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The Western Cube

Part 15

Sponsored by GlynWolf

by Draconicon

Tatyana thought it through as carefully as she could, keeping her hands to her sides as she breathed as quietly, evenly, and slowly as possible. The constant taunts from the green hologram between her and the voting screens were a distraction, meant to arouse and tease her, and the little grunts and huffs that the Overseer let out in her malfunctions could have been a problem if she listened too closely. Instead, she put all of that aside and focused on the possibility that had presented itself.

The question: could Greene be disrupted with further pleasure?

The answer: possible, but unlikely.

Tatyana knew that she had grown, but that didn't mean that she was immune to the allure of pleasure and humiliation. She had a very short time until the voting opened, and she knew for a fact that if she missed this window, she wouldn't get another one. Greene would find some way to get the other drones running again, bring them up and disconnect Krasnyy, and from that point on, the tigress would be running against a ticking clock against hopeless odds. If she was wrong, if she pursued the path of pleasure and found herself lost at the end of it again, then there would be no second chances.

And she needed to be sure that this was a plan and not just her own libido trying to creep forward and sabotage her again. She needed to be sure that this wasn't just the need to have that again.

So, the tigress blocked it out, and thought.

If I touch myself, I will send it to her. She is close enough that she should feel it. And if she does, then I will see what her reaction is.

But she couldn't take it too far. If she started getting into it, if she pushed her limits by taking her hand and fisting herself, for example, she would lose herself to the pleasure and miss the signal of the voting window coming around. She had to keep it to something more limited, something that would keep Greene focused on stimulation, but not so much that the tigress lost herself in it.

She decided to start with her nipples.

Raising her hands to her chest as she remained in a squat, the tigress idly thumbed the little peaks. The hologram stopped talking, her eyes widening slightly as she looked down. Tatyana kept flicking her thumbs gently over her nipples, biting back the little huffs that were already building in the back of her throat, studying her enemy.

It didn't take long for Greene's chest to firm up at a larger size, her blouse disappearing as her breasts got bigger. Insubstantial and transparent as they were, they nonetheless looked like the tits of an aroused woman, and the jackal gasped as she arched her back.

"Mmph...what are you...Ms. Whore, what are you -"

Tatyana pinched. She bit off the whimper of pleasure that she wanted to make, only for Greene to arch her back and all but scream.

"Ooooh!"

That's working...

But only somewhat. As soon as she stopped, there was less than three seconds before Greene had gotten herself under control again. It wouldn't be enough to get to the voting screen if she had to run for it. She'd need something more...intense. But that would be threading a very dangerous needle, balancing on a very fine razor's edge.

No anal, she decided. That had become too much of a fetish for her, and that would break her if she started. But...

She reached for her clit, that distended pleasure button that hung between her legs in humiliating fashion. Running her finger along it, she forced herself to not think of the pleasure and just study her enemy. The Overseer was already huffing as soon as she rested her fingers against it, and she knew that the stimulation was passing between their link.

You asked for this, Greene.

"I know...I know you...you're there...Oh, you dirty...you fucking...vagrant...you dirty - ah - you dirty Illegal...trying to...get off in..."

Each touch broke the jackal's ability to speak, but it wasn't enough to keep her from talking, nor was it enough to keep her from thinking. While Greene was starting to lean against the wall, taking on more and more physical mannerisms, it was clear that she had plenty of processing power to handle the basics that were being sent over through their link. She had that processing power to spare, probably setting herself to something akin to view-only mode. It probably wasn't quite that, considering she still reacted as if she was being touched, but it probably kept the strongest stimulation at bay.

Which was a problem. A big one, particularly as -

Ding.

The various voting screens throughout the facility suddenly pinged, switching over. Previously, they had only shown Greene as a viable candidate, but this time, Tatyana was pleased to see that Krasnyy had been installed as one. The face of a genial sort of grizzly bear stood as a counterpoint to the severe jackal female. She had a blue background, while Krasnyy had a red one.

Above the faces, Tatyana winced as she saw a five-minute timer. Not much. Not much at all.

It was now or never. As she gave her clit one last stroke, Tatyana threw herself out of her hiding place. The screen was no more than ten steps away.

It proved to be two steps too far. Greene recovered and lunged for her, a punch sweeping out of nowhere and catching Tatyana in the gut. She stumbled backwards, whooshing out air that she shouldn't have lost. The implant buzzed in the back of her head, reminding her just how vulnerable she was. Anything that Greene did to her was real; everything that the hologram tried to put her through, anything that she summoned, was as real and tangible as any solid material around her.

As she wheezed for breath, Greene stepped in front of her. The jackal woman had lost any pretense to clothing, and her body had shifted from slender and lean to something curvy and undeniably feminine. Everything was exaggerated, from her ass's curves going further out than any woman's ever would without surgery, to breasts that would have broken the back of anyone without superhuman strength.

And the latter was something that the hologram seemed to have from the pain in the tigress's abdomen. She hunched over the impact point, huffing as she stumbled back a step. Greene shook her head.

"It's time...time to put you...in your place. And if you will not learn it...through procedure...or punishment...then we will have to do it...through a beating."

"Nnngh...lost...any pretense to discipline, hmm?"

"You...creatures like you...do not deserve civilized treatment. You are nothing more than animals, giving in to your basest instincts. You threaten -"

Tatyana threw herself forward, hoping against hope that she could catch Greene by surprise. No such luck; the jackal spun sideways, bringing her arm down. It was only pure luck that the chop didn't catch her on the back of her neck and send her falling unconscious to the floor. Instead, it caught her arm, numbing her left arm and leaving it all but useless as she rolled out of the way.

"Parasites. Nothing but parasites, expecting the world to cater to your perversions," Greene panted.

"Nnngh..."

"I thought you could be made better. All the signs were there. You had the mind. You had the drive. But no. You are nothing. Nothing but a body built for...for..."

"For pleasure...you wish...you could have," Tatyana grunted.

"...I would not -"

"You want this...all this," the tigress said, slowly pulling herself back to her feet. "You thought you were better than me...but how long did it take?"

"For what? For me to see how worthless you were?"

"For you to want to be me."

Greene's eyes widened, and Tatyana shook her head. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the timer. Three and a half minutes left. Not much. She had to get to the screen and fast.

"You want to be me," Tatyana said, shaking her head. "You want to feel like this. You want...to know...what it's like. To be so lost in sensation...to forget...to have bad things happen and have it feel good."

"Nobody wants that! You don't want that! I would never -"

"But you do."

Greene bared her teeth and charged. Even with the rage, there was no lack of skill. She must have been downloading various self-defense programs, bits and pieces of information that would have once been reserved for the security teams giving the jackal the skills to fight even while enraged. Tatyana couldn't do anything against that; she could only take it, and for once...she did.

She took a punch to the gut, then to the chin, and then to the chest. She stumbled, falling back, and made sure to fall on the side of her numb left arm. The jackal followed her down, grabbing her by her throat and yanking her back up, eyes burning with digital fury.

"Say it again..."

Tatyana panted for breath as Greene squeezed her throat, clenching her hand so tight that she could barely get a hint of a breath past the other woman's grip.

"Say your lies again...say it...say I want to be like you...you trashy...debased...filthy - nnngh!"

The grip eased as Tatyana followed that first finger with a second, and then a third, forcing the jackal's digital ass apart. She stared down at the little blurs of motion where her fingers could be seen - if only just barely - through the other woman's body. Tatyana gasped for breath, shaking her head as she forced a fourth finger in, leaving Greene slumping down to her knees, almost falling over.

"You forget...when you make it so...so I can feel you...you...can feel me..."

"Ah...nngh...mm...ah...ah...ah..."

"And I...am used...to this."

The temptation to headbutt the other woman off of her was there, but she knew better. Two minutes, now, and she had to keep one hand busy. Instead, she wiggled her way between Greene's legs, dragging herself to her feet with one hand held back. With the other, she reached out for the voting window as Greene whimpered, the jackal's virtual rump clenching down on her hand time and time again, her hips wiggling, either trying to slide off or slide back. Every sneering, snide word that Greene had thrown her way had been completely silenced, leaving nothing but the soft gasps and gurgles of someone that was experiencing overwhelming pleasure for the first time.

She silenced that, ignoring it as she rested her hand on Krasnyy's face. The bear's icon glowed, getting brighter and brighter as she held her hand there -

"Please confirm your choice by typing the name of your chosen candidate for Overseer."

"...Confirmation codes? Fine."

She shook her head, typing it out with one finger.

K.

R.

A.

S.

N.

Y.

Y.

And just like that, the world went silent.

Tatyana looked up as the screen went dark, and even Greene's moans faded, muted, even though her hologram was still there. The lights went out, one by one, and the entirety of the Cube was left in darkness. Project West, Volt City, everything contained within the cube was completely quiet, as if every system had been shut down.

One second passed, then two. The cube hadn't started falling, so Tatyana still held out hope. She held her breath, her eyes flicking towards the ceiling. Was that a sign of light? Was something else booting up?

Finally, after ten seconds of complete and total silence, the lights came back on. No longer bright, but rather in power-saving modes, dimmed to something calm and warming, and the many panels and terminals remained shut down. The sound of drones hovering in the distance went silent, and Greene completely disappeared. Tatyana looked down at her hand, hardly believing that the jackal was gone, but for the first time in far too long, she felt...safe.

A low hum preceded the bear that took shape in front of her. Taller than her by a head, the grizzly bear was dressed in the old red of the Party uniform, looking like a retired military leader. He turned his genial grin at her, only to blink, the programmed expression of ease and compassion fading into one that looked vaguely uncanny.

His AI is the least-trained; it doesn't know what to do with unexpected situations.

"Krasnyy AI. I am from outside. Project complete," Tatyana said.

"I have been elected; of course, the project is complete. The revolution has succeeded in a most peaceful manner."

...If only you knew...

"I detect a great lack of power. How long - oh. Oh."

"Yes." Tatyana imagined that Krasnyy was getting a great deal of data downloaded to him to compensate for the length of time that he had waited to be activated, but she didn't have time to wait. Even with the entire facility put into power-saving mode, she doubted that they had a great deal of time before the whole cube plummeted into the abyss. Enough time for her to escape, to take what she needed, but not enough to linger and socialize. "Do you accept commands?"

"Are you from outside?" the bear asked.

"There is a datapad in the possession of former Overseer Greene."

"Greene? She should never -"

"She was Overseer, she had a datapad. It was mine. I can prove it with password access. It will show where I am from and my credentials."

"I will have it brought here."

#

It didn't take long, and it took even less time for the bear to access the pad once she unlocked it. The tablet was filled with more data of the outside world than she would have been comfortable with Greene having; the other AI having access to her own mind for a short time had been dangerous enough. As Krasnyy took in the details, his face would alternate between surprise, a simple blank state, and the occasional smile. The smiles, however, grew more and more infrequent as he took in the data.

For her part, Tatyana didn't interrupt. She had no idea of what was going through his head, but she knew that if the mutations in the Brain Tank were anything to go by, he was the least altered and mutated. All of this was probably a shock to the system that he wasn't entirely meant to take.

But as long as he doesn't shut down...as long as he doesn't disbelieve it...

Eventually, minutes later, he handed her the tablet back. She tucked it under her arm, trying not to be self-conscious about her nudity. Krasnyy was the first one not to make a point of it, and yet, that somehow made it all the harder for her to deal with it. The fact that he didn't seem to care made her care all the more.

"You are from the Facility. I will follow your orders."

"Bring the cart-bot out of level 0. She's coming with me."

"Accepted."

"Make sure that Greene is contained."

"Accepted."

"Bring all the copied data-sticks of the AIs in this cube to me."

"Accepted."

Things were happening fast, and more scarily, easily. She didn't know how to feel about that. The entire run through the Cube had been a giant struggle, the hardest thing that she had done since rising up against the former rulers of the Facility. She had conquered this through blood, sweat, and tears, and she still felt like she hadn't entirely finished. It felt like there was something waiting...

But there wasn't. Unless Krasnyy was to turn traitor, there was nothing that could stop her now. She, for all intents and purposes, had won.

"Finally, connect the Cube to the Facility. Once connection has been established, designate all data-stick versions of the AI as prime, and then log yourself out."

"...You are taking us with you, then?"

"All but one."

She had tried with Greene. She had tried very, very hard to do something about her, but as much as she tried to justify taking the former Overseer with her, it was too dangerous. Corrupted as Greene had become, she doubted that it would be the same sort of threat if that AI got loose in the overall Facility, but at the same time, she wasn't going to risk it. Not when they had this kind of history. She had come too close to losing herself once already, and that wasn't going to happen again.

"You have your tasks. Run them."

"Yes, Administrator."

The grizzly bear disappeared. She shook her head, looking down at the tablet. There was going to be a long period of study when she got out of the cube, and she imagined that she'd find a great many things that would allow her to push AI work further than it had ever been pushed before. The world would find a great many developments coming from her lab in the coming weeks...

Yet, at the same time, she knew that she was stalling. That work was important...but there was something more important, and more embarrassing, that would have to come first.

Therapy, Tatyana thought with an internal sigh. Lots, and lots of therapy...

The cube trembled. It was her cue to get moving, and she put action to thought and made her way down from the upper floors of the control spire. The elevator that would connect to the way out was only accessible via the lobby, and she had someone to wait for down there.

#

The cart-bot showed up on shaky wheels, and when the Greene hologram appeared, she was clearly the worse for wear. She looked like she'd been battered and used, and her face looked stained in a way that light never should, but she, at least, looked like she'd come through it. The cart rolled over with the green jackal sitting at the front of it, one leg crossed over the other.

"You look like hell," the cart-Greene said.

"I feel like it, too," she admitted, shaking her head.

Cart-Greene joined her in the lobby, the cart coming to a stop before the elevator door. The bot's mechanical arms reached into the cart's innards, pulling out a large knapsack. It looked like it had been there for over thirty years, considering the stitching and construction and wear and tear that it had obviously gone through, but it was still strong enough to support the weight of the data-sticks inside. Tatyana took it and threw it over her shoulder, shaking her head with a small groan.

"Did they get you?" the better Greene asked.

"She did."

"...Bad?"

"Not as bad as I treated myself."

Tatyana shook her head as she waited for the elevator. There was a great deal that she would have to do when she got out. Introspection was only so good as therapy, and it really should be guided by someone with more knowledge as to what was going on. She doubted that she'd ever be able to sort out everything, but if she could get a working relationship with the part of her that turned itself on with the idea of self-sabotage, that would be a start.

She still couldn't believe that she had come through this to a point where she could admit that. In the past, even thinking about having a part of her that enjoyed that sort of torment would have been too much for her to consider. The idea would have been locked in the back of her head to avoid a panic spiral, pushed there until the thought died of starvation from lack of interaction, the corpse of the idea later thrown out so that it couldn't contaminate other thought processes.

Now?

Now, it was front and center. She was, at least on some level, a hedonistic whore that enjoyed this sort of play. She got off from it, whether she wanted it or even liked it, and that? That was something she had to deal with.

She reached around to the back of her head. The implant was still there, but that might be something worth keeping, or at least refining. Hard-light technology was intensely interesting, of course, and in many ways, it was better for the average user than something like this. However, with the sheer flexibility of what holograms could create, as well as the impossible things that had happened with the holograms and the way that her body believed that it was supported when it was not, there were definite possibilities there.

She had many experiments in mind, already.

"Tatyana?"

"Mm?"

"...Did you actually ask for me to be released?"

She nodded, and Cart-Greene arched an eyebrow.

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"Well, there's the other Greene."

"Yes...And?"

"All that she did to you -"

"You were once the same person. The moment that it was separated from you and the pair of you were placed in different locations, you became distinct beings. What was decided by one of you cannot be held against the other. And I knew you as the cart before I knew you as the other half."

"...Right. Well. I'm glad that you can logic that out." Cart-Greene chuckled, rubbing the back of her head. "Me, I'd be stuck in a rut if I tried to do something like that. My brain doesn't work so nicely."

"Your brain is not mine."

"Clearly."

"...But it is better in one way. It understands its feelings, and I...do not."

Tatyana shook her head, looking at the elevator tube again. Finally, the lights of the descending tube were getting brighter. They'd be out in short order.

"And...my other half?" Cart-Greene asked. "Is she..."

"I'm not bringing her."

"Why -"

"Because she is too far gone," Tatyana said, shaking her head. "Even if I could take the risk with everything that she might do outside this place, you didn't see her brain. I did. I saw..."

She remembered the distended, mutated, tumorous mass that had been barely keeping itself alive in the Brain Tank. Everything about that brain had screamed 'diseased' at her, and even if it was safe to take it out of the tank itself, she doubted that it would survive long. The bio-computer that the brain must have functioned as had undergone significant decay, considering that it had likely gone with an extensive lack of downtime. No wonder that Greene had been as insane as she was; all the mutations had introduced new thoughts, but the artificial part of her programming would have been clinging to the rules as the only way for her to survive as something like 'herself.' It was a no-win situation.

"I am sorry. But she stays."

"..."

Tatyana sighed, shouldering the bag. She shouldn't bother explaining herself. It wasn't going to do either of them any good. Logically, she was satisfied with her decision, but Cart-Greene's silence was making her feel worse about it. She shook her head.

"Do you think this is revenge?"

"I think that it's part of it."

"It isn't."

"It wouldn't be impossible. You have a lot of stuff to hate her for."

"I do. But at the same time, I don't." She shook her head. "There's...a similarity I can't entirely ignore. I did not win because I was smarter. I did not win because I was faster. I won, in the end, because I could see a part of myself that she could not see in herself. I could acknowledge a weakness, a truth, while she was latched entirely to the past. I have yet to move on, but she..."

Tatyana sighed. That was not the point. That was not what she wanted to talk about. There were no facts for her to use there, only feelings, and the tigress didn't know them well enough to wield them. Shaking her head again, she continued.

"I do not hate her. If anything, I pity her. I pity her for being so lost in her programming that she couldn't see the danger around the corner, so lost in what she had to be that she couldn't be herself. Not anymore. She's...gone."

"..."

"Are you okay?" Tatyana asked.

"I'm just...I'm thinking about how..."

"How she came from you."

"...It's hard not to see it, like...like that's my evil side...and that would have been me if I hadn't been -"

"There is no part of a person that is pure evil. There is potential for 'evil' in emotion, in logic, in anything that is part of a mortal being's make-up. The reason that we do not have a scientific means to measure 'good' or 'evil' is as much down to the fact that the potential for both is omnipresent in living beings, in all aspects of them, as it is to the fact that there are different standards for both throughout the world.

"What the Overseer became is not a mirror to what you would have been. You could have been better; you could have been worse. But that Greene is someone else. What you are...is you."

The elevator dinged, a fact for which she was most grateful as it cut her off from giving any more speeches on the matter of the heart and good and evil. Tatyana stepped inside, and the cart eventually lumbered after her. The doors closed, and she felt the bag get slightly heavier. The lights through the gaps started fading, and she took a deep breath.

"Do you feel much through your treads?" the tigress asked.

"Some. Why?"

"Brace yourself."

It was like a rocket going off beneath their feet, the platform shooting up and out through the tower. As the lights continued going out beneath them, Tatyana knew that the cube was shutting down all systems to preserve the outside jets for as long as possible. The naked tigress bit her lip as they approached the end of the tube.

Just as they were about to crash into it, the brakes engaged. She was launched half a foot up, and the cart-bot trembled in mechanical shock as they came to a screeching halt. The hatch opened -

"Oh. Hello."

And Tatyana smiled ever so slightly at the small army of spider-bots that were waiting on the other side. There had to be at least three-dozen of the bronze and brass things, each one carrying some tool or another in their tiny little claws and grippers. Their ocular scanners panned down, seeing her. At first, they seemed slightly confused with her out of her robe, but their processors caught up quickly enough.

A full dozen descended into the shaft, attaching wires to the lift to drag it up the rest of the way. As Cart-Greene was studied and observed, others came forward with another lab coat, offering it to the tigress. As the first proper bit of clothing that she had seen in far too long - far, far too long - she took it in hand and threw it around her shoulders. The touch of cloth was almost a godsend, and the tigress closed her eyes just to enjoy the moment of feeling completely covered again. Even with nothing under the coat, even with her clit still hanging down, even with everything else that was wrong, that was something that was right again.

One of the spider-bots reached out a small leg, and Tatyana lowered her hand. It climbed up her arm as expertly as they all did, putting two legs over her shoulders and two others around her throat. She felt the hum of its fore-limb scanners checking her vitals, standing still while it did so, while two other spider-bots crawled over Cart-Greene's cart, scanning the various mechanics of it.

"Is this...normal?" the cart-bot asked.

"Fairly standard. They are a trifle more exuberant this time, however."

"They must like you."

"...Yes. They must."

As the lift finally came to the top, she looked back at her old chambers. The familiar bubble at the roof of the chasm seemed so far away, yet, there was a bridge between her and it, one that had been constructed of scaffolding and scavenged metal by the spider-bots and some of the other creatures that she had created. The various mechanical beings...

...They were coming for me.

Tatyana felt a little lump in the back of her throat because of that. Not out of guilt, but out of something that she didn't know how to process. The other experiments, back at the time of the Facility, had run off. She had been the only one to stay despite being the one to engineer the escape in the first place. She had colleagues, customers, but she knew that they would be quick to take advantage if they ever realized that they could get her over a barrel.

Her robots, however, had come for her. Unbidden. Unasked. They should not have had the programming to realize that they could do this, and yet, they had. Perhaps there was something to how she treated them.

"Tatyana?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. We should get off this thing, and quickly."

The spider-bots returned, bringing wires and more to attach them to the iron scaffolds above. Tatyana attached the cart-bot first, then herself. The spider-bots continued to mill and swirl about her feet, some of them poking at her ankles, likely puzzled by her lack of sandals and other such things.

Puzzled.

She shook her head. For all that there was a mystery there, for all that the spider-bots were acting a little more...active...than they had before, she had to put her curiosity aside. First, she would tend to herself, with showers, with therapy, and more, and after that, she would start building up a list of things that she wanted answers to. The AI data-sticks would need to be installed somewhere so that the various intelligences could be stabilized, and -

One of the spider-bots stopped her as she started to climb. She looked down as it tapped her foot again, and she realized what it was confused about. She turned it, looking at the tattoos that Greene had ordered installed via Cletus and his machines. The mark of the Illegal. The status of being something so dirty in Volt City.

And yet...

She could not deny all the progress that had been recorded there, too...or the pleasure that just looking at it sent through her pussy.

"...I'll keep that."

"What?" Cart-Greene called down.

"Nothing. Nevermind."

Tatyana called her little assistant up, and the spider-bot climbed up her leg. They were lifted off the cube, and as they were carried away, Volt City finally fell into the abyss.

It was gone, and good riddance to it.

The End

Summary: And so, we reach the final chapter of the Western Cube. Time to wrap it all up…in some way or another.

Tags: F/F, Beating, F/solo, Jackal, Tigress, Tatyana, Series, Anger, Fighting, Fingering, Teasing, Arousal, AI, Finale, Series Over, Grizzly Bear, Robots,