Kanti/Chendra 1 (Patreon)

Like I was saying, I received a private request for not only some Kanti/Suni naughtiness, but some Kanti/Chendra too. It sounded fun, so of course I wanted to try it!

As before, this isn't canon. It never happened. This is merely a what-if things had gone differently.

———

Chendra picked up the quantum resonator—or at least, the device that should have been her quantum resonator. The screen was lit with video of Captain Ateri giving a ship-wide broadcast, so it couldn’t be the device she’d assembled. She hadn’t even hooked up the screen to anything. This was someone’s strand! They’d obviously taken her project from the lab and replaced it with this so that no one would notice, but who would have done this? Why would they?

Her ears twitched at the sound of the door opening behind her, and she spun, finding herself nose-to-nose with a geroo so filthy that she barely recognized him. “Saina—?” she started to say before correcting herself. “Kanti, I suppose. How? How can you still be—?”

He opened his mouth, but he needn’t have. She understood completely. “You took my quantum resonator,” she said, “and it must have worked. The recycler must have shut down or you’d be atoms by now. But the commissioner’s arm?”

“I ducked through a maintenance hatch,” Kanti explained.

Chendra nodded. “And the recycler must have re-activated as soon as you were out. Bad luck for the krakun, but jeez Kanti, that was foolish. I hadn’t even tested this thing. It might not have done anything!”

“Yeah, I know,” he whispered. “But what choice did I have?”

“Well, we have to get you out of here before someone spots you,” Chendra said. She grabbed him by the wrist, and they jogged to the upwells. With everyone focused on their strands and listening to the captain’s broadcast, no one paid them any attention. Within minutes, Chendra had shut the door to her apartment behind them.

“Don’t…” she said, turning back to him. “Please don’t touch anything, okay? At least until you’ve had a chance to shower. My butler will pitch enough of a fit just washing the carpets, okay?”

The shaggy geroo looked down at his paws and then back the way they’d come at the trail of boot prints leading back to the front door. “Oh, jeez,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry!” He quickly removed his boots and clutched them to his chest. “I didn’t even think—”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. From there, she led him through fancy hallways to an office piled high with test equipment. Kanti froze, then turned in slow circles staring at the room that was completely different from the rest of her elegant mansion.

“I know, I know,” Chendra muttered. “I need to find a better place for all this gear. It’s too suspicious having it all here, but so far, the commissioner has never searched my place.”

“Wow, it’s…” he whispered, never completing the thought.

Chendra snatched the resonator off of Kanti’s shoulder. “If this device has actually been through the recycler,” she said, “then it’s possible that the metals have undergone some atomic changes. We might be able to learn more about how the recycler works by examining them.”

Kanti just nodded, clearly too afraid to touch anything else.

Chendra sighed. “You should take a shower.”

He nodded again, but otherwise didn’t move.

“Okay, follow me.”

# # #

When he returned, fur fluffed but still moist, Chendra looked up from her work. She’d cleared a work top and disassembled the resonator into its various components.

“I left my boots in the bathroom,” he explained. Then pointing at the pieces, he asked, “Did it, um, change?”

“I can’t tell,” she sighed, pulling a small scrap of metal from a tray with a pair of tweezers. “The biggest single piece of metal in it was this RF shield. It’s not much.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he whispered. Then turning in place once more, he asked, “Why isn’t all this stuff in a lab somewhere?”

Chendra gasped when he turned away. “Your tail-ring is solid metal!” she said, grabbing it with both paws.

He squeaked in surprise as she yanked it away.  “Chendra!” he whined. “I’m naked!”

That wasn’t technically true since he still had the empty strand holster on his shoulder, but most geroo think of their strand and holster as tools more than decoration. Being around other geroo without a bracelet on, well, that was far more intimate.

“Oh jeez, I’m sorry!” she yelled when she realized what she’d done.

“Well, give it back!” he insisted, trying to grab it from her paws.

“No! It’s solid aluminum! I need to analyze it,” she gasped, clutching the thing to her chest. “Look, I’ll get you a new one, a nicer bracelet, okay? Just let me have this one!”

Kanti pouted and held his paw out silently, demanding the adornment’s return, but Chendra put it behind her back. “And frankly,” she said, “you humiliated me and my entire family by charading as my brother. A little humiliation while you wait for me to get you a new one seems only fair.”

At that, he wilted. She was right, and he could obviously tell. “Okay, fine,” he mumbled and slipped out of the lab.

“Kanti?” Chendra called, looking for him. He didn’t respond, but she found him soon enough, on a couch in a nearby sitting room with silk pillows piled up over his tail. Dejectedly, he laid the side of his head against the backrest and avoided her eyes.

“I’m sorry about Saina,” he whispered when she sat down beside him. “He was my best friend, and I never wanted to assume his identity. I never wanted any of this to happen. I just kinda fell into it, and one mess led to another. I’m very sorry that I embarrassed everyone.”

“Yeah, I understand,” she sighed, putting a paw on his knee, “about why you did it, I mean. What I don’t get is why Tish got so angry when you introduced me.”

Kanti’s ears drooped, and he hid his face under a paw. “I’d rather … not say.”

“Yeah, well,” she huffed, crossing her arms, “I think I deserve an explanation. So, embarrassing or not, spit it out.”

Kanti sighed and removed the paw from his eyes, but he refused to look at her, hanging his head low against the couch. “It all goes back to that day when I answered Saina’s strand, and you mistook me for him,” he said. “I… Oh jeez, this is embarrassing. Please don’t make me say this!”

She touched his shoulder, but he still didn’t look up. “Say what?”

“It’s just … pretty gals never talk to me, ever!” he said, the words spilling out. “I’d never spoken to anyone half as beautiful as you, and you said that I looked great, really great. Of course, you only said that because you thought I was Saina and that I was taking better care of myself. I know he was carrying around a lot of extra kilos the last time you saw him, but my brain locked up. I wasn’t ready for you to say that, and I was … well, I was…”

Chendra stared at him, trying to puzzle out where this explanation was headed. There was only one possible word that fit in next, but it seemed absurd. He wasn’t going to voice it, so she did, “Smitten?”

He didn’t look up, but he nodded.

“Really?” Chendra never thought of herself as all that attractive. Her mother always remarked about how she was, but none of the guys were ever interested in her, so she wrote off her mom’s assessment as biased.

He nodded again. “I was completely ears over tail.”

“Even though you were dating Tish?”

At that, he looked up. “I wasn’t. Not back then,” he said. “I had never dated anyone in my life, and I was crushing on you so hard. Your face was burned into my brain. But then there was the accident, and things got crazy. I had to pretend to be your brother, and I couldn’t tell you the truth. I certainly couldn’t ask you out. And then I ended up in bed with Tish, and…”

Kanti stopped talking, so she prodded him. “And?”

“And then the worst thing that could ever happen happened.”

Chendra had always been great at working out puzzles. If given enough other pieces, she could always figure out the information that wasn’t being shared, but this time she was stumped.

“When I was in bed with Tish, I kinda… I sorta…”

“Oh shit,” Chendra whispered as it finally clicked. “Please tell me you weren’t fantasizing about me while having sex with her.” Chendra had only met Tish once, and she seemed like a sweet enough gal, but no one would ever have called her attractive.

He looked up with red eyes. “Not intentionally. I like Tish a lot, but I was excited. It was my first time…”

“And you called out my name?” She shook her head, not certain if she should be flattered or horrified. “And Tish didn’t murder you?”

“She nearly did,” he whispered.

“And then she took you back?” Chendra said in disbelief. “That gal is a saint!”

“I know,” he sniffled.

She covered her muzzle with her paws when she realized where the story was headed. “But then you introduced me, and she thought you had been fantasizing about your sister when you first had sex.”

Kanti nodded.

“Wow.”

“But it was all a mistake,” he explained, desperation clear in his voice. “You weren’t my sister. Yeah, I screwed up, and moaning your name was awful of me, but she forgave me for that. When I confessed, I explained everything. She knows you aren’t really my sister.”

“Well, yeah,” Chendra said, “but there was still that moment when she pictured the worst. Even if it was a mistake, she had to experience such … I don’t even have words for it, Kanti.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, lowering his head. “But she already forgave me!”

She scowled. “I know, but something like that… That’s a lot to ask of anyone—even a saint,” she said.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wJrz7yqoQIBxNWSvNSRBh5YcyUcKYcUtR1DJ8Qx8ez4/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?