Fallout

<snip>
"Put your clothes back on, you're acting like a stripper." Jamie said, anger rising further.

"WHO TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT?!" Cass roared back, and slapped him across the face. It was forceful enough to knock him to the ground as he wasn't expecting it. He landed with a strange squishing sound.
"The hell?" he said as he looked up. He rubbed a hand along his arm, which felt oddly wet.
"Stop." he said, looking up at the girls. "Seriously, I think there's something in the swamp messing with us." He did his best to look up at their eyes, for decency. But in his 10-year sex-starved state, that was going to be a bit harder than taking over the world.
</snip>

"Don't even look at me, you smegging piece of shit!" Cass yelled, covering her breasts with one arm while she stooped to snatch her bra and vest top up from where they had been discarded after Katrina had hauled them off her
Literally shaking with anger, she turned away to fumble savagely with her clothes, leaving Jamie to scowl up at her, battling a curious mixture of rage and lust as he took in the smooth curves of her lithe, lightly-tanned back, and wishing to God that he had managed to get further than he actually had
Watching her struggle back into her bra, he briefly wondered if he should perhaps have paid more attention to the better endowed and, unfortunately, still fully clothed Katrina, instead of this skinny little thing, but he inwardly shrugged to himself - After ten years with nothing but his right hand for company, even this attenuated little viper seemed like a great proposition
"I say we torture him to death" Katrina snarled, prowling cat-like around him, a knife suddenly in her hand as the fireflies buzzed an angry red around her
"I'd like to see you try" Jamie roared, suddenly struggling to push himself up from the ground only to be kicked back down again by Katrina
"Smeg's sake!" Cass snapped, fumbling with her vest top, trying to turn it the right way out and getting angry with the garments seemingly determined non-compliance with her wishes "Stupid smegging thing!"
"You know, you learn a few things when you work for the STCP..." Katrina breathed, her voice dripping with malice as she loomed over Jamie, her knife glinting in the misty sunlight "By the time I'm done, you'll be begging me to kill you"
Angry and almost painfully aroused, Jamie glanced between the knife and the still half-naked Cassandra, still standing with her back to him, and wondering if she might perhaps be a little more compliant with the blade held to her throat
He stopped
What was that wriggling on her back?
"Cut his dick off and force feed him with it" Cass hissed, giving up on her top, balling it up and throwing it to the ground as she wheeled around to face him
"Wait..."Jamie croaked raising his hand to point at her "There's something on your back"
"I'm not falling for that" Cass sneered, swinging a vicious kick in between his legs and doubling him up into an agonised ball with a strangled cry
Standing nearby, Katrina shook her head, trying to clear the fug clouding her mind as she stared at Cassandra’s back
"You know, there is something..." she breathed
“What!?” Cass snapped, wheeling to try and look over her shoulder “What is it!?”
“It’s some sort of... Ohhh shit!” Katrina collapsed to her knees, her breath whistling unsteadily between her gritted teeth as the firefly’s buzzed an intense rosy pink around them, Cassandra following suit seconds later, as her legs buckled beneath her
Completely overcome with a rush of lust unlike anything either had ever felt before, the two women were insensible to the huge pallid, wormlike something that rose slowly from the filthy waters of the pool behind them
“Fuck me” Cass croaked, reaching a hand out towards Katrina, her green eyes burning with a fevered intensity

Coughing and blinking the tears from his eyes, Jamie rolled over with a groan, and experimentally stretched out of the foetal position he had curled into, his balls throbbing appallingly and completely negating any possible feelings of arousal he might be feeling
“Smegging hell” he wheezed in horror, pointing up at the massive worm swaying to and fro just beyond the two women, its betentacled maw dripping vile smelling digestive enzymes as it sized up its prey
Heedless of the threat, Cass threw herself at Katrina with a low animal growl, wrestling the other woman over onto her back as Jamie, gasping in pain, pulled himself across the floor towards where Katrina’s pulse rifle lay abandoned and forgotten in all the excitement

Looming high above the two women, the worm-thing prepared to strike; the angry bark of the pulse rifle suddenly shredding its pallid flesh and wetly blowing it apart, just as it began its descent
The pink fireflies went out almost immediately, their little bodies falling to the ground around the three humans with a barely audible patter; the worms used to control each of the Dwarfer’s emotional states, similarly shrivelling and falling from their skin
Engaged in a passionate clinch, Cass and Katrina’s eyes widened in shock as their sensibilities returned, each pulling away from the other as if they had been stung and fleeing in opposite directions; Cass snatching her vest top up from the ground and hauling it down over her head in one smooth movement
For a moment Jamie’s pained and wheezing laugh was the only thing to be heard
“What’s so smegging funny?” Cass demanded hotly, folding her arms defensively in front of her
“I never thought...” Jamie gasped “I never thought that I’d ever be so thankful to be kicked that hard in the balls”
“Smegging shit...” Katrina breathed, passing a hand over her eyes as she shook her head “That was...”
“None of us will ever breathe a word of what just happened, ever again!” Cass looked between the other two, barely able to meet the eyes of either of them “Agreed?”
“Damn right” Katrina sighed
“Agreed” Jamie conceded after a moment; nothing good happened here and there was no need for any this to ever go any further
“Hello?” a voice called, making the three of them start and wheel in the direction it had come from

Artemis emerged from the undergrowth a few moments later, his improvised flame thrower at the ready
“You know, I thought I heard gunfire” he mused thoughtfully “What just happened here?”
“Very little” Cass said smoothly and nodded down at the partially submerged corpse of the worm “This creature attacked, we killed it. Who the smeg are you?”

The introductions made, Cassandra quickly ascertained Artemis’s reasons for wandering the swamp by himself, having left the others to look for research specimens of one sort and another, to enable him to test a few of his theories about cellular regeneration
“What the smeg for?” Cass demanded
“For a cure for Captain Chrysler, or course!” Artemis huffed impatiently, as if he were speaking to an imbecile
“You’ve studied the virus then, have you?” Cass asked, coldly narrowing her eyes
“Well, not as such...”
“You’ve seen the way it replicates; consuming cells, infecting and rewriting DNA, before it finally replaces cellular function with a machine equivalent, in preparation for total and irreversible cellular collapse?”
“No, but…”
“Then you must have tried upwards of a hundred different approaches to combatting the virus over the last week, and have watched each and every single one fail, as the virus adapts, evolves and even predicts your next attack vector?”
Artemis was silent for a moment
“No” he conceded eventually
“Then please don’t presume to think you can fix this in the couple of days Jay has left to live, with some smegging squashy things from a swamp!” Cass spat bitterly, her anger plainly evident
Katrina interrupted the exchange by clapping an arm around Cassandra’s shoulders
“What my good and extremely stressed friend here is trying to say” she began “Is that we’re down here to try and infiltrate an alien outpost, in the hope that we can secure some sort of advanced technology, which we can use to engineer a cure for my husband’s condition”
Cass glowered at this, her jaw tightening, but she said nothing
“Now, it sounds like you’re a scientist of some sort?” Katrina continued “Can you please help us with the infiltration? As phenomenally intelligent as Cass here is, an extra pair of eyes on any given problem might well help us out”
“Why of course!” Artemis graciously acceded after a moment’s consideration “If what you say is true, it would be foolish of me to repeat research that has already been done!”
“Well, that’s just great!” Jamie smiled beatifically “Can you show us where the others went?”

<tag / tbc>Let’s go join everyone else</tag / tbc>