“This is humiliating.”

“I feel like that’s the point of punishment, Epoc,” Diana said from the workbench. “Now stop being a baby and scrub.” 

Feeling a little grumpy and more than a little embarrassed, Epoc half crawled back under the bed. It was one thing for something like this to be the preamble for some kind of sex game, but it was another for Diana to check her work and then, without real judgment, tell her to do something again or that she missed a spot. She was just cleaning. But then again, if she was having fun, it wouldn’t be much of a punishment, would it?

“So, you did this before?” Diana asked, looking up from her project. She looked like she was working on some kind of haptic gloves, and Epoc wondered if this was where the new pilot’s chair had been conceived of. She hesitated, then nodded. 

“I had an ex,” Epoc said, and then closed her mouth. In most cases, “I had an ex” is the only explanation one needs because it was exactly the right kind of humiliating that got people to drop whatever you were talking about. Diana, however, just looked at her with polite curiosity. She wasn’t going to get away with it that easily. “Okay, so before I went to the academy there was this woman who was really into, uh…”

“Maids?” Diana asked. 

“Let’s call them ‘effeminate men.’ Specifically making them effeminate.” She sighed and looked down at herself. Weird fucking memories. Then again, weird fucking present, too. She had her dream job, piloting for a prestigious company and basically having her own Frame, and here she was, brain like a sponge, sitting in a maid dress on the floor of a secret room, scrubbing a bed frame. 

“So, what?” Diana asked. “You’re saying it took?”

“What? No, of course no,” Epoc laughed. “She tried with a couple of guys but it never worked. For obvious reasons. This is going to come as a shock to you but most men don’t want to be forced to become women. But for some reason when I found out—“

“How do you even find that out about someone?” Diana laughed.

“Drinking game. Anyway, she confessed to thinking it was hot, I walked up to her and was like ‘damn, nice fetish you got there, wanna try it out on a willing participant?’ And she was like ‘what the fuck is wrong with you but also yes let’s do it’ and then one thing led to another.” She giggled. Man. Those had been some strange days.

“You ended up liking it, realized it wasn’t a fetish?” 

“Something like that,” Epoc said. “People always talk about how ‘finding out you’re a woman is or isn’t a fetish’ or whatever and like, yeah, who I am isn’t a fetish — I’m a woman when I’m doing my taxes too and that doesn’t get me off — but nobody ever talks about how getting to be yourself for the first time after like, twenty years of trying to be someone you’re not is existentially arousing and yeah. That gets your dick hard sometimes.”

“So you were into it but not because of the forced feminization but because…”

“Because she was using me to get off on her sissification kink and I was using her as a way to finally experience my gender, which was getting me off in an unrelated but equally potent way,” Epoc said. She stood up and, almost automatically, stroked her skirt flat. “It didn’t work out, of course. She was a fucking weirdo about it when I didn’t want to wear skimpy clothing and just, like, wanted to wear a jeans and a shirt, but a woman’s jeans and shirt.”

“But for a while you were what she wanted?”

“Full sissy femboy maid,” Epoc said with a little salute, at your service. “Man, she would just sit there, watch me pretend to do the dishes or whatever, and lose her mind.”

“Weird,” Diana said. “If it’s any consolation, I just think the outfit makes you look ridiculous.” She winked. “Maybe just a little cute.” She stood up and sat down on the bed. “Come here.” She patted the mattress next to her. “Sit.”

Epoc raised an eyebrow, put the brush she’d been cleaning with off to the side, and did as she was told, a little apprehensively. On the one hand, she was already in a maid dress and she had already been shoved into a wall, so at this point she was in for the whole nine, but on the other there was something about Diana that felt… different. 

“So,” Diana said, “other than not having the brain thing, what do you want, Epoc?”

“I…” Epoc said, and then stopped. She frowned. What did she want? Her whole life she’d wanted to be a pilot and now she was here and everything had gotten very, very complicated very fucking quickly. “I’m not sure,” she said. “It’s weird, my gut tells me that what I want is to be a good pilot, be a good Hound, but with what’s going on with me a part of me wonders if that’s just the conditioning and my fucked up brain talking.” She sighed and picked at her nails. 

“Well, you signed the Hound contract,” Diana said. “I designed the cockpit. I know what it has to be able to do and yeah, need to know basis, but if I’m going to be designing a fuck-chair that can simulate being caned or having hot wax dripped on you, I gotta know I’m not committing some kind of fineable ethics violation. I know what goes into the contract.” She nudged Epoc. “So. Was it the sex?”

“It didn’t… hurt,” Epoc said, “but again, I can’t know if that’s my brain, you know? Winter made it very clear what she’s about, what Mako Group is about and what the Hound contracts are about. And I fucking jumped on it. Was that because my brain was already fucked? Did the drugs ruin my brain so bad that I’m just looking for someone to do all the thinking for me so I can just be a good little sex slave? Is that also the reason why even saying that out loud is turning me on?” She gritted her teeth. “I’m so fucked up, man.”

“Well,” Diana said, “if it’s any consolation, none of the other Hounds I’ve met, as far as I know, have the same kind of uh, neurological shit going on like you do. But they’re all still here and they’re all getting railed and fingered and milked or whatever. I can’t tell you some of the weird shit I’ve had to come up with, but I can tell you there was a Hound who had me build her cockpit so it felt like she was strung up by ropes in the seat, and then I had to find a way to get her to pilot it from the seat.” She shook her head. “I think all of you, the Hounds, the pilots, but generally the kind of people who are drawn to Mako Group and to the boss, I think all of you are just kind of like that. I don’t think you become a pilot if you don’t kinda wanna fuck the giant robots to begin with. 

“Hah,” Epoc said. “Devah said the same thing. She told me you probably know about her, uh, proclivities when she’s driving a Frame.”

“Angel? Yeah, no shit. I have to power wash every cockpit she sets foot in. Don’t get me wrong, from what I hear she’s a great Cat, but man, does that bitch get wet.” She laughed. “I think all of you are fucked in the head, Epoc. It’s not just you. And I don’t really think it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Like, I need you to remember that a Frame is a weapon. Sure, my exosuits and loaders are good for loads of things. I can make those babies feel like race cars while the Rats use them to stack boxes all day, but anything bigger than a Gamma was made with only one purpose.”

“Combat,” Epoc said. “I know.”

“Yeah. Your life’s dream of becoming a pilot is a life’s dream of becoming a weapon. Of becoming a tool made for one thing and that thing is risking your life, either fighting things so large they could swallow a house and not notice until it’s stuck in their teeth, or other people like you. I think you have to be a little bit insane for that.”

“So what about the sex?” Epoc said.

“What about the sex?”

“Is it just the pilots?”

“Are you asking me if me and the other engineers have orgies and secret sex dungeons and do petplay with each other?” Diana smirked at Epoc, who gave her the smallest nod she figured she could get away with without it being literally imperceptible. “No,” Diana said. “We have normal, collegial relationships with each other. Sometimes that means you end up in a normal, boring relationship and sometimes that means two people end up fucking for a while and then they break up and there’s a normal, boring awkwardness between colleagues who used to date. We don’t do conditioning and weird in-office sex games. It’s just you pilots and your handlers.” She cocked her head. “What did you think punishment was going to be like?”

“Uh,” Epoc said, “I don’t know. I figured a large strap would be involved.”

“You’re gonna have to buy me dinner first,” Diana said. “I don’t know you from Eve. The thing is, you can sign away all your human rights as you like, but the boss doesn’t own me. If I don’t feel like fucking someone, I’m not gonna fuck them just because it’s a part of your curriculum. And I’m a busy woman.” She shrugged. “That said, I do think you’re cute.” She nudged Epoc again, which was a little bit like being nudged by a fridge.

“I’ll… have to think about that,” Epoc said. “I’m not really used to relationships that don’t start out sexual, you know?” 

“Yeah, I know,” Diana said. “Don’t worry. I grew up gay. First base: infodumping. Second base: trauma dumping. Third base: sex. Home run: seeing each other in daylight.”

“Hah! Yeah, that’s about right,” Epoc said. “Though those first three could be swapped around. And the thing is like, it’s not like I was using sex as a replacement for anything. I think people get that wrong sometimes, you know? Like ‘oh she can’t get affection so she’s just sleeping with people because it makes her feel wanted’ like, no, I want my back blown out by tall butch in overa— in o— in…” Her voice trailed off when she realized who she was sitting next to, and the blush crept back up.

“Yeah,” Diana said. “I get it. I just don’t enjoy it if there isn’t anything more. So if you want me to blow your back out, we’re going to have to spend more time together.”

“I… I wouldn’t be opposed to that,” Epoc said. “But like, obviously I wouldn’t be able to commit—“

“Epoc, if you think I expect you to be monogamous you haven’t been paying attention. I’m not asking you to marry me, I’m telling you I want to have a drink with you if you want me to bring some of those punishment fantasies that get you to have to pretend you’re not hard to life.”

“Ah.”

“So, is that it, then? The sex? Why you’re here?” Diana asked. “I mean, not here here but like…” she waved out the window. “Here.”

Epoc shook her head. “I just want to be a pilot. Drive Nexus Alpha. Be really good at what I do. I am really good at what I do. And I want to have my needs met when I’m not piloting. I think I’ve always been a sexual person, it’s just that Mako Group really brings it out in me and whatever is going on with my brain makes things a lot worse.”

“Well,” Diana said, “you’ve got the time to figure it out. And if you want to have a talk with someone who’s not looking for an excuse to bend you over the desk, I’m around, alright? We’ll grab that drink some time. There’s a bar not far from here I go to sometimes.”

Epoc nodded. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

“Don’t. You’re not done scrubbing. You’re not leaving this room — or that dress — until this place smells like flowers.”

“Fucking damn it.”

Elamimax

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