Chapter Text
[ μ ] – εγλ 2000
Between "How to Assassinate Someone for Fun and Profit" and "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." Pre-relationship.
In hindsight, it was his own damn fault. There were probably worse places in the Shinra Building to take a nap, but Hojo’s nightmare-land laboratories had to be near the top of the list.
But what the fuck was he supposed to do? Midgar was being boiled alive by the worst summer heat wave in a decade and why should the nerds in labcoats get to hog the AC?
“Well, well,” the extremely un-good doctor said, never one to miss an opportunity to grandstand before Heidegger’s people. “It’s been so long since we’ve had a new volunteer. And a human one, at that.”
Reno barely heard him, coughing and heaving after landing flat on his back. The ceiling panel he’d chosen to curl up on happened to be right over one of the test subject enclosures, or so he surmised from the stench.
“Yeah, you got me,” Reno said. He forced himself more or less upright and wobbled toward the glass door of the dimly-lit enclosure, beyond which lay a panel of observation instruments, Hojo, and a few of his dead-eyed researchers. “Hah hah, hijinks ensue, fun times had by all, won’t do it again. Now lemme out.”
“Oh, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said the creepy old bastard, drawling playfully like he was being oh-so clever. Like he’d snared a Turk all on his lonesome, a fly in his web, instead of just being the beneficiary of Reno’s stupidity. “The creatures on today’s docket are all at the peak of their mating cycles. If they were to escape containment and set themselves upon some hapless employee, that would be…” His mouth twisted into a hideous yellow-toothed grin. “…quite the mess to clean up.”
“Turks don’t respond well to threats, yanno.”
“A threat?” Hojo feigned offense. “Have I suggested violence will be done to you? Oh, no, my boy. In fact, I understand that for a human it’s often extremely pleasurable, at least at first.”
“Pleasu–” Reno’s brain, running on a bit of a delay, finally recalled what Hojo had said a few moments ago. “Wait, ‘mating cycle’?”
It was about then that Reno felt something warm and wet slithering around his ankle.
“Late, again,” Tseng groused, making an emphatic strike mark on whatever sheet of paper he was signing off on, probably an attendance review. “To not even show up to an all-hands meeting…”
He was irritable because of the heat. They all were. Rude didn’t know where Reno had snuck off to for his nap, but he envied him. Tseng’s wrath would be worth not having to spend one minute more in this sweltering office.
“Access log says he’s still in the building,” Rude said. He knew without being asked just who needed to go and retrieve their little lost Turk. “Last keycard swipe at 0920, sixty-eighth floor.”
Rude looked up from the print-out, right into Tseng’s gaze. They both knew where that led.
“I’ll inform the director that we have a potential… inter-departmental diplomatic issue,” Tseng said with a resigned sigh. “Go collect your partner before Hojo grinds his bones to make his bread.”
“The first species on today’s docket is Tentaculus vulgaris, the common tentacle monster,” Hojo said, enunciating clearly so that his worthless assistant could take down his dictation exactly. “Like the octopus, its arms contain neurons, thus it can perceive and effectively ‘think’ with its whole body, allowing it to manipulate tools with incredible accuracy. It is a pa–”
The tentacle monster let out a rasping shriek as blue-white lightning arced across its (loosely-defined) back. Their stubborn little volunteer had wandered into the Drum armed, it seemed.
“Suspend the experiment! Segregate the subjects!” Hojo bellowed at his useless, cow-eyed researchers. A transparent partition slammed down within the enclosure, separating the Turk from Hojo’s precious, beautiful specimen, now huddled and smoldering in the far corner. “My poor, poor Blue Five. I hope you know I will be billing your department for any damages,” he added to the Turk, who was now hissing and spitting like he was the cornered animal, while researchers approached him with a sedative. “We’ll resume after you’re more suitably prepared for the encounter.”
He ordered the mics in the enclosure muted, so that the Turk’s shouted invectives wouldn’t distract him from his dictation.
“It is a parasitic species,” he continued to his assistant, “which lays its eggs inside the orifices of other creatures, preferably mucous membranes such as a human’s mouth, vagina, and anus. Less commonly, we see implantation in the foreskin, uterus, bladder, nostrils, and eyelids. Due to T. vulgaris’s long incubation period, it has an incentive to keep the host docile and in good health. Simply put…” Hojo dissolved into giggles for a moment. “…the host is domesticated.”
Reno would like to say that it took a full battery of dragon tranquilizers to take him down, but he was a skinny-ass twink and dropped within a second of the hypodermic needle jabbing into the side of his throat. He didn’t black out, though – just crumpled to the floor of the enclosure and watched a blur of labcoats take away his truncheon and materia, his jacket, his boots, while his own body seemed to move in half-time, his muscles trudging through quick-drying cement.
By the time the sedative had begun to level off, Reno was buck naked in the middle of the enclosure, without even his goggles to keep his hair out of his eyes.
“Much better,” Professor Hojo’s voice slithered over the intercom. “As a necessary caveat, I must inform you that what you were just administered in no way acts as an aphrodisiac, truth serum, or other ‘miracle drug’ on which you might conveniently blame your actions.”
“How many times have you done this to people,” Reno asked, wiping an unflattering thread of drool from his lips with the back of his hand, “that you felt the need to add a fucking disclaimer?”
“Oh, purely standard procedure for such experiments, I promise you. You wouldn’t believe how many volunteers later attempt to deny their own behavior. It’s the very reason we make sure to fully document the process.”
Meaning they were recording, but in a building with cameras everywhere, Reno had long since grown inured to threats like this. What were they gonna blackmail him with, a video of him having a good time? He’d demand the company sell it in the visitor gift shop and give him a cut of the profits; what the fuck did he care?
“Good, you’re already aroused,” Hojo added, leering directly at Reno’s crotch with such rapacious intensity that, all bravado aside, Reno felt like covering himself. “These experiments always go much better when the host is willing. Raise the partition!” he barked at his researchers.
The transparent pane separating his half of the enclosure from the seething mass of vine-like limbs lifted away, and the pungent scent reached Reno’s nose once more. Musty and meaty and rank, like a circle-jerk of unwashed cocks. Unfortunately, that was kind of Reno’s Thing, so it only turned him on further.
Well, whatever. It wasn’t like he’d never fought a tentacle monster on assignment before. Sometimes, if Rude cockblocked him hard enough, he even lost to them on purpose.
Reno did a few stretches to start limbering himself up. If all he had to do was get fucked before an audience, this was still a way better use of his morning than sitting around in meetings.
The creature shot out a long, thick tentacle, snaking over the floor of the enclosure with lightning speed. Reno yanked his foot out of the way just before it could coil around his ankle, and then he slammed his heel down on its tumescent blue flesh. It released another horrified squeal from whatever throat apparently lay somewhere in its center mass. Unfortunately, that did not stop the tentacle at all from coiling around his other ankle and yanking him off his feet anyway.
He managed to brace himself on his arms this time as he went down, narrowly avoiding getting the wind knocked out of him twice in the last however many minutes. His bare backside squeaked over the metal floor as it dragged him, other tentacles snaring around elbows and knees so that by the time he’d been pulled all the way to the far side of the monster’s enclosure, he didn’t have the use of any of his limbs. A nubby tentacle with cloudy white fluid dripping from its glans-like tip weaved over Reno’s head for a moment, as if debating whether to be polite before jamming itself into his mouth.
Instead, he just opened wide and let it do its thing. Yeah, sure, the sedative Hojo’s minions gave him wasn’t an aphrodisiac, but this definitely was. He knew how this went. The lukewarm fluid ran down Reno’s throat like a mouthful of runny snot, deeply unpleasant, but not any worse than swallowing human jizz. It caused his skin to flush and prickle, his lips tingling like the aftermath of a good kiss.
The tentacle then spurted a few additional loads directly onto his face, just to be thorough.
“You try to be professional, and this is what it gets you,” Reno said, sputtering and shaking the glue-like substance from his hair. At least he’d shut his eyes in time.
“My, you appear to already be familiar with this species.” Rather than amusing Hojo, this seemed to disappoint him, a gnarled frown belying the levity in his voice. “I wasn’t aware our friends in the Investigative Division were so well trained. Is it all your major orifices, I wonder? Or just your mouth?”
“Y’know, that’s a common misconception,” Reno said conversationally, helpfully spreading his labia with a couple fingers so that a particularly girthy tentacle could have an easier time of wiggling inside. Once the monster realized he wasn’t fighting, it had relaxed some of its restraints. “Actually, Turks got a policy of not fucking their targets. Health issue, see. Not to mention the problems if somebody catches feels on an assignment – ooh!” He gripped a hand around the straining, fleshy limb still trying to cram more of itself in his definitely-full vagina. “Where d’you think you’re going, big guy? This pussy’s an Extra Small; you gotta break me in before you go wearing me out.”
Hojo’s snarl was priceless, but not the sort of thing Reno wanted to look at while he orgasmed. He hummed and reclined against the floor of the enclosure, eyes closed and legs spread as an array of smaller tentacles petted and sucked on his pink parts.
A few slender appendages, each about as thick as a human finger, slathered a tepid, gooey something-or-other around his asshole before sliding inside. It felt fucking weird, like a bunch of worms squirming up through his ass. But the sensation was short-lived: the thin tentacles began massaging his inner walls, applying more of their thick secretion until everything was pins-and-needles numb.
“Hey, do I gotta be awake for all of this?” Reno asked, feeling all dopey and warm. The monster so far wasn’t doing anything all that original and he never did get his nap before. He yawned as the tentacle inside his pussy dragged a perfunctory, utterly ordinary orgasm out of him.
“Stop the test,” Hojo ordered his researchers, seething like the blood in his veins might just boil out of his ears. “Let’s proceed to the next subject, since our guest finds he isn’t being stimulated enough.”
“Ooh, wait, wait, the eggs are coming!” Reno called out, raising a finger. He squirmed as he felt the first rolling inside him, as big as a golf ball and unbelievably warm, grinding mercilessly against his sensitive spots as it went. “Aw, hell yeah. That’s the good shit. Those dumb little toy ovi-whatsit things got nothing on the real deal.”
He grabbed the nearest sucker tentacle and planted it over his clit, toes curling as a second, much more satisfying orgasm struck his body like a church bell. The rhythmic waves of pleasure radiated outward as a third (fourth?) egg pushed its way deep inside his pussy. Another egg-laying tentacle slid in to replace the thinner, lubricating ones in his asshole, and suddenly the pleasantly-full sensation he’d been experiencing became a suffocating, burning stretch, arresting every neuron in his brain.
“Phew,” Reno said during his come-down several minutes later, wiping hair soaked with sweat and sex-drug jizz from his forehead. “Been a while since I squirted like that. It’s all the way across the room! You guys rent this thing out for the weekend, by any chance?”
There were few doors in the Shinra Building that a Turk didn’t have access to, and most of them led to Hojo’s labs. Veld, obviously, considered this a security issue and had campaigned unsuccessfully for a change, but the best compromise he and Tseng had been able to broker was that Turks could come inside if they had direct orders from Heidegger or above. And they asked nicely.
Rude did not have orders from Heidegger or above. What he did have was a partner in jeopardy, so he ambushed the first researcher he spotted leaving the bathroom.
“I don’t think you wanna go in there,” the scientist said, his voice tight, because Rude was choking him by the collar of his shirt while he badged them through security. “Professor Hojo’s got this, uhm, new test subject, and he’s pretty rowdy…”
“‘He’?” Rude asked, gripping tighter.
“W-w-well the subject’s an incubator subtype, but Hojo called him ‘he,’ so–”
“‘Incubator subtype’?”
“Hurk! Augh! T-th-the department’s trying to update gendered med – medical terminolog…y…” The researcher was starting to turn blue so Rude forced himself to relax his fingers. Slightly. “‘Incubator’ is a lot less offensive than saying somebody’s got, uh, f-f-f-’female genitals,’ you know?”
“Agree to disagree,” Rude growled, and shoved him through the door.
“Our next subject is a fine specimen of Aenocyon dirus carrollus, otherwise known as the bandersnatch,” Hojo dictated. “A Wutaian creature also exists by this name, but it is unrelated. The true bandersnatch is a thaumic dire wolf subspecies found only on the Northern Continent and can reach sizes up to that of a small horse. With, hehe… genitalia to match. For that reason, we are using a subadult for this experiment.”
Its teeth had also been filed down, its fangs pulled, and its claws clipped, because it tended to shred human volunteers to bloody ribbons otherwise. The Turk was certainly much too incapacitated to defend himself. The host subjugation fluid he had ingested was now reaching its full potency and he was visibly flushed and perspiring heavily, even before the bandersnatch started licking his genitals.
“Despite vast differences in geography, the bandersnatch is instinctively drawn to the scent of tentacle monster eggs and larvae,” Hojo continued to his assistant, smirking as the Turk let out another yelp, both hands around the bandersnatch’s snout as he tried to escape its ravaging tongue. “Through our research, we’ve discovered that this is because a tentacle monster’s reproductive secretions are olfactorily indistinguishable from that of a bandersnatch bitch in heat. A perfectly useless bit of information for any real scientific advancement, but I’m sure it’ll improve the lives of some fur trappers in Icicle somewhere. Bah!”
“Uhm, Professor Hojo, sir,” said another of the dullards on his staff, having crept meekly over to him from his monitoring station. “We have a bit of a situation.”
“Not now,” Hojo snapped. He didn’t even turn his head. The bandersnatch appeared to have finished lapping up the eggs in the Turk’s vaginal cavity and was now flipping him over onto his stomach to mount him. Hojo resumed his dictation, growing ever more excited. “Notice that the animal continues to smell the presence of eggs, yet cannot seem to complete the logical thought circuit that they could be hiding in another orifice. Instead, it has moved directly onto mating. While a subadult bandersnatch’s penis is only about three-quarters that of an adult’s, like many caniforms it features a knot which– What is it, you fool?!” he yelled at the insistent gnat of a man still hovering at his shoulder, finally looking around.
“There’s been a security breach, professor,” the researcher whimpered, cringing into a ball like an isopod. “On the sixty-eighth floor. We believe it’s the Turks.”
Of course Heidegger’s little kill dolls would spring into action for their lost colleague. Hojo had hoped to have more than – he checked his watch – 48 minutes before he would have to contend with any more busybodies disrupting his work.
“Then delay them,” Hojo said, waving the gibbering idiot aside. The Drum was vast and decentralized; a Turk coming from the top floor would have quite a ways to descend in order to reach them. “Bah, now look at what you’ve done. I’ve missed the moment of insertion.”
Haha, Reno thought dimly, I’m going to die.
A wolf’s dick was not the biggest thing he had ever stuck inside his pussy, but he hadn’t had a wolf doing the sticking, either. Once the bandersnatch had him on all fours and mounted him, it had wasted no time jabbing its pointy, angry-red cock against his cheeks and the backs of his thighs, trying to find his slit.
It snarled and raised a rear leg to dig into his hip, slipping the scalding-hot organ inside while its blunted claws gouged his skin.
Reno barely had time to process this pain before the bandersnatch was thrusting with hyperactive abandon. If not for the slimy mess it had already made of his pussy (RIP vagina eggs, pushing the ass ones out wasn’t nearly as fun), and the sexy numbing plant drugs, he would probably be in a ton of pain right now. The wolf’s dick was girthy and smooth, no well-defined glans or prominent veins. It would feel disturbingly like a rubber dildo if not for the temperature, and also for the thick knot at the base.
Oh, and the paws the size of his head crushing his shoulders into the floor, the animal’s huge jaw open and puffing wet, hot breaths like steam against the back of his neck. That didn’t feel like a dildo either.
But the knot was most concerning at the moment. First, because Reno could feel it swelling, its bulge catching on the edges of his hole with every backthrust. Second, because it felt fucking amazing and he didn’t want it to stop. Even as the claws dug into his flesh and the pain mounted, it was the intense pleasure filling his cunt that made Reno’s eyes water and his teeth clench.
He cried out as the bandersnatch wrung a third and then a fourth agonizing orgasm from him without even trying. Or caring.
“Okay, this isn’t fun anymore!” Reno shouted through the burn of his afterglow, not sure his voice could even get picked up by the mics amidst the bandersnatch’s panting and growls. The knot had grown so big that it could barely even pop back out now, and from the frenetic pace he guessed the creature was about to come and probably wreck his pussy beyond repair. “You had your fucking laugh, Hojo! If you don’t wanna get your ass beat by the whole division I suggest yUNNNGH!”
Reno broke off into a full-throated groan, lost utterly beneath the bandersnatch’s triumphant howl as it slammed its cock inside him one final time, its knot inflating to what felt like double its previous size. He felt a sharp stitch of pain, like something tearing, but it was completely forgotten against the insane pressure on his G-spot and (thankfully empty) bladder.
“Ah… a-ahh…” His body twitched and spasmed, ass in the air, top half still crumpled against the floor of the enclosure even after the bandersnatch removed its paws. He felt the claws at his hip drag over his ass and guessed the wolf was turning around, but it didn’t seem to be going anywhere, at least. Yet. “Holy ssshit… This is… I’m not…” Gonna be satisfied by human dick ever again, is what he wanted to say, except that would be giving Hojo a win and he really hoped it wasn’t true.
“Much as I hate to interrupt your brain's oxytocin-dopamine bath,” Hojo’s voice came over the intercom again, “we are on something of a tight schedule today. Sedative dart,” he said to one of his flunkies. “That should help shrink the phallus to a size sufficient for you to push out on your own. If you wouldn’t mind chipping in.”
Rude didn’t like beating up nerds. It wasn’t sporting and they tended to wear chunky glasses with thick lenses, which really did a number on his hands. Fortunately, it only took a handful before they retreated and started releasing science experiments to hold him back instead.
He twisted the demihuman’s head until he felt the snap beneath his fingers. Then he tossed it aside with the others.
What could Hojo be up to that justified this level of response? Each of these tank freaks probably represented an investment of hundreds of thousands of gil at least. And Hojo’s people just threw them at him like cannon fodder.
Rude tapped his shades back up where they’d slid down his nose. This place was way too big to just keep going level by level, for reasons of collateral damage if nothing else.
He tried his PHS to contact Tseng, but wasn’t totally surprised to find there was zero signal inside the Drum. It only took a moment’s inspection to find the wired terminals only connected to each other as well. But that was better than nothing. He clicked through an antiquated system of menus on the analog machine and raised different channels until he got an answer.
“This is the Turks,” he said. No need for them to know it was actually just the one. Intimidation was one of the only plays he had left. “Connect me to Hojo, now.”
“Our third and penultimate species on today’s docket is Homo sahaginis kappas, or aquatic Sahagin. This particular specimen is a dominant breeding male – excuse me, ‘inseminator subtype.’" Hojo for one was glad to be done with such antiquated distinctions as gender – he was a major advocate for universal dehumanization, after all – but old habits, et cetera. "Colloquially it is known as a ‘prince.' These tend to be larger and more aggressive than other members of their species, so until now we’ve confined our breeding experiments with other Sahagin subspecies.”
Hojo paused to smile at the Turk in the enclosure, still trying oh-so-valiantly to keep the Sahagin’s long tongue out of his rectum.
“However,” he continued, “genetic analysis suggests that, despite having separated from our common ancestor more than five million years ago, these distant cousins of ours may still be able to produce fertile offspring with modern humans. What abilities could such a half-breed possess?”
“Professor, sir–”
“Now what is it?” Hojo’s nose wrinkled into a snarl, already spinning around to confront whichever imbecile had decided to interrupt him this time. It was the same harried junior researcher he had waved off before.
“The, um, the Turks are on the Drum PHS system,” the intellectual infant said, jiggling with fear. “They’re demanding to speak to you right now.”
“You may tell them that I am in the middle of a very important experiment and cannot be interrupted! Leave!” He sneered at the researcher’s rounded back. “Children! I am surrounded by children. Where was I? Ah, yes… Sahagin, like many of the true reptilians they imitate, are oviparous. Both inseminator and incubator subtypes possess two entire sets of genitalia: two vaginas and two uteruses; two penises and four testicles. Well, eight testicles, as you can see with this dominant inseminator. The extras grow when a Sahagin prince has taken command of a tribe, the better to impregnate its large harem. Having been without its incubators for almost a fortnight, no doubt our specimen is eager for some release.”
“I’m tellin’ ya, they’re too far up in there!” Reno shouted, bapping the Sahagin on its broad, flat nose as it plunged its eel-like tongue into his ass again. “And they won’t taste good even if you can get to ‘em, so cut it out! I thought you lizards were supposed to be smart!”
Sahagin weren’t just big dumb fish monsters. They carried spears, they made armor. They talked, so there was no reason they couldn’t learn human language too. Too bad this one didn’t seem interested in anything besides what was going on between Reno’s legs.
“Dammit…!” Reno kicked at the Sahagin’s shoulder, asshole clenching involuntarily around the slimy intrusion. “You better not try to stick that thing in my glove compartment!”
It shouldn’t feel this good. Especially not now, exhausted and bleeding, his pussy still on fire from pushing out the bandersnatch’s enormous fucking knot. Tentacle monster aphrodisiac goo was no joke. There was a reason live ones were such a hot commodity on the black market.
Finally, the Sahagin’s tongue slid free, a slimy trail of demihuman saliva streaking over his inner thigh as it withdrew. Reno caught sight of the bulbous sack now hanging between its legs like a hideous bunch of grapes. Standing at attention above it were two fat cocks, each terminating in a flared, barbed head.
Maybe the tongue in his asshole wasn’t for the eggs after all.
Sitting back, the Sahagin matter-of-factly grabbed Reno’s weak and overstimulated body by his hips and hauled him into its lap. It forced his legs apart and then adjusted its hemipenes to line their thick, flat heads up with Reno’s two holes.
“Uh, hey, so, I don’t do a lotta DP stuff, so if you could just go slow while you’re puttin’ that in–”
It did not go slow. Its cocks pressed and pressed against his entrances until they gave with a searing jab of pain, quickly buried by the aphrodisiac, but not forgotten. The soft barbs scraped along Reno’s inner walls like fingers probing in every direction at once. He lost the strength to hold his head aloft: his entire upper body went limp between the Sahagin’s thighs, head dragging against the floor. Broad, scaled hands wrapped around his legs like handlebars and fucked him onto its cocks, the mind-numbing stretch and fullness knocking every thought from Reno’s brain before he could think it.
He was getting cored out, like an apple. The Sahagin prince would slide his body back until just the too-wide heads remained inside and then yank him back onto them in one sharp, brutal movement. Over and over again.
Reno’s hand crept to his clit and he began stroking it without a thought. But the sensation was too weak after all the attention the tentacle monster had paid to it earlier, and naturally the prince wasn’t focused on any pleasure but its own.
Suddenly, its thrusts grew frenetic, sacrificing the deep penetration for the urgency of its orgasm(s). Reno clenched his teeth through the pain, and instinctively clamped his insides around the Sahagin’s dicks, every backstroke scouring his G-spot and the dense nerves around his asshole. He came again, who knew what number he was even on now, pinching his oversized clit between his fingers as his legs shook violently and another gasping cry escaped his throat.
His orgasm seemed to send the Sahagin over the edge as well, bottoming out inside Reno’s ass and pussy as it emptied itself in powerful, rhythmic spurts. Reno could feel it begin to ooze out around the prince’s cocks, but it remained balls deep, pouring just an absurd amount of its seed inside him with each hose-like jet of come.
“Fuck – fuck!” Reno whimpered, excess fish-man jizz sliding down his stomach, pooling in his navel. He hid his bright-red face behind his arm, overheated and overstuffed, pain and ecstasy indistinguishable from one another.
Rude hadn’t actually expected to be able to talk Hojo into giving up Reno. He just needed confirmation of where he was. And after a bit of hacking, including opening up a service panel and hotwiring most of its guts, Rude got his answer.
Three more floors. A bit too far to jump, even with the adaptive armor in his suit. He was going to have to descend in stages. It was too bad he hadn’t brought a grappling gun. That would’ve made for a cool entrance.
If Hojo had already hurt Reno… Rude shook his head. No. He wasn’t going to think about that. Harsh reality was, Hojo was untouchable, no matter who he killed in the name of his “research.” Whereas Reno was just as expendable as any SOLDIER, at least from the brass’s point of view.
The only thing he could do was hurry and trust Reno to handle things himself until he got there.
“No,” Reno said, jabbing his finger at the hulking shape on the other side of the partition. “No, I am not fucking that shit. This ends now, you hear me?”
Hojo’s smile contained too many teeth, all of them crooked. “And here I thought you might appreciate something a little less phallic, after your recent copulations.”
“It’s a slime. With eyeballs.” A good deal more than eight, despite its name. Some were larger than his head. All of them were more humanlike than he cared for. “How the fuck does it even mate? By giving another slime a smoldering look?”
“Why, that is what we’re here to find out. Do keep it from swallowing your head, if you can help it. Its insides have been modified to be less caustic, but it still has a depilatory effect on human skin.”
“A what effect–”
Gears hummed, and the partition separating Reno from the Hecteyes began to lift once more. The slime didn’t even wait for it to rise up to ‘head’ height: it flattened itself along the floor, its bulging, globular eyes rolling around like captive marbles as it slid below the partition. A few of the bigger eyes got stuck behind the glass for a moment, too large to pass under. But before Reno could even register the grotesque absurdity of what he was seeing, they had squished through and the whole pink mass was slithering toward him again, extending long pseudo-tentacles to reach for his ankles.
Reno hopped out of the way. And then kept hopping, even as the Hecteyes reformed into its towering mass and advanced on him with disproportionate speed. Reno dove and dodged, but between his injuries and fatigue, it wasn’t long before a pseudopod lashed itself around his ankle.
He watched, horrified, as the Hecteyes pulled his foot inside its translucent body. There was a faint stinging sensation around his toes. The slime pressed around his foot like a throat, caressing and drawing his leg further into itself. Its eyes bore down on Reno from all angles, intense and unblinking, their horrifyingly human irises and pupils dilating with interest whenever Reno whimpered or yelped.
The slime reached mid-shin, and the tingling-burning sensation only intensified. Hojo had said that its secretions had been made ‘less caustic,’ so what the fuck did this thing’s goo do human flesh normally?
Reno twisted onto his stomach, scrabbling for purchase against the smooth floor plating with his three remaining limbs. The Hecteyes shot out another pseudopod to wrap around his wrist, pinning it to the metal. He felt the skin of his forearm sizzling and yanked it free with all the force he could muster.
The skin where the Hecteyes had touched him looked fine, just unnaturally smooth. Like it had, in the space of a few seconds, eaten away the sparse hair follicles and dead skin cells on the back of his hand, leaving it exfoliated and moisturized.
Now he remembered where he’d seen the word ‘depilatory’ before: the labels on hair removal creams. Hojo had genetically modified a slime to dissolve body hair, of all the ass-backwards accidentally-useful little inventions to come out of R&D–
“Oh? Have you given up resisting?” Hojo mocked over the intercom, seeing Reno’s pause.
Like most Midgardian pretty-boys who took their beauty cues from Sephiroth, Reno already shaved most of his body: face, chest, pits, legs, pubis. If it were covered under the Shinra employee health plan, he’d have lasered off every last hair south of his clavicle, he hated dealing with it so much. And his legs were feeling a bit bristly today…
On the other hand, something that melted hair probably shouldn’t be going up inside any of his orifices.
“Don’t ‘spose you can tell this thing ‘for external use only’?” Reno grunted, dragging himself forward another couple centimeters. The slime had swallowed his captured leg up to the knee and there weren’t a lot of places he could bend the other that would keep it out of reach for long.
“That would defeat the purpose of these breeding trials, would it not? Never fear; your insides are coated with enough reproductive material from the last three specimens that it should take several minutes before the Hecteyes begins irritating your mucous membranes.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
His free leg slipped on the floor, knee landing in a puddle of cold fish-man jizz. The slime swept around his foot and between his toes, and before Reno could begin to cry out the Hecteyes was slurping his second leg inside its mass.
In no time at all, the slime reached his crotch. It slathered itself over his inner thighs and vulva, chewing away whatever pubic stubble had grown in since his last shave. Reno shuddered involuntarily as the ooze pushed inside, probing both his holes at once just like the Sahagin had. The slime did seem to sting a little less where Reno had been coated in monster spunk, but not by a lot.
More importantly, the Hecteyes kept cramming more and more of itself inside him. Reno even felt a sickening, spongy weight slide into his ass, and then another, rolling around his insides not unlike the tentacle monster’s eggs.
Eyes? It was shoving its eyes into him?!
Reno gagged, spared vomiting only by virtue of having skipped breakfast that morning. A larger eyeball pressed insistently on his front hole, like a squishy orb of materia trying to shove its way into his cunt. He couldn’t shake the idea it was trying to see inside him, like every crevice of his body was being forced open for inspection.
“Fascinating,” Hojo remarked, like he was appreciating an oil painting. “It appears Amoeba giganticus ocularus reproduces by incubating its eyes like larvae inside a host. I wonder if the young simply exit through the same orifice, or must eat their way out…?”
NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. This was already way beyond Reno’s gross-out tolerance; now they were squarely in nightmare territory. Bile from his empty stomach flooded his throat; eyes watered with some sensation so far beyond pain or pleasure that Reno’s brain simply gave up and short-circuited. He was swallowed up to his waist now, his lower body completely immobile within the Hecteyes’s mass, spread open and helpless to prevent more of its disgusting ‘eggs’ from pushing even deeper into his guts.
He felt more than heard the grenade go off. The shockwave rippled through the Hecteyes’s gelatinous insides and caused it to split like a bad custard. Reno forced his eyes open in time to see bits of shrapnel and pink goo arc by overhead.
“Partner…” Whispered like a little prayer of gratitude. Reno sank down against the floor, relief washing over him more powerful than any climax, sweeping him off into unconsciousness.
Rude wasn’t sure what part bothered him most – the certainty that Hojo would face zero consequences from all this, or that Reno had missed his grand entrance. He’d dropped through an open ceiling panel and roundhouse-kicked a slime, for Titan’s sake. His boot was half-melted and he’d have to file a TI-138 for it now, and Reno would never even know how badass he'd looked.
Rude settled for a third perturbance: this wasn’t even the first time he’d had to carry Reno, unconscious and full of monster semen, to an infirmary. At least it wasn't through kilometers of jungle this time.
The injuries were superficial, at least. Well, he’d broken his pelvis in three places and had significant internal tearing, but the breaks were clean and all of it healed easily with materia. Then there was the ‘residue’ that had bloated Reno’s guts so much he appeared to have a little potbelly. Rude didn’t need to be told to leave the exam room while the doctors dealt with that.
By lunch time, Reno was back in fighting form as though he had never left, happily chowing down on his salad. Not his usual lunch fare, but all the hot food options were unavailable with his meal pass suspended. Tseng hadn’t wasted any time in doling out the first phase of Reno’s punishment.
He stabbed at every chunk of lettuce with his fork like he was imagining them as Hojo’s face and chatted about everything but his morning escapades. Next month’s office retreat, the company volleyball tournament, TV shows, who was banging whom. Rude wasn’t surprised when the subject circled back to him.
“Didja catch that girl checkin’ you out earlier?” He gestured with his fork at the sweet-faced cashier at the payment counter who had just rung them up. “She looks like she’d enjoy polishing your dome sometime. Why don’tcha ask her to the solstice party?”
“That’s four months away.” Rude, whose meal pass still worked fine, had nevertheless foregone his lunch in favor of a protein shake. Not much of an appetite today, for some reason. He frowned at the viscous gray liquid settling inside the bottle. “You really okay? You took a beating in there.”
“Nothin’ the doc couldn’t patch up. Fucking mutt took a big chunk outta my hip, so that’s gonna scar, but other than that? Feeling better than ever.”
Rude shook his head, not terribly surprised, but disappointed anyway. Reno bounced back from nearly anything, and that which he couldn’t, he pretended that he did. Sometimes Rude considered giving into this Thing between them and taking Reno up on his relentless advances - maybe he'd listen more to someone he was fucking.
But no, that was stupid. Reno would always be Reno, whether Rude went to bed with him or not. Anyway, he was probably just transplanting his feelings of uselessness onto something his dick could understand. Or maybe even this protective instinct was just displacement, and seeing Reno stuffed so full of monster jizz and eggs that he looked pregnant awoke some feral impulse in Rude, a gut-level desire to claim him.
If I just asked him, Rude thought, he’d say yes in a heartbeat.
Reno hadn’t exactly let up with his flirting in the last year. He’d even finagled his way into a drunken makeout session or two. But Rude just couldn’t bring himself to take the next step. If sweeping in after the Corneo job had felt predatory, doing so right after rescuing his partner from a bunch of stock porn monsters felt beyond redemption.
He’d just have to keep his thoughts between himself and his dick, as usual. And hope, vaguely, for some miraculous opportunity to confess his feelings properly, or some cheesy shit like that. Maybe the winter solstice party?
Across from him, Reno again squirmed in his seat. The doctors had confirmed him parasite-free, so Rude surmised the Hecteyes’s acid had just left him with a few embarrassingly-placed skin rashes. Or maybe being completely hairless from the waist down wasn’t the boon Reno thought it would be.
“Thanks for, uh. For coming to get me,” Reno mumbled, eyes still downcast. “I mean, I know Tseng sent you, but. Thanks.”
“No problem,” Rude said. He forced himself to wet his dry throat with a sip of his unpalatable shake.
Reno’s gaze lifted, not to meet Rude’s, but to watch the liquid protein travel along the plastic bottle’s inner walls toward his mouth. Reno bit his lip, staring hard at Rude’s Adam’s apple as he swallowed.
Turking was a tough gig. But Rude couldn’t imagine any challenge tougher than this right here, reading so clearly in Reno’s eyes a desire to bang it out in the nearest bathroom stall, wanting that too, and still having to act like it was never there at all and he couldn’t recognize it in Reno either. Felt less like being the adult in this partnership and more like gaslighting, except he was gaslighting himself too.
“You wanna take off early?” Rude suggested. Reno’s eyes lit up. “I’ll cover for you.” Reno’s eyes dimmed again.
“Nah,” he said, picking forlornly at his salad. “I’m good.”
I want to eat you out so bad, Rude wished he could say. I want to know what my mouth feels like sealed around your soft, pink cunt. I want to suck your little cock until it’s so red and sore you can’t even wear those slutty thongs of yours for all the stimulation. I want to wind back time and eat you out right there in Hojo’s lab, with all that monster spunk still dribbling out of your bare pussy–
Rude cleared his throat and said, “Anything you want me to… leave out of the incident report?”
This seemed to set Reno off. He tossed his fork into his half-finished salad bowl and said, “Yeah. You can leave out the part where I wanna suck you off right here.” He leaned across the table, granting a very distracting view down his open shirt front. Somehow, he had only become boobier since his top surgery. Rude still didn’t understand it. “What d’ya say, partner? How’s about we stop pussyfooting around it and finally resolve this sexual fucking tension we got going?”
As the gears turned in Rude’s head, struggling to thread this needle with the precision of an electron microscope, he heard a gurgling noise rise up from the other side of the table.
Reno’s face fell, already turning green. “Guess they missed one,” he said, shooting out of his chair and hurrying in the direction of the bathroom.
Rude sighed, not quite in relief.
It was probably for the best. Monster dick was a tough act to follow. He wanted at least a few months between today and… whenever that perfect opportunity emerged and they could finally finish what they’d started in Corneo’s panic room.
The cashier at the register waved to Rude with a toothy smile, which was how he realized he’d been staring. He managed a stiff, awkward little wave in return.
I’m not exotic enough for him anyway, Rude thought, depressed. He’d get bored of me within a week.