Liberation Union Mobile Firebase Delta Foxtrot

[WickedCadrach]

The silent satisfaction that followed made Emily's eyes heavy. Despite the intervening shower, she and Magda both were only a couple hours removed from the skirmish at the Hive hab base, and the pilot's muscles were now demanding true rest. For a moment, she considered releasing the last of the tension in her limbs, slipping down to lie fully against the woman under her. She could stay a few minutes at least... right? The moment just felt so—

Magda's nose brushed Emily's and the dark-haired frame-jockey started, blinking as she felt the playful touch. A moment passed where her eyes moved between Magda's, looking first to the right then the left. Why had that surprised her so much? They had touched each other everywhere else with much much more intense contact. They'd kissed, something that not everyone Emily took to her bunk wanted to do do—not something she always wanted out of a lover, but something that had felt right in the moment. Still... that had been the heat of the moment. People said and did crazy stuff when their blood was moving, but things were cooling off now. Did she want another round? That didn't seem to be it. There was a heartbeat of pause where Emily thought she knew the answer, but silently the pilot shoved the thought away, playing dumb with herself as she shifted in place. Because in the stillness of the command office pod, just as Magda's nose had touched hers, Emily had felt a flutter in her chest that frightened her. 

Slipping on a crooked smirk, she pushed the feeling down. 

"Awww... Did I find the happy switch? My captain seems a little less cunt-y now," she said, her voice low and breathy despite the cavalier cadence. 

Withdrawing slowly, Emily pulled her hips away until she felt Magda's fingers slip free, and dropping a metal foot to the floor, she gave the other woman a last appreciative stare, her cool, mischievous expression softening as her gaze moved up from her captain's bare legs and chest and reached the shaved head lifting from the table to look her way. 

Without another word, Emily gathered her clothes, dressing promptly before firing off a sloppy salute at the door. 

"Captain."

[WritesNaughtyStories]

On 07/10/2025 at 17:49, WickedCadrach said:

"Awww... Did I find the happy switch? My captain seems a little less cunt-y now,"

Magda offered Emily a sheepish smile. "Maybe a bit more." She giggled, rubbing one hand over her cum-slicked thigh and the drying smear on her close-cropped scalp, "but in a good way."

She watched the younger woman make her way to the door, rocking her head to one side as she tried to shift gears back to Fire Base Commander mode. Then Emily saluted.

Magda tried to keep the sudden hurt from showing on her face, but couldn't. It felt like Emily was acknowledging an unsavory order, and the little yelp of hurt surprise escaped her lips before she could choke it off. The commander closed her eyes and took a long slow breath, trying to set aside her unreasonable reaction. Lt, Kehrer probably meant nothing by it. She'd given more of herself to become the pilot she was than anyone on the team. Maybe anyone in the Union.

Magda exhaled slowly, massaging her scalp as she tried, again, to shift her thoughts to their plan to rescue the Hive's sacrificial lambs. She pushed herself off the desk with a sigh and made her way to the small crate that acted as her wardrobe. She grabbed a new tank top, a pair of panties and a towel, all in colors so old and faded they looked gray.

Captain Payarkoon counted to 15 to give Emily time to avoid her and walked out of her door toward the showers. She dumped her kit on the metal bench and stepped into the chemical spray and sluiced off the evidence of her rendezvous, scrubbing herself with her bare hands,

//Shall I move us off to prepping for the attack?

[WritesNaughtyStories]

For the next hour Captain Payarkoon simply pushed the thing with the salute out of her mind. Her feelings had been hurt in the past - far worse, in fact - and her misery was not important enough to get clock cycles. There was, in fact, a war on and she was expected to fight it. When she crawled into the rack with an actual plan for how to take the Hive outpost she let herself be hurt and angry. Then she dissected it. Knowing it was just Emily being cheeky didn't help much, Knowing and feeling aren't the same thing, but it did let the Captain fall asleep.

In the morning Magda gathered the techs and the even more meager resources they could provide them. "I need Patune's mass driver fully functional and that new frame completely jail broken - Kehrer hates it, but for a day she's going to have to ride it. You have 48 hours. Get everything you can working as best you can. Questions?"

There were a few, mostly about priorities and what could be stolen from where to make things work. Magda did her best to answer them all clearly, wanting to leave as little to interpretation as possible. It's not that she doubted her people's interpretations, but much more that she doubted they'd have confidence in the interpretations and wouldn't do anything. Too often perfect judgement was seen as the ideal, when the initiative to do something, anything, was far more valuable.

Once the techs were off Captain Payarkoon went hunting to Lieutenant Keherer. When she found the scarred pilot, Magda shoved aside her lingering annoyance, "Come on, Patches. You, me and Scyllia have a date with a bunch of Hive locals who need rescuing from kaiju and Hive neglect." The captain pointed toward the door, "Go get your girl prepped, I'll be along as soon as I get the others briefed."

The Captain gave the pilot a minute to get on her way, then made a base wide announcement for an all-hands briefing in the carrier in 4 minutes. "Off the shitter and outta the showers, kids. Ya has important news to share."

She described only what the available pilots and carrier crew needed to know and the context of holding the outpost indefinitely. When to dust off, where to put down which BioFrame. Again, there were questions,this time she spelled out what she could, but added, "IF something comes up, and we can be almost certain something will, do something. A decision will be better than nothing. We can't work from nothing,we can't correct nothing, but once we do a thing, we can react tot it. Clear?"

Another few questions followed, but she was headed to the paddock, stripping her clothes off and jamming them into a waterproof bag as she approached Scyllia, "Hey pretty girl." She said, greeting the tiny frame, The captain continued, "Is your girl jacked in? Tell her I'm here?"

"Patches, can I sure my kit to Scyllia's leg?" She called.

[WickedCadrach]

The cold mountain air was exactly what Emily needed as she left Magda's office. Out of sight of her commanding officer, the pilot ignited the electric nic-stik and took a heady drag that set her artificial lungs audibly skirring. She stared off into empty sky, tracing the ragged claw marks of thin clouds as she used her outward cool to cudgel the restlessness in her chest back into submission. 

"Fuck," Emily whispered, exhaling chemical wisps that mingled with the mist of her hot breath. "Fuck. That's what it is. It's just a fuck. Just some fucking sparring to blow off steam. With—With your captain." The lieutenant's flesh-and-bone leg quirked in, dropping her hip and shoulder against the icy container wall of the nearest barrack pod. Her head followed and she let it lay there, putting her brain on ice a moment while she drew in another pull from the plastic and copper cigarette between her lips. She did all of this as a way of burying the thought that she'd almost said 'with Magda' and tossed why she felt the need to use the commanding officer's title instead of her name into that unmarked mental grave for good measure. 

For all the crap she gave her, Emily respected Magda. As a warrior. As a leader. As a woman who took care of her business. The only softness Emily had seen was the usual smirking comradery that successful officers doled out in moderation, enough to keep the troops on side but not so much as to lose the authority of command. And Emily had believed the softness Magda reserved for her had been of similar stuff—that or the maternal protectiveness that the lieutenant's 'broken doll' body seemed to engender in others before she shit-kicked the notion out of them. 

But that moment Magda's nose brushed hers wasn't either of those two familiar options. 

"Fuck..." The nic-stik's green LED flashed red as the chemical reservoir ran dry and Emily sucked burnt air and the taste of copper. Pulling the dull black and red stick from her lips, she grimaced down at it and wondered idly if her fingers were made from the same kind of wiring and rigid metal under the soft silicone 'flesh'. The thought lingered as she watched the blinking indicator on the nic-stik pulse, growing fainter and fainter before finally blinking out. 

Emily shivered. The exposed metal of her left leg was transferring the high altitude's cold up into her, but that wasn't why she trembled or why her breath caught. She tried to tell herself it was stupid to get sentimental about a fucking smoke, forcing herself to throw the discharged device off the rim of the slope as she turned for her bunk. Things got used up. Or they broke. You enjoy them while they're here, but it's idiotic to get attached when you know it's not forever. 

By the time Emily made it back to the pilot barrack, Diego was coming in from his shift on watch. She dragged him to the showers, pulling his hair and biting his shoulder and neck until he shoved her face-first against the wet tile. It wasn't enough to make Emily forget. But, for the night, it was enough to convince herself she didn't care. 

---

Cocooned inside the wet, roiling coils of Scylla's cockpit, Emily picked up the faint visual of Magda at her BioFrame's heel. She wasn't so deeply synced that she couldn't hear Magda with her own ears, but Scylla's impressive sensory organs and apparatus shot an echo of the call in crystal clarity to overlay Emily's natural senses. 

"There's some tow-hooks on the back of her calves and hips," Emily called back through the narrow opening through Scylla's abdomen that exited at the base of the BioFrame's spine. "Secure it wherever, just try to split it or ballast it. My girl's a dancer. Not a fucking tractor like Patune." Emily smirked, already imagining the look on Magda's face at the comment. 

Making a few final checks of the scant digital and analog controls in the cockpit, Emily stroked the dark tendril resting against her temple that was giving her a faint link to Scylla. "I know. I know. You like it better when it's just us. Me too. But Magda's cool. And I'm still driving, baby girl." 

The white-steel tentacles along Scylla's back swayed anxiously and the black, luminous eyes glanced down at Captain Payarkoon with an inscrutable and eerie stillness that might have been curiosity or warning on the BioFrame's alien and feral features.  

Emily decided to get ahead of any misunderstandings though and called out, "Don't worry. She's just nervous about someone riding shotgun. Climb up when you're set." A moment later, her own checks now finished, Emily added, "By the way, that new Frame we jacked. Does he have a callsign yet? I figure when it's time to make the switch, it might be a little late for introductions."

[WritesNaughtyStories]

2 hours ago, WickedCadrach said:

"Secure it wherever, just try to split it or ballast it. My girl's a dancer. Not a fucking tractor like Patune."

"Tractor?" Magda asked over a laugh, "My boy's a bulldozer more like." She offered, securing her bag to Scyllia's right hip. "It's just my clothes, but all I've got is one bag."

The captain felt Scyllia's eyes on her as moved toward the Bio frame's hatch. Magda turned an eye to Patune. The big brute was likely to be pissed, but it was hard to guess at who. Mercifully it looked like the techs we're working on his railgun so he was distracted.

"Hey Scyllia," she said stroking Scyllia's thigh, "I'm not here to steal your girl." She didn't add, 'but I'd sure like it if we could share'. Magda did tell the recon Frame, "Patune's probably going to be mad too."

Payarkoon slithered through the entrance with surprising grace and ease. Inside the tight nerve center, Magda felt massive. Having felt the presence of Patune's mind through her mother since before birth, Magda's instinct was to caress the dark tendrils that would connect Emily to Scyllia to let the BioFrame know she was here and to let her probe her mind  She fought that down. If Scyllia wanted her, she could find her through Patches.

The switch was natural. This was official duty, and Magda's affection for the young officer went to the same place fear and memories of the brave fighters she'd lost went. Now there was a mission.

The captain lay a gentle hand on the lieutenant's shoulder, "Where do you want me? Looks like kind of kneeling down in front and under you, or kind of laying on your back a little."

As she settled into position, Captain Payarkoon answered about the new Frame. "No. We've been stretched so thin that Patune and Granite have been keeping it company. I haven't had a chance to get in it at all so I don't even know if it feels like a girl or not."

Spoiler

For Hive frames gender tended to be a subjective call by the pilot because the emotion and hormone blockers, nerve gates and behavior limiters basically turned off most of their higher brain functions What was left was just autonomic functions to support the nerves that carried the pilots instructions to the muscles. As the barriers were lifted the rudimentary personalities hadn't developed the kind of identities Union frames had. The Hive frames like Granite almost always adopted what their pilot felt fit them. Magda had never thought that it was that Union pilots were so perceptive but that the frames were impressionable. If there was any way to do it, she give them three months to detox too.

"As soon as you're ready, Patches, let the carrier know I'm on board, and we're enroute."

//Whatever chit chat you want, a piloting roll to get us down the mountain and a stealth roll to sneak up the river, plus whatever drama the rolls reveal.

Edited November 12, 2025 by WritesNaughtyStories
clean up

[WickedCadrach]

On 11/11/2025 at 20:40, WritesNaughtyStories said:

The captain lay a gentle hand on the lieutenant's shoulder, "Where do you want me?"

The dim heartbeat-red of Scylla's cockpit lighting painted Magda's bare skin like primitive war-paint, making every crease in her tightly muscled body stand out in stark black lines, her eyes somehow softer and more intense from the glint that soft red gave them. The ease with which the natural-born BioFrame pilot navigated the soft roil of Scylla's black tendrils had drawn Emily's eye already, and there was just a flicker of a pause at the captain's question before Emily threw on a crooked smirk and replied, "I can think of a few places." 

Looking back over her shoulder, the LT locked eyes with Magda then shifted a gloved hand to indicate a dimple in the black coils—a space like the groove down the center of an enormous tongue behind Emily's back. In that silent exchange was both the cavalier and playful acknowledgement of what had already happened between them and the subtle promise that Emily would be packing those thoughts away for the mission as well. 

Unlike Magda, Emily was at least partially clothed, though her jacket and a fresh change were similarly secured in a cramped, water-tight cubby build into Scylla's thigh. A faded pair of boxers emblazoned with cartoon turtles hung crooked on Emily's hip, and as she helped Magda into position, she adjusted the strap of the black tank top draped unconvincingly over her chest. The cracked leather of the fingerless gloves on her hands creaked as she coaxed some of the thicker tendrils from the wall behind Magda and around the other woman's hips and shoulders. They idly coiled and swayed with the BioFrame's anxious and curious thoughts but mostly cooperated with Emily's efforts to set them in a good position to reach her around her passenger . 

With a small grunt of acknowledgement at Magda's comment about the new Frame, Emily tried to put it from her mind. It was a problem for later. The problem right now was the way Scylla's tentacles had started shivering in fits around Magda's extended arms and legs.

"You're bracing yourself. Try to relax," Emily suggested, watching as some of the black tentacled limbs began to steady, coiling up around Magda's ankles and under her armpits. "There's no 'throne' in here, no rigid seats, so let Scylla support you." Emily indicated the encompassing black coils and sea-anemone structures of tinier connections in the same glistening, wet flesh. "She'll move you around—for balance and to make sure I can reach the sync points I need if I end up going full-dive. Because of her sensor-array, there are a lot of ception-points, so don't get queasy if you catch some bleed."

When all was settled, Emily was kneeling, her palms gripping two tendrils that had snaked up her forearms to the elbow. Magda's was held in a sort of half-crouch over Emily's back, a thick tentacle between them as Scylla's main sync-line grazed Magda's shin and rode Emily's spine, leaving a glistening trail of neurofluid between the captain's breasts and in Emily's tank top from the contact. Hundreds of small, squirming cilia along the limb's trunk lit up the empathic link between pilot and BioFrame, and Emily felt the momentary vertigo of her senses broadening to take in the hangar and the now-tiny-looking LU mechanics at their final checks. 

<Showing green across the board, Patches. You and Scylla are clear for launch.> 

The message chirped in Emily's mind through Scylla's internal comms, echoed a millisecond later by the backup radio's dull speaker. 

"Roger that. Ya is onboard—and loving every second of it. Taking her out now." 

With a final breath and slow release, Emily shifted her hands where they nestled in the squelching roil of flesh, sending an almost ticklish coaxing through Scylla's nervous system. The next several minutes were a series of impressions between Emily's sweeps for patrols and errant kaiju along the mountainside. Icy air on steel skin. The roughness of tree bark and stone as Scylla's hands and feet worked with the tentacles to propel her with a cycling smoothness that kept the cockpit smoothly cradled in her torso, minimizing shock and giving an impression like gliding. 

// Pilot Roll 1 = (5, 4, 4, 2) + 1
// Stealth Roll 2 = (6, 5, 2, 2) + 2 

[Icarian Dreams]

There was a cold in the air. Not that Cassandra could feel it — the sensations coming from outside the frame were always carefully tuned and filtered by arrays upon arrays of sophisticated tech not to impact the pilot's performance, nor distract from the goals they fought for on the battlefield. The entire system was constructed so she would not feel the pain of a fresh combat wound on her Bio-Frame, the soreness of its exerted muscles, nor — indeed — the impact of high or low temperatures on the exposed organic parts of the unit. A heads-up display informed her of everything she needed to know, when she needed to know it, and a loud alert system would pipe off the moment any of the values shot past their expected boundaries so she could react accordingly. A system tighter than a well-made watch.

And yet, it was cold. Despite the on-board displays showing nothing outside the range of normalcy and the in-cockpit atmosphere being strictly regulated by a steady whir of fans and heaters. It must have been a nightmare to install AC into what was essentially a living creature, but the Hive had some of the brightest minds to ever be put into the field of Bio-Frame augmentation. Many of which were even employed under the company bearing her own family's name.

Cassandra grimaced. A living creature. A frame. The kaiju that lent its biological functions for this weapon of precise destruction was "alive" in only a very rudimentary sense. Steering it was little more than applying correct impulses to the correct parts of the tissue that you wanted to move. Not at all different from a remotely-controlled robot.

But Cassandra felt it reacting to the cold breeze outside. Reacting in a way that no other Frame she had steered before reacted, and to what was, ultimately, parameters that should have been well within expected configuration. The subtle hesitance in the relaxation of the muscles. A delay, slight inaccuracy in her inputs. A behavior in no way similar to those of any of her hunting Frames back home, nor like the giant Heracles-class she was given back at the northern front just a few years ago. 

A unique behavior, specific to this one, particular unit. A quirk, a sliver of personality, as some would call it. If she heard anyone from her unit do so, she'd have them disciplined within the hour. But thoughts, especially her own, were a little harder to police. And there was something that made it hard for her to think about a being shivering from cold the same way she'd think of a lifeless metal construct...

☆☆☆

A quiet breath escaped the woman's lips, carrying a note of resignation that rested in a foggy mist on the lower part of her translucent full-face visor. She reached towards the communicator for what must have been the dozenth time in the recent history. Thumb pressed down in a familiar motion the transmission button. A just-as-familiar buzz signaled she was on air. 

"This is Major Cassandra Magnusson of the 23rd B-Frame Company; Command, please come in. Over."

The communicator accepted her plea with an emotionless "beeeep," then fell silent again. Just like it did some eleven times before. Cassandra sighed once more. No matter how long she waited, there was no response.

This was not right. Nothing about this was right.

At first, she had speculated that the relay station must have got hit. It would have explained why her comms went dark and why no-one reacted to that kaiju strike earlier. But it didn't explain why she got ignored on the local frequencies when the reaction forces actually did arrive, and got into that skirmish with the Union not far from here. Or why the everpresent cameras kept on broadcasting her (and not only her) every move to some unknown audience as if it was some strange reality show. It didn't really make sense.

In all honesty, she should have expected foul play ever since she got the order to divert her course and arrive here instead. The call was sudden, uncalled for, and the fact that she got summoned here alone, without her subordinates, should have raised her eyebrow from the get-go. She wasn't even officially on duty when the call arrived. But she wasn't in the habit of questioning her orders and it wouldn't have been the first time a kaiju strike or some Union shenanigans pulled her unit into action when she least expected it. Never like this, but often similar enough for this not to seem too out of ordinary.  

But that mattered little now. Now she was stranded, in a frame she barely knew, and with no allies to call for after the dropship that got her here left her sensor range. The outpost didn't even have a proper garrison, so she spent last night cuddled in the cockpit, keeping her signature low as to not attract the kaiju. And between her broken comms, the disproportion between supplies at her disposal and the apparent hostile activity in the area, locals who knew seemingly as much about the situation as she did, and that strange behavior of the patrol just fleeing the scene after the skirmish... she was half-expecting to learn there was a bomb with a "thank you for your service" note rigged somewhere to her undercarriage. It had not exploded quite yet, but Cassandra wasn't convinced it wasn't just waiting for a particularly dramatic moment.

☆☆☆

The jump-jets of the Lion-class she was riding roared with blue-ish flame, getting the frame higher into the mountainside. The terrain below showed remnants of a recent attack — the one stopped by the Union and not her Hive allies... allies who did not even check on the outpost, which, she was pretty sure, was the only real resource the Hive had in the area. If not for it, then why were they here? And why was she here?

Cassandra ordered a full scan. Maybe someone was still in the area. Anyone, really, who had a better sense on what was going here than she was...

// Notice Roll [+, , -, +] + 3 = +4

[WritesNaughtyStories]

On 18/11/2025 at 17:44, WickedCadrach said:

"I can think of a few places."

It wasn't the lack of a couch that had the captain tense. It was a conflicted memory of what had been a good evening with the younger pilot and the goddamned salute. She knew she shouldn't be, but she was still hurt. Tears were useless though, and thee Captain had long ago learned to substitute anger. She took a long, slow breath and exhaled.

Magda relaxed into the gently undulating coils of Scylla's nerve tendrils. "It's fine Lt. Kehrer - I ride bareback too. I never liked the couch and neither did Patune." The captain knew Scylla couldn't hear her directly, but anything Emily heard, the BioFrame would hear. "It's okay Scylla, you can do what you need to reach Emily." She felt the thick tendril slither between them and rested her head to one side of the lieutenant's spine and Scylla's main neuro bundle. Her temple rested against the tendril, but Emily's tank top separated them.

"This good, ladies?"

It was strange, riding in the low light of Scylla's nerve center but with no direct input. The captain was traveling blind folded and could hear only the soft, set squish of tendrils and flesh. The Emily lit up the sensor array and a disconcerting crackle of incomplete data sparked along Magda's nerves. She tensed reflexively but had been synched to BioFrames sinve before she was born and knew no good would come from her pushing back.

"Go slow a sec, Lieutenant, I need to get used to the way Scylla's bleeding." Magda leaned her head against the tendril between the women and her cheek against Emily's bare shoulder. Patune was tactile and the slight contact with Emily's skin proved grounding enough to work with the more steady flow of data pressing against Scylla provided to keep the bleed from strobing on and off.

Magda meditated, concentrating on keeping her breathing sloe and regular, her mind empty. She labelled each stray thought to dismiss it. Her bleeding back in would be disastrous. There was a reason there were no dual piloted frames.

☆☆☆

Major Magnusson caught a glimpse of something moving through the tumbled rock and fissures of the mountain side, but nothing read on her Frame's sensors. it didn't make sense.

 

@WickedCadrach what do you do? I'm going to rule you notice the Hive BioFrame. How much information is Magda getting?

@Icarian Dreams after we get Emily and Scylla sorted, what do you do? (I need a way to @ the characters rather than the players)

[WickedCadrach]

On 24/11/2025 at 17:17, WritesNaughtyStories said:

"Go slow a sec, Lieutenant, I need to get used to the way Scylla's bleeding."

Emily obliged, and as Scylla slipped down the slopes with panther-like grace, the pilot took a few steadying breaths herself, letting the calm flow into the BioFrame's primitive brain and ease them into a flowing jog. The supporting tentacles gave the movement a fluidity that felt like swimming over the rocky ground, and compared to the stomping reverberations of Patune or some of the other pilots' Lion-classes, the sensation hitting Magda and Emily was more like being suspended in zero-gravity while the world turned swiftly under them. 

Emily closed her eyes, smirking as her CO lay her cheek over her bare shoulder. The warmth and pressure of her in the closeness of the cockpit was unusual, but not at all unpleasant. Scylla seemed to pick up on Emily's thoughts though, as two smaller tendrils slipped up the pilot's hips to support the thicker main line lying across her spine between her and Magda, creating a more purposeful division between them with the slick warmth of the interposing limbs. 

"Behave," Emily said softly. The feral mind send an impulse back that was somewhere between sarcasm and innocent ignorance. What do you mean? It may as well have said despite the lack of words. 

Emily was about to send back a pointed 'you know exactly what I mean' when suddenly Scylla bristled. Black tendrils flitted, and the the coils around Emily's legs lifted her up as others in the ceiling slipped down to lie on her temples. The sensor array in the BioFrame's cephalopod head was firing. Blue light washed in Emily's vision as radar fired, her brain and cyber finding a way to interpret a sense her body was never meant to possess. She simultaneous blooms of heat like the starbursts of pressing her palms too hard into her eyes. Thermal vision. The smell of burning fuel on the wind. 

Against her back, the slick neurofluid sent echoes of the images to Magda as well. The chill of the mountain air against Scylla's slick black muscle and chilled white-steel skin. The afterburn of jump jets ignited a little more than a kilometer away on the face of the adjacent mountain in the range. The sudden stillness as the playful whorls of Scylla's tentacles went as rigid as the threads of a spider's web.

"Bogey just burned about a klick North-North-West," Emily said, interpreting what was likely a chaotic kaleidoscope of radar, infrared, and signal probes for her captain. "I thought the intervention team pulled out..." she added, her eyes narrowing as she stared across the darkness toward the shadow of the unidentified Frame. "If they have patrols circling, we could be in trouble getting back out... Then again... Solo patrol is unusual for Hive outfits. Could be a merc or a conclave out here we don't know about." 

Tilting her head toward Magda, Emily couldn't keep some of Scylla's more predatory interest out of her eyes as she asked, "Permission to approach, Captain? Take a closer look?"

[WritesNaughtyStories]

Magda felt Scylla interpose extra tendrils between her and Emily. It was the kind of possessive behavior Patune might engage in too. She smiled softly into Emily's back as neuro fluid sickened her skin.

The connections weren't ideally located, but the greater contact increased the throughput between Magda and Scylla, and through the BioFrame, Emily. Magda leaned into her genuine care and concern for the pilots and Frames of Strike Team Delta Foxtrot. It was impossible to lie to the interface, so Magda made no effort. She let Scylla see, let the faint, distant information that flowed along the nerves of her extremities and torso trickle into her brain.

The tactile input was stronger, the nerves in contact with Scylla 's nerve bundles were meant to carry that data, but flashes of the visual input got through. It was disconcerting, like looking through fog with eyes you couldn't control. The images shifted and swirled, bandwidths and hues Magda didn't know.

She was smart enough not to fight. She let the stream wash through her, grounding herself in the cold air on Scylla's skin and armor and the warm press of the pilot and Scylla 's tendrils. That dicotomy Magda knew. 

The captain wasn't sure she hear Kehrer's question or felt it through Scylla, but answered as much as felt her reply.

"Go carefully - it might be a trap."

★★★

Cassandra caught the occasional glimpse of what appeared to be movement, but it slipped in and out of visuals, but almost nothing registered on other sensors.

Whatever it was didn't appear to move like a Frame, or at least not one the Major had ever seen, nor did appear to have the mass or linear, intent of a kaiju. It moved with a fluid grace that slipped in and out of sight, appearing for an instant, the disappearing only to reappear somewhere else.

[Icarian Dreams]

Cassandra narrowed her eyes. Adjusted herself in her cockpit and leaned in, following what was just a moment ago but a sliver of motion barely caught out the corner of her eye. A kaiju? No... but the movement signature didn't match any known threat she was taught about either. And while at first she dismissed the sensors failing to track it as just another malfunction of the frame's systems, right next to the unresponsive comms, she was starting to suspect that maybe it wasn't as much her gear failing as it was this anomalous entity managing to conceal itself in some way?

She bit her lip. In other circumstances, this would have been... somewhat exciting, even.  A part of her always found facing the unknown thrilling. That's why she enjoyed kaiju hunting so much, even though it was mostly in controlled environments. But here, alone, without the safety net of allied forces, or even a friendly ear she could consult this with? The entire situation just felt anxiety-inducing.

Alright. Cassandra swallowed and put her game face on. She's been in bad operational situations before. She needed to guide herself through this. Whatever it was shifting through the terrain, given its speed and size it probably didn't pose much a threat to her frame by itself. But it sure as hell could if it had friends. At which point, as good a vantage point as she had, the mountainside also made her Frame into a sitting duck.

She slid back down into the valley. She needed more information... but she couldn't be careless either. If this entity was moving towards the outpost, she had a good chance of intercepting it from where she was, especially if she caught it by surprise. If it was going elsewhere, then... well, it sure as hell wasn't anything Hive-aligned, so not engaging might have been the preferred course of action. For now, it felt best to stay out of sight while keeping her own eyes peeled. Figuring out what she was dealing with was the priority.

[WickedCadrach]

Scylla slipped over the ground on fingertips and toes, the coils of her tentacles moving like spider legs to support her frame as she skirted the rocky forest floor. The frame was moving. As Scylla approached, pulses of sensor pings and camera arrays with laser-calculated distance displayed in Emily's mind, spilling over in blurred glimpses to Magda through the close contact. 

"It's cutting us off," Emily said through grit teeth. The frame might have been heading back to the outpost for reasons unrelated to them, but the way it moved down the mountain so quickly after arriving sent a cold caution through Emily that made her wonder if they'd been made. Did the other have a recon suite of it's own? It hadn't been trying to be 'subtle' with that jump it made. Was it trying to lure her into a trap?

Emily's own cautious paranoia mingled with Scylla's own 'small-dog' ferocity, and without any word of command several more sweeps were made through the oblong sensor array in the BioFrame's head. Even through the static of tree leaves, startled birds, and the few hardy animals that made the mountain their home, the results were unsettlingly quiet. 

Now that she was closer, there was no missing what the Frame was ahead of her. Clad in standard armor plating and moving with the stiff, robotic gait she'd grown so familiar with, the Hive frame may as well have been waving the flag of its corporate sponsors. 

Scylla wasn't built for a straight fight. But if it hadn't seen her, it would be a fair fight. And there was only the one...

Only a day ago, Emily and Scylla had jacked a Lion-class frame right off the battlefield. Granted, Patune and the carrier had been there to support, but the odds had be a lot more complicated than this. If she could get one good hit in, she might be able to disable it. Maybe she could jack this one too. If she did, it would certainly be noticed. The commotion would put the whole outpost on alert, even if it was mostly civilians by now. Sneaking in and sabotaging the eblocker dosing would be out of the question. But somehow that didn't seem as important. No, even thinking about it hit Emily with a feeling of frustration that she wasn't sure was hers or the BioFrame's.

Scylla writhed closer, her pace quickening as excitement and a predatory hunger began to animate the coils in the cockpit. The limbs between Magda and Emily moved, curling to grip the captain's bare hip as another circled under Emily's tank-top to tickle the edge of her navel encouragingly. Black tentacles around Emily's elbows pulled her forward, stretching her out into a kneeling bow that put weapons systems at her fingertips and Magda's cheek closer to the base of her shoulder blade. Emily's artificial heart began to pump with adrenaline as the anticipatory excitement bloomed, spreading like fire from Scylla into her and Magda alike, and from behind Magda, a tendril two-fingers thick rode the crease between her thigh and ass, hugging tight enough to coil over her exposed lower lips on it's way to Emily's loose cartoon-print boxers. And in the connection of the sensitive nerves between her legs and the newest tentacle's slick coating of neurofluid, she saw a glimpse of Scylla's mind: bracing between the trees. A shock of blue laser at close range followed by a barrage of sensor noise to confuse the enemy. A dramatic swipe of clawed hands as the smaller frame leaped onto the Lion-class, too close to effectively turn its weapons on them. All of this flashed in an instant, reined in by Emily's mind asserting through the feral instinct. Magda could feel the pilot tensing bodily under her as she fought to hold in her own enthusiasm for the BioFrame's instinctive plan. 

 

[WritesNaughtyStories]

As Scylla's synaptic tendril brushed along the exposed flesh of Magda's nerve-dense cuntlip, the input from the BioFrame became stronger, clearer and the captain could feel feel the kaiju's eagerness, She could feel it feeding into Kehrer too, and through the Frame could feel the younger pilot getting excited by the idea of engaging.

Patune was the same way, but he was built for a stand-up fight and was about as subtle as a thermonuclear detonation. There was a reason Captain Payarkoon had chosen to ride bitch in a single seat frame, pressed tightly against a very pretty pilot - and it wasn't to rub Emily's ass. Scylla could get them into the outpost without getting noticed, but only if she stayed on task.

The pair were feeding back into each other and getting themselves frothed up for an unnecessary fight. Magda knew she needed a deeper connection and shifted her hips to the side to press her clit into the neurofluid of Scylla's nerve bundle. The slick pressure was delicious. Contact like this with Patune was insistent, feral, demanding, but Scylla was more like Emily - demanding, but patient. She could feel the pair more clearly and a strange ménage à trois began to form through the neural link.

"Ladies!" the order was a simultaneous thought and barked command that seemed loud in the confined space. Softer, gentler, her face rubbing against Kehrer's back and gently thrusting her sex against Scylla's tendril, she added, "Sneak around, if we liberate the pilot you'll get the frame without hurting it." She flooded the connection with her genuine affection for the pair, the Union and the Strike Team, "And without risking anything."