The girl Jess shared a face with squirmed between Aletheia's thighs as the redhead held her by her pretty green hair and used her mouth, each thrust punctuated by an adorable little whimper. Jenny had descended into subspace right on schedule, and had yet to come up for air. It filled her with endless joy to see her ortet getting back to normal, but now that she had a chance to sit back and watch the act, there was something that stood out, something she couldn't quite ignore.

"I still can't believe I sound like that when I come."

"What, the little yips?" Ella snickered and leaned into her, one arm around Jess's shoulders, the other stroking Imogen's hair — she was dolled out and sprawled across both their laps. "They're adorable. I always keep score and see how many I can get out of you."

"You absolutely do not." Yet, even as she said it, the cognitive overlay she was running to make herself toppy enough to keep from getting sucked into subspace just like Jenny had was giving her a vicarious thrill at the thought — watching her ortet go absolutely to pieces beneath her, squirming helplessly as she pumped her soft, gorgeous ass without mercy, had been bliss. The idea of keeping score like that was the cherry on top of the completely-wreck-a-beautiful-girl sundae. "Fuck. That's hot."

"It is so, so weird not having you melt all over me. Cute, but weird." Ella reached over and traced a little circle on Jess's neck, right where it met her shoulder, something that would have her head over heels in a heartbeat normally. With the overlay in place, though, it was just a pleasant bit of affection. "Like, dirt, Jess. Look at this."

"I know, I know," Jess said, laughing. "It's weird on my end, too. But I wanted this girl to be the center of attention," she added, reaching out with one leg and gently poking Jenny's butt cheek with its nubby little foot. The little moan she let out at even the slightest touch was music to Jess's modified psyche. She couldn't help but take her lip between her teeth at the sound. "And no lie, it's pretty fun, too."

"A sometimes treat?"

"Definitely a sometimes treat." Even though the overlay, Jess had an itch that being toppy wasn't scratching. Once the party was over, she was going to have to track down someone and set up a time-compressed sim for them to utterly demolish her. Maybe Cinnamon would be free — a sim level 4 avatar wasn't quite a level 5, but she had been promised a knolling. And then, of course, there was the other reason she was running a cognitive overlay to keep herself out of subspace. Jess may have arranged for Jenny to have a worry-free time, but she had work to do while she was here. "Infrastructure brain is calling, I think I'm gonna watch a little more of the forward cylinder doing its thing. Want me to top up your water bottle?"

"Oooh, yeah, thank you." Ella leaned in and kissed Jess on the cheek. "I might join you in a little bit. Who can resist a finely-tuned piece of machinery operating in perfect synchrony, hmm?" She gave Imogen's boob a little squeeze to punctuate it, and while Imogen may not have given any sort of reaction, she and Ella both knew she enjoyed it.

"Tell me about it," Jess said, giving Imogen's ass a gentle pat. "You know, even with this overlay in place...I still can't wait for the doll chassis to be done." She shivered at the thought — her chassis was gender as frost, but a doll chassis for Ella to play with alongside Imogen was a special kind of fun she'd always longed for, one that Miss Ginnala's class-M xenodrugs didn't quite reach.

"You know Mistress, she's a perfectionist," Ella said, "but when it's done, it'll be absolutely flawless. And I will have so much fun with you."

Not even the overlay could keep Jess from shivering at that. "Yeah, definitely can't wait."

"Well, until then, I'll just have to marvel at this gorgeous chassis you already have," Ella said, her fingers tracing the panel line around her collarbone. There was no mistaking her tone.

"Well, maybe this gorgeous chassis could use a little maintenance later," Jess replied, winking. She carefully passed Imogen over to Ella — it was about time for her to be moved, anyway — and helped her arrange the dollgirl in a cute pose on her lap before getting to her feet and climbing up out of the cuddle pit, water bottle in hand.

The three affini were settled in by the window, watching the show (outside and inside) and idly chatting amongst themselves. The moment Jess had found out who Miss Ginnala's guests would be, she'd begun planning her strategy for dealing with each of them.

Miss Ginnala, for her part, was far more clever than she tended to behave, but she was also very distractible. However, she also didn't work in environmental engineering, so it seemed unlikely that she had much information that would benefit the investigation. Jess simply needed to not make it obvious that she was digging for information, and Miss Ginnala wouldn't be an issue.

Miss Pisca, on the other hand — she was Jess's prime target. Despite being a third bloom, Miss Pisca was scarcely a hundred and fifty Terran years old, which made her very young for an affini. She was prone to rambling, especially when excited, and often said things before she fully considered them. She'd mellowed somewhat over the last twenty years, but she was still by far Jess's best hope of extracting useful information.

That left Miss Tsuga. She was highly placed in environmental engineering, and probably knew exactly what was going on down to the tiniest detail. However, she was also a ninth bloom, the oldest affini that Jess knew, and by far the most dangerous affini in the room as far as her mission was concerned. If the elder affini cared to, she could open Jess up and peruse her like a book, and she'd happily spill every secret.

Miss Tsuga hadn't always been that way, of course. When Jess had first met her, back on Solstice, she'd been a nervous wreck. Looking back, it was obvious, but even at the time she'd felt that there was something ever so slightly off about the tallest of the three affini who had showed up, who had to bend over double and sprawl over half of Bulwark's common room just to fit inside. Adopting Layla had grounded her somewhat, but she'd still been the overconcerned worrywart she'd always been. Getting something past Miss Tsuga the way she used to be wouldn't have been so difficult.

But she'd rebloomed since then, and that changed the calculus completely. It had happened shortly after Admin had adopted Jess, when she was still a giggly little disaster floret fresh from her implant, but she remembered it well. She'd been part of the keep-Layla-company crew for the full week that Miss Tsuga had spent in the growth beds, vines slowly coiling through the carefully cultivated plant matter as she rebuilt herself from the inside out — Layla had scarcely left her side the entire time, curled up in her little pet bed and reading works of Terran literature to her indisposed owner.

When Miss Tsuga had finally emerged, she didn't look much different — maybe a little taller, a little more filled out, but still the same rough bark, still the same needles, still very recognizable as Miss Tsuga Sequi, now Ninth Bloom. It quickly became apparent that much and more had changed beneath the surface, though. Gone was the anxiety, gone was the worry, gone was the tendency to drop needles when nervous — gone were the nerves! She was calm, collected, and dangerously observant. With eight blooms behind her, she'd heard every trick in the book from dozens of sophont species across multiple galaxies. She was a canny old thing who would have no compunctions about taking a floret aside, enthralling her, and figuring out exactly what was going on the minute that she caught so much as a whiff of unwholesome subterfuge.

Jess loved Miss Tsuga. Everyone did — she was one of the kindest and warmest affini Jess had ever met, and she gave some of the best headpats on the ship. One could feel her love when she gave you affection, even when she spoke to you, a love so powerful that it outshone all but one's owner's. She was wonderful and good and Jess hated to trick her, but if she let Miss Tsuga stay around while she tried to work an angle on Miss Pisca, she'd figure it out in a second and stop her. At best, she'd shut Miss Pisca down when she got close to something sensitive — at worst, the class-D xenodrugs would come out.

So when she approached the three affini lounging together on a low couch, she made a beeline for Miss Tsuga and draped herself against her leg, a placid smile on her face. "Hiiii~"

"Well hello there!" Miss Tsuga laughed as vines slipped from beneath her bark to coil gently around Jess's chassis. "To what do I owe the honor, little one?"

"Well~" Jess took her time, leaning into Miss Tsuga's bark and rubbing gently against it, enjoying its rough texture. "I wanted to see more of the, uhm, the reconfiguration? The forward cylinder already looks so different." She glanced back over her shoulder, out the window, at the shifting landscape. Already, several large sections of it had been completely reformatted, the contours of the artificial "sea" floor beginning to take shape here and there. "Are we really gonna melt down a whole comet to fill it with water?"

"A good chunk of one, yes," Miss Tsuga said. "There should be some left over, though. I think Ginnala's actually submitted paperwork to use it for sculpture, haven't you?"

"Mmhmm! It's been quite a while since I've gotten to work with cometary ice! Such a fascinating medium, and this one's got an interesting blend of rock and dust and frozen gases. If it's carved the right way, it'll make for a truly stunning display in about, oh... twenty-thousand Terran years or so, when it gets close to its parent star again. I'll have to leave myself a note to come see how it turns out!"

"That's so cool!" And, to be fair, it was. Miss Ginnala's art was always amazing. Even if Jess didn't always get it, her dedication to it and her devotion to finding beauty in base materials was downright inspiring. Imogen was but one particularly stunning example of her craft — there was a reason the dollgirl's handle was 'magnumopus.' "A whole little ocean," she added with a giggle. "That's so wild! Are we gonna put fish in it?"

"If nothing else, a few species to support a cleaning ecosystem," Miss Tsuga said. "Water needs much more intensive work than atmosphere to keep clean, you know."

"Mmmm. Ohhh yeah, speaking of water." She giggled to herself, playing up how high she was (and she was still high) as she held up Ella's mostly empty water bottle. "Ella needs a refill but she's got an Imogen on her lap."

"Oh, does she?" Miss Tsuga chuckled, leaned down, and ruffled Jess's hair with one of her big, warm hands — not as big as Admin's, but wonderfully big. She lost herself in the touch, barely even noticing as the vine snaked out and gently took the water bottle from her. "I'll take care of this, little one. You just sit tight and watch the show."

"Yes, ma'am." Jess wobbled a bit as Miss Tsuga stood up, transferring her weight from her leg to the sofa, which was low enough she could just get her arm on top of the cushion. "Thank you~"

"Always, little one." One last stroke from a passing vine, and Miss Tsuga was away. Jess's plan had worked, and now the clock was ticking. No time to waste. She enabled her sensory recording systems and, with a burst from her legs, hopped up onto the sofa and sprawled out in Miss Pisca's lap.

"Oop!" Miss Pisca laughed and began to pet Jess. "Guess it's my turn!"

"Mmmhmm! Tummyrubs!" Jess said, giggling and stretching out. "What kind of fish?"

"Hmmm?" Miss Pisca's vines went to work, and Jess shivered at the touch. She overclocked herself to collect her thoughts, to spread out the sensation a little. She needed to stay focused.

"For the water," she managed to say before a moan cut her off. "How come you're arg-mmmmff! Arguing about fish?"

"Ohhh, well, it's mostly about trophic levels and such. Honestly though, it's not as if we're even considering cultivating any dangerous aquatic species. I'm fairly certain everything more than a few centimeters across that's been proposed is some kind of filter-feeder. It's not as if any of it's going to get the idea to take a bite out of a cute little sophont."

Cute little sophont, huh? That could have referred to virtually any floret aboard Tillandsia, even vreeüt, but given the context, it was suggestive. "Ohhh," she said, nodding as she gazed out the window. "Yeah, that'd be awful, going swimming and getting bit. Are you working on the fish stuff, Miss Pisca?"

"Oh no," Miss Pisca said, laughing. "No no no, ecosystem design is well over my head. I did get to design a little segment of the landscape all on my own, though! A nice little lagoon with lots of fun, interesting little crevasses and depressions that'll result in tide pools to hide in. It's right over... there, I think. Or it will be, anyway, by the end of today."

Crevasses. Tide pools. Hiding. Now Jess was getting somewhere. If she could pick out Miss Pisca's lagoon, she could probably infer a size range for the xenosophont. That would narrow down her search parameters significantly! "That's so cool... could I see a map, maybe?"

"Oh sure, petal, I'll send it right over to you," Miss Pisca said, smiling down at her and scritching her behind the radiators. Jess arched her back and leaned into it, lip seized between her teeth. "I didn't know you were interested in topographic engineering!"

"I think she'd be interested in listening to you talk about just about anything right now." Miss Ginnala reached over and added her vines to the fray, opening one of her access ports and running one vine along one of her primary oxygenation fluid conduits — which, naturally, Admin had made incredibly sensitive. Jess let out another moan, her eyes rolling in her head. Miss Ginnala probably knew all her spots.

"You might be right," Miss Pisca said. "Everbloom, what a cutie she is." She glanced over at the cuddle pit, where Miss Tsuga was leaning over, vines reaching down into it — from the sound of things, she was teasing Layla mercilessly, which only turned Jess on even more. "What do you say we go and join her?"

"I think that's a marvelous idea!" Miss Ginnala closed up Jess's access port and leaned over, smiling down at her. "What do you think, Jess?"

Her thoughts slowly collected themselves as she stared right back up at all of Miss Ginnala's pretty eyes. She was starting to fall, she could feel it, though the neurocognitive overlay was fighting valiantly to keep her focused, to keep her in control of the situation, to keep her on task. She took a moment to consider — she'd found out a great deal from Miss Pisca. Maybe she could get more, but she'd have to push much more obviously, and that risked her op being discovered.

That was the stick. The carrot was falling into blissful submission like she'd wanted to from the moment she arrived at Miss Ginnala's party. Even a neurocognitive overlay couldn't keep the feelings of wanting to be used at bay forever. She wanted every single sophont at the party to have their way with her. She wanted Jenny to have her way with her, though that might be a tall ask at the moment.

Stick alone or carrot alone, she might have resisted, but together they were a combination she couldn't refuse. Reaching into her codebase, she toggled off the neurocognitive overlay. Any hope of staying in control of herself evaporated as she felt herself blown free like a hundred little dandelion seeds. She opened every single xenodrug injector port her chassis had and whispered, "Please~"

Let Miss Ginnala and Miss Pisca compete to see who could dose her up first, could dose her up more. Let them pick and choose what they dosed her up with. That wasn't her decision to make.