Filling Out the Frontline Chapter 12: A Flower Trapped in Snow (Patreon)

Soft, full, warm. The way that A4 had melted into her hands had been… exhilarating. It had made Spas feel whole, reminding her of her Protector’s Purpose, but of so much more.

They had linked. Truly, actually, linked with one another. Spas didn’t know why it had happened, it shouldn’t have been able to unless both of the girls had activated their combat modules, but it had happened, and it had wrapped them together as if they had been cuddling beneath a small blanket.

The electric power beneath A4’s skin, the sloshing weight in her food-and-drink packed belly, wherever Spas touched, she could feel A4’s response on her own body. The softness of touch, the warmth of the pressure. It was the first time she’d ever given someone a tummy massage.

She wanted more.

However, she could feel the other sensations that rolled like waves off of A4’s skin. It wasn’t as if she could read her mind, but Spas could instinctively sense the small girl’s intent. A4 was confused, tired. There was joy there but there were other things too.

That was why she’d let A4 up from her lap. She’d felt when her temperature changed, something chilled the back of her neck when the other girl knew she had to salute Mosin before being completely dismissed, and she’d sense when A4 noticed nobody else had done the same.

Too many feelings, too many thoughts, A4’s mind was spinning in circles, the chill on her skin giving the sensation of standing inside of a windy storm. So, when she returned to the couch, Spas let her droop back down to the side and lean into the armrest, wondering if she would soon fall asleep.

Welrod and Miller weren’t talking. They sat still, both watching the TV, but Spas couldn’t tell if either was really watching at all. Welrod kept fidgeting, as if trying to find something to say while also not wanting to disturb the movie, while Miller was just silent, eyes and expression hidden beneath his dark sunglasses.

A soft touch on her calf had Spas glance down, to where Grizzly now sat with Kalina on the floor. Deep purple eyes glimmered gently in the light of the TV as the big bear offered a cream pie up to Spas, who took it with an appreciative, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Grizzly winked. It was easy to forget her sheer size, always compared against Mosin and RFB, but the woman was the size of a marshmallow mammoth next to the merely chubby Kalina.

Spas wondered for a moment what her belly must feel like. It made her feel mild to think about it, and she realized she’d begun to blush, so she nodded at Grizzly and began to unwrap her cream pie.

The moment that the dessert touched Spas’ tongue was the exact moment when A4’s heart stopped.

“Yeah, Buddy~”

Spas felt the crack. Suddenly, as if her vision had flashed, she was already looking at A4,  wondering why the girl had whispered her phrase.

But A4 had said nothing.

A moment formed. Then the moment stretched, and Spas could feel the cold redoubling over her bare skin as a harsh arctic ice blew down her back. She twitched, dropping the pie from her lips as impact struck into her hands and she felt as if a weapon had just bucked against her palms, but there was nothing there.

“A4?”

It wasn’t her that said it. Somebody else, and she could feel movement around her when pain struck into legs, then her temple, and then, as swift as the air, she felt as something pierced her stomach. A blazing sear vanished the others from her mind, a torrent that came so quick she barely had time to breathe, much less cry out, and forced her to fold over forward.

The white tile floor had become crystals of loose-falling snow. She could see someone’s boots, tall and black, and realized that they were mechanical appendages rather than actual garments.

Her vision blurred as the girl spluttered.

Sabrina. Sabrina. Her mind fought to hold onto the word.

Somebody was laughing. A high-pitched cackle that sounded almost like a scream before something struck Spas’ left leg, and the burning struck through her stomach before slicing out her back.

“A4!”

Sabrina felt her heartbeat become thunder, the sound of gunfire, the explosions which rocked through the core of the Earth as glass shattered all around her mind.

Twilight. Midnight. The shimmering twisted, and phantoms screamed.

A shadow passed over and Sabrina looked up.

On the screen, the camera pulled away from A4’s garnet eyes to show her face. Full-figured, soft, but the glare was like daggers and the smile a blade that Spas could feel, burning her in cold winter fire.

A4 was standing. Spas couldn’t see her, couldn’t see anything except for the girl on the screen, the girl that was A4 but couldn’t possibly be, but she knew that she had risen from the couch. She could feel the chill of crystals on her bare feet, the shuddering of the ground.

And then he was there. Standing in front of her, his white face in shadow from the TV, dark glasses reflecting her own garnet eyes, and the fire in A4’s belly exploded as she lunged forward and sunk her teeth into Commander Miller’s outstretched arm.

“COMMANDER!”

Spas was moving. The world was static around her, flakes dribbling against her exposed skin, but she could feel as they all moved. Welrod had launched herself off of the couch and snatched at something on Commander Miller’s hip, her own combat module spiking so harshly that it ripped through Spas’ senses. An unintentional shift.

Blood spilled from Miller’s arm. She could taste it in her mouth and see it puddling around A4 in the reflection, but her own senses felt as Welrod lifted back the knife, and Spas stumbled, reached out, and she missed.

Someone else had caught the strike first.

Spas chomped down on her cheek. A true ache that was abrupt, violent, and as terrible as the pleasure she’d felt just before. She wrenched herself free and finally was able to see her own sight. The cool tiles beneath her bare knees, her curly white hair, and the dribble of sweat that fell from her nose. She scrambled to her feet, where violet stared down into green.

Grizzly held Welrod’s wrist up in the air, white fingers clutched around Miller’s knife.

Neither A4 nor Miller had moved, standing like statues while Grizzly’s massive heft lifted and fell into a long sigh. Welrod’s chest was hammering, and Spas could still feel as the blonde’s combat module searched for something, anything, to latch on to, other than the bear standing over her, with both their eyes glowing against shadow.

The door to Commander Winters’ office smashed open and the man came around the side, but was stopped in his tracks.

“Give me the knife,” Grizzly whispered. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

Welrod’s eyes darted from Grizzly to her Commander’s arm, fixing upon the trickle of blood before an emerald bonfire sparked. Like A4, her eyes changed, the electrified color threatening to overwhelm her pupils when she turned back to Grizzly, the same anger filling her own expression.

And, just like A4’s, it flowed meaningless over a glacier of ice.

With her hood up, the bear’s fluffy onesie made her look as big as a building. Even as Mosin came to John’s side, RFB and 45 having stood up from the couch, nothing was bigger than the chubby calm of her Grizz’s face.

When she spoke, it had that same soft assurity. “I was combat lead while you were still sweeping theaters in Yakutsk,” she said, slowly moving forward until she nearly had Welrod’s face pushed into her chest. “Give me the knife, or I will break your wrist.”

It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t even menacing. A simple statement of fact.

Welrod’s eyes darted, her pupils as small as pinpoints, looking from Grizzly back to her Commander, but then widened as Miller’s opposing hand slowly moved up towards his glasses.

******************************************************************************

They had taken her.

She didn’t know where she was, what she was doing, she didn’t even know her own name. Memories, movement, she remembered faces. Dark expressions, bright eyes, she remembered Alena, or Buddy, or Grace, or Sherry. All those stage names, all those characters. She remembered Bernice, and Grayson, and Francis, and Jackson and…

And she remembered when she had been hit over the head. The taste of the oil-mixed-blood rising up into her throat.

She remembered filming in the Washington forest, the soundstage in Dallas, the heat of the Arizona desert on her bare skin, but most of all, she remembered the trip to Moscow, where they’d hit her, taken her, and sold her away. She remembered the container they had locked her into, the chains she’d been bound with. They’d taken her to Krasnoyarsk, intending to cross into the remnant of China.

And she remembered the Doll, and the man, who had rescued her.

Where were they, now? They weren’t here. She didn’t know these people, these girls, these men. Through the cracks of her sight, she could see Carmilla, her fangs dripping with blood, until the reflection had lifted, and she stared into the pair of weathered gray eyes.

“I have a rendezvous with death.”

Rose felt herself blink. The taste of blood was inside her mouth, and she could feel the ground beneath her bare feet, but it all faded as flakes slowly fell around those gray eyes, pulling in deeper, deeper, until all Rose could remember was the storm.

“At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade,

And apple blossoms fill the air.”

She remembered the trees, but it wasn’t Washington. I wasn’t her forest, her memories. They were A4’s, the girl that Rose had become, and she remembered the weight of her machinegun dragging her down as she kept moving forward into howling arctic winds.

She remembered the connections, and then they were there. Her teammates. They were so subtle, but A4 felt them, even though she could barely see make them out on her tac-map. The storm was too heavy, and A4 was falling behind.

“I have a rendezvous with death,

When Spring brings back,

Blue days and fair.”

The words laid over the memory, loud enough to make even the wind seem quiet. For the first time in years, she was hearing pure, unaccented, English. Her fractured mind had a flash of the desert, of the bright sun against a blue sky, before the sun’s fire blossomed from somewhere far, far, far to her right, and A4 saw the outline of the behemoth against the gray snow.

Then, the roar came from in front of her as the line of Jupiter Cannons bellowed. Dozens of black shadows, the shape of Gods clashing inside of the arctic storm. A4’s ear exploded with coms, girls and men screaming information and orders while her tac-map burst with red gunfire tags, surrounding her teammates and friends.

She felt when they died, bright blue dots lost in an opening sea of red.

Ambush! Ambush! They’re hiding in the snow!

“It may be he shall take my hand,

And lead me into his dark land,

And close my eyes,

And quench my breath.”

The bipod of A4’s MG *snapped* into place as she and several other heavy specialists drove their weapons into the top layer of ice. In less than a second, she could hear herself shouting information back to her command lead, shouting for her and the others to fall back.

“It may be I shall pass him still.”

Make for the border!she heard someone order. She ignored it

“I have a rendezvous with death.”

A4 fired into the mass that had formed around her team. She was yelling almost as loud as the second salvo from the cannons that screamed over her head. The others were with her, M2HB, FG-41, Ameli. She could hear MG5 give the order to cover the advance retreat, and saw as her first teammate, Astra, came through the treeline at a sprint, her long red hair flung about by the screaming wind.

The handgun specialist fell when numerous shots struck her in the back.

“On some scarred slope of battered hill,

When spring comes round again this year,

And the first meadow flowers appear.”

HUNTING IMPULSEshe felt herself screech, her fingers striking the special activation trigger, drawing blood from her fingers and jabbing into her left palm, fusing her and the weapon to become as one. It forced her sight to sharpen, able to see the purple of Sangvis’ Ripper units closing in on the blue-outline of her retreating teammates while adrenaline surged.

Her gunfire blessed the battlefield, the strongest weapon in human existence firing into the mechanical horde, and wiping through unit after unit in a hail of fire. Others appeared, but were struck down just as quickly as the six second counter rolled down on A4’s skill shot.

But even when it reached zero, A4 didn’t stop. There was still ammo inside her pouch carrier, the MG still slamming through. She kept her palm pressed into the weapon, feeling the connection drawing from her systems and her racing heart.

“God knows ‘twere better to be deep,

Pillowed in silk and scented down,”

Then she saw her team lead, S.A.T.8, like an orange-clad lioness with her fluffy blonde mane, moving faster than she’d ever seen the shotgun specialist run. Blue light flickered up from her skin as she bodily snatched Astra up from the ground, sprinting to catch up with the others.

A4’s gun ran empty and, without a moment between, she was swapping out the belt to draw from her second container. Seconds passed by, another salvo from the Jupiter Cannons, and the Sangvis line was collapsing onto the rear gunners.

Someone rushed past, then another, but as A4 rose back up to her shooter’s stance she could see more still running out from the trees, with Sat all the way at their back, holding Astra up on her shoulder.

Fall back! Fall back! Sat was shouting. Ringleader!! Ringleader!!!

“Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,

Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings are dear...”

It was too soon. A4 shouldn’t have been able to activate her skill shot again. But the weapon responded as she thrust her palms back to the placement, drawing from blood that wasn’t just blood, and Carmilla’s scream rippled into scarlet lightning that consumed her weapon.

Each shot of the .30 caliber matched her, flashing out through the arena with a crimson spark, tearing through the treeline as she swiveled her barrel along the Sangvis advance. Vespids, Guards, the M1919A4 demolished their ranks. A pair of Dragoons, racing forward on their bipedal units, were torn to shreds in less than a breath.

She was aware of the others pulling off, could hear a Doll, the Doll, call out to her in a name she barely recognized, firing still into the storm.

Miller’s voice came again, but it was no longer alone. A group spoke, words deafening over even the noise of the firefight. The electronic rumblings of ancient audio.

“But We have a rendezvous with Death,

At midnight, in some flaming town,

When Spring trips North again this year,”

The Ringleader appeared, moving faster than Sat, faster than the Dragoons, almost as if she were flying through the air, her white hair streaking behind her like the arctic itself were thrusting her forward.

A4 turned upon her, the steady stream of bullets all striking home, yet only achieved a red pulsation that revealed the Doll wore a kinetic shield.

M1919A4’s strength, Carmilla’s energy, she kept firing, willing herself to strike through the barrier, and felt a sense of intense glee as the Doll shifted, turning from Sat to sprint headlong towards A4.

Just a few shots more. She’d strike through the barrier, her weapon could overpower the shield, and then she’d eviscerate-

A4 had just enough time to feel the fear. She thrust out her connection, willing her strength to be transferred away, for Sat to take it and use it to escape, as the Ringleader ignited her weapon. In only a moment, the Doll sliced the blade through A4’s MG, and ran the beam of red plasma up through her stomach.

Pain. Burning, terrible, time slowed as the Doll lifted A4 up upon the verge of a weapon that was as long as the Doll was tall. She could feel it inside of her stomach, the muzzle of the instrument had been shoved through her center. She felt herself seize, folding into the blade and the sensation erupted throughout her whole body as fire overwhelmed the burning cold.

A4 coughed, saw the black-stained-blood of her insides smack into the purest white skin on the Ringleader’s chest. Alien jewels, yellowish green, with a trio of black marks beneath the right eye, stared up into A4’s, Carmilla’s, Rose’s dying face.

And, from somewhere else, she felt as her connection snapped to, and snow crunching beneath a heavy footfall.

You’re like her, the Ringleader said. Mastermind will want you… alive…

“And we, to our pledged word are true,

We shall not fail that rendezvous.”

Scarlet energy rippled out of her center and over her body as if blood given an electric form. It came over the weapon, then the Ringleader, her alien eyes widening in surprise then in horror as her shield overloaded, shattering like so much glass, and A4 saw out the eyes of the other as the automatic shotgun was lifted to bear.

She saw herself drop, as the Ringleader turned to engage with the other, and then Rose saw nothing, and A4 was sobbing into a soft, warm chest.

The combat readings didn’t make any sense, but she barely even comprehended her own flashing warnings. Her hands were freezing. Or, were they on fire? She could still feel the Ringleader’s blade, while her mind ached and searched for the connection she’d formed, and the connection she’d lost, with the white-haired Doll who had saved her life for the second time.

“You’re okay,” the man whispered into her hair, his accent of a home long forgotten. “You’re okay.”

******************************************************************************

Rose had been an actress. She’s started out as a Doll in the United Empire, and had been designed to be a stunt double for feature films. Even after the third World War, humans were always desperate for ways to entertain themselves.

Carmilla had been her big break. The scarlet vampire played by the soft, sexy Doll, who had a body that human women couldn’t compete with. She was soft but strong, could do her own stunts, play her own characters, and people loved her for it.

That’s why her producer, Bernice, had hit her over the head with a tire iron.

The next year had been the worst of her life, and Rose… A4, had been able to forget it all in an instant. But it was coming back now. Small flashes, the pain in her legs, the sores on her skin. They’d kept her in a pod for days on end, starving her until she lost her soft body and her good looks.

Lying there in the dark, Rose would think about home. About her best friend Alena, and their time playing together as Buddy and Carmilla. Each of the girls had become their role, practicing and playing even just on their own. The vampire queen and the tomboy werewolf. They had only been stories, but they became the only thing that Rose had to envision during those days in the dark.

Rose would let herself change. The pod transformed into a comfy coffin, the time in the darkness became her spot just to rest. Carmilla didn’t take orders. Didn’t let the captors abuse her. She’d even manage to tear into one’s throat once with her teeth.

Then, one day, dawn came to the endless night. And it came with gunfire, panicked shouts. Rose had been terrified, trapped in that space, but Carmilla began to try and smash her way out. She bucked, kicked, and shouted, and when the coffin opened, she nearly flung herself at the invader, expecting a man.

But it was a girl. A girl with ashy white hair and eyes that were the blue crystals of a most beautiful snow. The purples of her outfit caught Rose’s eye and quieted Carmilla, and the soft but earnest smile on pale pink lips was as friendly and as comforting as the automatic shotgun she wore on a strap round her shoulder.

“Keep calm. You’re okay now,” the Doll said, her British accent making her voice sound breathy and strong. It, like Miller’s, reminded her of home. “I’m an A-Doll with Griffin,” she continued, offering Rose her hand. “Calvary’s here. Do you need some water?”

She did.

But the closest thing on hand was blackberry alcohol.

“You okay?”

“I… I don’t know…” she said, shaking her head and sipping at the bottle of fruity liquor. She leaned back into the cushion of the couch, garnet eyes looking at the file upon her lap. Every one of her names sat printed on forms that decorated her knees. Combat reports, the volunteer paperwork. All of it. She felt bloated, tired, confused, angry… she felt everything.

And she felt sorry.

“How’s Commander Miller?”

A hand tapped down on her shoulder. She looked up to see the reflexive sunglasses, but knew underneath were scarred, stormy eyes that, somehow, wrinkled in a gentle smile. “I’m fine. You’re not the first person to nip me today.”

“A-A4…”

From her other side, A4 looked to see Welrod trembling so hard that her chubby hips couldn’t stop quivering. Her colorful eyes were obscured, lidded in shadow as she inclined her head forwards.

“I’m… I apologize profusely! I don’t know what came over me, and I acted completely…!” she was cut off, looking suddenly straight upwards and A4 felt the great shift of movement at her side.

Grizzly rose from the couch next to A4, where she’d taken over for Miller after he needed his arm bandaged. She turned, kneeled on the cushion, and reached out for Welrod’s arm. Welrod hesitated for a moment but soon took it, and the brunette guided the blonde girl to her before kissing her upon the cheek with a loud, *Mwah!*

Welrod became entirely pink.

“You moron. You stuffed yourself stupid,” Grizzly said, reaching up and tussling Welrod’s hair. “You’d know that if you got a proper meal every once in a while. Too much pleasure, everything becomes instinct. Haven’t you ever just ate or drank until you wanted to cry?”

Welrod was staring at Grizzly’s meaty paw, holding her hand. “N-no… I don’t believe…” she trailed off.

“Ithaca has,” Miller came in. “Val, too. I tried to help them, like you said,” he nodded at Grizzly, ”but I’m…” He sighed, rubbing a hand through his blonde hair.

“T-they have?!” Welrod looked startled. “Why haven’t… nobody mentioned…”

The man shrugged. “You’re not always around.”

“Which, by the way,” Grizzly came back, her big paw descending onto Welrod’s head. It wasn’t hard, but it was firm, like tapping a knuckle against a coconut to see if it was hollow. “Spend more time with your team! You’re the lead of 512’s Alpha, Welrod, not a lone agent doing recon.”

The blonde girl rubbed at her head, her face as delicate and as round as a scoop of strawberry ice cream. “I-it’s not that I don’t try, but there’s a lot of responsibilities-”

“RFB has this place on lockdown,” Grizzly chuffed. “Nobody’s sneaking around in the vents except you. And,” Grizzly’s smile sharpened, their joined hands going to poke at the flab on Welrod’s hips, “I think even you might be above that weight class.”

In that moment, Welrod stopped looking chubby. Her hips were too wide, her stomach too stuffed, her breasts too full. The union-jack shirt was fractured, having lost several buttons, but it held on for now. Riskier was the tight pair of underwear that now more closely resembled a thong.

Welrod was fat. Just like Grizzly, and RFB, and Mosin, and the burger-munching feline that was Miss 45. Different shapes, different sizes. All of them, fat.

A4’s head spun. She closed her eyes and pinched her nose, wondering if she could force things to make sense. Besides her, a soft impression whispered that she would.

She turned to look into Sabrina’s eyes.

They were crimson, like hers, and they glowed like a hearth in the dark of the room. Both of them still had their modules activated, and they could read one another. Whispers, sensations, the tender sense of comfort that ebbed off of Sabrina was a tranquil assurity over the swirling uncertainty that filled Rose’s center.

It was practically the only thing that was keeping her sane. The connection with Sabrina, A4 with Spas, there was a strength that ebbed up from deep inside. Not just protocol, this was more than the Protector’s Purpose. Rose didn’t need to ask Sabrina’s name. She knew it, just as she knew that Sabrina was forcing the smile that filled her soft, chubby face.

For some reason, knowing that made Rose feel… better. How it took effort for the girl just trying to smile.

Sabrina’s hand pat down on Rose’s leg, gently stroking the exact spot where her legs had shattered multiple times. The muscles and blood had cooled rapidly, but A4 wasn’t like the Dolls at Griffin. She had more than wires, more than meat. Oil and metal brought internal enhancements that could make her move quicker and easier, but which would shatter and fail under the weight of her armament in the deep Russian cold.

In the last two months, she’d been rewritten three times. Once when being reassigned, and then both times when her legs had failed. She had thought she could remember the events, but The Suppression had hidden the truth from her. Made it sound like a simple little thing, a minor repair that was needed.

When the joints shattered, when her skin tore to expose muscle so warm that they steamed against the freeze of the dark winter sky, A4 remembered the pain. She remembered the morphine injectors triggering to jab into her spine while 47 and Sat tried to figure out what to do. There were four hours from the city, walking through wilderness.

They had to be cut off. But A4 barely felt it, so cold and so tired, even though her mouth knew she should scream.

The oil had been what gave it away. A-Dolls didn’t have oil, and T-Dolls didn’t use nearly as much as Rose’s systems required. So they’d all been rewritten, A4’d been repaired, and they were sent back out. And then it happened again.

The glass shattering around her had hurt. Each pain, each emotion, memories triggering like misfiring synapsis, but the hand on her leg was real, and warm, and soft, and made the phantoms slowly peel away.

“Have another sip,” Sabrina instructed, and Rose obeyed, lifting the bottle for another blackberry pull. It was cool, delicious, and though she knew she had eaten too much, A4 kept drinking. A gulp, then another, and then she was empty, and the bottle was taken before a fresh one took its place.

Sabrina leaned into her, one arm behind her and the other lifting up beneath Rose’s shirt. Everywhere that she touched, Rose could feel the warm air rolling over her thin skin, with most of the attention being paid to her belly.

“You feel like sunshine,” the chubby Doll whispered, her cheek tucked into the smaller girl’s shoulder, and A4 breathed, and she drank, and she burped.

The goosebumps on her skin were fading, the frost on her fingers and toes being pushed away, by the warmth that she felt centered inside of her belly, cozy with the weight of Spas’ touch and her fullness.

Silence passed between them, but it was filled with sound. Impulse, emotion, there was a freedom there that Rose hadn’t felt in years. It was as if she’d taken the first breath of fresh air after coming out of the pod.

The air smelled like hamburgers. It made her feel hungry.

Without speaking, she felt Sabrina realize and respond, lifting a large cream pie to her lips. A4 took it and nibbled on the edge, her lips and her mind showing her appreciation, and Spas’ smile became genuine as she leaned back into A4’s shoulder.

The other girl opened about herself. Impact, pressure points, the spots on her body where bullets had snuck pierced her large kevlar plates. Spas had been completely destroyed four times, and her biomechanics could track every impulse.

The ghosts of the past recoiled from the pair, their contact and breath trapping them in this moment, with Sabrina and her promise to keep Rose safe.

Spas was a good specialist, but Sabrina had been a failure. She’d worked with food, once, but loved it so much that she’d been fired from her purpose. At Griffin, they’d been happy to indulge her desires, and had gotten Sabrina clothed and off of the streets, but she was a shield to them.

And A4 had been their sword.

Behind her, a field of wrecked mechanical appendages and robotics were pilled up in mountains of scrap. A4 was a destroyer, given an MG specifically because of her enhanced makings, which had been designed with a skill shot to match. She’d seen numerous Ringleaders on the battlefield, and had mowed down their dummies as easily as she had their hordes of dinergates.

She was sure that was true. Carmilla took pride in her strength in battle… but it lead to her being rewritten, again and again, and now A4 was no longer sure what was her truth, and what was her lie.

Sabrina’s kindness helped keep the darkness at bay. She whispered for her to stop trying to think, and to listen instead. And, in silence, she told Rose everything.

Kelly. Grizz. Marshmallow… everything. Welrod, Val, FNC, USP, UMP45, WA2000. Sisters in secret, with more on the way. John Winters, Samuel Bellows, Edward Miller, and the truth of the frontline at Griffin and Kryuger.

A4 had been in Griffin for much longer than Spas, but that just meant she’d been forced to forget more things. When she signed on, the girls were only just paired with their weapons. The Suppression wasn’t a thing yet. And, when it came, they were never told until they were already changed.

It was too hazy, too many things for Rose to remember, but Sabrina’s memories were clear. Her moments with Winters, with Marshmallow and the others. Cuddling with Kelly beneath the blankets at Kalina’s, A4 watched her own moment of dejection from Spas’ eyes.

For the first time, A4 felt a moment of discomfort at the connection, but held on against Sabrina’s immediate realization and attempt to withdraw. She wanted to see more, know more. And that’s when she felt the other connection come.

A4 turned to see Grizzly, her purple eyes glowing with the smallest hint of her module, giving a wide and friendly grin. The same that she’d worn at the bar, when she’d given A4 that first giant burger, even though she’d been practically drooling with hunger.

It took only a moment, but A4 accepted, and then something happened that she could not expect.

A4 saw nothing. She felt her arms, her legs, her chest and her belly, rising and falling with a husky, large breath. Her body felt huge, full, so much skin and weight and A4 realized she could feel Grizzly’s shape.

“Oof, careful,” she heard the girl chuckle into the darkness. “Don’t squeeze so hard. I may feel like Marshmallow, but I promise, I bite back~”

Her body lifted and fell as she laughed, exceptional chest and doughy jelly belly flexing the outfit against her soft skin. A4 could feel where a layer of fat rolled up from her neck to form a second chin.

Her body was warm, but more than that, the air around her was equally heated. It reminded Rose of her old life, when she’d be going from hotel to hotel and using the sauna, and she could feel how the comparison made Grizzly feel proud.

Another was with them. Sabrina’s consciousness circled around Grizzly, poking and jiggling and hugging and playing, tickling Grizzly and A4 alike. She was touching Grizzly’s breasts, smushing them together and giggling delightfully when they plopped as the dropped, and Rose could feel goosebumps rising on her own chest.

A pair of lips touched against her scalp and, when she opened her eyes, A4 was laying into Grizzly’s fluff-covered side, looking up into the brunette’s pleased violet eyes.

“There we are,” she said cheerfully. “Not so cold anymore, huh?”

A4 shivered, sitting back from Grizzly and seeing how Spas was leaning on the other side, drooling over the fluffy bear’s onesie and pulling at the threads that mushed over her breasts.

“When I broke out of The Suppression,” Grizzly began, a hand going up to ruffle Spas’ hair, “I activated, too. My combat module, I mean. Thought I was back on the field. I nearly broke the Commander’s jaw before, suddenly, RFB was sitting on top of me. She was smaller then, but I could feel… everything.”

A4 blinked at them, then looked around at the room. The TV was no longer on, and most of the group had moved away from the couch. Her file had been spilled down onto the ground, paperwork now sitting atop of tile and uneaten popcorn kernels. The scent of cooked meat still hung in the air.

Her belly rumbled. For a moment, she could still feel Grizzly’s weight on her, but that slowly fell away. It made her feel naked, and a little bit cold.

“Where did everybody go?” she asked.

Grizzly took a long breath and sighed. “They’re inside the office,” she nodded. “They’ve got… stuff to talk about. We’ve got a lot to talk about, too.” Her wide face perked up into a soft grin. “You were kind of in-and-out there for a bit. Would you like another drink?”

She did, but before she could respond, Spas seemed to regain herself. The albino yelped, pulling rapidly away from Grizzly but without first letting go of the outfit, and so tore several stitched threads. “S-sorry!” she said. “Oh, goodness. I don’t know what-”

“Oh, I think we both do,” Grizzly interrupted with a soft wink that made Spas turn pink. “We’re still connected, you know~”

Spas’ garnets began blinking rapidly, her face now entirely flushed, but she hopped up from her seat and came to A4’s side. “How about you? Is there anything you’d like to do? We can talk for a little, and I can try and make something for you using the grill!”

Grizzly seemed to feel it before even A4 knew what she wanted. The big woman’s eyes opened in surprise, and she started to say something, but she fell quiet a moment later, hesitant. Then Spas felt it, and she bounced in place, the glimmer of her combat module glowing a few degrees brighter.

“Wait here,” she said, her eyes matching Carmilla’s crimson. “I’ll get our weapons from the arms locker.”