Healing Swell - Chapter 1

Boots hit the star-studded pavement of the space station street just off the tram stairs and anti-bac steam wafts away from their quick steps as they continue towards the R&D hub in front of them. Pallas moves sluggishly, her eyes almost at a migraine squint despite the eternal night of the station.  She has been feeling… off.  Persistently and upsettingly.  She finally gave in to her roommate’s needling to take a day off pounding the pavement for work and get checked out. The thought of heading to a quick clinic and all the paperwork involved was a non-starter for Pallas and she instead opted for a trip to Eir’s lab.  Not a MEDICAL doctor, but certainly more knowledgeable about Pallas’s situation than she would be comfortable divulging to a tired eyed physician's assistant.  Her steps clack metallic on the entryway into the building, concentrated AC blasting her steely dark gray hair back.  It smells like a fond memory.  Nodding to the familiar receptionist and the answering the questioning head tilt of 'work?' she offers a sluggish smile and a shake of her head. Two months have passed since she was psychically blasted during the climax of a tense investigation. In some ways it felt like the blink of an eye, in others... an eternity. Troublingly, she didn't remember pockets of time during those months.  But she doubted it was any kind of psionic interference.  Just long tired days leaving her passed out at the end of them.

The prospect of stairs is too daunting, and her boots are literally metal weights. If she closes her eyes in the elevator... it's almost like there are no walls. Fear has had a more difficult time gripping her recently. A relief.  A ding as the correct floor is announced by a stock voice, crackling with static. Pallas pushes forward, only opening her eyes again several steps out of the box.  Lights were always a bit dimmer in this hallway, and she's grateful for it today.  Her head has been in constant revolt at even the idea of too much light and sends it's discomfort straight to her stomach.  With this becoming an everyday occurrence now, her appetite has tanked, yet frustratingly what she did eat clung to her body for dear life.  Maybe the freshman fifteen sentiment applied to new jobs too...

Holding her breath through the mushroom arches that heralded her entrance to the lab, she clangs down the metal catwalk and the stairs to the main floor, heady floral musk of the room surrounding her.  Eir stands in front of a terminal, scrolling away with a finger in thought before turning to the newcomer, her braid slipping off her shoulder to pendulum behind her. She was a tall alien, healthily built through years of effort. Her species didn’t have the natural aptitudes of the gene-modded humans, she couldn’t pull magic out of the molecules of the air to toss around at will, and she couldn’t delve into someone’s mind like an encyclopedia, but should she so choose the vocation her build was warrior-like. Four strong tentacle legs emerged from her back, used to scuttle around quicker than human’s clumsy feet could. Her skin was a sepia brown mottled with cream, like a relaxed cuttlefish. She has an extra set of eyes where her human eyebrows WOULD have been, normally closed but when opened pulsed verdant green as they sought out heat signatures even in the pitch dark. Her hands had two fingers each with a thumb, well suited for quickly shuffling through pages of data on pads. Despite not being able to harness the raw magic of the universe at will, she was able to utilize the smaller amounts of magic her body made naturally and used them as a healer.

"Hey Eir..." says Pallas with a wave, not bothering to mask her discomfort.  Eir’s brows knit together at the lack of a smile, even the lie of one.

"Vulca told me she was going to convince you to come by, I didn't know when you'd be stopping in.  I'm glad you came.", she provides a smile instead.  Pallas nods sleepily and looks over at an exam table with questioning eyes, and even as she does the exertion of her trek to R&D makes her knees buckle just a little bit.  Strong limbs are suddenly wrapping around her torso, Roma’s tentacles and their peculiar texture.  Gentle but firm hands grasp at her biceps, and a low murmur of "Let's get you checked out over here...", as she assists Pallas over to the table.  

"Just lay.  Let your breathing return to normal.  To NORMAL, don't think about it.", she adds, chiding Pallas for immediately overthinking her inhale-exhale patterns.  A stethoscope is deftly flicked around from point to point, listening to her lungs, her heart, it felt good lingering on her warm stomach.  All of her was warm, but the metal sliding over her there gave her pleasurable goosebumps down her arms, prickling what hair hasn't been worn away by her armor.  Eir tilts her chin, noting the reaction.

"You have internalized much trauma in the past several months, Pallas.  It's a wonder your body is holding up as well as it has.  Arm non-withstanding.", Eir adds almost as an afterthought, gesturing at Pallas’s prosthetic cybernetic laced arm.  "Does the phantom pain trouble you daily?  Or less often?"  Eir’s fingers test the nerve-circuitry connection at the seam of her new shoulder, almost a pauldron.  Pallas lays mostly still, with some noises of slight discomfort, existing underneath the blissfully cool compress Eir provided for her eyes and forehead.  

"Most days it bothers me.", she mumbles through a haze of concentrated chill, "But when I'm moving it doesn't really.  I can usually flex my hand and it helps.  But since I had Vulca upgrade the circuitry for motion assist in my forearm and hand it hasn't worked quite the same."  Eir taps her pen on the clipboard she's holding, staccato.  "Why did Vulca install that?"  Her question is met with the ambience of the lab in lieu of reply.  Beeping monitors, bubbling experiments, spore plumes... and suspicious silence from the woman on the table.  

"Pallas.  I am your physician in this moment.  If you hide your symptoms from me, I cannot help you.  Please be honest with me, if you can bear it.", prods Eir, scribbling a note.  After a stretch of stubborn quiet, Pallas raises her hands off the table by several inches in a frustrated jerk before letting gravity slap them back to the table.

"Because I CAN'T MOVE IT anymore.  I can't bend metal, I can't lift anything bigger than a fucking FORK, I can't funnel electricity, my magic control is basically GONE, I can't...", the beginning of her confessions pours out of her in a breath as if any interruption would derail her intentions, and then she sighs and rubs her forehead with long tension headache strokes of her thumbs from the center outwards, "- I can't even talk at Nysus…  I...", her voice turns more brittle than before, an unspoken worry finally given voice, "... Eir, Nysus got hurt.  She was protecting me in that... she was protecting me, and she got hurt, and I can't feel her anymore, I can't use my magic, I can't... Eir what if she died?"  In this moment she's very grateful for the compress over her eyes, and that it stifles her sinuses and their ability to make tear snot.  She breathes in the silence between the two women for a long time.  Eir, standing sentinel, understands the gravity of this. Nysus was a mental symbiote that Pallas had been infected with months prior. Their tug of war was contentious at first, but they’d come to understand each other’s desires and Nysus provided Pallas greater control of magic than she ever had before. To suddenly be bereft of that, and a constant companion of plurality must have been shattering for Pallas, and she shouldered it all alone...  Eir moves to the top of the table and takes over for Pallas’s fingers as they shake at the effort of relieving pressure.  Her gloved hands glide over Pallas’s forehead, right under where her cybernetics meets her skin, in small tight circles.  Pallas makes a small noise of gratitude, her head lolling to one side ever so slightly.

The half broken woman lays on the table, and tiredly plucks at her strands of hair, curling around her from her ponytail shoved to the side. "I was worried when I woke up and felt my abilities slipping a week or two after. I'm just... I'm so tired all the time, I have migraines every night, I can't eat food because I'm so nauseous from them and on top of it all my goddamn TITS won't stop aching.", she finishes with slightly more frustration than she let leak into the rest of the sentiment.

Eir’s lips purse outwards at the last statement, still winding her fingers in rhythm across Pallas’s forehead.  "Come again?  Your breasts are uncomfortable?"  Pallas shrugs, plopping her own hands directly onto her chest, and then grunting with discomfort.  "Like, I KNOW they're bigger, and I asked Tula if that was weird and all she had for me was 'mammal hormones' before she started up again on the training dummy so I don't know.  Do you think it's hormones?  Does that shit still HAPPEN to people at 30?  I thought I didn't have to worry after puberty."  Eir snorts and laughs but not in such a way to be rude.  

"A hormonal flux isn't out of the question, you've had substantial life changes recently... to say the least.  Our bodies react to those circumstances very differently.  You need to be gentle with yourself while you're healing.  Mind and body.", she punctuates the last words with three taps on Pallas’s shoulders.

"Thank you for being honest with your doctor.", says Eir with an attempt at humor while only missing the mark a bit.  "Given new information, I'd like to do a full checkup, get some bloodwork, maybe some light physical therapy if I can pinpoint anything."  Eir helps Pallas up gently to a sitting position, her posture still more of a slump until otherwise directed, and shimmies out of her boots and jeans and jacket, but leaves her black tank top on just in case an unlikely someone wanders through the doorway to the lab.  She does remove her sports bra deftly without taking off anything else, a skill acquired from bone tired days on the mining rig, returning to the apartment and falling into bed without too much else in the way of disrobing.  The scientist begins her thorough examination several times over, taking blood with several discontented noises from the patient, checking reflexes with aid of pressure points, taking temperatures from different areas for cross reference, before she says, "Alright, lift up your shirt.  I need to check your breasts, let me know what areas are uncomfortable as describe the pain if you could, please."  Eir leans in, and clinically cups one breast at a time, her eyes flicking around and her brows furrow and she examines.  Eir is one of the few people who have ever seen Pallas laid bare, and from her first examination she immediately notices something to bring to Pallas’s attention.

"Your areola is darker... and slightly larger from several months ago when you came here for your initial exam.  They do appear larger as well, which would explain the ache.  Have you had any changes in diet recently?", she asks bluntly and clinically, even while her eyes stray down to Pallas’s waistline.  A slight roundness of gut that was not present even when Eir had seen her weeks prior is obvious to her now, though it was hidden by Pallas’s clothing expertly.  And... her hips had slightly more to them than her rail-like form had ever possessed in any picture Eir had ever seen of Pallas at the apartment.  Pallas fidgets slightly the whole exam up to this point, the pricks of needles are soothed over by Eir’s hands and, clinical though it is, the attention blooms goosebumps and tingles from her head down her arms in blissful waves, rolling right through her migraine.  But as Eir’s attention focuses in on her chest, she blushes.  The first time they had been strangers.  Now they were friends.  It really shouldn't bother her... in either way.  But it was.

"Uhhhh... nah.  No change in diet, I'm eating all the same stuff just... you know... less of it overall.  I guess I did start trying out those herbal sleep supplements you gave me after... you know.  But if they are doing this I'd honestly rather feel this shitty forever than never sleep again."  

"Don't be dramatic, it affects my readings."

"You got it."

Eir’s fingers linger on Pallas’s breasts, her mind miles away in thought, before shaking her head and standing up, peeling off her gloves and throwing them in the trashcan nearby, and crossing to the computer hooked up to the sample centrifuge to grab some new readouts.  She pulls a paper off of a nearby printer, and scans over it quickly with her hand over her mouth.  

"Can I put my shirt back down?", asks Pallas from the other side of the room, eyeing the doorway nervously, and extremely self conscious of how hard her nipples are.  Eir is already moving back towards Pallas with intent, not hearing the question in her focus, "Lay back", she commands and her extra legs ferry her through the room gathering supplies quickly and rolling over a large machine with a screen attached.

Puzzle pieces are falling into place for Eir, and she's kicking herself for not seeing the signs earlier, it's just... this was Pallas.  She nears the table and flicks on the machine with a magic infused whirr and pulls a tall stool over for herself to sit bedside, pulling on a new pair of gloves with a snap.  "Pallas, when was the last time you had a sexual encounter?  I'm not here to judge, or pry, but I am not counting anything that you and your robot lovers may have engaged in, organic encounters only. Dates to the nearest week, please."  She punctuates that statement by quickly smearing freezing gel over Pallas’s lower abdomen, Pallas sucks in her small gut at the contact with a hiss and says, "Oh c'mon Eir what the fuck give me some warning-"  "Dates, Pallas."

Eir pulls out a wand-like object that statics the nearby screen to life, and starts fiddling with settings, but her jellied fingers keep slipping on the dials.

"Umm...", starts Pallas with a scrunched up thinking face, "At this point?  A few weeks before I came back to the space station... five months I think?  Almost on the dot?"  Eir shakes her head, "Are you sure?", to which Pallas shrugs, relatively unbothered.  Eir’s perplexed expression only deepens as the wand glides up and down Pallas’s slightly protruding stomach, searching and searching... for something that she never finds.  The scientist huffs a confused sound, and crosses her arms as she leans back in the stool, extra legs preventing it from rolling too far, puffing a strand of her silvery gray hair out of her face.  

“Pallas I'm sorry... I thought things had been pointing towards a conclusion but it would seem that you aren't pregnant."

"Space Me, I shouldn't be!!", Pallas says sharply and quickly, "I know I put on a little weight but damn, Eir."  The dark haired woman slides herself up to a sitting position, hiding her stomach away with an embarrassed blush.  Eir reaches out with a hand, spattering jelly on Pallas’s leg to her chagrin.  "No, I'm not- it's just- listen.", says Eir, with no clear direction for the waffling of the statement.

Eir stands are starts pacing quickly on her tentacles, shaking her head, "Common symptoms were all there, I don't understand why you are in this state.  It could be several conflicting conditions at once, but your milk ducts in your breasts are blooming, and that I cannot attribute to any of these other conditions on my short list.  Pregnancy made the most sense, but I also know your personal history and that wouldn't line up with a standard timeline, although I don't know what magical mutations might have happened in your system with all the exposure you've had to... large sources...", she stops in her tracks, and turns to Pallas who is examining her stomach in Eir’s distracted fervor.  She experiments with pushing it in, but it doesn't have the give of fat.  It's firm, and taut.  And slightly bigger.  

"Eir-", she says, breath hitching in her throat, as she looks down, pressing in on her stomach with both hands, she can feel it pushing out just a bit against her spread palms.  Eir is there in an instant, knocking Pallas’s hands away with precision and she spreads her overlarge fingers across the expanse of Pallas’s lower stomach, and is surprised to feel the inertia of slight movement pushing towards her.  She watches her fingers spread in miniscule amounts, and then up at Pallas like a hawk, with amazed but laser focused eyes.  Pallas bites down on her lower lip so hard it's almost pale, and flinches in pain.  Her hands fly to her breasts, and her shoulders raise as her face screws up.  They are at Eir’s eye level, and she sees Pallas’s jelly covered smeared breasts surge out against Pallas’s fingers, rounding through the spaces between.  Her nipples grow a flushed shade of dark pink, and so do Eir’s cheeks.  

"Pallas please lay back, I need to check something, it's going to be alright.", she asks, then all but pushes Pallas back against the reclining table and holds her in place with her tentacles.  Pallas struggles against her, hands claw-like.

Eir knows there's nothing she can do to fight her, if her magic is so weak, as is her body.  She watches Pallas writhe there as she opens her second set of eyes, glowing acidic, pollen like motes drifting from the edges as she does.  It's a strange overlay, like seeing an anatomical network model underneath a live video feed.  After several moments she closes her main set and Pallas’s magic pathways come alive in resplendent color.  Trace magic glows through her veins like golden chemtrails, fading before they pulse out from her heart, a yellow orange beacon.  Eir’s attention is stolen away by Pallas’s head, where it seems like it was once a vibrant purple, but is almost gray now, infected by orange shards.  Sharp and spearing through what looks like a black voidspace right behind Pallas’s migraine.  Now that she's seen the orange, it attracts her attention throughout the rest of Pallas’s pathways, like little orange needles stemming flow where magic should run freely.  It causes entropy and backup, and the magic bleeds out into Pallas’s muscles until it's reabsorbed into her bloodstream.  A pulse of light catches Eir’s attention, despite Pallas’s squirming.  She looks down... and right behind Pallas’s distended stomach is a faint and flickering purple helix, looping around and in on itself.  With Eir’s hand still on Pallas’s stomach she can feel it grow with each pulse of the light.  The pulses send racing scions through Pallas’s body, Eir sees them gathering not only in the stomach, but the hips, and her rear... and her breasts.  And this pulse was a large one.  She sees trickles of her own green pouring from several injection sites she poked and prodded Pallas with to relax her, and the verdant energy is sucked into the purple... and consumed by it.  

Eir switches eye sets, and finds Pallas staring daggers at her.  She has no time for theatrics or pageantry. 

"Pallas, it's Nysus.  Nysus was living in your head before, I saw it.  And I saw the wounds you described, she was certainly hurt.  She descended through your body, I can see the path she took, to the place where there are the most regenerative systems in your body... your womb.  She's settled in there... I think she's consuming your natural magic to regenerate herself.  But her activating your latent reproductive systems seems to have tricked your body into a false pregnancy!  This is ASTOUNDING, I've never in my life seen anything like this-", Eir’s focus on her explanation loosened her grip on Pallas’s hand that, with great speed, slaps Eir’s bicep and grabs her with a vice.  "Eir.  What the fuck do you mean a false pregnancy?  This FEELS PRETTY REAL TO ME."  Eir clasps her hand over Pallas’s, but tenderly, "I know, that was a lot, I'm sorry, it just... it makes sense now!  And I think I know how to help."

As she says this, Pallas leans back and groans, her knees grinding together as her stomach churns, she's sweating slightly, flush.  Her free hand travels to her larger breast, grabbing at it and whimpering with an inability to help herself.  

"Are you in pain?  What are you feeling?"

Pallas gasps and huffs, her eyes glazed over for a moment, and says a bit drifty and unfocused, "I am so fucking horny.  Eir I've never been this horny in my life.  Oh my god."  The nipple her finger keeps running over begins to bead with white liquid, like dew.  Eir’s eyes widen and her mouth opens involuntarily.  Her heart is pounding in her chest and her breath is coming faster.

Eir watches on, the enormity of her evening to come dawning on her.