FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

A Better Friend

by Von Krieger

I purr happily, licking my mother's face and neck, getting her all wet, and easier to swallow. Both of us are so eager for this moment. She's taken off her nanosuit, allowing me to see all of her beautiful body.

I hug her to me and lay on the bed. I caress her soft fluffy fur with both hands as well as my forepaws. I could look at her for hours, my eyes tracing over every black marking, every sweet patch of silver. I gaze into her beautiful blue-green eyes. She lets out a little gasp as I open my mouth, kissing her deeply.

My tongue finds her own, and I find the texture intrigues me. This is yet another activity that I would have no problem taking part in for hours on end. Keeping my tongue in her mouth, allowing her to suckle upon it, I pull my head back. My jaw pops from its standard joint as I open my lips, beginning to take her head inside my mouth.

She reluctantly releases my tongue, purring happily as she finds herself neck deep inside me. I grab her under her arms with my hands, and grasp her hips with my forepaws, lifting her off the ground and pushing her up into my mouth.

With serpentine elasticity, my skin stretches to accommodate her shoulders. I curl my tongue around her breast, teasing her. She's wet and achingly hard. I push her up further, able to tilt my head back now, allowing gravity to take over and pull her down my gullet.

The aspect of my throat that leads to my stomach closes off, the part leading to my egg pouch opens, making absolutely sure that my mother will be safe. I hold onto her, making sure that she doesn't descend too quickly. We both want this drawn out, to take time. Both of were enjoying the experience.

She shivers as her breasts slide across my tongue, down inside me. I curl my tongue around her cock, holding her outside of me, wanting to pleasure her before she gets in too deep. She thrusts eagerly, but she wriggles and writhes, wanting to continue downward. As much as I'd like to caress her to climax with my tongue, have her seed coating my fur.

With some reluctance I release her, allowing the rest of her body to slide easily into my mouth and down my throat. She slips into my egg pouch easily. I slip my internal tentacles from their homes in the walls of my pouch. They seek out her sexes and breasts, soft sucker mouths and soft tongues caressing her.

My mother purrs happily, stroking my tentacles. I sense that she's tired, wanting sleep more then sex. I extend another tentacle, finding her mouth and slipping inside, distributing a sweet liquid into her mouth. Blocking her mouth as I am, even if she was unwilling to swallow, she'd be unable to spit it out. But she is willing. She eagerly gulps down my nectar, and it has an almost instantaneous effect, her eyes close and she drifts off into a restful sleep.

I pull the tentacle from her mouth, keeping the others in place, pleasuring her as she sleeps, insuring that she has exciting dreams. I lay back in our bed, purring, my tummy rounded with my mistress' presence. I stroke my belly with my forepaws, my mother's sense of happiness and contentment making me feel much the same.

I'm responsible for her state of happiness, and since my mother is happy, I'm happy as well. I'm to wait a few minutes, to make sure that my sleeping nectar functions properly, keeping my mistress asleep. I spend the time looking over my sexy form, the beauty of the body my mistresses dreamed up to fulfill their fantasies and desires.

I know that my standing height is just a shade over seven feet in height. Compared to the researchers, I'm nearly a giant. From front to flank, my draconic body is longer then I am tall, approximately ten feet in length, with twelve more of serpentine tail.

By placing my tail on the ground and curling it around my back legs, I can shift my center of gravity enough to stand solely on my hind legs. while such a balancing act makes for rather ungainly walking, it does allow me to utilize all four manipulatory limbs in an effective fashion.

My wingspan is similarly large, nearly thirty feet when unfurled fully. Their position is slightly off from that of a normal dragon to compensate for being comparatively front heavy with my humanoid torso, rather then a long neck and head.

I have four digits on each paw, three fingers and a thumb on my handpaws and forepaws, and three toes in front and one in back on my hindpaws. I'm incapable of manipulation with my hind legs, but I am able to grip things. The same with my wings, although they're by far my weakest limbs grip wise.

My tail is also designed to be extremely flexible, and it is prehensile. I'm able to grab things with it, pick things (and people) up with it, use it as a weapon to give a powerful swat, or curl it up and provide a comfy, fuzzy bed for any one of my mistresses, if they so desire.

I really like my coloration, like that of a tiger. Beautiful black stripes on a radiant orange with a white underbelly. I'm mostly furry, but the underbelly area of my draconic torso, back to the very tip of my tail is covered in soft, smooth scales. The contrast between my underbelly and my black nipples and genitals is something I find interesting. My coloration makes them stand out all the more.

I find myself absentmindedly twisting my hair. A sweet shade of honey blonde, it reaches down to just about touch my draconic back, but doesn't quite make it unless I lean back. It feels so wonderfully soft as well.

I pluck a pony-tailer from my mother's nightstand, putting my hair back so it doesn't become messy or tangled. I want to look my very best when I go out to see my other mistresses! Mother was quite sleepy and I didn't get to interact with them much outside of saying hello and walking past them.

It's only been about a minute, but I should wait about five before I can assume my mother is completely asleep and truly napping happily. I make a checklist of processes I can test on my own that have yet to be confirmed as working. Most of them were able to be tested with interaction with my cybernetic brain, so it's a rather short list. Most of them involve sensory experiences with my erogenous zones.

I also take a look at my files on my mistresses to see if there's anything I could do to make myself more pleasing. I chuckle as I find a common link. They're felines of course, so it shouldn't come as any surprise to me. I immediately set activation for all of my breast nodes, as well as making myself begin to lactate. All of them love multiple breasts, and all of them love milk.

I give myself an over view of their species as a whole, and I find it quite interesting. The data is so much more intriguing when looked over by an organic mind, rather then simply sitting in binary data files.

The six researchers aboard Damocles Station are all female type hermaphrodites and all feline. Though there's some variation, all are members of the Leiaou species. Originally a somewhat militaristic race of lions, upon advancing in technology the ratio of males to females that was natural to the species caused a strange sort of shift in how the culture viewed their males.

For the most part males were bred to be big and served the purpose of fighting off other males, or large dangerous creatures. With the advent of iron age technology, they became, for the most part, entirely replaceable. With a common ratio of ten females to one male, Leiaou society was of course female dominated. Males weren't particularly intelligent, and almost always inherently lazy.

As a result the females slowly broke free of their small pride-based social structure, using the males as slave labor and breeding almost exclusively. Males just weren't bright enough to take to schooling as the females did. So as a result all technological advances were created be females, who viewed the males with contempt, and thereby controlled what they created to their own gender's advantage.

The society advanced quite well and quite quickly on their home planet, most skirmishes settled through athletic contests, rather then out and out war. The Leiaou being an aggressive species of predators, but unlike others then put their natural power and aggression into something non-destructive.

As a result of a universal use for males solely for reproduction purposes, and other females for love, mating, and pleasure, as soon as genetic engineering and alteration technology became able to make a Leiaou female in appearance and have fully functional male and female genitals it was widely utilized. Within two generations the entire Leiaou race was made up of hermaphrodites.

When the Leiaou developed space faring technology, they found themselves to be quite useful to the rest of the furre races. The Leiaou are amongst the largest naturally occurring mammalian species, with an average specimen standing 6'8" and weighing 250 pounds on average. They are also highly intelligent and place an emphasis on education, discovery, and technology. After all, it helped them get to the point that they are today.

There is no discrimination against males and females of other species from Leiaou, though they believe themselves to be somewhat superior due to their dual genderedness. The Leiaou found the other furre races fascinating, and many take a member of another race as a sexual partner at least once in their lifetime.

Due to their size, strength, and keen minds, the Leiaou are primarily law enforcement officers, soldiers, and mercenaries, though there are a fair number of scientists. There are also a large number of Leiaou professional athletes. For the most part in mixed race society the Leiaou fill roles where they can put their size and strength to good use, as they're also naturally competitive and aggressive.

Despite using their males as such for most of their early society, the Leiaou have an intense dislike for slavery, and attempt to crush such operations as best they can. It might stem from regret regarding how they treated their males, but I'm not entirely sure. Sisterly compassion for the victims of such crimes bring many Leiaou to take one, or several, former captives into their own households, showing them true affection.

As a result 'pure' Leiaou, that is those who are fully leonine, comprise only about two thirds of the Leiaou population. There are a great number of interracial births fathered and mothered by Leiaou, all of whom are hermaphroditic, as Leiaou are genetically female and thus possessing two X chromosomes, combined with their bodies rejecting all Y-chromosome baring offspring.

Universally smaller then their Leiaou parents, physical careers aren't in the cards for most non-leonine Leiaou. They do inherit the keen mind of the Leiaou, and are well suited to scientific careers. Thus all Leiaou research stations, like Damocles, carry a heavy complement of non-leonine Leiaou crew members.

The purpose of most of the projects at Damocles are designed to eradicate slavery. Most of it is the design of engineered lifeforms like myself, that are perfectly suited for particular tasks, quick to grow to adulthood, and fast breeding. Thus able to work more efficiently then slave labor in fields where it's still economically feasible to utilize slave labor. While we're recognized as sentient lifeforms, and thus required to be paid, we're far more productive. Costs are less to pay us for a task, not meaning that we get paid less, but less money had to be spent on things like life support equipment and radiation shielding.

Others are designed to combat slavery in a more physical way, as better soldiers. I myself am impenetrable to all standard ballistic projectile fire, most calibers of rail gun, impervious to disrupter, disintegration, and laser fire past the 'expendable' outer layer of tissue. Theoretically at least. Individually each of my inner scales acts in such a fashion, but the way I'm designed has yet to be tested.

It's another thing that I don't expect to ever have to come to know, the Leiaou view harm and violence as things to be used when absolutely needed. It's likely my children who are placed in security roles will be the ones who find out if the inner scale system works or not, as they're the most likely to get blasted. It shouldn't occur on Damocles. Piracy against Leiaou holdings results in several wealthy Leiaou gleefully destroying the finances of any person and organization involved.

My five minutes are almost up. I begin to think of which of my mistresses I should go and meet with first. All of them are so busy, but I know that they would easily welcome the distraction of their collective creation come to pleasure them. I scan through the information I have on each one of them, all of them having some part in my creation, though Cally did the most work, and thus is programmed into me as my mother.

Mistress Tatanya contributed only the smallest parts to my design, but without them Mistress Cally couldn't have done very much. Tatanya is a virologist, and her work on the station centers around tailor making vaccine type viruses. Something that will have essentially no effect of the body, but trigger the creation of antibodies that will also be able to destroy something more dangerous. Or more common or annoying. It turns out every planet has it's own version of the common cold, and it alters every year. Also, altering my genetic structure now that I've been finished has to be done using retroviral treatments. It's old technology, but has really become something of an art; shaping existing DNA was easy to learn, but hard to perfect.

Mistress Tatanya is an ocelot, extremely small for a Leiaou, about five and a half feet in height. The images and profile I have tell me that she's a cute little dark haired bundle of energy, happy and hyper. She's prone to swishing her swivel chair from side to side while looking down her microscope. Even when she works she doesn't stop moving.

I can imagine her lithe little body beneath my tauric form, my cock stretching her to her very limit. She likes being dominated, and more then likely would prefer I treat her as my plaything instead of the other way around. As long as it is my mistress' desire, I have no problem taking on the role of mistress myself.

Mistress Leelinaw, or Lee-Lee for short is a very touchy-feely pantheress. Lee-Lee designed my sexual layout, as well as helping with a few other systems in her specializations. She is one of the most intelligent Leiaou, holding three doctorates. Her work as a fertility and reproductive specialist is behind her now for the most part. She's more focused on design aspects in various artificial creatures that are planned. Her knowledge of endocrinology, urology, and gynecology are all well appreciated by all aboard. With all that, she knows all the right places to rub and caress.

A quick interface with the station's computer shows that Mistress Lee-Lee is currently occupied with an appointment and thus sadly not available for play. Though considering who her patient is, I'm sure both are having a great deal of fun.

Mistress Regina is actually responsible for a great deal of my theoretical design. Due to her physiology, she isn't well suited for the intricate work that many of my other mistresses can accomplish. Unlike others on the station, who have several generations of Leiaou in their family tree, Reggie is the result of a loving union between a Leiaou diplomat and a true sphinx. As a result she is incredibly smart, having a good mind for working out puzzles as well as filling in the in between details about aspects of my form that the others don't have any specialization in.

While not holding any degrees, Regina is a font of knowledge on almost all topics. Her inability to chose and retain a major during schooling is a result of this. She's somewhat hunched over as compared to a true humanoid, and her hands are more like paws then true hands. The design of my forepaws is actually based on a more dexterous version of her own hands. She also prefers to walk on all fours, as due to a halfway quadrupedal biology bestows chronic back pain on those who walk upright too often.

She also has a pair of wonderfully soft feathered wings. Regrettably unlike my own, they're not suited for her weight. A true sphinx has a lighter build then a Leiaou, as well as having avian-like bones to lighten the body for flight. Reggie inherited her father's biology for the most part. While her frame would support larger wings, the genetic therapies that would also grant her the increased flight muscle strength in order to fly are prohibitively expensive, even for one paid so well to do wonderful cutting edge research.

The other five are currently saving to pay for the process, which is mostly the supplies and raw materials. Reggie herself has made several designs for the possibility, and we have all the equipment and expertise on the station to perform the genetic alteration, thus cutting out the huge fees involved for specialists.

Though usually serious, logical, and a bit enigmatic, Mistress Reggie's softer, cuddlier, more playful side emerges at times. Usually when she's in a randy mood, or a bit sleepy. She loves to snuggle, usually sharing a bed with another of my mistresses. Soft feathery wings make a wonderful blanket, though I'm sure she'd like to try the experience herself with my own wings, even though they lack feathers.

Mistress Miriam is our all around technology specialist, robotics, cybernetics, nanotechnology. Her work is what allowed me to be conscious and fully sentient during the first few moments of true life. The direct-to-brain download technology is essential to creating a creature like me in a relatively quick amount of time. My body was grown to adult size and I was given a mind to match it. Anything less, and there would be the unpleasant task of having to raise a nigh-invulnerable and dangerously powerful half-ton infant.

Mistress Miriam is an Abyssinian, short fur that is a rich cinnamon in color. The best way to describe her is nerdy. While she's perfectly content with social interaction and such, she doesn't actively seek it out and seems happy with only bits of tech keeping her company. She also has a tendency to focus intently on one thing and ignore everything else. Tunnel vision, essentially. For the most part my role is to make sure she remembers to eat something other then snack foods and frosted delights. A quick scan of outgoing data traffic tells me that she's looking at porn, probably enjoying herself.

Mistress Pepper is the most like me, since she's also a genetically engineered lifeform, though on the other end of the spectrum. She's by far the smallest one on the station, not even four feet tall. Due to part of her creation she's extremely amelanistic, giving having mostly white fur, white hair, and red eyes. She has a few pink stripes on her body though, giving away that she's not really a true albino.

She's a botanist and contributed the photosynthetic function that my body would resort to in space in an emergency, as well as the ability to store light energy by using the backs of my wings, which function similar to leaves or solar panels. This allows me to not need as much food as one for my size, as well as storing up a charge inside of me that I can use to boost the strength of my draconic breath weapon. It does mean that I need some amount of real sunlight to take advantage of that process, though.

She's also... also... I blink a few times. I don't have her psychology profile. I check the area where it should be, and find that the data has been corrupted. I link up with the station's central databank and try to download it from there, but I find that it too has been made into a bunch of gibberish.

I poke around a bit, and I finally manage to find it on the tertiary file backup system. It's something that seems almost redundant, having the original data storage and two other backups, but when research is so important, it's better to be safe then sorry. Only Miriam and myself know of it's existence on the station, as it's only meant to be seen when all three data systems before it have failed.

I open the file and find out why the others were corrupted. Pepper is severely paranoid. I can't help but feel sorry for her, as her creation was in effect the complete opposite of mine. Whereas a great deal of thought and planning went into me, Pepper was created on the cheap by a company that quickly dissolved for violating lifeform rights practices.

Though the purchasing of synthetic lifeforms is allowed, we do have rights, though they're lesser then normal beings. Essentially it's somewhere between normal sentient's rights and an animal's rights. While it's not illegal to harm one's purchase, it is illegal to cause them irreparable bodily harm or outright kill them. We are to be treated humanely and we are to be paid for any work we do, though it's at fractional wages then other sentients, usually a quarter to a half depending on our owner's generosity. We serve at our tasks until we've made our owner four times our purchase price, then we're considered free creatures with the same rights as anyone else. There were a few scandals a while back of companies setting unrealistically high purchase prices, and only selling after 'discounts' that didn't affect how much the freedom price was, and a few other busts that dealt with companies that tried to set up situations where the synthetic lifeform could never earn its way free. Each time the government stomped out a loophole, the companies would try and find a new one. It's a dangerous but profitable gamble for companies, since the punishment for violating rights is as high as the profit that can be gained.

Mistress Pepper was engineered from Leiaou DNA combined with that of a non-sentient mouse. They did that in order to get a relatively small size, though the bits they left in that they shouldn't have caused Pepper problems. Her eyes don't work properly, she has oversized pupils and next to no irises. As a result her eyes let in far too much light. She wears tinted goggles everywhere in order to be able to see without pain.

She was created for a pleasure role, and much like myself was birthed as an adult using cybernetic attachments to the brain and direct downloading. Her programming is terrible, completely rigid, poorly written, and the source of no end of trouble. The corporation that designed her sought to exploit loopholes in the laws by 'renting' the creatures they made for a set period of time, then buying them back for the original price after a year, then memory wiping them and renting them out anew.

The cost of Pepper's series was artificially inflated, making it so that it was impossible to achieve the freedom price in imaginary wages. It doesn't matter if an artificial lifeform is paid for or not, taking normal scheduling and set base wages for various industries into account, they're meant to be freed even if their function is that of an unpaid personal companion.

So at the end of the year, each was brought back, their personality saved to a database, and the body's physical memory wiped. As they were still considered property this was legal, although incredibly unethical. It's for the lack of ethics that saw the company's demise, the Leiaou private sector essentially destroying the company and buying up the pieces, setting all those that were created there free as well.

Sadly that caused even more problems. Due to the rigidity of their programming, Pepper and those like her require a master, or else they're to return to the company for reassignment. Being free, they have no master, and there is no company to return to, which makes for a programming loop that causes strange and often unfortunate and sad things to happen.

Pepper was one of those whom they tried to rehabilitate, that simply lead to them fixating on their mentor to be their new mistress, even if it was never spoken. Pepper's mentor tried to steer her towards acquiring hobbies and interests, as a result Pepper took up gardening, and being told that she should learn as much as she can, Pepper went to collage to study botany.

Her mentor passed away shortly after Pepper's graduation, and due to the requirement for a master, Pepper satisfied that by essentially assigning the corporation that employed her as her master. So basically she lives for her work. She avoids conversation, as she's well aware that she depresses others. She stays in the greenhouse and tends to her plants all the time.

She also tends to be instinctually afraid of those larger then herself, which is everyone on the station. I know she probably won't seek me out to make friends or anything of the like, but I feel that she's the one who needs my companionship most, and that I might be able to help her. As I'm also a created lifeform, I'm not someone she can set as a mistress in her mind, and thus she can see me as an equal, unlike everyone else on the station. Hopefully I might be able to fix her mindset a bit, and if she allows me to link up with her, maybe I can fix the faulty programs that they put in her cybernetics.

I get to my feet and call up my internal map of the station, heading to the Arboretum on the upper floors, as computer logs indicate that Mistress Pepper spends 96.3 percent of her time there. Oddly enough she's never actually entered the room assigned to be her quarters. Apparently she keeps all her things in the Arboretum and sleeps there as well.

It was kind of a strange thing for someone programmed to be personal companion to take on a near feral lifestyle. But then again, considering her fear of almost all other sentient creatures, the Arboretum is the place where she's least likely to encounter them, and most likely to be near a hiding spot.

As I walk through the station, I can't help but feel alone as I meander though section after section of empty apartments, stores, food courts, and machine shops. This station was meant to hold over a thousand lifeforms in luxurious conditions, and four times that in more cramped arrangements. The circumstances and reasonings behind having a comparative handful of beings in such a large station are not a part of my mental database. Though I suppose due to the relative danger of some of the experiments a minimal staffing was required. Mistress Tatanya's experiments had the most possibility of incurring collateral damage if anything went wrong. Maybe the stations were mass-produced. Maybe people are intended to be moved in later. I should look into it at a later date.

I can tell I'm getting closer to the Arboretum, as the empty boxes of soil meant to hold landscaping are beginning to show signs of life. A few tiny sprouts here and there, and a scant few blades of grass appear as I walk onward. This soon gives way to small shoots and tiny flowers. It's rather strange, as internal calculations show that assuming even ten percent of the planters are filled to this distance from the Arboretum on this section of the station, that the amount of work required is beyond the capabilities of Mistress Pepper and eight All-Purpose Maintenance Droids, which is four times the number of AMDs that she's supposed to have active.

A quick check of the station's stores tells me that Pepper has no AMDs checked out, nor has she ever utilized one. As I near the Arboretum I can tell that she's done something to the plants, as records indicate these planters were not filled when the station was originally set for occupation ten years ago. Nor does the size correlate with the growth patterns of a standard specimen. The trees appear to have been growing here far longer then the five years Mistress Pepper has served as the only botanist in Damocles Station's history.

A small movement in the bushes draws my eye, it's not in sync with the station's air currents. It immediately puts me on edge, as it means that one of the ecological support creatures has gotten out of the Arboretum. I make a note to set a half dozen AMDs to the task the next time I'm near one of the storage units.

I activate the sliding doors into the Arboretum and step through, pulling my tail in quickly so as not to cause the doors to stall and keep the biological containment field up for longer then necessary. A diagnostic on the field itself indicates no gaps that would account for a small creature being able to sneak out. Perhaps another door then? I set the computer to perform diagnostics on all Arboretum containment fields as well as the doors themselves.

As the door closes, the opaque blue-green energy field shuts off, allowing me to view the biological splendor for the first time. My own capabilities are excessively limited in trying to convey the beauty of the place in words and phrases. Species of flora from a hundred worlds grow and flourish here, planted in the perfect arrangement to feed and nurture one another with their various soil needs and additions.

There are the green leafed plants that are common to nearly all worlds, but green leaves are mixed with blues and pinks and purples from places where the evolutionary process utilized a slightly different chemical composition. Slightly below the leafy canopy is an even more vibrant rainbow of colors, shorter flowering trees designed to be in near eternal bloom, fragrant flowering vines looping gently through their branches. A confetti of varying kinds of fruit contrasting the leaves and flowers that surround them adds still another dimension of color and beauty.

I know that I can walk the paths here for days and explore the beauty of this place. What I can see from this spot is the tiniest sample of what the Arboretum has to offer. The flowers that line the path are meant as the merest samplings of what is kept in the flower garden at the center. This area is meant to be a semi-open space, allowing for recreational activities and play.

As I walk toward the area where Pepper has her lab set up, I can find only a single sight that seems wrong or out of place. As I pass by what is listed on my internal floor plans as a playground is instead overrun with grapes, vine roses, and morning glories. The metal and plastic structure has been converted for use as trellises. The way it's almost entirely covered by growth, even the padded fall mats below, seems like an almost conscious effort to hide the thing from view. I make a note to ask Pepper about it, as I'm sure she's the source of any deviations from the original plans.

And the closer I get to Pepper's lab, the more the landscape begins to deviate. It's been grown larger, heavier, and thicker here, giving things a rainforest-y look with the density if not the environment. This area is cooler and more humid then the original specifications state it ought to be. More then likely for Pepper's own comfort.

It takes me a few minutes to find the way into Pepper's lab, as all but one of the paths into the area have been overgrown, trees and thorn bushes planted in the middle of them and allowed to grow wild. It makes me sad to see that Pepper feels that she needs to grow a fortress for herself in order to feel safe and secure.

I notice that the bird songs that are common in other sections of the Arboretum are entirely silent here. The small movements caused by small animals are also absent, although there are tiny shiftings not in line with the wind that I can't identify. I don't wish to jump to conclusions, but I have some speculation as to the direction of Mistress Pepper's applications of her research.

As I step into the gazebo that serves as the entry to the lab itself, I find my suspicions confirmed as a vine playfully curls around my tail, tickling the underside. I turn and gently remove the vine, clicking my tongue disapprovingly at it, letting the plants know that I'm not here to play, nor am I a violent, dangerous creature, prone to needlessly tearing away curious flora.

I follow the sound of muted song into the main lab, where I see Mistress Pepper laying atop the belly of what appears to be an exceptionally large green gecko. I look over the creature, spying flower buds along its back. I can find no match to existing species in the station's data banks. Nor can I find it in a registry of licensed artificial lifeforms. Though if it is primarily plant based it's exempt from registration.

The gecko is hugging Pepper against its belly tightly, the tiny white furred feline humming happily, eyes closed. I approach slowly, making enough noise to make myself known. I lay on my belly beside the two of them, reaching down to stroke Pepper's hair. The lab's lights have been darkened enough to allow her to work without the use of her goggles, so I see the deep red oil drops that are her eyes as she looks up at me with a smile.

"Anya." she says softly. I nod and return the smile with one of my own. She's so very tiny, not even as tall as my arm is long. I offer a hand to help her to her feet, her tiny handpaws barely encircle my own fingers as she allows me to pull her up from her place on the plant gecko's tummy. The creature rolls onto it's belly, looking up at me warily.

"Halu isn't sure if she likes you just yet." Pepper says in almost a whisper, which I soon realize is her speaking voice. She looks down at the gecko, which is eying me curiously. I reach down and give Halu a few pats on the head, and then I lean a bit further forward to give her belly a few tickles. The plant creature squirms contentedly at the touch.

Pepper smiles, "She's decided she likes you. I think I like you too." she says, hugging me as best she can. "Even though you're so much bigger then I am, I don't feel afraid of you."

I nod, "Likely it's because I'm an artificial lifeform, Mistress."

She sighs and takes a seat on my back, sitting with her back against that of my own humanoid torso. "Probably. My programming either treats you like another one of me, or overrides my instincts knowing you yourself are designed to be entirely unable to harm me. Doesn't really matter which one." she says, sighing again.

We sit in silence for a few minutes as she looks me over, running her handpaws over my wings, feeling the muscle beneath my skin, but she always returns to stroking the soft smoothness of my wing membranes.

"They look black until you turn them towards the light, then you can see they're actually a really dark green." she says, looking up at me with a smile, one that looks almost real rather then those that have come before, those have simply been parts of her manners and courtesy programs.

"I made the pigmentation?" she asks, a question. She knows she did, but she requires confirmation.

"You did indeed, Mistress." I say in reply, reaching back and patting her on the leg. "Thank you."

She nods and again we return to silence. I begin to see why she distances herself from others. She's never been taught the way to properly interact with others socially, she was programmed to speak only when first spoken to, and though her current role dictates that she no longer has to abide by that rule, force of habit has made her uncomfortable speaking first.

I curl my tail around her, gently picking her up as I shift to allow us to have a face to face conversation, allowing her to lay on one of my back legs. I curl my tail into an oval shape, the bottom keeping her rump from sliding off my leg, while the upper portion provides a rest for her head. She smiles, a genuine smile this time, and absentmindedly begins scratching my leg, enjoying the feeling of my soft fur.

"I don't disturb you?" she says after another minute or so of silence.

I shake my head, "No, Mistress, I understand that you were made to listen, not to talk, so you don't talk very often and have a hard time bringing yourself to do so. Most sentients have evolved to have a sense of relative urgency, so they feel uncomfortable with long silences when someone has to find the proper words and test and retest them a dozen times in their own mind."

"Yeah, we live just about forever, so we don't have that problem." she says with a smile that's betrayed by a sad glint in her eye.

"I'm not sure I want to, though. Live forever that is." she says, leaning back and looking at the ceiling. I decide to remain quiet, as she wants to talk about something.

"Especially if this is as good as it gets. Anya, this is the longest actual conversation I've ever had with anyone. Usually it's just a few sentences from me to somebody detailing my progress and maybe one or two questions. Or I get told something and I nod. The only time I can remember that I've actually spoken longer with somebody was when I was first recovered, and those conversations with my adviser don't count because they were prompted, nor do presntations. It's prompted, scheduled, and prepared in advance and even those make me nervous. It's still burned into me to be careful of saying something that's wrong, even if I go over the data a hundred times I'm still nervous I'll screw up. It's why I wanted to be out here, I can just type out my progress reports and transmit them without having to say a word." says the tiny Leiaou with a soft sigh.

"You probably think I'm silly for not getting my programming cleared out, but I just... can't. It's built to where it's an incredible phobia. I've tried to get it done, but the moment the utility touches my programming, awake or asleep I start to panic. My fight or flight response goes haywire after awhile. The last time I tried to get it done, I went into biological overload and was clinically dead for three minutes before they brought me out of it."

"It's stupid. I know it's not going to hurt me, I know it's going to make me feel better, but I just can't help it. I was at the manufacturing plant when they got me, I was the next in line to get mind wiped. It's a horrible sensation, having everything you know just vanish into nothing and you come out knowing that you used to remember more then you do now, that you used to act differently, think differently, that you know you used to be a completely different person, but you can't remember how you were different. You can't do anything but act to follow your original programming."

"I had a sister. Though technically I guess my whole design series were sisters, but we were owned as a pair. Compared to some of the things I've heard, we actually had a pretty nice owner. We just cooked and cleaned. Our mistress had gotten to liking us just the way we were, and with company organization being as poor as our programming, we went three years without being sent back for wipes. So suffice to say we actually developed deep set personalities. It was during the last days of the company when an emergency ass covering search of outstanding models pegged us as almost having worked to our release cost."

"Our Mistress was an old woman, she couldn't do anything when they pick up crew came to get us. She'd been giving the pick up guy a thousand credits when he would come to pick us up for program updates every 6 months, and two thousand every year to skip the mind wipes. Though because the process never actually took place, it was just marked down that we were, the accounting files were never purged. So company policy dictated that we had to be brought in and reset as a precaution."

Pepper is silent for awhile. "There's a reason it's illegal to mind wipe after two years, and twenty one months is the usual safety cut off. The neurons grow too big and too widespread or something and when you try to run the wipe current through them..."

The little feline just shakes her head and sighs. "Super-stroke. Mint had the lower production number, so she sat in front of me." Pepper sighs again. "Do you know what a mass program conflict overrun is?"

I wince, "In poorly coded cybernetic programming it's where so many guidelines for behavior are in conflict that they can't be resolved and are responded to in the order they appear in the hard code."

Pepper nods. "Due to a quick fix, some of the behavior files were shunted to later serial numbers. So when I saw blood coming from Mint's nose 'Defend Self' 'Defend Sister' beat out the need to obey company rules and regulations. When I was breaking out, thankfully, the Leiaou were breaking in. Company'd been dismantled as a legal entity, and all operations were to stop immediately. Though it wasn't immediately enough for Mint, or for the three attendants that found out how sharp my teeth were."

Another long silence. "I can't eat anything that bleeds because it reminds me of..." she's having trouble finding the word, but a motion to the side of her neck where the jugular vein lies is enough to get her meaning across.

"Can't eat meat, don't like having animals around. S'why I like plants, they just suck up food from soil, water, and sunlight. Though Halu eats bugs. That's ok, bugs don't bleed thick and red." she says with a shiver.

"When the removal of my programming was first described to me, it sounded like a mind wipe to me. I decidedly didn't want one. When it started making integration into society harder and harder, it was explained to me in better terms, but I couldn't get over my phobia. Eventually I just had my cyberlink taken out, as I started to get more and more uncomfortable doing anything with it. I stopped using the link entirely, and then just had it taken out as it became something I didn't use that had the capacity to kill me."

She sighs. "So, yeah. I'm stuck with a head full of bad wiring and no real way to get rid of it. I try to change my behavior but it's slow going. No one notices I'm improving but me. I figure in another twenty years I won't instinctively try and duck under a table when any true born feline taller then four feet walks into the room."

She falls silent again, and I get the sense that she's probably not going to start back up. "You've never told anyone that story before, have you?"

Pepper shakes her head, I smile at her, picking her up and giving her a hug. "Well you told it to me, and I think being able to tell me that is a big improvement. If you ever need to talk, I'm always ready to listen." I purr, nuzzling the tiny white feline's neck.

She kisses my nose. "I'll remember that. Thank you, Anya."

We sit in silence again, but this time it's a happy silence. Pepper clings to me tightly, snuggled up against my shoulder, my arms wrapped around her. I let her go when she starts to wiggle a little bit. Neither of us needs to say anything. She goes to a nearby computer on a low table and continues her work, the large plant gecko walking over to provide a seat for the tiny feline.

I can see Pepper smiling as she goes about her work, something that I'm sure she doesn't do often. As I leave the lab I find myself smiling as well. I've been designed to attend to the wants and needs of those aboard the station. I'm not even a day old, and I've provided Mistress Pepper with the one thing she needs most in this universe, a good friend.