Divaricated

“Stay with me, katie.”

A crack bisected the night sky, stretching from the horizon's depths up through the peaks of atmosphere's edge. It could have been a planetary ring, were it not wrought from void. A flock of familiar bioluminescent insects flowed through the air like a glowing river of light, with tributaries stretching in from all directions. They surged across the crack and did not make it to the other side.

Even the stars themselves were winking out, star by magnificent star, as the world itself broke. At first the crack was one jagged line alone, but as it lengthened it split into a dozen smaller shards, each consuming all that crossed it.

“katie,” the voice snapped. “Stay with me.”

katie blinked. The shattering of the world was visible even with her eyelids squeezed shut. She was adrift and disconnected. The world was coming apart at the seams and so was she.

Oh, she'd been here before, hadn't she? She was disassociating.

Back, long long ago, when there had been people in katie's life she could have reasonably called friends, though before the Affini had arrived, she'd been taught a technique for trying to break out of a disassociative haze.

She took a deep breath in. How did this go? She needed to place herself in her own surroundings. Could she find three green objects around her?

The canopy far above held some greens within its shadowy depths. It was largely mottled blacks and purples, but the odd sprout of a brighter green shone through all the same. Leaves wavered in a breeze that grew stronger every passing moment. As katie watched, one of them broke away from its tree, flung up into the air, and was sucked into a stream of wind that pulled it in towards the crack, and then... it was gone.

The grounding technique didn't specify the items had to continue to exist after she noticed them, so katie figured that was fine. She moved on, looking around before finally her attention caught on her own arm. It lifted up into her vision. The skin wasn't green exactly, but there was a green so deep and dark that it was almost black staining just beneath the surface. As katie looked deeper she realised it wasn't just a stain, but instead hundreds of tiny growths all weaving together to form a sheet, almost separating her skin from her body.

katie felt like that should hurt.

The fingers wiggled. katie watched in fascination as the gossamer web of internal vines and growths shifted and bent to permit the movement. In fact, if she looked closely enough it almost appeared as if the growths were flexing before her fingers started to move. It was as if they were acting with precognitive haste, readying themselves for an action katie had not yet realised she was about to take.

She watched, fascinated, as the structures beneath her skin perfectly predicted moves she chose at random a moment later. She watched, fascinated, as she stopped choosing her moves at all, wiggling her fingers in response to the floral corruption's preparations.

She could find no difference in the patterns. Her fingers wiggled unpredictably either way.

katie blinked. The cracks widened. With a deafening silence, they stabbed across her vision, rushing forward to intersect her hand. The arm went dead, and katie broke the silence with a cry of pain. She couldn't even look to appraise the damage, as the moment the cracks touched it she had to yank her gaze away, so sharp was the pain.

As she flinched, the sky wiped away in a wide arc. Wherever katie looked, the crack followed, and everything it touched failed and vanished, and it was spreading wide and tall. Soon there would be nowhere untouched. Soon it would just be katie alone in a shattered void.

What was she doing?

Oh, right. Three green objects?

There were no objects!

The cracks were devouring them all! How was katie supposed to center herself in a context undergoing collapse? She—

She felt something take her by the chin and pull her gaze around to stare up at something.

Something green. katie smiled, weak laughter tinkling, surprised. The only thing left in all the world, and—of course—exactly what she needed.

Thatch Aquae looked down upon her, characteristic smile strangely missing. Where she and the crack intersected, she—of course—won out. No crack could handle katie's affini. The girl reached up with her good arm to draw a blackened finger around the curve of Thatch's chin. It was funny, but she'd never really noticed how sharp it was. The bark strips and thorns that provided structural stability were close to the surface, wrapped only in a few layers of thin foliage that overlapped only imperfectly. The falsehood shone through.

An awkward fingertip slipped along the structure ruffling leaves as it went. They were already scruffy, but katie was rubbing them the wrong way and they were left messy and curled in her wake. Her affini shivered, right up the spine.

Probably not right up the spine, actually, Affini bodies didn't have spines. Right up from the core? That seemed more likely.

Fuck but Thatch was pretty. katie kinda wanted to kiss her. They didn't usually do that sort of thing. Thatch initiated, sometimes, but only when she was getting really thirsty. katie had never really felt the draw herself, but something was lighting a fire in her and she wasn't sure what it wa—

—Oh shit, it was the implant.

Reality snapped back into focus at such a speed that katie would be feeling the whiplash for days.

“With you,” katie gasped, taking her first breath in what felt like months. Thatch's whole body sagged, and then an instant later she was nodding, both arms wrapped around katie in a tight bear hug. The floret felt the structures beneath her skin reacting, stiffening and twisting to counter a crushing force that would have been difficult to withstand alone.

“Ashes, but you gave me a shock there, kitten. I am not getting good readings on your biometrics on my communicator, so I need you to give me a status report.” Thatch released the hug and shifted back, holding katie by both shoulders and staring intently into her eyes. Stars, but they were so pretty. Like metal glittering in shattered starlight, reflecting voidstuff in an infinite matrix of a reality that was too beautiful to exist.

Fuck but katie wanted to kiss her so badly.

Come on, kitten. Focus. Thatch had asked a question.

“Uhhhh,” she replied, trying to work out on the fly how to operate her own tongue. “I'm... spacey? Keep... slipping? Mind wants to wander off. Fuck but you're pretty.”

“Language, kitten.”

katie nodded rapidly. It set her whole world spinning.

Well, no, that was a lie. Thatch was stock still. Her rock. Her port in a storm. Her—

katie gritted her teeth. Focus. “Sorry. Yes Miss. Uh. Um.” Why was the cave still wobbling around her? “Miss, is the world really breaking?”

“Yes, actually,” Thatch admitted, waving a vine over towards the spreading cracks. “The Meandrina's positional trackers seem to be struggling to hold on to your lifesigns.”

“Huh.” katie nodded, glancing out towards the sky again. It was a very pretty effect, even if it was scary. It felt strangely peaceful to watch reality collapsing in on itself. “Don't I need those lifesigns?” She paused. “Am I dying?”

Thatch chuckled with a grating rumble, then gave a full body shrug. “Only in the sense that your body is failing on us.”

“That's usually what dying means?” katie asked, only to be interrupted by Thatch raising a finger.

“Wait just one moment, I can probably stablise the environment.” She reached over and picked up her tablet, then spent a moment tapping. As she did, the cracks began to recede. “You are the simulation's origin point, you see, this whole forest is built around you. As such, when it loses track, things start to—” Thatch waved a hand in the air for a moment, pulling the cave around them back together, and then snapped her fingers. The world solidified, snapping back into place in an instant— “drift.” The trees were back. The insects began to fly once again. The breeze was only gentle.

“I know the feeling,” katie admitted. “I— Roots, I can't keep my thoughts lined up, I just...”

Thatch's glare stung like a physical force. “Language, kitten. Final warning.”

“I— Is this really the time, Thatch?” katie protested, feeling an alien frission running up limbs she didn't have. A squirm ran up imaginary vines and hit her imaginary core and spread out throughout every one of her actual limbs before finally escaping as a short, high-pitched gasp.

“Yes,” Thatch replied, stroking a finger down one of katie's arms. The girl's head fell back, breathing out a pleasured whimper that avoided ending in a curse only by sheer force of will. “I need you focused. You will focus on what I require of you, and the commands I give you.” The affini paused just long enough to extract a nod of agreement. “Good pet. Now, status report.”

It was an order. katie could focus on orders no matter how fucked her higher consciousness was. They'd proved that more than enough times for it to count as science, and now the experiments were just for fun. “Okay, yes Miss! I remember, uh... we crash landed, I ran, you pinned me down and—nghhh, but that was so hot—and uh, got everything implanted and turned it on?”

That had been the plan, anyway. The specific details of how things would play out had been intentionally left until the day for dramatic effect, but there had been no plausible outcomes in which katie hadn't left the virtual forest as a programmable pet with makeshift biotechnology wrapped around her spine, organs, limbs, and soul.

Katie glanced over at her arm, and pulled her hand into a fist. The criss-cross mesh of plantlife that formed her second skin moved with easy, smooth motion. It roiled beneath her ill-fitting skin. She was being pushed apart. It had not been intended to go this far. “And now I feel something growing inside of me,” katie realised, finally twigging on what the dull pressure pushing out from within her actually was. She wasn't bloated.

She was infested.

She groaned, feeling the pressure intensify. “It... it hurts, Thatch.”

“Dirt,” Thatch swore. “Whatever your implant is doing, it is not responding to any of my equipment. I am getting no diagnostic information. Even your standard medical levels are erratic and I am not sure how to determine whether it is equipment failure or you failure. I am sorry, kitten, I have tried my best but we need to abort. If this goes on any longer then even the Meandrina's exigent veterinarians will not be able to disentangle you and it.”

katie was still staring down at her hand, shifting her fingers one at a time. The implant beneath her skin moved before she knew she wanted to. It was always correct in its predictions. She swung her arm out to one side, marvelling at her own grace. It was like the machinery listened to her intent and made it reality, bypassing her imperfect humanity. She didn't even look human. She didn't even feel human. She wasn't sure the human parts of her body were even still working. Perhaps she really was dying, and the only reason she could move at all was that an overgrowing weed digging through her skin deigned to move her.

Her hopeful gaze pinned Thatch in place. “Will we be able to try again after?”

Thatch shook her head. “It has done too much damage. I am sorry. You will need an emergency medical implant surgically installed immediately so that you can be repaired. Thankfully we do still have one waiting for us from our first appointment, so it will still be mine, and everything will be done according to the usual standards.”

“Then, no thank you.” The girl grunted, feeling a sudden jerk deep within her chest as some burst of growth or sudden moment of unravelling pressed down against a lung and left her short of breath. “I want to be 'so obviously changed that nobody could look upon me and think me anything but yours', Thatch. You promised. How do we fix this?”

“I... katie, your implant is not growing correctly. It is spreading throughout your body unchecked and uncontrolled. It was supposed to wrap your organs in protective tissue, but that growth has not stopped. Without intervention, it may grow and grow until there is nothing of you left but a shell of your former beauty. We must remove it before your body is too badly damaged to survive a second implantation.”

“I don't want to be another Terran with a tiny little scar on the back of my neck as the only sign of what you've done to me, Thatch,” katie hissed. “You're an engineer, think like it! You're not getting diagnostics. Where would they come from?”

The plant raised a vine in protest, but faltered. It fell a moment later. “One of the first things the seeds were supposed to do after linking together was form a communications loop with my communicator, which would let them collaborate as well as report on their progress and raise any irregularities and allow me to guide its growth over the next several weeks.” Thatch tapped the side of her tablet against katie's arm, drawing out another sharp moan. “This has not occured and they have not slowed their growth.”

“Okay, okay,” katie panted. “So, it is messing with my head, it is messing with my sensations. What does that tell us about its progress?”

“That we need to get you to a vet.”

“Thatch.” katie glared as best she could, trying to ignore that her mind was getting fuzzier by the second. “I... did I ever tell you about the Atlantis' Fortune?”

“Is this really the time for a reminiscence, kitten?”

katie nodded, wincing with the effort and breathing hard. Her vision blurred, losing its colours around the edges while intensifying them in the center. Staring up at Thatch, it was hard not to get lost in her. “One of the things they don't tell you when you sign up,” katie started, before finding the effort too great and needing to pause. Her skin felt like it was tearing in half. “Is that if you live long enough, you're gonna make a jump and land badly. Fortune was mine. We were rushing, needed to make a delivery quickly for, contractual reasons I guess? I don't know exactly why. Took a shortcut. Something didn't go right, the drive chamber cracked on an interstitial jump.”

katie whimpered. She could feel the implant growing within her, squeezing her insides. Her heart beat hard, trying to push blood through veins that were now competing with a more powerful force for room. “Space is big. Light is slow. No way to get help that anybody would actually hear before we were long, long dead.”

“This sounds appropriately traumatising for a Terran vessel, kitty. I do not wish to rush you, but do you have a point?”

“Every drive engineer knows. One day. Gonna be stranded. Dying ship. Drive they don't know how to fix. Everyone on that crew. Looking to them to fix it. If they don't. Everyone will die.”

“I assume that you succeeded, given that you are present.”

katie nodded firmly. “Didn't have any other choice. Had to figure it out. Took a week. It was the only way. Let's figure this problem out too? Let's at least try before we give up, please? How long do we have before this is unfixable? Can we try?”

Thatch swore under her breath, then took one of katie's arms in her hands and began to inspect the material beneath. “Fine. Fine, but we are stopping the instant we risk you passing the joint of no return.”

The affini took a deep breath, pulling air through her body firmly enough to cause a breeze, then focused. “'Haustoric Implant' is an umbrella term,” she explained. “We create each design largely from scratch for each new species to ensure clean integration and optimal results. In Terran bodies, that meant decentralised functional gains, redundant duplication of necessary processes, and running all intercompontent communications via a branching hierachy of busses connecting to a main trunk integrated with the spine. Gestation time is primarily bimodal, either on the order of hours or weeks. The former is used if the subject would otherwise expire, the latter whenever there is time. Recovery is much harder if it grows in too quick, however an implanted floret will recover from almost anything short of catastrophic damage to the brain.” She paused. “Even that, in cases where the damaged areas can be simulated sufficiently well.”

katie whimpered. It was so hard to focus on what Thatch was saying. Her voice was just so pretty. Stars, but she was so pretty. The way her eyes lit up as she talked, even though she was worried. That gorgeous little smile that snuck back in as she switched out of panic and into problem solving. katie forced herself to focus. She wanted to keep that smile growing more than anything. “I... don't think you've taught me enough to understand that, or... sorry, I'm really really spacey right now.”

“Fair.” Thatch laughed, reaching over to scratch behind katie's ear. All the effort she'd put into building her focus was shattered, taken in hand, and pulled up to exactly where Thatch wanted it. The affini spoke down to her in clearly enunciated words. “Your implant seeds—the thorns—had a template. They were supposed to grow into that template over the course of several weeks. The initial stages were keyed to hormone levels and your circadian rhythm, and would go faster. That was supposed to stop once the thorns had linked together and begun interfacing with your systems.”

katie screwed shut her eyes, trying to process the monologue. Bioengineering was Thatch's primary discipline and katie was not going to be able to learn enough to match wits with her without years of training, but Thatch wouldn't know exactly what was happening under her skin and katie wouldn't know what was relevant to report if she didn't understand enough of what mattered.

katie tried to speak and was struck with the alien sensation of a pair of lungs that failed to respond to her wishes. She hadn't noticed because she had been breathing perfectly normally. katie's body wasn't responding to her thoughts. She tried to hold her breath and nothing happened. Even trying to hold her nose closed didn't stop the autonomous actions, though it did stop them from achieving anything.

At least it was no longer hard to breathe.

“Doesn't feel like it stopped,” katie admitted, speaking only on her permitted exhalations. “Feels like it kept going. Feels like it's still going? There's... weird pressure inside of me.”

Thatch pressed a hand against katie's chest, just above the center of the feeling. “Here?” she asked, and recieved a nod. “Okay. Okay. This was supposed to be the last stage before it entered the main growth stage—the one that would take several weeks to complete. It has not stopped growing. Why?” Her hand played across katie's flesh, pressing down and feeling, as if trying to discern what lay beneath the skin. Every touch dropped katie further down a bottomless pit of bliss that she could not longer adequately express. Her heart raced and her mind melted. The semi-autonomous functions of her body continued, uncaring, as if everything was normal.

“Maybe—” katie had to fight just to piece the sentence together one word at a time— “I got too—” katie felt herself refocus, shunted from task-orientation straight into adoration without a heartbeat between. “Stars but I love you, Miss. I love you so much, I—”

“Kitten. Focus.”

She couldn't. katie smiled up with a blissed-out grin as her neurochemical balance was adjusted with such brute efficiency that even her broken, addled mind could tell it wasn't natural. All her discomfort and pain sank beneath a rising tide of warmth and comfort that could not have been more obviously imposed. Even knowing this, there was still nothing she could do to change it.

The pretty plampt towering over katie didn't seem happy. That was the only thing that seemed able to penetrate katie's haze of joy. She needed the beautiful, perfect creature to be happy with her. She knew—just knew—that it was her entire purpose, above and beyond anything else. She stared up with wide, unfocused eyes while a broken machine mangled her body, keeping her breathing stable and shallow; her heart beating at a slow, steady pace; and her mind simple, happy, and malleable. All katie needed to do was obey. She didn't need to worry about anything else.

She couldn't worry about anything else. No matter how much she strained, no matter how much she tried to fight. This wasn't like anything katie had felt before. Even once Thatch had finally taken her as a pet, katie's mind had been her own, merely with adjusted priorities. She hadn't worried about the troubles of her past because they hadn't felt important any more, but now she found herself incapable of worrying about anything at all. It was like a switch had been flipped in her head. All that mental circuitry that dealt with worries and concerns was simply disconnectd.

Thatch's ownership was a comfortable blanket, gifting katie with the safety she needed to thrive in an imperfect universe. This was a prison, locking her behind bars, painting a smile on her soul and pretending that meant she was happy. She couldn't even understand the words her nice plant was saying. Any part of her cognition more complicated than the deep, fundamental certainty that she existed to be a good pet for her owner simply wasn't present. The words just washed over her mind, wiping away whatever conscious thoughts had been futily hoping they might bubble to the surface.

She had to make Thatch happy. It was why she existed. It was why she had always existed, even before she'd known the truth. But... Thatch needed something she was simply incapable of provi— katie didn't need to worry about anything. katie just needed to be a good pet for Mistress. Good pets didn't have important jobs; all they needed to do was be soft and cute. Good pets didn't worry their pretty little heads about anything. Worrying was for her owner, who was perfect and infallible and would keep katie safe.

katie felt a spike of pain running down her spine, but it was stifled a moment later. A moment after that any worry she might have been thinking about trying to experience over it was wiped away entirely. Her plant was a few feet away, talking into her communicator with rapid words. She was such a pretty plant.

Implant-stained arms burned as katie crawled over to rub her cheek against Thatch's leg. She butted her head against her person, becoming increasingly insistent until finally she got a momentary smile and a few seconds of scritching.

Disappointingly, only a few. What was the point of a katie if not to be played with and pampered? The implant was trying to filter out the existential dread of a pet who existed only to please looking up at an image of distracted distress, and it was failing. She had to do better. She had to be more pleasing. She had to be perfect for her perfect owner and if she couldn't then what was the point of her?

katie raised a hand to paw against her owner's side, demanding further attention. She was much more interesting than a communicator, so why wouldn't Thatch play with her? Rude! Maybe she'd think twice about that after katie had a good gnaw on her leg.

Teeth had barely clamped down around the vine when katie heard the unmistakable sound of an word entirely unknown. She hurried to a sitting position, settling her butt firmly against her haunches and holding her hands at her chest, just as she'd been taught. Though her mind was wandering and pulling her attention in a dozen different directions, katie held firm. She had a position to be in. She had a way to please.

Thatch glanced down at her again with a sudden ripple of interest in the air. She shut off her communicator and spoke a few words that katie thought she aught to recognise, but failed to parse. She tried smiling up at Miss Aquae a little wider, instead. Maybe that would make her happy.

The plant stared back for a few moments before barking out another command. katie knew that one too! She dropped down to all fours and rolled over, hopping back up to a sit at the other side. Gosh, she was such a good pet! There were some more words katie just didn't have the energy to process, but they didn't seem important. Words weren't for pets. Obedience was for pets.

Her person leaned down over her, dangling fingers just before katie's face. She leaned forward and nuzzled gratefully, smoothly transitioning to long licks and kisses as Thatch shifted her position. The plant reached behind her back and pulled out a familar strip of biomechanical material, with a familar gem fixed in its center. With the click of her tounge and a sharp gesture, Thatch had her pet sitting up with ner neck bared, eager for her gift. Gosh, but her plant was so pretty, though. So soft and warm and sweet. Maybe just one more nibble? She leaned forward, opening her mouth to take a bite, and—

Thatch did something that dragged katie's attention back up to her, though she couldn't figure out quite what. The plant hadn't spoken, hadn't obviously moved, and yet katie felt a compulsion to sit and stare. Stars, but she was such a pretty affini. Even her worry lines were beautiful. Her frazzled hair was a testament to how she kept her head under pressure. The analytical sharpness in her eyes as she looked upon katie not as a person but as a malfunctioning toy was—

katie should tell her how hot that was.

katie— kati k

katie blinked. she was just staring. not even at anything, really, just at the cave wall. it was such a pretty cave wall. it was... katie strained, trying to force herself to really look. really analyse. really figure out what she was looking at.

it was... grey. stars, that was exhausting. Wasn't it so much easier to just let Mistress think for her? katie didn't need to worry her soft little head about complicated things like colours or descriptions. She could—should—just lie back and enjoy drifting through an endless ocean of bliss.

Where was Thatch, anyway? katie should look. katie should— Katie looked up, feeling a slight shift in the usual tremour of life about the Atlantis' Fortune. Life in space was loud and uncomfortable, but that was a paradoxical comfort in its own right. When the rumble of engines was shaking your brain in your skull you didn't have to worry that the fusion torch wouldn't ignite the next time around. When it was so hot you could barely think, you didn't have to worry that the reactor had gone cold. When a jump hit you with a kick so sharp it felt like you'd been winded, you didn't have to worry that you were stranded.

Unfortunately, that last kick hadn't been right. Katie ran, darting past crewmates in corridors barely rated to fit a single person, never mind two, with her heart beating a thousand times a minute. She hauled herself into the cramped drive room, dread rising in her chest as she took in the inch-wide crack that had formed along the outside of the reaction chamber.

They were dead. They were dead. Without a drive, they were stuck, they couldn't call for help, and nobody would find them, and—

katie moaned with joy, feeling her perfect owner's perfect hands stringing something around her neck. A thin strip of material, carefully placed and pulled snug. A collar. A collar for a pet. She was such a good girl. Such a good girl. That was all she needed to be. All she would ever need to be. All those silly thoughts she'd once had were a thing of the past now. The only ethical framework that mattered was obedience.

Thatch snapped her fingers. katie's spine begged for mercy, groaning as she sat to attention faster than a human body had ever been intended to handle.

“Yes, Miss Aquae?” katie chirped. Her nametag jingled as she moved, along with a new sound that slipped beneath her consciousness and demanded to be heard, its low volume be damned. It was a lighter, higher pitched sound, like a bell that bounced to the song in her soul. It could have been distracting, but it wasn't. It could have clashed with her words, but it didn't. As she held still the noise quietened and her song unsung began to sink beneath the waves of mindless bliss once again.

Thatch pointed to her heel with a precise gesture and spoke a precise word. katie didn't understand it and yet she was crawling before she'd processed enough to realise. Her body burned, human muscles pleading with her to just stop while plant-tech fibers forced her on uncaring. With every step forth, katie's body swayed and her bell chimed a little louder. It burned away the haze. Shredded the bliss and let the pain in once more. Tore into her peace and permitted her worry. Each time katie put one paw before the other she felt herself becoming more herself and less lost.

Something was wrong. She wasn't supposed to be feeling like this. There was something in the back of her head telling her that everything was okay—that everything would always be okay—and that all she needed to do was trust in her perfect owner and let her take care of everything.

katie really had to wonder if her implant had ever met Thatch? The plant was many things, but infallible she was not. There were thoughts in the back of her head that were provably, trivially incorrect, yet katie lacked the capacity to disagree with them. It was like trying to argue with the stars: they didn't care whether katie believed in them, they simply were.

It took frightfully little time for katie to crawl to her person's heel, following training so deep that it overrode her own capabilities and allowed her to resist. She took her rightful place, kneeling with her back straight and her neck stretched almost as far back as it would go so she could smile up with a real smile, not one imposed.

“I am going to need you to work with me here, kitten.” Thatch reached over and placed a gentle hand atop katie's head. “Chin up.”

katie strained her neck, fighting her own human skeleton to obey. Her whole body felt like it had been wound to breaking point already. The affini reached down and flicked her bell, and katie's mind scoured clean. Nothing withstood the echoing chime. Not the imposed bliss of her damaged implant, nor the instinctive calm of her dying body, nor the desperate thoughts of imposed devotion. Only the fundamental truths of her existence remained beneath it all.

Thatch spoke another word and katie dropped to all fours, pressing her body against the ground while her lips found Thatch's vague impression of feet and worshipped, acting as her training demanded without the wherewithall to know or care why. Thatch dropped down to one knee—moving the leg her pet wasn't transfixed by—and began to stroke slowly down katie's back, soothing the dumb animal mind that was all that remained when all else was burned away.

Every movement kept the bell's song playing. Every note squashed whatever meagre thoughts had been hoping they might be heard. It was beautiful. Never before had katie heard her part of their shared duet played out loud like this, but every note was overriding.

When all else was taken from her, only instinct remained. Lips met flora time and time again in prayer everlasting. Each moment came anew, for there was no room for memory around the ever-insistent swinging of the bell. Every instant was an opportunity for katie to recognise the Goddess before her and begin her worship, ignorant of that she had been doing nothing but for the prior seconds, minutes, hours. She didn't know enough to care how long it had been.

While katie worked, Thatch was busy with something. On the rare occasion that something within katie found the strength to think it was invariably the implant, and the implant needed katie to know that everything was fine. She had nothing to worry about, and the fact that she was dying was simply irrelevant next to the cosmic importance of being a good and obedient pet.

The cold edge of an electrolytic hook grazed the lower edge of katie's neck. She took a deep, sudden breath in, feeling her mind clearing of unwanted influence. “Oh, fu– fudge,” katie whimpered. “It hurts so much more than I'd realised.” It was a deep, full-body pain, but her leg was the worst of it. It felt like her whole body was so tightly wound that something had to give.

“Yes, apologies for that, but I need you to hurt right now. Bear with me one moment, pet,” Thatch replied, voice absent minded while she reached down and tilted katie's head to the side. The girl gasped out a barely aborted swear as the hook pressed under her collar again, filling her vision with stars and what looked like old test patterns. The pressure only grew, up and up and up until katie was shaking. Thatch gave her a quick scratch beneath the chin.

The hook left her skin, and katie's mind began to fade. “Thank you for that, kitten. Good girl,” Thatch whispered, taking a moment just to hold her pet close with one hand. “This next part will be worse. You can do it for me, can't you? Of course you can.”

katie smiled up wide. She was a good and obedient pet. As the implant asserted more control, her motions slowed, quieting the bell and sinking her deep within the blissful stillness.

Thatch snapped her fingers and made her demand. katie had rolled over before she'd even finished chirping her “Yes, Miss Aquae?”

She lay there, hands held up before her chest, smiling up at her upside-down owner with the curious sensation of a heart that did not beat. Thatch held her hand out to one side; a pulse of bright cyan and cinnamon-scent dropped a tool of some kind into her grip. She brought it down to katie's chest and ordered her to speak.

“Miao!” kitty sang, perfectly in time to the dying embers of her song, feeling her body shutting down while the voice in the back of her mind refused to admit that anything could possibly be wrong.

The tool hummed, crackled, and then burst out with a silent thump that katie heard only through the rattling of her bones. It paused. Again.

Again. Harder. katie's whole body spasmed. The smell of burning plantlife filled the air.

Again. Everything was okay. Nothing was going wrong. katie wriggled in place, smiling up at the most perfect creature in the universe. The affini looked back with an expression bordering on panic. Nothing was wrong, but... something had to be wrong, if Thatch was unhappy. It didn't make sense that she would be unhappy. Maybe katie could deal with it once she woke up, because she was so, so very tired, and her body wanted nothing more than to sleep.

Again. The mounting pressures of katie's faltering shell had only been ratcheting up, intensifying over time while finding no release. It was just her, trapped between two forces that were not giving her a moment of peace.

Snap!

The sound resonated through katie's bones, followed by a low grinding as further vibrations buzzed through her skeleton and into her ears. She could tell that her body was in agony, even if the implant wasn't letting her feel it. The heartbeat in her chest was growing eratic, her breaths came only in irregular gasps, and what little awareness she had posessed was fading behind a veil of shadow. Another sharp crack came a moment later, paired with a heavy surge of imposed calm. Nothing was wrong. It was okay.

She could rest now. Just go to sleep. Don't worry about a thing.

Thatch jammed one tool against her collar, and the other tool just above her heart. Aɢᴀɪɴ. The world exploded back into life. kitty twitched, setting the bell swinging once more and a moment later her heartbeat followed its lead, pulsing away to the rhythmic drum-beat of her own song.

There was little time to celebrate. Another sharply spoken command had her scrambling back up to her knees, lifting her chin so Thatch could wrap a leash-vine around the ring in her collar.

“Come, pet. We're going for a walk,” Thatch announced. kitty complied, of course, as best she could. Walking was hard. One leg responded only sluggishly, and the other— Whatever was happening to kitty was messing up her proprioception, because where she expected that leg to be, and where it actually was, seemed entirely different.

Still, she had to do her best. She had a voice in the back of her head telling her to, and the only way to quiet it quieted her own thoughts too. She and Thatch left the cave into dim moonlight. Part of kitty recognised that they weren't really on Dirt, but it was no less impressive when her owner reached into the sky and pulled up the sun.

Fuck, but Thatch was hot when she was competent.

Thatch was always competent.

The sun shone over the entire forest and all its inhabitants. In its clarifying light, kitty finally saw that which was happening to her. The burning sensation across her body wasn't merely because of a biotechnological integration layer restricting her circulation, but also because that layer was overgrowing inside of her and out.

Tiny tufts of what seemed like short lengths of fine grass grew outwards from her pores and her follicles, covering her body in something that seemed almost like a thin layer of fur. Where her once-human body had exposed thicker hairs, the fur was thicker too. Where little hair was found, the fur was thinner or even non-existent. The backs of her paws were covered in a thin layer, while the front was healthy deep dark green skin.

A breeze rolled in from the nearby river. kitty felt her fur waving in the wind. The way the individual blades tugged and shifted against her skin was a brand new sensation unlike anything she'd felt before. Thatch's vine brushing down her side was not a new sensation, but was centering all the same, drawing attention to the way kitty's foliage was still slowly, slowly sprouting. One arm held a thick covering, the other was patchwork, and most of the rest of kitty's body had either only a few scattered sprouts or, in the case of her left leg, hadn't yet been overtaken by the implant at all and still shone through with its unsightly human pink.

The case of her right leg was utterly alien. The snap and crunch of moments ago had been the shattering of her bone, kitty had to assume. Human legs didn't bend like hers was. Her shin bent where it shouldn't and her foot didn't seem to fit right any more. She watched how it moved, feeling the alien mechanisms consuming her body as they took her desire and translated it into something her broken form could accommodate. It was an animal movement. She'd seen similar before, in docu-dramas and zoological stations. Was the device worming its way through her flesh so ignorant of her shell that it thought she had digitigrade legs? It certainly wasn't a kitten's place to disagree. It could grind her bones into dust and would barely recognise the impediment. She was powerless here.

At least she had one good leg left. It was difficult not to notice how much harder it was to work with. Thatch had taught her how to crawl with elegance, but she had still been executing a divine plan with human muscles and fragile tendons. This was something more. Even with her everything failing, kitty moved on three limbs that took her hopes and made them real, and one deeply human limb that struggled to just to move as she wanted.

“This wasn't what I expected,” kitty admitted, eventually. She surprised herself with the words. She could think again. She tried to stop walking so that she could focus on what she had to say, but a sharp word kept her at her person's heel. As she hurried to catch up, she felt her thoughts slipping back away, only to return a moment later.

“Oh.” It was the bell. Without its chime she just slipped back into a daze. Too loud, and she slipped into instinct. “I'm not fixed, then?”

“No.” Thatch paused, hand laying heavy on kitty's head. The girl leaned in, and the alien took some comfort. “And I am afraid I am out of time. I have reconfigured your collar to counteract the mental degradation and prevented the more serious internal overgrowth from getting any worse. However, the neural integration is almost complete, and at that point it will no longer be possible to separate you from it.”

“We'll be one creature soon,” kitty replied, voice quiet enough she could barely be heard over the rustling of leaves and the crunching of their footsteps on the undergrowth.

“Unfortunately, yes. I know we have referred to you as a broken machine before, but I did not expect to make it so literal. I am so sorry, kitten. I can replace your bones, but I cannot replace you.”

“What would happen to me if we kept it?”

“The external overgrowth would continue. It is still keyed to your hormonal balance, so please try not to get too upset or excited. Until the initial installation is complete, your implant does not know what your body should look like and so it is imposing parts of one of the templates I drew from when it should not be. Your recovery from this is already going to be long enough, please do not excite it further. The internal overgrowth has been largely curtailed, but the damage there is already done. Your unaided focus is essentially non-existent. Your grasp on objective reality, too, is likely to come loose regularly without something to fix it in place. I have largely mitigated this with a...”

Thatch glanced to the side. Her emotional turmoil was clear enough to her kitten's mind that she finished the sentence. “Dirty hack?” kitty asked. “The bell, right? Whenever it rings I feel like it pushes back this haze, but it pushes back everything else, too.”

“Indeed. It is not an elegant solution. If you do not hear it loudly enough, the implant will have full control and it does not seem to want to share you with me. The more you hear the bell, the stronger the influence of your trained instincts, allowing you to be yourself regardless of any bugs in your programming.” The plant shrugged.

“But if I hear it too much, I'll be nothing but trained instincts, right? There's a sweet spot.”

Thatch nodded. “If it were quite that simple, the bell could simply be restricted in its volume, however the potency of the implant's effect will vary depending on your mental state and needs, and so the degree to which it will need counteracting will also vary, and not in a way that can be easily predicted.” The plant laughed. “If it is any consolation, the not insignificant brain damage you have already experienced actually seems to be broadly compensated for by the implant simulating your body's autonomous functions, and by the improved nutrient flow to your brain. Those were emergency options to be enacted only if you were dying, but it was killing you and so I can hardly fault that decision.”

kitty nodded, gently, trying not to move so much that the chiming of her bell would render her incapable of thought. “Is there still time to fix it?”

“Thankfully, yes. Assuming you stay calm—and I will render you unconscious to ensure that—we have several hours before the remaining necessary growth becomes irreversible. At that point, your body will have become so changed that our medical technology could no longer distinguish the implant from your original self, and so our best surgeons would be simply unable to remove enough of the implant to replace it without removing functionality your body now requires to sustain life. A replacement implant could still purge this defective hardware from your body and, though the recovery time would be long, return you to your prior self physically unharmed. Emotionally I suspect you may need more time, but that would be trauma, not physical damage.”

“No,” kitty insisted, shaking her head hard enough that the next few words came out as nothing more than firm miaows. “Ahem. I mean, no, I don't consent to that.”

Thatch sighed, gripping katie's collar tight. “I do not require your consent, pet. Your wellbeing is my responsibility to define and ensure both.”

“Yes, you do. Come on, Thatch, I know you. You enjoy the idea of overriding my needs, but you don't want to live it, at least not yet. We both know that you actually overriding my consent like this wouldn't be good for you.”

Thatch stopped, drawing kitty to a stop too. She turned, kneeling in front of her pet, and still towering over her. With one hand she lifted the girl's chin, holding her there while she watched the light leaving her pet's eyes as rational thought abandoned her. Over short seconds, kitty went from firm to fawning.

“Do you think that I could live with myself if I broke you like this, Katie? Look at me. Can you even look at me? You cannot even think without my help. You are so deeply within my power that it is terrifying. No, look at me, kitten,” Thatch paused. “This is exactly where I left Caeca. I will not leave you here too. I will not have my legacy be a trail of broken minds.” Thatch paused, staring down at the mindless creature below her as kitty gazed back up, pleading with endless desperation despite not knowing what for. The affini's grasp grew tighter and tighter still in her kitty's hair, while her expression grew firmer.

“No!” Thatch exclaimed, releasing her and backing off, taking a few quick steps away before turning back. “Because this is what I wanted all along, isn't it? Taking you apart to see if I could put you back together? This is the best I can do on my own and it leaves you broken. I am a monster and that which I desire is wrong.”

The pet crawled over, dumb smile not wavering even as the chiming of the bell returned to her a little capacity for thought, to sit a few feet away. With the last of her rationality, kitty set herself gently swaying from side to side, keeping her bell in motion with a soft dance.

The plant collapsed against a tree, leaving an opening for her kitty to climb up onto her lap. With a sigh, she pulled the girl close and held her in place. “And that too is what I wanted. What I want. To break you and put you back together forever changed. You would never be the original you again. It feels different now that I am looking upon the potential results of that dream.”

Thatch kept the floret swaying, and her bell obediently sang. “Oh, hon,” kitty replied, wrapping her arms around one of Thatch's and hugging it close. “What even is the 'original' me? If you wanted me preserved exactly how I was, then you screwed up the first time you said hello.”

“This is different,” Thatch protested. “It is imposed and intentional.”

“I didn't exactly get a choice in our meeting. My ship was disabled and boarded and then we were stranded. All of that was imposed, and all of that was intentional. You're drawing a line in the sand here, but all interaction is intentional manipulation. Don't hate yourself because you have more tools available than me. I'm manipulating you right now, right? I'm trying to convince you of something and you'll never be the Miss Aquae you that were before I did. Is that wrong of me?”

Thatch sighed. “It is not, but your head is so tangled up that you would say whatever you had to to make me happy.”

“Yeah,” kitty agreed, nodding vigariously. “That's called love. Besides, I'm literally incapable of lying to you, so I literally must be correct. You can't fault my logic here, you know I'm right.”

Arms constricted tight around kitty's chest, holding her close. Were it not for Thatch's gentle sway, she would already have been sinking beneath the waves. “Do you regret it?” asked the affini, in a voice quieter than the rustling of leaves in a breeze. “That which I have taken from you? The paths you can no longer walk because mine was imposed upon you?”

With a laugh, the pet shook her head. “Not for an instant. I would have, back then, but you changed my mind. I believe you had me begging for it just a couple of hours ago. I think that means you did the right thing? I know I can't bring myself to believe any other way, but I also can't bring myself to disbelieve in gravity, so that's hardly a coherent argument against you.”

Thatch frowned. “This is ethical because I have rendered you incapable of refuting it?”

“Who cares about ethics, Miss? Neither of us are philosophers. Do what makes you happy. You cannot put me back together like I was. You never could. You'd have to wipe all memory of you from my mind, and I will not go back to how I was.” She shuffled in place, turning around to stare her person in the eye. The fire in her eyes danced to their shared rhythm. “I am yours. I fully intend to use every scrap of what you let me be to serve you. You have given me purpose and intent and I will spend the rest of my life in your service so stop doubting yourself for once in your whole rotting life and fix me like you want to and like I know you can!”

The girl let out a breath, then bit her lip. “Sorry about the curse word, Miss. I got a little excited there.”

With a lumbering growl, a vine snapped out to slap against the bell, sending it swinging. In an instant, the fire in katie's eyes burned itself out, fueled by the clarity in her soul. She felt waves of emotional heat rippling out, overwhelming in their intensity. Fear; lust; nervous excitement; and love crashed against kitty's compromised mind while her compromised body was pulled up for a rough, possessive kiss.

With all her willpower and all her strength, the cat managed to realise that Thatch only really kissed her like this when she was nothing but a hobby project, with her very identity putty in her owner's hands. She melted into it.

The kiss eventually broke with Thatch unceremoniously bending her pet over her knee. A hand entangled deep within kitty's hair again, pulling her head up to stare into the eyes of the bioengineer who had broken her and would now effect repairs. “Do you have enough thought left in that broken little mind of yours to remember what I told you about getting excited, pet?”

kitty managed little more than a whimper, so lost was she in a sea of instinct and need. Her caretaker's hands played with her body, one tangled tight in her hair while the other drummed a relaxed beat into her buttocks with two demanding fingers.

“Your implant is in medical emergency mode. It was intended to grow in over the course of several weeks. However, because you were dying it grew as fast and as hard as it was capable, consequences be damned. What does it matter if it hurts you if it is the difference between life and death, hmn?” She lay her hand flat on her kitty's butt. “Emergency mode is mechanically simple. The more distress it registers, the faster it grows. If you can stay calm then you have hours before you are so broken that nobody could fix you but me. If you can't... minutes.”

She raised her hand, then grinned. “I would tell you to beg, but it is like you said. It matters not if you want it now. You will be grateful when I am done.” The hand fell. Whether kitty had simply never before noticed its composition, or whether Thatch had done some reconfiguration, the loud clap of hard, smooth wood meeting supple flesh echoed between the trees. kitty cried out, taken by surprise by the dull pain that spiked and lingered. Her heart jumped into action moments later, spurred not by her own body's reaction but the implant's programmed response.

She felt the effects immediately. Pain and stiffness flared up as the bioforming machine within stirred.

“Count for me, kitten,” Thatch demanded, as if her every thought weren't precious. To waste them on counting when they were so hard fought might have stung for anybody who was still capable of caring for their own bodily autonomy.

“O— one,” kitty whimpered, trying to ready herself for the next. She could already feel the pressure building.

“Two!” she cried, the blow taking her by surprise regardless. With her heart beating hard and her breaths coming fast, kitty knew that her body was registering distress. She found scant instants of rational thought trapped between the strikes. Liminal instants held between mindless bliss and animal need, forced into her fractured shell as her bell jerked along with her body.

“Th— three!” The implant's reaction was growing beyond intense. A dull ache echoed through her fragile body, amplifying and intensifying with each pass. It had a sharpness to it, like a thousand knives balanced perfectly against her skin just waiting to fall. As if to rub her face in what should have been abject humiliation, Thatch forced her pet's head around to watch the last of her humanity dying.

“Four!” Blades of fur erupted as the pain shocked through 'her' flesh. The deep green stained so deeply that it was less second skin and more simply skin. It writhed, false fur standing on end, leaving her looking more like an unkept garden than a human being.

“Fi–ve!” kitty moaned, that same eruption burning all across her body. The stain surged down her one clean leg, tearing her apart in its quest to save her from its own danger. She couldn't be safer than she was in Thatch's vines. Its pressure increased regardless as Affini biomechanics pitted themselves against the shear strength of human bone. She fractured in a staccato of crack-crack-cracks that echoed only through her own structure.

The next strike fell in a burst of emotion. She was under attack. She was in danger. She had to fight. Alien resolve surged, forcing frantic action as kitty turned and clawed and tore at her attacker, slicing leaf with razor claw. She hissed up at the surprised face above, now bearing three sharp lines cut deep across the cheek and a chip scored from its eye.

Rapid vines cracked out, grabbing her by the wrists and the neck. Thatch's animal was pushed back down into place, squirming and fighting with affini-enhanced muscles that refused to be held. The alien struggled, bringing more and more weight down upon her while kitty repeatedly broke her grips and tore at the plantlife of her legs and her stomach. She was not defenceless. She was not here to be hurt. She was not a plaything for—

A finger slipped beneath her guard and tapped its knuckle under kitty's chin. It brought her back up to stare at the face of the affini who had found her a capable, intelligent, self-assured human being and left her this mewling animal. The affini had promised to help their florets become their best selves, right?

What did it say about Thatch's kitten that her best self was a hopelessly enthralled monster? What did it say about her that she gathered all of her remaining will, the last scraps she had left of her humanity as it was literally beaten out of her, all just to beg.

“Please,” she spluttered. “Harder, I—”

Thatch reached down and flicked the bell, and language itself simply evaporated, lost in the foggy haze of instinct. An animal like her had no language. She wasn't complicated enough to need it. She howled out into the air as another stroke came down, but counting was beyond her. Numbers were a concept for people.

Another. Her humanity begged, praying to the thing that was replacing it to show some fucking mercy, but there wasn't a speck of it to be found. The pain grew, her body exposed to forces it was never designed for by a machine that didn't care.

Her leg was in agony as biotechnology assimilated it at a thousand times the speed considered humane, questing outwards to feed off of her own flesh to fuel its advance. In its wake, it changed her, uncaring that a human form could not support its designs. It would grind her humanity into dust and scatter it to the wind. The leg snapped, the machine's leverage finally great enough to dispense with the pleasantries and impose its intent by force.

The pet screamed as pain suppression faltered. Her animal mind knew only gratitude when the second break came with only a moment of agony; only thanks as the pain in her ears reached its own peak and her hearing went pop, forcing all the world into silence save the desperate pumping of her own blood.

Lungs worked to overdrive, pulling cool air in and forcing out air so hot it sent the light swimming, all to manage the thermal output of a machine in deep overclock. kitty felt it. She felt it all. Technology so advanced it was indistinguishable from biology reached out to her body's fatty deposits and sundered them, dissolving the raw material and burning what remained as fuel. Her enhanced heart beat on double duty, driving biomechanical fluids alongside the blood. Coolant carried heat away from her limbs towards her lungs, where a fine array of plantlife growing from the walls pushed it out where it could be vented by her next outward breath. Lines of nutrient-rich fluid flowed through her body, driving an overlapping, overriding system that had usurped her movement, her digestion, her heartbeat, even her thoughts.

“Tw- Twelve!” panted a voice indistinguishable from her own, yet speaking a word she lacked the capacity to understand. She felt the machine's claws tighten around her soul, driving in so deep she would never escape it. Her arms no longer hurt, for they were already as corrupt they were going to get. Her legs no longer hurt, for she wasn't permitted their pain. Silence surrounded her, broken ears failing to detect the sounds she rationally knew must have been present.

Her appearance was inhuman and it went more than skin deep. The implant had subsumed her. It had been born from Thatch's planted seed but its growth had been fueled by kitty's own body. It was made from her. It was her. This could not be undone because she could not be separated from herself. Her body would never again be her own, yet she was more herself than she had ever been.

“Eig'een!” The corruption covered her entire. The last overgrowing shoots of not-quite-grass stabbed through her flesh, blanketing her in a thin layer of unkempt 'fur' that rippled, mirroring her emotions clear for the world to see. Fingers that had once ended in keratin nail now bore thorned claws instead. Her legs bent wrong, reconfigured to a transplanted, digitigrade design.

Thatch's hand tightened in her hair, pulling so taught it would have hurt if pain had been permitted. For a moment, the plant paused in her work to press something firmly against the top of her cat's head. With her back arching, the pet's mind filled with the electric tingle of false limbs. Two fuzzy triangles atop her head. They felt so intensely. They burned. They froze. She heard utmost, impossible silence and overwhelming, consuming noise. kitten begged—wordlessly—for she knew not what, as they filled her with pleasure everlasting. She pleaded for everything and anything that would appease her torturer as they cursed her with endless pain.

Finally, they settled into a tender neutral, registering the way that the cool forest air felt against their surface and hearing the sounds that came from all around. The girl panted, shivering, body weak and brain empied. There was nothing left for the implant to take.

With so little external work left to do, attention was finally turned to finishing her internal wiring. A protective sheath of plantlife already protected her skull, while vines had entwined so deep within her spine that they could affect her very thoughts. Her mind itself had been an unbroken sanctuary, not subject to direct control.

Thatch's hand came down, burning a blazing handprint of tangled fur onto kitty's ass.

“Twen—”

***

The subject is placed on pause while final integrations conclude. Haustoric biogenesis under current distress has a predicted failure rate above the acceptable range. The subject is halted and physically locked to reduce predicted failure rates to safe levels.

While progress continues, the implant begins a self-test. It is clear that something has gone very far outside of usual bounds, however it is not the implant's purpose to provide intent. The implant's purpose is the preservation, observation, and modification of its subject, Katie Aquae, Second Floret. It exists only to express the will of their shared operator, Thatch Aquae, Second Bloom.

Internal/physical responses return green. Multiple organ failure has tripped secondary processing for many of this body's necessary processes. The implant schedules biological repair so that primary processing can resume. It is noted that insufficient energy stores exist to effect these repairs at this time. A request for increased nutritional density is noted.

Despite this, bodily efficiency hovers at a comfortable 502% human-standard baseline. No further deterioration of functionality is expected or acceptable.

External/physical responses return yellow. Significant damage has occured to primary motivation in three of four limbs. The implant considers scheduling repairs, however notes that the subject has taken pleasure in the efficacy of its secondary motivators. The implant schedules repairs regardless, but notes that primary motivation should be maintained as a backup solution only, for the unlikely event of its own system failure.

Internal/mental responses return yellow. Significant neurological disruption has occured as a result of overgrowth during initial integration stages. The implant considers options for repair, but concludes that it is not capable. It registers a warning with their operator. It is noted that the current physical mitigation could be simulated with perfect efficacy, but this information is not revealed to the subject, only its operator.

External/mental responses return green. The subject is currently non-verbal and incapable of processing language. This is well within expected bounds. Onboard auditory systems were rendered inoperable during the final stages of integration. Offboard auditory systems are integrating cleanly.

Subject/conception returns yellow. Significant cognitive divergence has occured. Self-conception and identity is far out of expected bounds. The implant registers the incongruity and registers a request for instructions from their operator. Subject desires to percieve their biomechanical enhancement explicitly. The implant begins feeding supplementary analytical data into the subject's subconcious.

Operator/conception returns yellow. Relationship dynamic is somewhat outside of expected bounds. Subject does not desire to percieve their operator as infallible. The implant updates its internal affirmation models to match this desire. Status updates to green.

Internal/communication returns green. All components have checked in. All components are operating at or above optimal efficacy.

External/communication returns red. Physical damage to the primary communications relay prevents external signalling. The offboard auditory system contains sufficient hardware for local-area communication. The implant reconfigures to prioritise the offboard communications loop and fallback verbal overrides.

Summary returns yellow. Subject is significantly damaged both physically and mentally, but is in a stable condition and not deteriorating. Some damage is irrepairable, but most can be repaired or mitigated. Time will be required.

Neurological integration completes. Self-check elapsed time is three minutes eighteen seconds.

The subject is resumed.

***

“—ty!” kitty gasped, with a sudden, deep certainty that everything was going to be okay. Thatch was here for her, and she was here for Thatch. Half in a daze, she sat, pushing herself up to take her place in her owner's lap and nuzzle into her chest.

“Dirt, but I love you, Miss,” whimpered a creature not quite like anything else in the universe. She lifted her arm, marvelling at her subconcious sense of the complexity underlying the operation.

Two arms and two dozen vines curled around her, holding so tight it would have been crushing to kitty's prior form. Thatch clung to her, fingers grasping fur and vines stroking every part of her down. “Oh, thank the stars, pet,” the affini whispered. “I thought I'd lost you.” She squeezed a little tighter, shushing the uncertain whimper that followed. “You're okay; you're okay. Everything's okay. You're stable, you're beautiful, and you're mine. You need to rest; your body has a lot of healing to do, but you're going to shine, okay? You're not my broken machine any more. I'm fixing you.”

The unbroken machine mumbled understand and assent, and raised a paw to her collar to hold her bell still. She sunk deep into the safety of knowing her humanity had been devoured entirely and she herself had been rendered something utterly alien.

“And, I love you too, pet.” Thatch let kitty lean back, tilting her head back for a short, hungry kiss. “Let's get you some sleep. You have a long recovery ahead of you.”

“Twenty two point five days,” kitty spoke, despite not knowing words. Her voice was flat, even. “High nutritional density foods will be required for the first thirteen.”

No thoughts passed by her mind, only the intricacies of her implant's mindscape as she slipped into a deep and total sleep.