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Pepper vs. Wordplay

by Zmeydros

(edited by Tiliquain and Secretskunk)

The well-lit interior of the Repository's main entrance was a respite from the claustrophobic reality of living under the sea. Whenever I tilted my head or otherwise changed my viewing angle, the silver marbling in the walls, ceiling, and floor glimmered. Whatever alien or ancient Atlantean ceramic material the Repository was made out of didn't seem to mind the three thousand feet of seawater above it.

Fifteen bulkhead doors were cut into the wall in front of me. Two sets of seven, on either side of the center door, were man-made because the original ones had been destroyed in the thousands of years since this structure was built.

Behind those bulkheads were endless branching hallways. Housed in the rooms along those hallways were the physics-and-causality-defying items that Charlemagne and her POSC organization called Non-Prosaic Objects, or NPOs for short. "Prosaic" was a word that meant "ordinary" or "everyday," but it was a rather uncommon, unordinary word itself. The irony made me smile.

The center door loomed in front of me, the only ancient bulkhead of the original fifteen that was still intact. It was circular in shape like all the others, but made out of the same ceramic material as the rest of the Repository. No one in recorded history had been through that door. As if to taunt us, it had a clear method of opening it: a smaller circle halfway up and off to the left where one might expect a doorknob to be. Even though I'd only been part of Charlemagne's team for a few weeks, I'd heard this door mentioned many times. A common joke was that when we finally got it open, we'd find all our lost socks, toenail clippers, hairpins, and keys.

Behind me was the Librarian's main terminal, which looked like a white obelisk in the center of the room. Hearing the bulkhead to the habitat open, I lifted my back off of the base of the Librarian and turned around.

Persephone walked in, wearing tight-fitting jean shorts that showed off her bulge and a tight yellow tank top that clung to her bust. I think she just liked watching Charlemagne's libido simmer whenever she was off duty. If Percy and I hadn't had a romp that morning, my libido would have started to simmer. Her thick shark tail and suggestive toothy grins made me shiver with lesbian lust.

"Okay, that outfit is flaming hot," I said.

"Glad you like it. These shorts just arrived yesterday," Percy said.

"You're going to have to teach me your online clothes shopping tricks. At first I thought it was luck, but now I'm sure you're just good at it."

"I'd be happy to help." She grinned, putting her pointy shark teeth on display.

"Awesome! So, what brings you out here on this fine evening?" I asked.

She said, "I was wondering why you spend so much time out here."

"It's the largest space we have access to." I looked up, leaning more against the base of the Librarian.

"True, I guess I don't get as stir crazy because I can go out for a swim," she said.

"You can't even imagine how much I want to be a deep sea shark hybrid like you," I said.

"I don't think it's the hybrid part you're after." She patted her bulge. "You just want this."

I bit my lip and blushed before saying, "Not only that, I want to be a hybrid too. Like, I wish I had a tail and pointy ears. Being human is kinda boring."

"Someday, I hope you get your wish." Percy ran her fingers through my long red hair. "Just don't do something rash like asking Septimus to experiment on you."

"Now there's an idea," I said, grinning.

"If they don't know how I turned out this way, I hate to think what happens when something actually goes wrong," she said.

"I was joking, Percy."

"Oh, I'm a bit tired and couldn't see your face from this angle, so I couldn't tell." She played with my hair a bit more as she said, "You coming to bed?"

"Maybe in a half hour or so?" I pulled my iPad out of the fuchsia backpack next to me. "I need a bit more time with just me, a book, and this open space."

"No problem. Plus, you should probably sleep in Charlie's bed tonight. You two haven't had quality time in a while and she's too proud to admit when she needs attention," Percy said.

"But she wakes up, sooo early."

"Not tomorrow morning. She's still on her weekly call with Pearl Harbor."

"Weekly call?" I asked, furrowing my brow.

"Well, they're planning to have it weekly. Hawaii's setting up a POSC base," she said.

"Does that mean we'll get to go to Hawaii sometime? I sure could use a vacation."

She laughed. "If we bug Charlie enough, I'm sure she'll eventually find an excuse for us to pay a visit."

"That might be a misuse of our girlfriend powers, though," I said.

"Nah, she needs a vacation. Other than that day in the hotel room after she transformed, all she's been doing is work work work."

"True." I reached up and gave Percy's butt a smack. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow since you've kicked me out of our room."

"No I just thought you two should have some quality--" Percy knelt down and booped my nose. "You're a tease, you know that?"

I grabbed hold of her shoulders and then took my time licking and nipping at her neck, being careful not to be too rough with her gills.

She was gasping and her prehensile cocks were stirring in her shorts by the time I sat back down. "Now I'm gonna have to jack off before I go to bed."

"You're welcome!" I said.

"One day, you're gonna tease me during a meeting, and I'm gonna just shove my cocks down your throat to teach you a lesson."

"Yes please!" I said, getting a bit wet.

Percy was blushing bright red. "Damn it, now I really need to get off." She walked toward the habitat.

"You're even more welcome," I called after her.

"I didn't thank you!" she said.

"You didn't need to!" I said back.

Once she was gone, I said, "Librarian? Do you have any music you can play? Does this room have a sound system?"

"Yes, I have music I can play, and yes, this room has a sound system," the Librarian's soothing, but softly growling, voice replied from behind me.

"Play me something you like," I said.

"I don't like or dislike the music I have stored," she said.

"Huh, then, play me something someone else liked?" I said.

"Alright." She played something that sounded like a glass harmonica connected to a giant metal cavity filled with water. The music warped as the water sloshed inside the cavity. It was neat and unlike anything I'd ever heard.

"Is this alien music?" I asked.

"Define alien, please."

"You don't know what aliens are?" I asked.

"To me, modern day humans are aliens," she replied. "So my definition of the word 'alien' likely diverges from yours."

"Did you consider the ancient Atlantians aliens?" I said.

"No, they were among the first race from your planet I was introduced to. So they are more familiar to me."

"Our planet? You have met things not from our planet?" My eyes widened.

"Are you truly from this planet? A leading theory is that the building blocks for life came from off-planet. From that perspective, all life on this planet is alien."

I blinked a couple times, processing that. "You're trying very hard not to answer my question."

"It's requiring no effort. My CPU usage is currently below ten percent."

I grinned, "Ha! You just admitted that you're trying not to answer my question, which means you have met aliens."

"Incorrect, I am avoiding your question until we've come up with a definition of the word 'alien' that we both agree on," she said.

"Okay, fine, 'unfamiliar' isn't what I meant. How about we define 'alien' as sentient life that originated on another planet and then came to earth," I said.

"What about sentient life that developed on earth, left earth for a few millennia and then came back. Would you consider them aliens? Or what if a sentient race developed on your planet and is hiding in secret? They are of your world, but you have never seen them. Or what about a sentient race returning to earth which befriended humanity during ancient times? All these are common conspiracy theories I hear humans discuss."

"Yes, I'd consider all those to be aliens," I said.

"Your current definition heavily implies that neanderthals and other protohumans were aliens as well. So, I could answer your question with a 'yes' and you still may end up with the wrong impression."

My nostrils flared. "If you don't want to answer my question, just say so!"

"Without a clear definition of the most important term in your question, I do not know how to proceed," she said.

"Sure you don't."

"I'm glad we agree."

"I was being sarcastic!"

"Sarcasm suggests that I have irritated you. I will discontinue this conversation so you can calm down."

I didn't say a word for the next ten minutes because I was trying to figure out a way to pin her down so she had to answer my question or admit she was hiding something. While I was doing that, a stark white robot with four legs and a flat-topped body came out of the second bulkhead on the right and walked to the left. On top of this robot was another robot that looked exactly like it, but was smashed all to hell.

As it got closer and closer to the center door, my heart picked up its pace. Hoping neither the robot nor the Librarian would realize I was readying myself to pounce, I slowly put on my backpack and got into a runner's start position.

I sighed in frustration as it passed the center door's midpoint. As I was moving to sit back down and give up, the robot stopped under the smaller circle that I thought served as a scanner or pressure plate. A tendril-like arm came out of the robot's side, holding what looked like a pitch-black PS One CD, only it had a hole in its periphery and not the center.

The tendril waved the disk in front of the scanner and then pulled the disk back inside the robot. The door did something that sounded like an eight-bit quack and then pushed out toward me a good four inches. It was far thicker than the other bulkheads and it was a bit scary to see it lift off the floor and climb up the wall as it revealed a dark passage beyond.

The robot went through when there was only six inches of clearance above what it was carrying. Then the door started closing again. Seeing that the four-foot gap was quickly shrinking, I ran and dove under the door.

My backpack caught on it and it kept closing. Not wanting to be crushed, I took off my backpack as fast as I could and pulled it through. Lights were coming on for the robot as it advanced down the long, round hallway.

I followed it another twenty feet and then stopped dead in my tracks when a light came on to reveal junk sitting neatly on shelves cobbled together out of other junk. There was glassware, strange ceramic items I couldn't even begin to guess the function of, antiques, WWI and WWII surplus, and even some things from the modern era like nonstick frying pans and toy cars. The shelves were made out of everything from driftwood to books to road signs.

As I was trying to understand it all, a shape moved to my left, just at the edge of my peripheral vision. I shrieked and jumped back, my butt hitting one of the shelves and sending some garden gnomes tumbling to the floor.

I got into a fighting stance as a grizzled tiger-striped kangaroo dragon thing hobbled toward me. "Stay back!"

The being was just over six feet tall and stopped the moment I yelled at it. Then it sat down on the floor with a long sigh and bent its head down. Flicking one of its battered long ears, it said, "No harm-danger." That's when I noticed it had breasts, big balls, and a sheath.

"Wh-what are you?" I asked. "An, an a-lien?"

"I am Helja," it said. It looked up at me, a gash on its face interrupting the movement of its lips. "Define 'alien.'" Its voice was dry, a bit like mine had been before my larynx had healed.

"Sorry, I can't explain that right now." I wasn't going to go down that road again, not today. "Do you prefer he, she, or they? I keep calling you 'it' in my head and I feel bad about that," I said as I stepped farther away from the shelf and closer to Helja.

An alien was just six feet in front of me! My heart was beating so fast I could hear the blood rushing in my ears.

"Which gender does your culture consider more nurturing-compassionate?" Helja asked. "I will use the associated," it paused, "special word?"

"Pronoun. 'She' is a pronoun and it fits with what you asked for," I said.

Helja smiled. "Pronoun. Yes. I have many holes in my word library. Very few audio streams available. Most of it military." There was a patch of fur missing on her shoulder and the flesh underneath it was a dark purple-black. She had a big chunk of flesh missing from her side and gashes in her legs and arms. The gash on her face disturbed me the most. It split her lip on the left side of her muzzle and went all the way across her face to just over her left eye.

"What happened to you?"

She got up off the floor. Then she gestured for me to follow her as the lights for the rest of the room came on revealing that the junk shelves went all the way around the room. She grabbed the broken robot off of the top of the other robot and dragged it toward a large round bed. "I lost a fight."

I followed her, asking, "With what?"

"Heretics," she said as she sat on the edge of the bed. "Come, sit with me."

"That's what the Librarian called the pool toys!" I said. The bed was made out of some sort of memory foam which sloped slightly down near the edges and then flattened toward the center. "Are you the race that built this place?"

"Pool toys?" Helja tilted her head.

"Terrifying indestructible inflatable humanoid robot things," I said as I maneuvered around the robot Helja was holding so I could sit off to her side.

"I only know what some of those words mean." She thought for a moment, her ears drooping slightly. "Yes, we are referring to the same enemy. Drones built by the Heretics. What you fought when you entered the Repository."

"You know about that?" I asked.

"The Librarian informed me, but I was not well enough to help," she said.

"Wait, so you weren't injured in the recent attack?" I furrowed my brow.

She grabbed one of the robot's legs, put the hoof-like foot in her mouth, and took a long slow bite. The material crunched, but didn't splinter. She soon had bitten off the foot and was chewing on it as if it was a giant crab claw.

I was blinking, trying to make sense of this when Helja just continued the conversation like everything was normal. "No, I was injured about two hundred years ago in a Heretic attack and have been hibernating," she said.

"Hold on, why are you eating that robot's leg?"

"Define robot, please."

"A machine that can do things on its own. Like washing dishes or flying around and spying on people," I said.

"Would you consider me a robot?"

"No, you seem biological, but you're eating something that would be unhealthy for any animal I've ever seen, so I'm confused."

She held up the leg she'd been taking bites out of. "This contains materials I need to repair. My energy system has been working under stress. It gets worse as I use it." She looked down at the floor.

"Is there anything that can be done? Is the robot you're eating going to help?"

"This inactive robot is mostly carbon materials and is low technology. My systems are very different." Then she bit off another chunk and chewed. Her muzzle was different from a kangaroo's in that it was wider and more muscular. A lot like a hyena's, actually. They could crack open bones, so it made sense.

My teeth hurt watching her eat such hard materials. I scooted close to her, wanting to console her, but I didn't know whether I wanted to touch her. If she could eat a robot's leg, my arm would be very easy to chomp right off.

"So, you're dying?" I asked.

"Yes, the Librarian has been bringing me low-level NPOs to try and help. But she is a segmented intelligence and does not know what things are made of. So she is very unhelpful."

"Unhelpful is one way of putting it," I said.

"Hostile towards usefulness?" she offered.

I laughed.

"I'm glad we agree." She reached out with her right arm slowly and then touched my shoulder experimentally. When I didn't pull away, she pulled me toward her. "Her dis-ease of use is a security feature, actually."

I moved over, sitting against her side, the edge of her naked furry breast brushing against my clothed one. "Does it have something to do with her being a segmented intelligence, whatever that is?"

Helja nodded really fast, it almost looked like a sneeze. "She does not have free access to her own memories. This is to prevent electronic attackers from learning things about the NPOs stored here. Physical connections are needed to load different memory segments." She hooked her tail around my middle, hugging me.

She was warm, not as warm as a human, but warmer than the room. I put my arm behind her back and grabbed her side. I was getting the feeling her race was pretty touchy feely, which made them good people in my book. "Wait, you mean to tell me your super-advanced AI Librarian system has her memories stored on jump drives and you have to physically plug them into her to access them?"

"Define jump drive."

"A data storage thingy about the size of my thumb that you plug into a usb port."

We went back and forth for about ten minutes while I explained all the basics about modern computers. She quizzed me on all the different parts while making rather amazing deductions as to what various components were made of. Since I didn't know everything, I said I'd check on some of it. She was also asking me a ton of word definitions. This whole time, she just cuddled with me, treating me like a dear friend. I could only imagine how lonely she'd been all this time.

"Please bring me lithium batteries and heat sinks. Also, I know this may be hard to get, but I need high-purity aluminum."

"Why would you think aluminum is hard to get? We use it for everything," I said.

"Aluminum is energy intensive to extract and has a low stiffness. When composites became cheap, we switched away from aluminum and most structural metals," she said.

Her vocabulary was growing just from this short conversation.

I pulled my backpack off and got my iPad out of it. "Would this help you stay alive until I can find you more materials? The entire back of it is made of aluminum and there's a big lithium ion battery in here."

"The aluminum is likely an alloy, but it will help." She grabbed the iPad and looked at it a moment before finding the port on the bottom. "Are you sure you do not mind losing the use of this device for a while?"

"For a while?" I asked. "If you eat it, it's gone forever. And if it saves your life, I don't care. I can just requisition a new one."

"If I back up your data and carefully deconstruct it, I can print you an identical copy when I am well again," she said.

I immediately thought about all the porn on my iPad, and my passwords. "No need to back it up, I backed it up three days ago."

"Good, could you power it down?" she asked.

"Sure!" I hit the power button and swiped up. It scanned my face and then opened to the page of herm hybrid porn I'd been viewing the night before. "Ack!" I turned the screen away from her, blushing.

"I liked the blue lizard with two penises," she said. "Very unique."

"I like that one too." I pulled up the herm lizard she liked and showed it to her since it seemed we both had a casual attitude toward porn. My blush still deepened. The herm had big breasts and balls and reminded me a bit of Charlemagne's muscular stature.

"She's beautiful." She smiled. "Are human-animal combinations common? Do many humans look like me?"

"No, very uncommon. The technology to make hybrids is in its infancy," I said.

"Strange, I can create hybrids easily using my builders," she said. "It is one of my functions."

My heart started racing and my muscles twitched. Had Helja just said she could turn me into a herm hybrid? "Why is that one of your functions?"

"My race modifies species to make them better adapted to threats and environments. We also modify ourselves," she said.

Biting my lip, I willed myself to not get aroused. The thought of having a cock, balls, and a nice long tail was enough to make me wet on its own. "That's interesting," was all I could manage to say. I turned off my iPad and handed it to her.

"Thank you." She sniffed all around the edge of my iPad. Then she went to work on it, running her hands over the edge of the screen. I felt heat coming from her hands as she worked. Then some of her claws grew out long and flat on the sides. Using them to pry the screen off, she revealed the inside of the iPad. I could smell the heat-activated adhesive she'd loosened. How she could make her paw-padded hands hot enough to do that without hurting herself was beyond me. Her claws morphed into screwdrivers, and all sorts of tools she needed on the fly. It was mesmerizing, like fast forwarding through a deconstruction video on Youtube.

Eventually, she had the lithium ion battery in her hands. As she ate it, I grimaced. My poor iPad. "Do you like how it tastes?"

After swallowing the battery cell she ate, she said, "I am filtering for chemical information. If I tried to taste it like food, I would not be able to eat it. Separate functions. Resource gathering. Eating food."

"Isn't it still food to you, technically?" I asked.

"We still have the ability to experience things from when we were biological. We separate what we could eat then and what we sometimes have to eat now. When I am repaired, I will be able to gain benefit from what you would call normal foods."

"You mentioned you have a limited vocabulary, I mean, word library. Is there a way I can help with that?"

"Large amounts of recent conversational data and data about the world outside would be very helpful," she said. "I can figure out how to interface with any storage device you give me. Technical information about the hardware you provide would be appreciated, though."

"Sure, I'll try to help with that too, then."

She swallowed another part of the lithium ion battery. "This iPad is very helpful. I will have the ability to better use the materials you bring me. You have given me more time."

"Oh shit!" I zipped up my backpack and put it on. "They're going to start looking for me if I don't get back."

"Why not introduce them to me?" she asked. "I risked becoming worse by talking to you, but you have helped. After I have incorporated the materials from this iPad, I will be able to stay awake longer. "

"If I tell Charlemagne a sentient NPO is on her base, she's going to summon a mountain of paperwork and you might be dead before she decides to help," I said.

"That is sad," she said, giving me a squeeze. "I trust your thinking and will let you handle telling the other humans."

"How do I get back in?" I asked.

She manipulated the robot she'd been eating and then reached carefully into its side and pulled out the same type of black disk the other robot had used. "Here is a key. If Heretics attack again, bend it in half a few times to make sure it no longer works."

"Okay! Will do!" I said as I clambered to get off the bed.

"Thank you!" she called after me.

"You're welcome!" I said as I got up to the door and held the disk in front of the scanner.

The door made that eight-bit quack sound again and started opening.

The moment I was on the other side and saw the librarian, my nostrils flared with rage. "All that wordplay was to disguise the fact you have a real live alien behind that door!"

"You are alien to me and you are alive," the librarian said. "Define wordplay."

"You are impossible!"

"And yet I exist. Your statement is contradictory," she said.

As I was trying to come up with a retort, I realized Helja had never answered my question about whether her race had built the Librarian and the Repository. At least she was fun to talk to. Talking to the librarian is like being party to a very long Dad joke.

I walked right past the Librarian toward the habitat. I had better things to do, like snuggling Charlemagne tonight and trying to find Helja some stuff she could use to repair herself.

STORY CONTINUES in "Pepper VS Temptation" on my Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/41014838

This story starts off an entire TFTG novel entitled "Pepper VS Temptation."

As Pepper and Helja grow closer to each other, they form a cross-species bond that brings both of them much joy. But their visits are being kept short because Helja's repairs seem to be exhausting her more each time.

Making things worse, a bizarre NPO is growing exponentially, filling the base with a network of crystalline fibers. It has thwarted every attempt to contain it or arrest its growth and if they don't find a solution soon, the entire Repository will be lost in a matter of days.

Helja's solution to save herself and the Repository risks her existence being known and endangers Pepper's continued service in the POSC. These risks are heightened by the fact that the plan puts Pepper face to face with palpable temptation. To keep her standing and save the day, she's going to have to be patient, resist temptation, and collaborate with a secret admirer on Charlemagne's team. Wish her luck, she's gonna need it. To get the entire four-hundred-page "Persephone and Tritonia Ebook" that includes this novel on my, click here to go to its Patreon page!

This story art above went up on my Patreon six months ago.

If you want to see my stuff weeks to months early, vote on a monthly story, and support my writing, click here to become a patron.

I'd like to acknowledge my $20 patrons, Arkona Kothe, Navajo Demar, UBA, and Warialinth for helping make all this possible. Thank you! Thanks to all my other patrons as well. Every one of you rocks!