OpNet forums, though. It was less threatening, she supposed, and it let them hide from taint.

She focused on Olga, the pounding of her heart, the quickness of her breath, the heaviness of her step. She sensed her as acutely as anyone could, following her path from the door to...

Olga appeared in the doorway. She blinked several times when she laid eyes on Chang. Much had changed since they were last together. Back then Chang's shaft had been smaller, suited for baseline interaction. Her skin had not been half as sensitive as now, she could not see with it. Olga had no reason to believe Chang could see her, or was watching now, for Chang's eyes were fixed on the table before her, and the glass of vodka.

"Hello, Chang."

So sweetly spoken. Filled with tension, fear of the future and the present. Already she wondered if this had been a mistake. "Yes," Chang said.

Olga swallowed. It seemed so loud. "Can I come in?"

"Well, we can hardly talk in these positions, can we?" Chang did not raise her eyes.

Olga had come dressed well, in a shimmering black eufiber gown that flushed green and blue alternately as she moved. A cynical choice. Chang had dressed her in it for one of their first photoshoots. To this day it was one of Olga's more famous shots.

She put her handbag on the seat beside her, and moved to sit beside Chang. "How have you been?"

"An awkward question, awkwardly asked," Chang said. Now she raised her eyes and turned to Olga, feeling so... fake for doing it. The motion held no meaning. Yet Olga needed it. They could never rekindle something. Lover, or beloved, they would need to understand that Chang was always watching.

Olga flushed a little. "You're not exactly being helpful here."

"You wished for this meeting, Olga. I simply agreed to turn up. What is it you want from me?"

She had not expected such a straightforward reply, let alone such a direct question. "Please, let's not fight. I know I hurt you. I never meant to."

A lie. Obvious and true. She accused Chang of raping her, took her to court, tried to put her in jail. She had played the role well, that of the defiled beauty assaulted by the vicious inhuman Nova monster. The media had loved that story. Of course they had twisted it into a sort of 'Beauty and the Beast' parallel, though it never really hung together. Chang was more beautiful than Olga ever could dream of being, more beautiful than any woman. They knew it, and she knew it. The point of the beast was that it was a beautiful man made ugly by his actions. She was a beautiful woman, and she had only ever been made more beautiful by her actions, in her own mind at least.

"I forgive you," Chang said. "But I do not forget."

"What was I supposed to do?" She showed anger now, frustration. "You just... just... that!"

"Embraced you? Fucked you? Touched you like no baseline hand ever could? What else did you expect from a Nova? Something shiny and perfect and familiar? Did I ever give the impression I could offer that?"

Olga took a deep breath. "No. But you also never gave me the impression you would do that."

Chang shrugged. "I never intended to. It just happened. It's a strange thing to say for me, who has spent so long achieving perfect control, but it's true. You just looked so delicious. I had to taste you."

Unbidden, she thought of the melon she'd swallowed, of feeding it to her cock and her lips. There had been no real difference in taste. She supposed her whole body consisted of 'tastebuds' now. "I've changed a lot, Olga," she said, her voice quiet. "You should get a drink."

Chang stretched her arm out, winding and coiling it through the air, slipping between people to the bar to order a drink for Olga. She whipped her arm back. "Want me to caress you?" She stretched her arm again, curled it up above Olga and wiggled her fingers at her.

Olga tried and failed to suppress a shudder. "I wanted things to go back to the way they were."

"Difficult. We're not the same women."

Olga's eyes went to Chang's cock in response to that. "No, I suppose we're not. But, surely there's hope? We can do something, right?"

Chang smiled. Olga stank of desperation. She had not thought this through, though, nor anticipated how things had changed. "Tell me, Olga, what will you do with me when I am naked and hungry?"

She leaned back, and twitched the enormity of her shaft, so it strained against her clothes and her PVC creaked deliciously.

Olga looked down at the ground then. "Chang..."

"You came here because you wanted your career back," she said, in all four voices. "You wanted me to exalt you again. But what will you do if the asking price is being sucked into my body day after day?"

"You woudn't. It's not right!"

"I would. It feels amazing. It's like saying someone won't have sex, and that's not right. Don't you understand? These changes are not skin deep. The mind behind the body is as different as the body it shapes. I wasn't just doing something on a whim that I've forgotten, that is a sexual act in and of itself. You came to use me, Olga. I'm not some simple emotional fool. I'm not going to fall for a flash of thigh or breast. You've shown me who you are. What can possibly have changed that will make me care now?"

Olga turned to her. "I've changed, Chang! You're not the only one, you know! What am I supposed to say? You scared me!"

She did not feel moved. "We are a little older," Chang said, "but that means a different thing for Novas. I am older, and more beautiful, and more powerful, and I see the world with fresh eyes. You are older, and your beauty is fading, and you are weaker, and jaded. What are you supposed to say? Nothing. What do I expect you to say? Nothing. What you do or don't say changes nothing. We are older, and more different than ever. Truly, Olga, what is there to say?"

Olga stared at her, conflict raging in her blue eyes. Chang could see unsaid words in that gaze, but she could not have said what they were. After a few moments, Olga broke the gaze and took her first shaking sip from her glass. "What if I say yes?" She said.

"Yes to what?"

"Yes you can suck me up and play with me all you want." Olga took a big gulp of her drink. "What if I'm okay with it?"

"You mean, what if you'll endure it, never sharing, never loving, never enjoying. What if you'll do that?"

Olga nodded.

Chang put her drink down and slid across the seat, easily kicked her leg over Olga's, and switched to kneel in her lap. She leaned forward, bringing her three breasts close to Olga's face, resting her arms against the wall, and put on her hungriest stare.

Naked fear played in Olga's eyes. She trembled, and not in a good way. She remembered the look in that pilot's eyes on the airstrip, when he had delivered bad news.

She unwound her hair from her cock, and pressed it against Olga's body. Chang did not laugh, even though this was funny. Olga thought it so large, but it wasn't even erect.

Chang made her shaft suck on her, the raw flesh pulling in some of Olga's clothes and resting its warmth against her belly, penetrating to touch her breasts.

With that touch came a shock for them both, for Chang felt herself begin to stiffen. Olga gasped, as the cock swelled and thickened, pushing up between and parting her breasts, coming up against her chin, now absorbing her clothes as it went. "P-Please," she whispered, her voice resonant with fear.

"Please what?" Chang said in a four-tone whisper, each a moment behind the other. Her cock pressed up against Olga's chin. She concentrated, and made its tip 'kiss' her chin, sucking fleshily on it. Olga looked like she might cry. "I've learned some new tricks," Chang said with a smile. "Want me to share them?"

"No."

"Then why did you come here and offer to be my lover?" She put a hand on Olga's cheek. "Why did you taunt me with that? Do you think I have no yearnings? Do you think I don't miss it? You never knew how much it hurt me, Olga. Or perhaps I give you too little credit, since you're a baseline. Maybe you did know, and just didn't care."

"No," a tremulous note entered her voice. "It wasn't like that. It wasn't."

Chang leaned in and stole a kiss. Her first real kiss in years. Lip to lip, tongue to flesh. It felt electrifying, though it went unreturned. She pulled back. With a pleasured groan, she gaped her cock wide enough to engulf Olga's head, and for a moment watched the woman flail and struggle. Then she pulled it back, and her hair rewrapped it, pressing it tight against her central breast until the stiffness subsided. That might take a while.

She watched Olga, listened to her thudding heart, her gasps and panicked breathing. She had been in no danger of suffocating, of course. Chang had kept her alive inside herself for over an hour that one time.

"I could swallow you up again. Suck you into this body of mine," Chang said, her voice thoughtful, meditative. Then she shrugged. "But what's the point? You don't want me. And I'm no rapist. But I'm not human, either. You helped teach me, Olga. For that I thank you."

Chang slid out of Olga's lap, and sipped her vodka again. She had done too much. Her body hungered. She clamped down on it, though. She had let her feelings run wild to prove a point, and no more than that. She needed a lover who would see that and have her eyes light up with lust, her body shiver with desire.

Of course, that woman might not exist. But Chang had a romantic side, and she had always felt that true love might be real.

"So that's it, then?" Olga looked petulant now, angry. "You dragged me here just to humiliate me. Does this make you feel better, Chang?"

"You assume your feelings matter to me one way or the other," Chang said. "They don't. You're important to me, Olga, but only because of what you mean. You're not a person anymore. You're a lesson learned, and remembered. You'll probably take offense, but I'll remember you fondly when I've forgotten thousands of others. Surely there's something to be said for that."

Chang pushed her hand into her glass, warping the fingers and flesh and bone to fill it, and absorbed the liquid directly into her body. She savoured the taste, then her hand swelled and flowed over the glass, sucking that in as well. "Glass is quite delicious," she said, rising from her seat. "But I wouldn't try it if I were you. My constitution is rather different even by Nova standards."

Olga sat, defeated. She had hoped for something, some hope, some arrangement, and received nothing. "Help me. Please."

"No," Chang said. "You are not my lover, not my friend, and you do not love me. I owe you nothing more than a fond remembrance, and you have no right to ask for more than that. You were young and beautiful once, and you are still beautiful, though no longer young. Live your life, Olga. Defy the odds if you're able. Don't come to me begging for a quick fix. I have other models to focus on," she said, thinking of Bombshell, "ones that are glorious already, who will put a strain on me to find some way to enhance what they naturally have. Goodbye, Olga. We should not meet again."

Chang walked out of the booth without pausing. It was over. She felt no grim satisfaction at upsetting the woman, took no vengeful joy from returning some imagined favour. She only felt glad that she had indeed left it behind her and not been left embittered.

As she stepped out onto the street, her smooth flawless skin tingling and alive with vibrations from the ground, the brush of air across it, the taste of vodka and well-used glass in her fingers and belly, she smiled.

Tonight she had walked old ground, and left it with new discoveries. Nobody could ask for more.

Chang smiled, and began to walk home, heading to Chinatown first. If tonight was a time to walk old ground, then she might as well take another trip down memory lane on her way back.